by Fiona Quinn
“Lynx.” I turned around to see Deep standing on the stairs. He walked over to where I was sitting and held out his hand. “Come on. You’ve got to go get yourself fixed up.”
I looked up at him with expectation.
“Striker called in. They dropped your charges. The whole team is on the sub, heading in for a celebration dinner. Cookie isn’t quite sure what’s going on, but he understands the word ‘party.’”
I reached up to give Deep a hug. “Wow. Oh, wow. I can go home.”
Deep put his hands on my shoulders and took a step back. “Don’t get your hopes up too high,” he said. “Striker says it’s still complicated. He’ll catch us up to speed tonight.”
Crap. I knew it was too good to be true.
I waited on the stairs as the men walked up from the boathouse. I didn’t see the sub come in. I didn’t even see the water ripple. I only knew they had arrived because I had been standing in the command room, waiting for the warning alarm that picked up something weighing more than twenty pounds passing by the buoy sensors.
When the men walked up the path, they saw me with my hands on my hips, my feet set wide. I was sure that the look on my face read very plainly that I wasn’t in a partying mood. “Don’t get your hopes up,” Deep had said. “It’s complicated,” Deep had said. Enough was enough already. Honestly!
Striker had a full dimpled grin on his face when he caught the first glimpse of me and raised his hand in a salute. As he came a little closer and could read my body language, the grin dropped from his face. That hurt. I was hurting him, and he didn’t deserve it – didn’t deserve me. Like toxic waste, my moods clouded the air. Who could live, let alone thrive, under such poisonous conditions? I’ve been nothing but trouble since the day he took on the Wilson case. At some point, I’d have to pull up my big girl panties and set things right. What that meant frightened me, because I knew – and, if I were being honest, had known for a long time -- the best thing for Striker was that I let him get on with his life. Without me.
“Deep told you that we had a win and a caveat,” he said as he got closer.
“Deep said not to get my hopes up for a trip home.” Tears filled my voice. Life without Striker? I was bereft at the mere thought.
“Come inside, and I’ll catch you up.” Striker put his hand on my lower back and shepherded me inside, reaching down to ruffle Beetle and Bella’s ears on his way to the puzzle room. There, he shut the door. “I understand you’re upset. Let me lay everything out, and then we’ll see what you want to do about it.”
“I’m listening,” I said, still choking on the thought of life without Striker.
“Judge Talbot reviewed the sealed files. They didn’t follow the normal protocol for obtaining an arrest warrant. This should have gone through a grand jury. It turns out the FBI insisted the warrant be issued. They used an aspect of the Patriot Act to keep it quiet, demanding the case be sealed.”
“And Frith didn’t know that? Did the FBI give a reason?” I asked.
“Not in the file. The judge contacted the FBI, and explained he was taking over most of the cases that Wallace had on his docket. He wanted immediate response about the India R. Sobado case.”
“What did I do?”
“Nothing. Not a damned thing. The only file that the FBI has that includes your name is the Wilson case. In that case, it is very clear that you were Travis Wilson’s victim, and you killed him in self-defense. The FBI had no reason to issue an arrest warrant, with or without the seal.” Striker crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking my stance. His hip leaned into the side of the table.
His gesture was more out of habit; mine was a sign of self-protection. I’m toxic, Striker, One problem after another. One worry after another. Are you tired of me yet? Deep said it to me that day when he was showing me around, “You’d be hell-on-wheels to date. I wouldn’t date you for a million dollars. I’m not a glutton for punishment.” My loving Striker punished him. Oh, God, the thought was so painful I could hardly breathe. Tears shimmered my vision.
“How did a warrant get issued then?” I rasped.
“Chica.” His eyes warmed with concern. “You look miserable. Are you in pain?”
All I wanted to do in that moment was crawl into the corner and sob. When you love someone, they’re supposed to feel joy, not constant anxiety. “My brain’s misfiring. I swear, I’m fine. Do you know anything about the warrant and how it was issued?”
“They can’t tell, and Wallace says he has no recollection of that case ever coming before him.”
“Wallace is an Assembly member,” I said.
“Lynx, powerful people populate the Assembly.”
I paused as the phrase ran through my head. “I bet you can’t say that three times real fast,” I smiled at him, and tried to climb down from the emotional cliff I was standing on. I didn’t want Striker to feel punished by my bad mood. He was working hard, and had been working hard for a long time. All for me.
“Talbot dropped the charges and cleared your name,” Striker said. “The FBI followed the trail, and found they had signed a high-priority contract with Omega concerning India Sobado. It was a very expensive contract, attached to other work Omega was doing in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan contract is upward of a billion dollars, so this didn’t catch the attention of the bean counters. It passed right through the internal audit.”
“How did the contract read? Who signed it?” Relax. Breathe. Listen, I reminded myself.
“It was exactly what Frith said: extraordinary rendition, final tap. Who signed it? Jenkins.”
“Deputy Director Jenkins? He’s an Assembly man.”
“Lynx.” I’d pushed that button one too many times, and Striker was clearly exasperated with me ringing that bell.
“I know. ‘Powerful people populate the Assembly.’ Go on. Why did he sign it?”
“He says he didn’t. It’s his signature, according to our forensic computer analysis, but he says it’s not possible that it’s his signature. When that contract was signed, he was in the Bahamas, celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary with his wife.”
“Forged?”
Striker shrugged. “Can’t say. It’s under investigation.”
“There’s no warrant, and Omega’s contract is baseless. What’s the problem? Why can’t I go home?”
“The FBI wants to know what’s going on. They contacted Omega and changed the contract. The new orders read that Omega must treat you like a fragile egg, and bring you to their headquarters immediately, instead of following through with a rendition order. Under no circumstances was there to be a tap – not a hair on your head should be hurt. They need you whole, and they need you healthy. They’re leaving the bounty money in place.”
“What bounty?”
Striker’s gaze locked on mine. “Two million dollars.”
“Two million what? That would put me on par with upper echelon Al-Qaeda leaders.”
Striker nodded slowly. “Exactly why it bypassed the comptroller for their Afghanistan focus.”
“Why don’t they rescind the contract and let me be done with it?”
“They are asking you to sit tight and give them a little bit of time to figure this out. They’ve already lost a lot of money on this. Crimes are obviously being committed. There is a major breach in the judiciary and the agency. Of course, Omega hasn’t done anything wrong. They’re just complying with their contracted orders. The FBI want answers. Command had them sign a contract with us, so that Iniquus expenses for your search and rescue were paid in full, that you have proper safeguards in place, and that Iniquus works on the case with FBI cooperatively, which means anything they see, we see. Anything they hear…”
“We hear. Got it.” I scratched my fingers through my hair, trying to wake up my brain so I could take this all in. “What if I say no?”
“Then you go home. Omega picks you up, takes you to Jenkins. Jenkins has to pay the two mill, and we never know why you were a target. The bad guy
is still out there, and still after you.” Striker reached for my hand. “Chica, there’s a reason someone went to these extraordinary lengths. I can’t imagine that failure at reaching their goal is an option for them.”
I cocked my head to the side. “There’s more.”
Striker grinned. “Hard to hide anything from you. There is more. Up until this point, the FBI has prevented us from accessing anything related to Frith. My sources couldn’t get their hands on either the Wilson or the Patriots United files. Command insisted that total access to everything to do with Frith, and those cases in particular be made available to us.”
“The FBI agreed to that?” My brows shot up to my hairline. That would break all kinds of protocol.
“Spencer threatened them with a huge lawsuit, where we would ask in courts for everything we were now asking for privately. If that were the case, Command said that you wouldn’t cooperate with this new ploy. And you’d want a sizable payout for your suffering. And then their agency could deal with the media frenzy.”
“Ah. And so. . .” I looked over at Striker. His eyes had warmed. His commander stance was falling away. The way he looked at me made me smile, despite myself. Striker pulled me into his arms. It was a little sanctuary of calm and safe. I was so going to miss this feeling. I gasped and buried my head.
“And so, Chica, we are asking you, pretty please, with sugar and cream on it, to lay low and let the systems run.” Striker kissed the top of my head and let me go. “And in the meantime, that briefcase. . .” Striker nodded towards the bag resting on the table “. . .has Frith’s employment records. The rest is being encrypted and sent over to Command, who will forward it on to the puzzle room computer.”
I went over to the bag, pulled out the files and a large evidence bag. I held it up and sent a questioning look over to Striker.
“Frith left on a sour note. Security escorted him from the building. They removed the food, but packaged the rest of his desk drawer contents. You can see there isn’t anything of interest there.”
I jiggled the contents in the plastic bag to see what it held. “He didn’t want this back?”
“It’s noted that he did request the items and was denied.”
“Denied?” I let the word sit on my tongue. I bet they didn’t know.
“I think he really pissed off his commander,” Striker smirked.
“I bet he was furious.”
“The commander? Yeah.”
“No, Frith,” I said.
“Because he didn’t get back his black plastic comb, Bic pens, and pocket knife?”
I looked back at the contents of the bag and slowly shook my head. “Striker, that isn’t a pocket knife. That’s a Mesinox flash drive.”
“What?” Striker moved over to look into the bag I held out to him.
“There are no blades in this thingy. It’s made to look like a multi-tool army knife, but it’s really a flash drive.” I took the bag back and held it up to the light to see better. “It looks like the company’s high-end drive.” I set the bag down on the table. “The Mesinox have some amazing features. They can automatically encrypt, and they have fingerprint recognized access. More importantly, if it isn’t given the right fingerprint, this flash drive can pull enough energy from the port it’s plugged into to self-destruct. What do you think Frith’s got on there?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure the lab can pull a fingerprint off something else in the bag. Maybe the coffee mug. Either way, they can put it in the FireWire bridge in postmortem and pull everything off without it being damaged, even if it’s self-destructible. It may take a while. I’ll have Command bump this to the front of the queue.”
Now that most of my bristles had softened, Striker’s lips were soft on mine. Possessive. I laid my head on his chest and breathed in the scent of his aftershave, spicy and warm. I loved him so much. I needed to get this case solved so that Striker wouldn’t be forced into this position. Right now, he had no choice but to deal with me, since Command made the assignments. I’m sure with a little space and time, Striker would realize I’m not a healthy person to be around. I was a catastrophe. My heart squeezed painfully. I didn’t want to walk away, even though I knew I needed to, for Striker’s sake.
Thirty-One
After dinner, the men retired to the west wing. They were still on the clock and working their caseloads. I stood alone under the overhang, and watched the glow of the last light shining through the gray clouds as rain danced in the distance – no rainbow, though. The bay swayed with white-capped waves. It was mesmerizing.
I startled when Striker moved up behind me.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump. You were in lala land. Is your head okay?” He wrapped warm arms around me. I leaned back to pillow my head on his chest.
“I was thinking about my dream last night.”
“Rats?” Striker asked.
“How’d you guess?” I asked, twisting so I could see his face.
“You have that one a lot.”
“Yeah, for a couple of years now.”
Striker spun me around so we were eye-to-eye. “That’s curious. Any idea what it’s about?”
“I did. I started having the dream after I puzzled the Sylanos case.”
“A lot was happening then: Spyder went off the grid, your mom passed away, there was the fire at your apartment, you got married, Travis Wilson was stalking you. . .”
“Nope. I had the dream before the apartment and Wilson. It started right when Spyder left. I had been working on the Sylanos case. I figured out he was the kingpin of the crime ring I was puzzling. I handed the file over to Spyder, and that night I got the goodbye call from him. He was going off-grid. I was to follow the plan for shutting down his personal life. We knew he’d be gone for a long time.”
“You don’t think it has to do with Spyder?” he asked.
“That my subconscious considers Spyder a rat for leaving me? Are you kidding?”
“Sorry.” He dropped an apology kiss on the top of my head.
“You should be. But the answer is no. I have always equated this dream to Sylanos, which makes no sense since he’s dead.”
“Maybe someone else that you pinpointed got away?”
“Like Maria or Julio? Dead and dead.” I turned to face Striker. “I puzzled the case; I gave the information to Spyder. I thought he gave it to Iniquus, but when I was in the safe house, you asked me if I had helped Spyder on the case. You thought the case was unresolved. You brought me the file, I reconstructed the puzzle, and showed you what I had discovered. What did you do with that information?”
“I took it to Command.”
“Did they act on it? Were there any arrests?” I asked.
“I don’t have that information. We took the case back to our client. It was very complicated, as you know. Sylanos had done a very good job, skirting just on the inside of the law. The client wanted to be the one with boots on the ground. They were sending in their own operatives; we were involved as support and intelligence. We did the things that would have had the agents bound up in red tape.”
“Were we around when Sylanos was shot?” I asked.
“Yes.” Striker took my hand and started up towards the house.
“Tell me what happened to him.” I patted my leg to call the dogs.
“Sylanos was at a party down in the islands, and some of the guests got out of hand. A fistfight turned into a brawl. Sylanos’ bodyguards pulled out their guns – one of them was shooting into the air to get everyone’s attention. Someone bashed into the guard and the gun went wide. He shot Sylanos by accident.”
I turned in front of Striker, stopping him just as we got to the door. “Sylanos died on the spot?”
“His guards gathered him up, and dumped him in his helicopter to get him to the hospital. He died en route. They took his body back to his complex in Colombia, and they held the funeral there.”
“Were there any operatives involved at this point? Did anyone see
the body?”
“We have photographs. No. No one was eyes on. The last physical contact was at the party. With Sylanos dead, we were released from the contract.”
“Wait. It was the client at the party? Iniquus operatives weren’t at the party?” I asked.
“Correct.”
“So this story comes from. . .?”
“Our client,” came his tight lipped response.
“CIA?”
“Classified.”
“Do you refute that?” Normally, it’s almost impossible to pick up a “tell” on Striker. But I guessed he wanted me to know, because he gave me a lopsided grin. “I can neither confirm or deny that information.”
All right, then CIA operatives were with Sylanos at his supposed death.
As the wind whipped up, we moved inside, where we sat together on the couch. The air conditioning felt good after the heat outside. My mind worked to line up the details. Striker sat quietly, giving me the space I needed to put a hypothesis in place.
Finally, I pursed my lips and shook my head. “I’m not buying it. This is what I think happened. The CIA got hungry. They didn’t only want Sylanos. They wanted other tentacles from the monster. That’s what Spyder was after. That’s why you and I got called up on the assignment last Christmas.”
I needed to pace. I stood up and walked the short distance from one end of the couch to the other, then back again. Back and forth, back and forth. “It was a behemoth, and Sylanos was only one arm. A massive arm, for sure. . .I think that besides calling Iniquus in, the CIA put in a shadow detail, and they watched to see where Sylanos would lead them.” I paused to look Striker in the eye. “Personally, I think it was a bad decision. Greedy. Sometimes you have to take what you can get. And he’s a pretty big get.”