I was so angry, but then she showed up at my tent flap one night with a box of Oreo cookies. We were best friends from that moment on.
“You’re right,” I said. “I need your help.”
She glanced at me. “Mine or WikiExpose?”
“Both.”
“You know WikiExpose is under investigation, right?”
“I also know that it’s still up and running. And I know that what I need is someone I trust who can get a lot of information out to the public really fast.”
“Do you want people to actually believe it?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just releasing the information will be powerful enough.”
Julie looked up. “What is this information?”
I leaned back against the low dresser that sat in front of the bed.
“You probably won’t believe me.”
She smiled. “Do you know that that’s exactly what most of my sources say before they drop a bomb in my lap?”
“I’m not surprised. You’ve published some pretty crazy stuff.”
“That’s why the feds are after me.”
“They’ll probably hate you—or love you—if you publish what I have.”
“So spit it out. What is it?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “There’s a terrorist cell in France. The attacks that took place last year? That was part of their doing. The CIA ran a sting two years to take them down, but it was halted prematurely and only the lowest tier was taken out.”
“I think I remember that,” Julie said. “Wasn’t that about a year after you were injured?”
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guessed she was right.
“You know about Dragon, right?”
She nodded.
“One of my assets, Dominic Gil, was a part of the operation to stop the terrorist cell. His partner, Emily Greene, was CIA. She believed that there was a reason why the operation was ended prematurely. She continued to look into the terrorist cell even after she left the CIA. A few months ago, Emily was murdered and a CIA hitman came after Dominic and his wife, Amy.”
Julie looked intrigued now. “Why?”
“Because Emily had uncovered some information that seemed to point toward the fact that the CIA infiltrated the terrorist cell and certain CIA agents were continuing to run it for personal gain.”
Julie shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
“It is possible. We have her notes proving it.”
Julie jumped to her feet and began to pace. “Dominic—can I talk to him?”
“If it’s necessary.”
“I’ll have to see these notes.”
“Of course.”
“What happened to the investigation into Emily’s murder?”
“It’s still open. The cops in Arlington thought for a time that Dominic was involved, but they’ve since turned their attention to the possibility that it was a random robbery motivated killing.”
“But you know better than that? What happened to the hitman who went after Dominic and his wife?”
“Dead. He was shot and killed by one of my agents.”
“Why didn’t I see that as a headline?”
“We covered it up. Made it look like he died in the accident.”
“Accident?”
I dragged my fingers through my hair. “Yeah. He chased Dominic down in his car and caused an accident that nearly left his wife dead. Dominic shot him twice and one of my other guys delivered the fatal shot.”
“But you were able to make that look like an accident?”
I shrugged. “It’s not rocket science, especially with a military background.”
As I said it, I realized that that should have clued me in to the fact that Dante wasn’t all he said he was, either. He was supposed to be a New York City cop, but he knew how to remove the bullets. He knew how to stage the accident. And he did it all in less time than it took two patrol cops to find us on that deserted side road.
Julie leaned against the window and studied me. “You have a murder that’s being investigated as a random robbery gone bad, and a CIA hitman whose death was made to look like an accident? Those notes had better be damn good.”
I hadn’t seen all of them myself. But I knew they were.
“Emily was tracing the hierarchy of the terrorist cell. She followed the money and travel evidence—airline tickets and hotel receipts. She was able to figure out which of her CIA contacts during the operation were always around when something, some attack, took place. She figured out that it was a group of disgruntled businessmen in France who first began the cell. But then she was able to track the movements of the CIA agents involved to figure who and when.”
“She has proof that these men were a part of that cell when attacks were taking place.”
“Yes.”
“Who are they?”
I shook my head. “You get that when you assure me that you’ll publish the notes in their entirety.”
“You can’t dictate what I’ll publish.”
“Trust me, when you see these notes, you’ll want to publish them all.”
“What do they consist of?”
“There are reports from the CIA.”
“Internal reports?”
I nodded. “And travel receipts. Expense vouchers. Financial records. Emily’s own notes, putting together some of the information that appears on the other documents.
“Do you realize that it’s treason to have internal reports from an agency like the CIA? Where did you get them?”
I shrugged. “Emily had quite a few sources.”
“Does that include your Mr. Gil?”
“It does.”
“So he stole paperwork from the CIA?”
“He appropriated.”
Julie laughed. “It doesn’t matter what word you use. It’s still stealing and that’s still illegal.”
“Since when are you afraid of the law?”
She came over to me and stood so close in front of me that if we’d been lovers, I would have melted right into her.
“You have to understand that if I were to publish something like this, there would be a hell of a lot of blow back. You, your agency, and all your friends would be crucified if anyone ever discovered your connection to this.”
“The thing is, my entire family, all my friends, we’re already being crucified. The man who is behind all this knows what we have, and he’s coming after us. This is the only way to stop him.”
“You know who he is?”
“We do.”
She was quiet a moment, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. “That man of yours,” she finally said, “he was CIA, wasn’t he?”
“He was.”
“Didn’t I hear that he left you at the altar?”
I blushed. “That was a long time ago.”
“Is he involved in this?”
“Up to his neck.”
“Tell me this isn’t a case of revenge.”
“It’s not, Julie. In fact, this is an attempt to clear his name as much as it is an attempt to get these killers off our backs.”
“He’s back in your life?”
“We got married last night.”
She nodded slowly as she ran a fingernail along the curve of my jaw. “That’s too bad. I always kind of hoped you’d start swinging for my team.”
I thought for a moment that she might kiss me. I even found myself wondering what that would be like. But then she abruptly pulled away from me.
“Get the notes. I want to take a look at them before I commit to anything.”
“You can’t tell anyone about them if you decide not to publish them.”
“Of course not.”
I nodded. “Okay. Let me go get them.”
“Hurry back.”
Chapter 19
Luke
I stared into my beer, not sure what made me angrier: that Hayden would believe Dominic over me, or that he was right about how he had to help Megan cope with my l
eaving. I’d hated leaving her. If I’d had another choice, I wouldn’t have done it. But I truly believed that I was protecting her. I still believed that I was protecting her.
None of them truly appreciated how complicated this whole thing was. I knew what Garner and Edgar and all the rest of them were up to when they first began infiltrating the terrorist cell. But I had no idea that it had continued after I left the agency, or that it would come back to camp in my front yard. I was supposed to get married and have a life. I wasn’t supposed to be drawn back into this bullshit!
If not for Peter…but I couldn’t even blame him. It was my own fault.
The morning I was supposed to get married, I drove to this same hotel and met with Edgar.
“Garner is the force behind all this. He’s lied to his supervisors, convincing them that he’s running a totally different operation than the one he is. And he’s taken in money for what he’s doing. Do you know how much money there is to be made in a properly designed terrorist attack?”
“Garner was always so by the book when I was with the agency.”
“Yeah, well, that was just a cover. He’s planning an attack in Belgium as we speak to drive up the stock prices on a couple of American companies that manufacture there.”
“And Peter?”
“Peter Bradford? That man doesn’t know how to keep his nose where it belongs. The rumor is that Garner planned to kill him at the wedding. But since it’s not happening, he’ll probably back off.”
“If he doesn’t?”
“All you need to worry about is keeping your own ass out of the fire. I’m going to need you to be my eyes and ears so we can take this fool down.”
“You want me to work with Garner?”
“I want you to be so fucking loyal that he’ll have no choice but to bring you into his inner circle. And once you’re there, we’ll have the ammunition we need to pull him down.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
That was two years ago. I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to get close enough to Garner to stop him. I’d only met him face to face three times. Once when I was in France working the original operation, once just after Peter’s accident, and the night we kidnapped Amber together. I hadn’t seen him since. All my orders came down from his second in command, William McDonald.
Two years. The first year I spent cleaning up other people’s messes and chasing down leads that often led nowhere. We were trying to get information on the bad CIA agents, they told me. We were trying to find out who was running that terrorist cell, they told me. As if I didn’t realize it was they who were behind it all. And then Amber turned up, and they decided they needed someone inside Dragon Security. They asked me to do it because of my relationship with Megan. McDonald said that I would be able to spot a change in behavior, a change in the atmosphere, faster than someone else would. I would know when they’d found something. I was to report directly to him the moment I did.
That’s exactly what I did. Only I didn’t tell them that I was the one who corrupted Emily’s notes. I let them believe that they came to Megan corrupted so that they wouldn’t think that she’d seen something on them. And I didn’t tell them that I shot the hitman before he could tell Dominic what the CIA was up to with the French terrorist cell. And I didn’t tell them that I made sure that certain information that Peter had found on Jack Forrester had disappeared from the manila envelope he’d left with Amber, or that the corruption on his hard drive was my doing.
I didn’t want them to know that Megan had any information at all. I wanted to reassure them that Megan was not a threat. But they seemed to always be one step in front of me just the same.
I sighed, lifting my beer to my lips as I slowly turned on my stool. Hayden was doing the same, sipping from his own beer, his eyes on the mirror over the bar. Just as our gazes met, his eyes widened and he spun on his stool.
“Where the fuck did she go?”
I turned as he jumped off his stool and rushed for the door. I was just a few feet behind him, searching every face in the crowded lobby for Megan’s.
“She must have gone to her room.”
“We told her—”
“I know.”
I grabbed Hayden’s arm. “There’s nothing we can do but wait. She knows what she’s doing.”
He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have left without telling us.” Hayden pulled his throwaway phone out of his back pocket, but I grabbed his wrist before he could do anything with it.
“You can’t. You might make things worse for her.”
Hayden’s eyes came up to meet mine. “If anything happens to her—”
“Don’t you think I get that? I didn’t want her doing this, either. But Megan has a mind of her own, and I learned a long time ago it was safer to go along than to fight her.”
Hayden jerked his wrist away from me and returned to the bar, falling into his stool like he’d never left it. He lifted his beer to his lips, drinking nearly half of it in one gulp.
I grabbed my own drink and moved into a stool beside him.
“I’m sorry. I know losing Sam was hard for you.”
He didn’t even look at me. “You have no idea,” he mumbled.
“It wasn’t easy for me to walk away from Megan.”
“But you had a choice. I didn’t. You left her sleeping peacefully in her bed. I held Sam while her life drained out of her.”
I nodded. “You’re right.”
“If you’re really on the right side here, Luke, you had a choice. You could have handled this in so many ways. But you chose to walk away.”
“I am on the right side of this.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Silence fell between us for a long few minutes. We each finished our beers and ordered new ones. The minutes seemed to tick by with exaggerated slowness. When I saw her come into the bar, my heart leapt for joy while red-hot anger filled my head. I climbed off my stool and strode toward her, grabbing her wrist to wrap her arm around her back, pushing her into the little alcove between the bar and the lobby.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“You realize that we have killers after us, right? You realize that it wouldn’t take much for them to take you out?”
“I know.”
“When I saw you were gone…”
I kissed her because words just weren’t enough. She melted against me, her body hot and full of life against mine. If we’d been alone…but, of course, we weren’t.
“Megan.”
Hayden’s voice was low, like a teacher who’d just found a student smoking cigarettes behind the gym. She stiffened slightly, craning her neck to look around me.
“I know, I know. He’s already given me the lecture.”
“Did you speak to her?”
“She wants to see the notes.”
Hayden nodded. “I’ve got them.”
“I’ll take them up.”
“We’ll take them up.”
She hesitated. I could see that she didn’t like the idea. But she relented fairly easily.
“We’ll take them up.”
Chapter 20
Megan
Julie wasn’t thrilled to have me return with two big, burly men behind me, but she let us in. I guess she was curious enough that she was willing to accept just about anything I demanded. Luke only stayed a few minutes. He went to rent a room for us since this would be an all-night thing. And he wanted to call his friend to let him know what was happening.
Hayden stood quietly by the windows as Julie put the thumb drive into her computer.
“I’ve got more security on this computer than they probably have in Fort Knox, so everything’s perfect safe.”
“I trust you.”
She glanced at me. “You shouldn’t. In a situation like this, you shouldn’t trust anyone.”
She clicked on the file and the screen was filled with the familiar notes
at the beginning of the collection that I’d seen the night Sam began going through them on her computer at Dragon. I watched as Julie slowly read through each document, scanning here, and reading in detail there. I found myself reading over her shoulder, even the things I’d read before.
And then came the page where Luke’s name showed up. That was where the virus had suddenly corrupted the file, making it unreadable.
It was simply a list of names. After each one was a description of what that person did within the terrorist cell. There was a blank space after Luke’s name.
Julie clicked and moved to the next page. Luke’s name appeared again. But so did Garner’s and someone named William MacDonald.
“I’ve met MacDonald,” Julie said almost to herself.
“How?”
“He was in Afghanistan the same time we were.”
That was news to me. I didn’t recall ever meeting him.
Another page. And then another page. I saw things I hadn’t anticipated seeing. Emily attributed attacks throughout the world to this terrorist cell, attacks that had been attributed by the media and the government to ISIS and other groups. But Emily—and the money that was exchanging hands—told a different story.
“This?” Julie said, pointing to a description of an attack in London. “This created a shockwave through Wall Street. Someone with prior knowledge could have made a killing on the day of the attacks.”
“This one, too,” I said, pointing to the description of another attack.
Hayden came over as we talked, looking over our shoulders at the information on the screen.
“Has anyone bothered to do a check on Garner’s personal accounts? Or MacDonald’s?”
Julie and I kind of glanced at each other. I felt a little dumb for not having thought of it sooner.
“I could—” I began.
“Let me.”
She pulled up a program that I was certain was highly illegal, and that I was sure Peter would have loved, and typed in a bunch of information. I watched her fingers flying over the keyboard, feeling as though I were watching Sam in action again.
“This is weird.” Julie snapped a nail against the screen. “This should have a huge balance. Or they should both have accounts overseas. But there’s nothing.”
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