by Fiona Quinn
“Are you doubting me? Are you doubting the integrity of my team?” Colonel Guthrie sneered. “Lily died by my command. People don’t go around falling onto Metro rails just as the subway is powering toward them.” He reached over tapped the screen, bringing up a picture of a car that had slammed into the side of a cement mixer. The next picture he scrolled to was a close up of the driver who was obviously dead, crushed under the steering wheel. “This is what happened to Ruby Leibowitz on her drive home from Iniquus. Poor thing. I couldn’t let her go to USIPAC with her information. And now I have Gage.” He waited while this seeped into her conscious.
“How many people do you want to see dead, Zoe? Should I call your folks in Hawaii? Pay your friends Sydney and Holland a visit? Jurnee? She lives nearby, doesn’t she? In central Virginia? That’s only a few hours from here. A nice drive.”
He seemed to be waiting for a response, but Zoe wasn’t in her body. Besides the ability to see and hear, she was little else. She was floating. Weightless.
“There are people you love that can suffer greatly for your heroics. But in the end, you know you’re a patriot and want to help your country. There is nothing intrinsically bad about what you’re developing in terms of safety for the American people.”
“And what do you get out of this? A gigantic paycheck. One from the CIA and the other between you and Bilik from the Mossad.”
Colonel Guthrie squeezed her jaw until she thought it would pop. “Who else knows that?”
“I do.”
“Who else?”
“No one else. I figured it out last night when I was thinking it all through. I’m right; aren’t I?”
The colonel threw her off the chair. She splayed across the floor. She had gotten her answer.
“Really, I shouldn’t need to twist your arm to get you to comply. But I can certainly twist his.” Guthrie flipped back to Gage’s picture.
He needs medical help. “Is Gage here? Can I tell him that I’ll be following your directives to the T?”
“I’m not stupid enough to put you in the same location.”
Zoe stood and caught at the back of the chair as she wobbled. “Well, I guess you’d better drive me to Montrim so I can get going in my lab.”
“That’s my girl.” Colonel Guthrie took her elbow in an iron clasp, snagged her purse, and steered her out the door.
Chapter Forty-One
Zoe
“Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.”
~ Stephen King
Zoe put the RoboSphecius down on its petri dish. Her hands were shaking to the point of being ineffectual. She turned her microscope off. Instead of moving forward, she was destroying what she already had in hand. As much as she hated the idea of taking a break while Gage was tied to that chair, she needed to eat. She needed a big fat sleeping pill. She needed to black out like she had at the hospital. She needed to wrangle control of her nervous system.
The man who was tasked to be her shadow was taking his assignment too literally. He hadn’t been six inches from her side since she got out of the car at Montrim. His breath had been hot on her neck for the last two hours. She was a tall woman, but this guy was a behemoth. He’d even make Gage seem small in comparison. So far, she hadn’t tested out Colonel Guthrie’s threat that he’d even be six inches from her while she used the bathroom.
“Do you have a car? I need to go home.” She stood.
The man followed her to the lab door and waited while she entered her codes to lock up. Without speaking to her, he took her elbow, just as Colonel Guthrie had, and steered her down the hall. They wound their way through the labyrinth of Montrim’s campus, out the side door, through the courtyard, through another door down the hallway and up some stairs to come out in a back parking lot that Zoe didn’t even know existed.
The man was speaking into his cuff in a foreign language. He pressed her up against an air conditioning unit, and they waited. The wind blew. The cold got into her lungs. She coughed to expel it, which reminded her that she’d been holding her bladder all day long.
A car came around the corner and stopped. With an iron claw gripping her elbow, the behemoth thrust her forward. A door popped open on the sedan. Zoe heard a bang. Suddenly, her guard leaned over her, making guttural noises and twitching. He grasped at her convulsively. A ball-like object flew past her into the open car door. There was an explosion that lit her auricular nerves on fire. She stuck her fingers in her ears and collapsed under the guard’s weight. She tried to push him off and saw that the car had filled with billowing smoke. The air became acidic. Zoe breathed into the fabric covering her elbow.
The driver tried to take off driving, but the smoke was too thick to see through. He ran straight into the cooling unit, not two feet from where she and her captor lay. Zoe screamed and flung her arms out, making the guard drop off of her. Two men fast roped down the side of the portico roof. One grabbed her and jerked her back inside of Montrim.
Zoe fought with everything she had. But the man had wrapped her in his arms and had a hand over her mouth stoppering her screams.
“Zoe. Calm.”
She bit his finger hard, and he flung her out away from him, but kept a good grip on her wrist.
“Zoe. Calm. It’s Titus.”
Zoe panted. Relief and danger fought for dominance. “No, you can’t save me. I need… They have Gage!”
“Zoe. Shhh. We have Gage. He’s at the Iniquus infirmary.” He held up his cellphone with a picture of Gage lying on a cot. The wounds she had seen earlier were cleaned and dressed in pristine white bandages.
“You saved him? How?” Zoe was completely confused. “You saved me? How?”
“We’re good at what we do.” He held out his hand. “Come on.”
“But the CIA are good at what they do too. They have the same capability as you do. More.”
Titus touched the comms that wrapped his neck. “Panther actual. Roger that. I’m exiting with our precious cargo.” He pushed the door open and took her by the hand. “We weren’t up against the CIA, just Guthrie. Guthrie had a friend at NSA who was helping him with satellite images. We have friends there too.”
“But Colonel Guthrie said—”
“Let’s get you back with Gage, and we’ll tell you what we found out.”
Zoe moved out into the diffused light of a gray winter’s day. Red Christmas bells, hanging on the parking lot lights, swung in the wind cheerily. Special Agent Prescott was hefting her captor to his feet. He was in cuffs. Prescott looked over at Titus. “I’m loving these stun rifles, man. So much less paperwork.”
Brian had another man bent over the hood of his car, cuffing him, as well. Smoke billowed around them.
Zoe was escorted to Titus’s Hummer. He helped her in, then scooted around to his side. She was too stunned to speak.
“You’ll feel better once you see Gage,” Titus predicted. He did her the great kindness of not talking again until she was in Gage’s arms.
***
Zoe sat as close as she could get to Gage without actually crawling into his lap. Touching him helped her remember that he was safe, not being beaten and bound, with his life on the line for her ethics. He reached up to stroke his hand over her hair and planted a kiss on her temple.
After she had gone to the infirmary to see Gage, the female doctor had taken her off to make sure that she hadn’t been sexually attacked during her captivity. Zoe hadn’t even considered the possibility. It was though. Possible. And she remembered again how Colonel Guthrie had said these men would be within six inches of her when she slept and peed and bathed. She was fine. Thank God, both she and Gage were fine. Lily was not. Ruby was not. What a horrible string of events.
She and Gage had eaten and now they were back in the Panther war room, waiting for Special Agent Prescott to come and debrief them.
“Can you tell me what they found in the Mercedes?” Gage asked, lacing his fingers with Zoe’s. Zoe grasped his hand with both of hers
and pulled it up against her belly.
“Yeah, sure,” Brian said. “We stripped it down. The envelope was taped up under the rear seat. It had Colin Bunsinger’s name on it. The envelope was still sealed when we handed it over to Prescott.”
“They charged the men at the farmhouse? They’re still in custody?” Gage asked.
“Yeah, we have eleven of the twelve up here, counting both hot and cold bodies. We have one who was picked up in Miami,” Brian said.
“Lynx’s ploy dragged one of their guys down there?” Gage grinned.
“Looks like it. He was caught trying to sneak onto the cruise ship. Either he was on his way to the Panama Canal on vacation, or he was falling into her trap. Strike Force kept an eye on the cabin for us. They’re the ones who nabbed him. FBI took control of the guy and is shipping him back here.”
Gage was laughing and held up a hand for a high five.
Zoe decided to ask Gage about the story of Lynx and the cruise ship later. Right now, she wanted to be very still and very quiet. Gage seemed to answer that thought with the kiss he brushed into her hair.
The Panthers rose respectfully as Special Agent Prescott moved through the door. Gage went to stand as well, but Prescott caught his eye and waved him back into his seat. Zoe sat up straight as the mood shifted from hanging out to official debrief.
Prescott stood at the front of the room. “I want to tell Panther Force how appreciative my unit is and how grateful I am for your help on this case. Nine men from the Israeli Special Forces are in custody, and three of them were killed while committing their crimes. We haven’t yet learned how they came to be in America. This case will continue to unfold.” He reached up to scratch his brow. “The CIA has been apprised and will be working with the FBI on the best way to handle the situation from this point forward.”
There was a general groan that went up with the Panthers. Prescott acknowledged this with a calming hand gesture. “I know that’s a stretch of the imagination, but on this case, it is in America’s best interests that these criminals be kept under wraps. We can’t let the public know in any way, shape, or form about the BIOMIST program. You’re right, Zoe.” Prescott opened his hand toward her. “This database has been of immense help to our intelligence community. On that, there is no disagreement between the FBI and CIA.”
Prescott focused on Gage, and Zoe could feel Gage’s muscles stiffening. “I have spoken directly with the Director of the CIA and apprised him of the actions and pressures that were put on Dr. Kealoha as well as the illegal contract they had developed with Montrim’s board member, Christopher Bilik.”
“Only Bilik?” Titus asked.
“From the papers that the team brought in that were meant to be disclosed to Colin Bunsinger, the funds were to go into two offshore accounts, both in shell companies’ names. Bilik of course needed someone of Guthrie’s stature at DARPA in order to gain access to the designs that Zoe was developing. It’s being investigated. Guthrie is being held on two counts of kidnapping, and one count of torture, and a list of accompanying crimes. He won’t be free from prison in this lifetime.”
“What’s the CIA’s position on my research?” Zoe asked.
“The CIA’s unofficial position is that their need was great. They were forced by circumstances to use whatever means they had at their disposal, bribery being one of the tools they have in their toolbox.”
“They were okay with the plan to steal Zoe’s intellectual property?” Brian asked.
“That’s what the CIA does. That’s their job. You’d understand that better if you made Zoe a stranger. Pull the personal out of the equation,” Prescott said. “And again, that’s unofficial. Officially? Grossman and Parker are being reprimanded for their actions and for reckless behavior that put lives at risk, ultimately leading to two deaths.”
“Wait. The CIA wasn’t running the Israelis?” Gage asked.
“As far as we can tell, in this set of circumstances, they were not. They did know that the project was in danger because Lily was helping Senator Billings. They’re the ones who put the spyware on both Lily and Zoe’s phones.”
“And in their watches?”
“We haven’t figured that out yet. The CIA says it’s not them, and they’ve been forthright with the rest of the information.”
“Colonel Guthrie said that he had ordered Lily’s and Ruby’s deaths.” Zoe felt the full weight of the betrayal resting on her chest. She had trusted the colonel. He’d been an uncle to her her whole life.
“We were apprised that she was in a car accident.”
“She hit a cement mixer. I think it was the same one that chased us.”
“We can pin that down through license plate recognition,” Nutsbe said as he tapped his keyboard.
“At this point, we know Guthrie is a key player in all of this. We believe that Bilik is complicit in the BIOMIST scheme as well,” Prescott said. “We have a warrant out for his arrest based on the correspondence between him and the Mossad.”
“What was going on with the tattoos and the Rex Deus?” Titus asked.
“The men all say that it was a pledge of brotherhood they made to each other. They claim it has no implications beyond that. We are, of course, at the beginning of the investigation,” Prescott said.
Gage leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “And Bilik’s not in custody yet?”
Prescott checked his watch. “There’s a team on it now. As soon as we have him in pocket, you should be safe again, Zoe.”
“Thank you.” Zoe’s eyes filled with the tears that had been turning off and on like a water faucet since Thursday evening. She scanned the faces of all the men, including them in her gratitude.
Titus crossed his arms over his chest. “Zoe, Mr. Spencer, one of the Iniquus owners, also let the Director of the CIA know about Grossman’s and Parker’s connection with everything that’s happened. At that time, Spencer made it clear that you, Zoe, are under Iniquus’s protective wing. We don’t allow bad things to happen to one of our own.” He gave her a nod that punctuated the statement.
“This is part of the FBI contract?” Zoe asked, confused.
“No,” Titus said. “It’s part of Gage’s contract. He listed you as his fiancée. Like I said, we take care of the Iniquus family. By contract, that means you.”
Titus walked up to shake Prescott’s hand, and they moved toward the computer system when Nutsbe flagged them over.
Zoe and Gage moved to the corner to talk privately. They wrapped their arms around each other.
Zoe tipped her head up. Gage’s eyes were turquoise green. The shade they turned when he was very happy.
“You didn’t ask me yet—we hadn’t decided on marriage when you signed those contracts with Iniquus,” she whispered.
Gage canted his head and sent Zoe a sexy grin. “You didn’t ask me yet either when you signed my name to your hospital advanced directive, giving me the right to make life or death health decisions for you.”
“My Montrim contract required me to put two local names.”
“Funny.” He planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. “My contract only asked for one. Aren’t you glad I picked you?
“Yes.” Zoe came up on her tiptoes to give Gage a gentle kiss. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
This is not
THE END
Please follow Gage Harrison and the Iniquus family
as they continue their fight for the greater good.
Would you like a sneak peek at the next book in the Iniquus chronology?
In Too Deep
Sometimes trust can get you killed.
Deep Del Toro, an Iniquus Special Operative on the Strike Force Team, listened to the radio as the announcer gave details of Lacey Stuarts upcoming press-conference. He had watched video of her fighting off the FBI agent and escaping from a murder scene the night before, and now she was turning herself over to the police. What Deep’s practiced eye saw in the video was a highly-choreographed crime. B
ut somehow Lacey had thwarted the professionals’ plans. She was in imminent danger.
When Deep saves Lacey from a sniper’s bullet at the press conference, he becomes enmeshed in a mystery that includes the FBI, the CIA, and a tangle of interconnected international crimes.
Deep and Lacey work as a team to discover who plays the good guy and who plays the bad guy in a gray world where right and wrong easily overlap.
Here’s Chapter One:
Chapter One
Lacey
Thursday Night
Lacey Stuart’s muscles tightened as irritation prickled through her nervous system. She gave her phone yet another check. No new messages. A swirl of frustration blew past her lips, as she pushed the phone farther back on the bar. It didn’t look like Steve was going to show. Emergencies popped up, she thought, trying to be generous. But really, what could have stopped him from sending a quick text? She slid her thigh farther up her crossed legs, trying not to skate off the ultra-modern, ultra-awkward bar stool made for someone much taller than she. Lacey caught the server’s eye and tapped the rim of her empty Cosmo glass, signaling that another one was in order. She decided to take a Lyft back to her apartment after she finished this drink – with or without Steve.
She should probably be worried about Steve. It wasn’t like him to stand her up. But honestly, the only thing she felt was aggravation. It had been a long, miserable day at work. All Lacey wanted was to be back in her apartment curled up with a cup of hot tea, and her book. Lacey glanced down at the winter coat she’d thrown across the stool beside hers to save a place for Steve — a good thirty minutes ago. She couldn’t understand why he’d been so insistent on meeting her here, and then not been courteous enough to give her a heads-up that he was running late.
As the server set a fresh drink in front of her, Lacey caught scotch-on-the-rocks guy staring at her mouth. Again. She wondered if he had a thing for bright red lipstick or if she had a strand of spinach from her afternoon snack caught in her teeth. Lacey held her hand over her mouth, lowering her head to stare at her lap while her tongue foraged in the crevices and along the gum line, hoping to excavate any residue.