“More of a support operative than a field one,” she added.
“So not like you?” Shaw asked.
Charlie offered him a cold stare. “Not every agent is suited for the field,” she said icily.
My eyes met Damon’s. He arched his brow at me. His face right then said everything: This woman was scary, which made sense because Weston was pretty damn scary too.
I held Damon’s gaze a little longer than necessary because for that split moment he was my Damon again and not some bomb waiting to go off. He hadn’t broken yet. Just toeing that line like I did on occasion.
“What else can you tell us, Charlie?” Nick asked.
She sat back in her chair without a care in the world and said, “He was in charge of PSYOPS.”
The room immediately felt ten degrees warmer and a hell of a lot smaller. Anscombe stood up. Shaw slammed a hand down on the desk in front of him. Both men looked fit to kill the first poor bastard to make a move right then.
My whole body locked down on the threat of violence that hung in the air. My eyes found Pierce’s. His hand rested on his gun, under his jacket. He looked at me, a warning clear in his gaze. And then I remembered Damon’s fragile state and spun toward him.
But Damon is a fireman who’s faced down death a time or two in the form of uncontrolled flames. He knew a lethal situation when presented with one. He stood still, but loose. Ready to react; either defend himself or throw his body out of the way.
I could trust him, even though he was close to the edge, to look after himself. It made me feel ashamed that I’d been so sure he was a liability in the upcoming op. But looking and listening to the two ASI men fist their hands, and bunch their muscles, and growl under their breaths, I thought perhaps they were the loose canons in this scenario.
“He was the one?” Nick finally said.
“Yes,” Charlie replied but didn’t elaborate.
“And he’s still alive?” Nick asked incredulously.
“He is… slippery,” Charlie said. “Caleb and Ava have been hunting him, but have had little success.”
“And he’s been in Auckland all along?” Shaw murmured.
“We think he might have spent some time in Wellington prior to moving here,” I offered, mentally putting puzzle pieces together to form a picture I couldn’t identify. This was personal to both ASI men, but especially to Charlie.
I didn’t have all the facts, but I thought my best bet right then was just to listen.
“Oh, he was definitely in Wellington for a time,” Charlie said.
“Would you care to fill in the blanks?” Damon demanded, not feeling as circumspect as I was right then.
“This is Charlie’s story to tell,” Nick said.
We all looked at Charlie.
She turned and looked at me. “What haven’t you told me?”
I really didn’t want to tell this woman a thing. But she’d just divulged something that I didn’t think was trivial. At the very least, Charlie had a personal history with Weston which connected to two others; a Caleb and Ava. I couldn’t be certain, but I could take a guess. Caleb and Ava were spooks like Charlie had been. And PSYOPs was a part of their team’s makeup.
From what I knew of psychological operations, mind manipulation played a big part.
This all connected. And Charlie Downes was the best chance we had of figuring it all out. Of catching Weston. Freeing Carole. Saving Stretch. Releasing Hennessey from a blackmail’s guillotine.
Solving HEAT’s arsonist crimes. And convicting someone for Angelo’s murder.
This was it. The moment that could make all the difference.
But opening up the doors to our closet and showing this woman our skeletons was not an easy thing to digest.
I let a slow breath of air out and looked at Pierce.
“Go on,” he said as if it was a simple as that. I’d already dropped CIB in it, so what more could hurt the Criminal Investigations Bureau after that?
I glanced at Damon then. Like Nick had said about it being Charlie’s story to tell, this was really Damon’s closet to open.
“Do you want to or shall I?” I asked, giving him a chance to shut this down if he wanted.
I thought that would be a mistake. But I wouldn’t take the decision out of his hands until I’d given him a chance to do the right thing.
“What choice have I got?” he said. He waved a hand at me. “You’re better at this than me. Go ahead.”
It’s hard for some men to delegate. But Damon Michaels was not one of those types of men. HEAT was his family. He ran it like one. The respect he earned from his men was a given. Because Damon treated them like his brothers.
Better than a brother, I thought.
I looked back at Charlie. She sat patiently, watching the scene unfold, no doubt coming to conclusions by herself.
“Damon’s sister is being held by Weston.” The spook gave nothing away. “Initially, we thought Weston was the boyfriend who introduced her to Auckland’s drug scene. Damon got her out of it, into rehab. Weston retaliated. He took her back after seeking revenge on Damon and HEAT. A series of arsons and then targeting me.”
She did arch her brow at that, looking at me and then Damon, and putting two and two together to get romantic entanglement. I thought she was making more of a show of her reaction than she actually felt or the situation warranted. Charlie Downes had a sense of humour underneath all that lethality.
“It has since become apparent,” I went on, “that Weston has manipulated her mind rather than established a relationship with her. The drugs are undoubtedly a byproduct of whatever it is he does to control his victims. However, we believe Carole’s involvement in the finance sector brought her to his attention in the first place, but we can’t find a reason for his interest in money lending per se.”
“He’s been cut-off,” she said.
“But wouldn’t he have backup funds stashed away like I presume you did?” Nick asked.
“Caleb found them,” she said.
“Who is Caleb?” Damon asked.
“Another spook?” I said.
“You really do have a death wish, Keen,” Anscombe muttered.
“Yes,” Charlie said, either in agreement that Caleb was a spook like her or that I had a death wish. I chose the former explanation for the sanctity of my emotional - and physical - wellbeing.
“He’s blackmailed and manipulated and abducted and murdered his way around the city for the past five years or more,” I told her, getting us back on track and the spotlight off me. “We’ve linked several previous cases to him. Some of which were closed cases. We think the men sentenced for the crimes were also manipulated by him.”
“Quite possible.”
“How good is he?” I asked her.
“Very.”
“They have triggers,” I said and surprisingly saw her flinch.
Just slightly. Minutely even. But the spook flinched on the word ‘trigger.’
Fuck.
I looked at Nick. He was watching Charlie closely and didn’t even see my questioning gaze right then.
What were we dealing with here? PSYOPS, I had thought, were tactics intended to manipulate one’s enemies. What if they were tactics used on a spook herself? To control her. To make her do things she wouldn’t necessarily do.
Double fuck.
Had we opened a hornet's nest here and were woefully ill-prepared for the buzzing that would ensue?
“Whose trigger has been used?” she asked. It wasn’t so much that she’d taken long to answer, but there had definitely been a split second delay.
Spooks were good at what they did. But so were cops. My eyes met Pierce’s. He nodded his head to me. He’d seen her reaction too.
“One of the men,” I said, “currently serving time for a crime we believe Weston committed.”
Charlie looked at the far wall of the room and said nothing.
“We think Carole might have a trigger,” I added. Watching. W
aiting. Nothing. “He also just took one of HEAT’s team members. So now there are two people in his immediate realm of influence. Not to mention the blackmail of a Department psychologist.”
“There’ll be more.”
“We’re aware of the traitor in the Bureau,” I said.
She smiled. “I doubt it,” she said.
“We know we have one,” I argued, bristling.
“I’m sure you do,” the spook agreed. “But have you correctly identified them?”
“The man at the top of our list has already been manipulated once by Weston,” Pierce said, “It makes sense…”
He was cut off. The spook abruptly stood.
“You can’t assume anything will make sense with this man. He is beyond your wildest comprehension.”
Everyone just stared at her. She’d spoken forcefully when until now she’d been almost blasé about everything. Her tone had changed the entire tone of the room.
To dread.
I stepped forward and met her steady grey gaze head-on.
“Then what do you suggest?”
She smiled.
“We need to bring in some help for this,” she said.
Fuck. So much for keeping this low-key and in-house. I could feel the entire operation getting away from me. And there wasn’t a blind thing I could do about it.
Because Weston had Carole and Stretch. And because even though Damon was still a badass chief investigator from HEAT, he was also close to breaking.
If you feel your back hit the wall, Sport, you better get moving.
It was time to get moving. As if I hadn’t been trying to, already.
Chapter Seventeen
“It’s A Shit World Full Of Evil Shit And If You Don’t Get Your Shit Together Then You Get Mired In It.”
There were now three motorbikes parked in the underground carpark at ASI. They didn’t match, and I wondered if that had more to do with their respective owners than chance or statistical probability. Charlie’s was almost utilitarian with a hint of menace. The one parked closest to hers was sleek and big and made a roar as it entered. It was also black, but this time shiny in a slightly showy way.
But nothing compared to the glitz and showmanship of the last motorbike. It was red and sleek and looked slightly exotic, much like the red leather-clad woman who had ridden in on it a mere ten minutes ago.
“Caleb is out,” the red woman said now. She flicked dark hair over her shoulder in a move that I thought was subconscious but was probably a ploy to garner the attention of every man in the room. “He sends his regards,” she added. “And a directive to kill the bastard.”
“I don’t need a directive from Caleb for that, Ava,” Charlie said.
“I know, darling,” the Ava spook crooned. “But you know Caleb; always throwing his weight around.” She looked at Nick. “Talking of muscles,” she purred. “How have you been, Nicky?”
“Enjoying a quiet life, Ava,” Nick said purposely.
“Oh, and I suppose you think I’m here to disrupt it.” She laughed. It wasn’t as good as Charlie’s, but it did the job nicely. Every male watched her. “It seems like you have more immediate problems than me.”
“Yes,” Nick said in forced agreement.
I watched the dynamic between them. There was a certain level of respect, but it was couched in fear. Not that the ASI bossman showed much of his fear. But I was used to assessing suspects and witnesses, and from what I was seeing, there was history in this room, and it came with a bucket load of baggage.
What was missing, though, was trust. Even trust between Charlie and Ava. They eyed each other up like hissing cobras. In contrast to that relationship, the final member of the motorbike club was definitely Team Charlie. And I recognised him from my extensive digging into ASI in the past.
Adam Savill. A longtime member of Nick Anscombe’s team. Not a spook. But definitely involved with Charlie.
He seemed normal enough and levelheaded, despite the rising tension in the room. And he also seemed comfortable letting Charlie call the shots. I was pretty sure that would have been something they established early on in their relationship.
I glanced across the room to Damon, expecting him to be absorbed in the interactions as well. Possibly even enamoured with Ava. But he was looking directly at me. He nodded his head toward the door to the meeting room we were all in and slipped out while Ava and Charlie continued to posture as Nick and Adam tried in vain to calm them.
I made my exit when another well-aimed barb was hurled in someone’s direction, aware that the spooks probably hadn’t missed either of our exits.
In fact, I was beginning to suspect they’d engineered it.
I shook my head in disgust. Mind manipulation was a scary thing. Being manipulated in any fashion by lethal assassins and spooks was just as unwelcome.
Damon had stopped some distance down the hallway, halfway between two camera domes on the ceiling. Control was just around the corner in one direction — the gym and firing range around the other. We’d be watched. But as Pierce had remained behind with Shaw in Control, I had to hope we wouldn’t be watched too closely.
“What do you think?” Damon asked me once I’d reached his side. He kept his voice low, but like me, he probably suspected it was futile.
“I’m not sure what she’ll bring to the table,” I said. “But we need the extra muscle.”
“If they don’t kill each other first,” he grumbled.
“Competitive industry, I suppose,” I said.
Damon shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at nothing.
“What’s on your mind, Michaels?” I asked.
He stared at me. “You haven’t called me that for a long time.”
“Sometimes it’s nice to remember how far we’ve come.”
“Ah, love,” he murmured. “I’d travel the distance with you all over again tomorrow if I could.”
“Would you? It’s not exactly been plain sailing.”
“I always did like a challenge,” he mused.
“I’m a challenge, am I?” I growled.
He laughed. It was the happiest I’d seen Damon in weeks. “I still know how to push all your buttons, love,” he whispered and reached up to tuck a strand of my hair away neatly.
He sighed. The world outside this bubble was waiting. God alone knew what Weston was doing to Carole or had done to Stretch.
“The longer this takes,” he said, “the less I believe we’ll see a successful outcome.”
“Don’t lose faith just yet,” I said. “We know more now than we’ve ever known. We know who he is.”
“That doesn’t reassure me, Lara. It frightens me. How the hell do we fight an ex-PSYOPS agent? I get the impression that the professionals have had little success chasing him down, so why should I believe we will?”
It was unlike Damon to sound so fatalistic. He’d never met an argument he couldn’t win. But this... this was big. How did you combat a sinister and malevolent man like Weston who had training most of us couldn’t even begin to fathom let alone counter?
“That’s why we need them,” I told him. “Ava and Charlie. I might not trust either of them, but they’re our best chance of catching this madman.”
“They have their own agenda.”
The triggers, he meant. If Carole had one, then they certainly did.
“I trust Nick Anscombe,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say to reassure him.
“Love,” Damon said with meaning, “he’s as wary of the spooks as anyone. More so, considering he knows more of Charle’s background than we do. I’m not sure we can count on him at our backs either.”
This fatalistic Damon was new to me, and I wasn’t sure how to combat it. I’m not one to offer platitudes or coddle people. You either get our shit together and play your part or you’re useless. But that was the cop in me. The one raised to hide her emotions and file away the crap that she sees on a daily basis.
That was the only woman i
n a club full of men trying to fit in when she really didn’t. Not to their testosterone-exacting standards anyway.
Hennessey would tell me it was my coping mechanism. And my mind’s way of handling the trauma of the job without fracturing. Being a hard-arse protected me from all the psychological and emotional hits.
Carl would say it’s a shit world full of evil shit and if you don’t get your shit together, then you get mired in it.
Both were right. But there was more to me than the parts that made up the whole. I might have been close to breaking on more than one occasion, but I also knew that what made me a good cop was the fact that I could still feel something at all.
I wouldn’t let the hardness I used to protect myself abandon Damon to his fate.
I stepped forward and reached up to cup his cheeks. Then I went up on my toes and kissed him.
He didn’t exactly resist, but he didn’t enthusiastically press me up against the wall and mould himself to my body. I’d been where he was; unable to let go in the face of such trauma. Unable to allow yourself to feel for fear of feeling too much.
The body gets numbed to the stress and heartache. The mind protects itself in various unhelpful ways. You do what you have to do to survive, but it’s not living. This emotionless void, this muted life; restricting your reactions; dulling all sensations.
I recognised myself in Damon, and it hurt my heart so deeply that this strong, capable, able-bodied man was being brought low by his own defences.
I kissed him softer not harder. Pushing him now wouldn’t reach him. I had to call him to me. He had to want to be there. To respond. To rise above the malaise.
I knew in his head he’d either be fighting or hiding. It didn’t matter which. He wasn’t here with me; not completely. I kissed him softly, poured myself into that single place where we touched. Then I added another sensation; I moaned into his mouth using everything I had.
He shifted closer. His tongue met mine in a tentative sweep. I sucked on it and then flicked mine back in greeting. He tasted like my Damon. He felt like my Damon. I wasn’t sure if he was still my Damon, but for that moment, I pretended he was and that everything was how it should be.
A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four Page 15