by L. T. Ryan
“We have executed one of your men already,” said the man in the center. “The other two will follow in three days’ time if you do not meet our demands. The United Kingdom and the United Kingdom’s allies have imprisoned five men. You will release them immediately. If you do not, these men will be executed. If you continue to refuse us, we will continue to kill your men.”
The man took a step closer to the screen. “We will not stop until we have justice. Release Josiah Scott, Anthony Temple, Georges Andrews, Dymek Antar, and Elijah Nowak. You will receive instructions in seventy-two hours.”
The video went black seconds later, but not before the man on the right, the one who was staring straight ahead, looked directly into the camera. There was finally fear in his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but Bear knew exactly what he was doing.
He was pleading for his life.
13
“Who are those men?” Sadie asked. She was all business now. A fire ignited within her.
“We haven’t been able to find any connection between them. Two are being held in the United States. Three of them are here in London. A white supremacist, a drug dealer, an abuser, a car thief, and a sex trafficker. As far as we know, they have no connection to one another.”
“They must.” Sadie put her hands on the table and leaned forward. “Why else would they ask for those five specifically?”
“At this point, your guess is as good as mine,” Winters said. “We’re looking into it now. I’ve also put in a call with your superiors. If there’s a connection, someone will find it. I told them to contact you directly if they find out anything.”
“Could Thorne be a part of this?” Bear asked Sadie.
Charlotte’s attention snapped to him. “Who’s Thorne?”
Sadie didn’t look happy that his name was now on the table, but Bear had made an executive decision. Winters could have easily gone over their heads and kept them in the dark, but she had no interest in peacocking and neither did he. The sooner they figured this out, the sooner he’d be able to find Jack.
Sadie said, “Thorne is the man who decided my agents were going to do his bidding.” She turned to Bear. “But I don’t think so. When I first told him they were missing, he was livid. I’ve never seen him that out of control before.”
“He’s a good actor. He had all of us fooled for a while,” Bear said.
“Look, I’m not discounting the possibility. It’s a thread to follow. But I have a feeling it’s going to lead to a dead end.”
“I think we need to have a chat with Maria,” Bear said. And before she could ask, he turned to Winters and explained. “She was Thorne’s protégé. She fed the agents intel she thought was credible. Turns out she thought wrong.”
“We need to figure out where she got that intel,” Charlotte said.
“And from whom,” Sadie finished.
Winters walked to the door and called out to one of her men. Within ten minutes, there was a fancy laptop sitting in front of Bear and he was video chatting with Maria. Sadie was seated next to him, but Director Winters was behind the computer. They all thought it better not to chance Maria getting spooked if she knew MI5 was involved.
Maria answered on the second ring, holding her phone out in front of her so all Bear could see was her face. Her red hair was in a messy bun and she looked like she had just woken up, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. But as soon as Bear told her they’d found one of the agents dead, she sat up a little straighter.
“Was it because of what I told them?” she asked.
“We don’t know for sure,” Bear said. “But it’s likely. We need to know everything you do.”
Maria’s hand absently found a loose strand of hair and began twisting it between her fingers. “Like I said, I was trying to clean up loose ends. I was still mad about Thorne. Still pissed that he never really cared about me to begin with. The CIA wanted more information about what he’d been up to, so I decided to backtrack and dig into all my past cases. I wanted to know what had really happened after I was done with a job. Was he telling me the truth? Or was I doing his dirty work and never really knew it?”
“Why’d you start with the three agents?” Sadie asked.
Maria shrugged. “It was one of the more recent jobs I’d done before Korea. And it was all informational. I didn’t have to do anything more than survey targets and then pass along anything interesting I saw. None of it seemed connected at the time, but I figured if I started looking back on it, maybe a bigger picture would form.”
Bear tipped the screen down so he could see her a little better. “And did it?”
“Not really.” Maria sighed. “To be honest, I didn’t get very far either. I found out they were missing and figured I was in over my head. That’s when I reached out to you.”
Bear turned to Sadie. “And you knew about the missing agents before Maria stumbled across them?”
Sadie said, “Of course I did. They were my men. We’d already been working on finding them. The project with Maria was unrelated. Until it wasn’t.”
In other words, Bear thought, until they realized Thorne had probably stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. Bear returned his attention to Maria.
“Let’s talk about this last piece of information you passed on to the agents. What was it? Why do you think it was bad intel?”
“Well, they’d gone missing, didn’t they?” Maria seemed annoyed, but Bear thought it was more at herself than either one of them. “The intel was stupid. Harmless. Even in the moment it didn’t seem like vital life-or-death information, you know?”
“Start at the beginning,” Sadie said. Her patience was immaculate on the surface, but Bear could tell the runaround was starting to get to her. All this paper chasing was driving him crazy, too. He was ready to start shooting things again.
“I had been in London for a couple weeks at that point. I had been gathering intel a couple different ways. Sometimes it was an envelope slipped under my door. Sometimes it was a phone call. I’d be given a time and a place, and I was to arrive an hour beforehand to start scoping the area. I’d set myself up somewhere comfortable, and then I’d just wait and watch.”
“How did you receive the information this time?” Bear asked.
“Phone call. Anonymous, like always. It was always a guy on the other end of the phone, but sometimes the voices were different. I wasn’t sure if I had multiple people calling me or if they used a voice modulator. Or, for that matter, maybe all the information was coming from one person and they just employed multiple people to deliver it.”
“That didn’t seem a little unorthodox to you?” Bear asked. It’s not like he hadn’t taken an anonymous phone call once or twice in his life, but they usually led to disaster. He tried to know who was passing him information, if only to cover his own ass.
Maria laughed. “Doesn’t Thorne seem a little unorthodox to you? But no. This was how it was done. My job was to trust Thorne one hundred percent of the time. And I did. No questions asked.”
“What did the anonymous caller sound like?” Sadie asked.
“Male. American. Deep voice. Maybe a twinge of a Southern accent, but if so, he was doing a damn good job of covering it up. Polite. Kind of sexy, to be honest.”
Bear cleared his throat. “Focus.”
“Don’t be a prude, Bear. He sounded like a pretty typical, all-American boy.” She tilted her head back and looked up at the ceiling like she was deep in thought. “He told me about a terrorist cell in London. There had been reports of so-called accidents all around the city. Little tests for response time, crowd reactions, things like that.”
Charlotte sat up a little straighter at the mention of a terrorist cell, but she remained silent on the other side of the computer.
“And you just believed him?” Bear asked. “What if he’d been lying?”
Maria said, “I know I’m relatively new at this, but I’m not an idiot. I looked into it. Pulled up the newspapers on my compu
ter. Everything checked out. He told me when the next one was going to take place. Gave me an address. I was supposed to stay clear of the area but take note of everyone who passed through. Then pass that information on.”
“What happened when you got there?”
“A restaurant caught fire. I took some pictures and passed them along to the agents. I thought they might be able to recognize someone.”
“Did they?” Bear asked.
Maria twisted up her face. “Like they’d tell me. I dropped off the information and I left, just like always. That wasn’t a two-way street.”
“Did anything feel wrong about the job at the time?” Sadie asked.
“Nope. Pretty straightforward. One of the easier ones, actually. Everything happened like the informant said it would.”
“And it didn’t bother you that this person knew this information and instead of going to the authorities with it, he gave it to you? Just so you could watch?” Sadie asked.
“My job,” Maria said, her voice tight, “was to trust Thorne one-hundred percent of the time. Besides, I figured it was for the greater good.”
Sadie just barely kept her scoff to herself. “How so?”
“If sitting by and letting this accident happen meant we could put an end to a terrorist cell, it would be worth it.”
“Do you still have the pictures?” Bear asked. Perhaps with the photos they could get somewhere with this case.
Maria shook her head. “I gave them hard copies and deleted the pictures off my phone. Totally scrubbed clean.”
Sadie leaned back in her chair. “We’ll need you to give us as much information as you can about the articles you researched and the fire you witnessed.”
“I remember some of them,” Maria said. “It might be enough to put together a pattern.”
“Thanks, Maria,” Bear said.
“Any time, Bear.” Her face grew serious. “Thanks again. For everything. If you need anything else—”
“I know where you are,” Bear said. Maria waved goodbye and Bear shut down the computer.
The room was silent for a solid minute. Charlotte was the first to break it.
“How much do you trust this girl?”
Bear and Sadie exchanged looks. Bear opened his mouth to answer, but Sadie beat him to it.
“She’s green. Naïve. I’m not convinced she’s out from under Thorne’s thumb just yet. Whether or not she knows it is a whole other story.”
“I want to trust her,” Bear said.
“That’s not the same thing as saying you do trust her,” Charlotte said.
“I know.” Bear’s sigh felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. “But I’m with Sadie on this one. Thorne’s one of the best. Maria only knew what he wanted her to know. I think she means well, but her intel is unreliable.”
“Noted.” Charlotte stood up and gathered her papers. “But at least we have a place to start now. That’s better than nothing.”
Bear wanted to agree, but something still felt off about the whole thing. They had a lot of puzzle pieces but none of them fit together. The agents. The terrorist group. The kid and his mysterious boss. Maria and Thorne. Jack’s disappearance.
At some point there had to be a thread connecting them all together.
Right?
14
Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom.
Bear looked at the text on his phone. It took him a second to register what it said. Then another minute to put the pieces together. He was at MI5 headquarters. Dottie must’ve gotten wind he was here. Maybe she had information on Jack.
While Sadie concluded their meeting with Director Winters, Bear got directions to the closest bathroom and headed down the hall, even deeper into the building’s interior. Luckily, the two guards who had brought them in and were still stationed outside the meeting room didn’t follow him. What would have been the point? There were cameras everywhere.
Bear pushed opened the door to the bathroom. It was small and tidy. Three stalls and a urinal. Smelled like lemon. It made his nose burn, but it was better than the alternative. There weren’t any cameras in here. There couldn’t be, legally. But he wondered about listening devices. He didn’t want to be the person who had to go over those tapes.
What surprised him most was that the room was empty. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Dottie lounging on a couch against the wall, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in another? Not exactly, but it would’ve been a nice welcome party. He could use a drink right about now.
Instead, his phone vibrated. He answered it on the first ring.
“Hello, Bear.” Definitely Dottie. “Heard you were in the neighborhood. I’m outside away from listening ears. Try not to say anything too damning, just in case.”
“You know I was just wondering about that,” Bear said. “Shitty job.”
“Literally.” Dottie laughed at her own joke. “Luckily that’s well below my pay grade.”
“You got news?”
“Of sorts.” Dottie’s voice sobered. “Jack was here, in London, about three weeks ago.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“This doesn’t feel like good news.”
Dottie sighed. “I’m not sure it is. He used one of his many aliases. Almost didn’t catch it, but I remembered a few of his go-to ones from back in the day.”
“Could be a sign,” Bear said. “He could’ve used anything.”
“He’s either leaving a trail for us, or he was desperate.”
“Either one doesn’t bode well.” Bear scratched at his chin, deep in thought.
Dottie filled in the blanks. “It means he wants to be found or doesn’t care if he is.”
“What was on the itinerary?”
“I wish I knew. He came through Heathrow and then disappeared. He hasn’t checked into any hotels, booked any plane tickets, used any credit cards. I haven’t been able to find him on CCTV, but I’ll keep looking.”
“You might be wasting your time,” Bear said.
“I know. If Jack wants to disappear, he will. And no one will be able to find him.” Dottie took a deep breath, and Bear got the distinct feeling she was trying to convince herself as much as him. “But he did want someone to find him. He wanted someone to know he was in London.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Bear said. “Disappear. That was the plan.”
Something or someone had brought him out of hiding, Bear thought. If Jack had gotten a lead on Thorne, he would’ve taken it, damn the consequences. If he couldn’t find Bear, he would’ve gone off on his own. Noble was like a pit bull. When he sunk his teeth into something, he was relentless.
But even if Jack couldn’t find Bear, he knew where Sadie was. Why didn’t he reach out to her? She had proven herself in the field. She was trustworthy. There was definitely something between them. But maybe Jack had assumed, like Bear, that Sadie was happy behind her desk at Langley. It was only after the events in Korea that Bear found out she’d been back in the field much sooner than anyone expected.
Or maybe Jack was trying to protect her. Protect all of them. The revelation that he had landed in London wasn’t a mistake, Bear was sure of that. But if he wasn’t trying to catch their attention, maybe he was trying to reassure them that he was okay.
But Bear knew one thing for sure. He wasn’t about to stop looking based on an assumption. If something else was going on here, Bear needed to know about it. He had to make sure Jack hadn’t dug himself too deep into whatever shit he’d gotten in. If Bear found him and Jack told him to fuck off, he’d do just that. But he had to know either way.
“Thanks for the information. I appreciate it.”
“I wish I had more. But I’ll keep digging. If I find anything else, I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds good to me.” Bear looked around the bathroom. “But I preferred our last talk. At least there was coffee.”
Dottie didn’t laugh. “One last thing?”
&nb
sp; Bear didn’t like the hesitance in her voice. “Yeah? What is it?”
“Director Winters is a good woman. A good agent. But she plays things pretty close to her chest.”
“You think she’s hiding something?” Bear asked.
“I don’t think. I know it.” Dottie sighed. “I’m not sure what she brought you in on, but rest assured she’s only revealing information she absolutely needs to share with you. Anything else she’ll keep under wraps until you need to know it.”
“You sound like you don’t agree with those methods.”
Bear could practically hear the shrug in her voice. “To each their own. I trust you because I trust Jack. She doesn’t know you. You’re a bit of a wild card. You can count on the fact that she’s done her homework on you.”
“That’s been made clear.” Bear eyed the door, wondering how much longer he could get away with being in the bathroom before someone came looking for him or an agent happened to walk in to use the facilities.
“I’m not saying don’t trust her,” Dottie said. “I’m just saying to be cautious. I’m not sure if she knows about Jack or not, but if she does and she’s keeping that from you, there might be some sticky situations in your future.”
“Understood.”
“Bye for now, Bear,” Dottie said. “I hope you find Jack soon. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Me too,” Bear said. “On both accounts.”
15
Bear woke up the next morning to a knock on his door. The night before he’d taken Sadie’s advice and changed venues for his sleeping arrangements. They’d gotten a pair of rooms on the same floor in a moderate hotel in the middle of the city. If they were being watched, it was better not to hole up in the same place every night.
Sadie’s voice filtered through the closed door as she knocked again. “It’s me.”