Irished
Heather Slade
The Invincibles Book Seven
Copyright © 2021 by Heather Slade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-953626-13-4
Contents
Irished
Prologue
Part I
1. Irish
2. Flynn
3. Irish
4. Irish
5. Irish
6. Flynn
7. Irish
8. Flynn
9. Irish
10. Irish
11. Irish
12. Flynn
13. Irish
14. Flynn
15. Irish
16. Irish
17. Flynn
18. Irish
Part II
19. Irish
20. Flynn
21. Irish
22. Flynn
23. Irish
24. Flynn
25. Irish
26. Flynn
27. Irish
28. Flynn
29. Irish
30. Flynn
31. Irish
32. Flynn
33. Irish
34. Flynn
35. Irish
36. Flynn
37. Irish
38. Irish
39. Irish
40. Flynn
41. Irish
42. Irish
43. Flynn
44. Irish
45. Flynn
46. Irish
47. Flynn
Epilogue
Want more?
1. Saint
About the Author
Also by Heather Slade
irished
/ahy-risht/
verb
to put some Irish in you.
Prologue
Irish
Crested Butte, Colorado
June
Buck led the other people we were traveling with and me into the ranch’s main house.
“Hello?” he called out.
“Hey, Buck,” I heard a female’s voice answer; she walked up and hugged him.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“Out surveying.” The woman turned and looked directly at me. “Who are you?”
“Paxon Warrick,” I said, stepping forward and extending my hand. When she took it, a feeling I couldn’t explain, other than to say I never wanted to let go, washed over me.
“Flynn Wheaton,” she said. Her cheeks flushed, and I gripped her hand tighter.
“Great name.”
“Yours too.”
When Buck touched her arm, I dropped Flynn’s hand and watched as she met and shook the hands of the other people in the room. More than once, I saw her look over her shoulder at me.
I knew from the brief I’d received that Buck only had one sister, which meant Flynn was twenty-one years old. What I’d give to take ten years off my age and be five years older than her rather than fifteen.
When most everyone other than me, Buck, and one person besides Flynn left, she walked over to me. When she looked into my eyes with her mesmerizing blue ones, all thoughts of age faded into irrelevance.
I longed to reach out and run my fingers through her long hair that was light brown with golden highlights. When she turned her head just slightly, I saw shades of red too.
Flynn took a deep breath when I stepped closer. I opened my mouth to speak, but words escaped me. If she and I were alone, I’d tell her how beautiful she was. But we weren’t, as I was immediately reminded when her brother, who’d left momentarily, returned.
“Ready?” he said to me.
“I should head out now too, but I’m sure I’ll see you later,” said Flynn, seemingly jarred out of the same trance I was in.
“I’d like that.” I followed her to the front door and watched her walk away, wishing, maybe for the first time ever, that I could leave the wretched hell my life had become and follow.
I
1
Irish
Williamsburg, Virginia
Thirteen Years Ago
I’d been at The Farm—official name Camp Peary—for a little over two months when another recruit, Sumner Copeland, arrived. He was the son of a senator and, in general, a pain in my fucking ass.
Even though I was eight weeks ahead of him, there wasn’t a single training exercise, physical or mental, where he didn’t best me. What made it worse was that our instructors appeared to be pitting us against one another, something I hadn’t seen them do with any other recruits.
After two weeks of that bullshit, both Copeland and I were called into the big boss’ office. I was stunned by what he told us.
“Irish,” he began, using the nickname I’d received my first day there, when the in-processing agent told me Paxon was a “pussy” name, “Cope here will be acting as your handler from here on out.”
I looked at Cope and then at the boss, knowing I had two choices. I could accept his decision or leave. What I couldn’t do was argue.
I’d been counting the days—one hundred and twenty-four, to be exact—until I could finish my training and never see Cope’s smug face again. So, what did the boss’ announcement mean? “Define here on out.”
The boss cocked his head. “For as long as you both work for the CIA, son.”
“No fucking way!” I screamed inside my head, smart enough not to say it out loud. “Does this mean he’s my superior?” I felt like a jackass as soon as I asked. I mean, I should know what a “handler” does, right?
The boss rested his arms on the desk and leaned forward. “It means he’s responsible for making sure you have every single thing you need to accomplish your mission and live to accept the next.”
Which meant, if he fucked up, I was the one who died.
“Any other questions?”
“No, sir,” Cope answered before I could.
I repeated his words, and we both stood to leave.
“Listen,” Cope began when we were outside the building. “I want you to know this wasn’t my idea.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“I’m too much of a risk to put out in the field. If I weren’t assigned as a handler, I would’ve been tossed out of the program.”
I highly doubted that was the case. “Why?”
“My father. Major handicap, my whole fucking life.”
The last words, he muttered, but I heard him, and for whatever reason, it made me like him more.
“This is all about trust, Irish.”
“Right.” On my part anyway. What did he have to lose? Sounded to me like he’d be sitting behind a desk while I risked my life.
Cope looked as though there was something else he wanted to say, but I didn’t encourage him to continue. Only time would tell whether I would feel the trust that this was all about.
2
Flynn
Crested Butte, Colorado
Thirteen Years Ago
As much as I never, ever wanted my oldest brother to leave, I knew he had to. All he and our dad did was fight. Porter, who was the next oldest after Buck, said they always had, especially after our mom died.
I was only three at the time and didn’t remember anything about her. There were pictures of her around the ranch house, and my brothers told stories, but I had no memories of my own.
“Hey, squirt,” said Cord, brother number three in oldest to youngest in our family. “You hangin’ in t
here okay?”
I looked up from the book I was reading.
“You need anything, you let me know. Understand?”
“I understand.” I wouldn’t go to him, though, if I needed anything. I’d either ask my brother Holt, since he was closer to my own age, or Johnny, the head cook at the dining hall where my father usually had me hang out when he and my brothers were busy on the ranch.
Since I started kindergarten, Holt and I had gone to the same school and he always looked out for me. Next year, he would go to middle school and I’d be left on my own. Just thinking about it, made my stomach hurt. Now, I was only made fun of when the other kids knew my brother wasn’t around. Once he was in a different building, it would be all the time.
“Hey, heifer!” they’d shout and then moo at me when there was no teacher within hearing distance. I hated it, but less because it hurt my feelings. It was the humiliation that made my cheeks heat and my stomach ache.
I’d begged Holt not to say anything about it to our older brothers or our dad, and he never had. Maybe he was afraid, like I was, that our father would think it was funny. Worse, he might start calling me that himself. Every so often, I could swear I heard him making pig sounds when he caught me in the kitchen, getting a snack.
My dad was all about perfection. At least the outward appearance of it. I was anything but perfect. I hated the jeans and western shirts he bought for me. I might as well be his fifth son, the way I looked in them. And my hair? I kept it tied back in a ponytail all day and night. When he thought it was too long, he’d just cut part of it off.
“Whatcha doin’?” I heard my brother Buck ask.
“Nothing,” I said, barely turning my face from the pillow I’d been crying into.
“You know if there was any way I could take you to college with me, I would, Flynn.”
I dried my tears on the pillowcase and looked up at him, relieved he thought I was crying over him rather than feeling sorry for myself.
3
Irish
Hong Kong
Nine Years Ago
The mission we were assigned was standard reconnaissance. As the person with the least seniority, I was given the worst shifts and shittiest jobs. I didn’t mind. I knew one day there would be someone else below me. Fair was fair.
My three partners for tonight’s duty were Peter “Dingo” Samuels, Albert “337” Baker, and Eric “Julius” Berg. The three had a lot more seniority than me, but since they were looking to leave the mission early, they’d volunteered for the “swing” shift.
The man we were watching, a Chinese-born Canadian national, was the suspected kingpin of a vast drug network that was raking in upwards of fifty million dollars annually.
He wasn’t on our watch list because the CIA wanted to bring him in. Our mission was to determine who his main points of contact were in Hong Kong and who was laundering his money.
As danger went, it was relatively low risk, given we had no authority whatsoever to act, only to report information.
The streets were empty but for a few vagrants as we waited for our relief team. Two men, though, caught my eye as they rounded a corner and stood there, looking in our direction long enough that it raised my concern.
“Dingo—” I’d no more said his name than a vehicle sped past, taking out all three of the agents I was on duty with. Samuels fell face-first into the alley from which we’d been conducting our stakeout. The other two were farther away, but there was no question they were dead. All that prevented me from meeting the same fate was that I’d been standing in the shadows, hidden by the corner of the building.
“Agents down,” I hissed into my mic. “Repeat. Agents down.”
What happened over the course of the next three days left my head spinning. No one asked me for an account of what I saw or heard. The entire mission was scrubbed, then burned.
And Dingo, 337, and Julius? I never heard their names mentioned again.
My mother used to say every person dies three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when that body is put in the grave. The third is when your name is spoken for the last time. Seemed to me that all three happened on the same day for the three men I’d been working with.
When I returned Stateside, I asked Cope to meet me away from the office.
“It came way too close, man,” I told him. “It was a low-risk mission.”
“What I don’t understand is why it was burned at all, let alone so fast.”
“I agree.”
Cope said he’d dig around and see if he could find any other information, but I could tell he was as skeptical about his success as I was.
4
Irish
Washington, DC
Seven Years Ago
Exactly when I’d started keeping track of agents’, operatives’, and assets’ deaths, I couldn’t remember. As I added names to my ongoing tally, I added more details. Soon, I began adding photos along with as much information as I could about how and where they had been assassinated.
That’s what I called it. These men and women didn’t “die in the line of duty,” as was sometimes reported, and then only within the company. The general public never knew a thing about those who had given their all to protect our collective freedom. I did, though.
The spare bedroom of my condo became a cross between a shrine and a war room. The walls were covered with notes, and whenever I filled a whiteboard, I added at least two more.
I divided the room’s four walls into where the agents were originally from. Most were either from the States, the UK, and either France or Germany, which I lumped together. The fourth wall became “everyone else.” It wasn’t necessary for me to sort them by where they’d died. With few exceptions, it was either in Hong Kong or mainland China.
Was I obsessed? Sure. Especially after another instance—in Beijing—where agents I was working with were gunned down and the entire mission burned.
Each person whose likeness hung on my walls could’ve been me. Particularly given I’d come so close on not one but two occasions.
It was what had made me start paying attention. The deaths I’d witnessed had nothing to do with our mission, as far as I could tell. It seemed almost random, but everything else about it, including the agency’s reaction, didn’t.
There had to be a connection, and before I faced the same fate as so many others, I had to find out what it was.
Tonight wouldn’t be the first time Cope stopped by my place for a beer. We didn’t make a habit of it; there were weeks we couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I didn’t have any siblings, and neither did he, so I couldn’t say I felt the same way about him as I would a brother. But maybe.
He held up a six-pack when I opened the door and waved him in.
“Thanks for stopping by.”
Cope pulled one bottle out of the carrier and was about to open it, but set it on the table. “What’s going on?”
I walked over, opened the beer, and handed it to him. “Have a drink.”
He took a swig. “This isn’t going to be a ‘shoot the shit and avoid talking about anything to do with the job’ night, is it?”
I chugged the beer I’d poured into a glass and shook my head. “There’s something I need to show you.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“You’re going to like it even less when you see it.”
He sighed in that asshole-y, condescending way he did that pissed me the fuck off. “Irish—”
“Shut up, Cope. Whatever you’re about to say, I guarantee you’ll regret it. In fact, I’d advise you to just keep your mouth zipped until I explain.”
As Cope had said that fateful day when he was assigned to me—or vice versa—the thing about a handler and one of his agents is that it’s all about trust. As much as Cope could make me crazy, at the end of every single day, I trusted him and he trusted me.
I opened another beer for myself, and he did the same. “Come w
ith me.” I turned the handle on the door that always remained closed and took a deep breath.
“Irish? What the fuck—”
“Sit down.”
He sat, opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. I sat too and kept quiet as I watched him scan the room. His expression changed as he realized what was written beneath the images were dates of death.
“Paxon—”
I held up my hand. I wasn’t ready to speak and didn’t want him to, either. Whenever I entered this room, I forced myself to take several moments of still and reverent silence.
When I was a kid, I went to a Holocaust museum on a school field trip. Our entire class, usually boisterous, was solemn as we studied the images and realized what they represented. This was the same. Each image was a life lost. Worse, it was a name forgotten by those who should’ve honored their memory.
Irished (The Invincibles Book 7) Page 1