Before standing, I took a deep breath. I walked over to the first wall.
Cope stood too and walked closer. He pointed to the three images above the names. “These are the guys who died on your mission,” he said.
“That’s right. Peter Samuels, Albert Baker, and Eric Berg. All died in the line of duty two years ago in Hong Kong.”
Cope slowly walked around the room, scanning images, reading the notes I’d written about each one. When he got to the fourth wall, he turned to me. “How many?”
“Number fifty died last week.”
“Jesus. Fifty,” he repeated under his breath. “Why haven’t you shown me this before?”
I had no answer. I didn’t know why I chose to now. Until he arrived, I had no intention of doing so. Maybe it was the tally reaching a milestone number that made it too hard to bear on my own anymore. Maybe I wanted someone besides me to know. To remember. And maybe, if I met the same fate they had, I wanted Cope to find out why. Why had more agents died in the last three years than in the twenty prior combined?
5
Irish
Washington, DC
Six Years Ago
It had been three years since Cope and I began the mission we undertook with no authority or funding, both of us knowing our careers as well as our lives were on the line if anyone found out about it.
Thus far, every theory we contrived led nowhere. If it weren’t for the sheer number of deaths that couldn’t be explained or attributed to anything, it would be easy to think it a tragic coincidence. Except I couldn’t do that. Agents I’d worked with directly had been gunned down in front of me. I was convinced their deaths had nothing to do with the op we were on, and yet nothing about them was random.
The only apparent link was that three sets of murders I’d witnessed took place either in Beijing or Hong Kong. Two were close calls for me too. One, I was at a safe distance away, but the end result was still the same—agents were dead and no one had any idea why.
Without any other leads, the Chinese became the center of our investigation. Given relations between our two countries were strained even more than with Russia, it wouldn’t be a stretch of anyone’s imagination to believe either communist nation was behind the loss of so many of our agents.
While, to a certain extent, Cope influenced the missions I was assigned, he certainly wasn’t the person who ultimately decided what they were. That was a couple of steps above his pay grade. He did make sure, though, that I was put front and center for every mission related to China—including those in Hong Kong.
Most of my other assignments had enough downtime that I could continue looking for patterns in what appeared to be systemic execution. There had to be something that tied the deaths together—other than China, which both Cope and I believed worthy of more investigation. How they were involved specifically, though, remained a perplexing mystery.
Today, like every other time we met on the subject, we were careful about where and when we talked. We set off from the CIA headquarters in separate cars and drove an hour to Annapolis, Maryland. Once there, we left our cell phones in our vehicles, met at the public docks, and rented a boat.
It was a warm mid-September day that felt more like summer than the beginning of autumn, so we chartered a thirty-two-foot cruiser. Once we were far enough out in the Chesapeake Bay, Cope cut the engine.
“Does the name Malin Kilbourne mean anything to you?”
“She’s one of the agents you handle, right? Code name Starling.”
“That’s right.” Cope looked over his shoulder. There was nothing but water within a couple hundred yards of us. “She’s picked up a lead on something I’m going to let her run with.”
“Let her run with? Isn’t she brand spanking new?”
“To me, yeah, but she trained under Dutch Miller. She’s got chops.” Cope looked over both shoulders a second time. “I’ll monitor her closer than she realizes.”
“What the fuck has she gotten herself mixed up in that has you so tightly wound that you keep looking over your shoulder?”
“Somebody from DHS gave her a tip on money coming into a super PAC.”
I knew there had to be a hell of a lot more to it than that. “Get to the point, Cope.”
“She starts looking into it, and within a couple of days, Ed Montgomery steps in and assigns her a mission in Afghanistan.”
“Whoa. Back up. Isn’t he with Congressional Affairs?”
“Yep.”
I cocked my head, trying to figure out why someone Cope didn’t report to was giving missions to an agent he handled.
“Is there a new chain of command I’m unaware of?”
Cope shook his head. “Right? Striker asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing.”
“And?”
“I told him to ask Stevens.” Striker Ellis was Cope’s and my boss. Ellis reported to Paul Stevens, who was the head of the National Clandestine Service branch of the CIA. Stevens answered directly to James Flatley, Director of the CIA. Ed Montgomery was nowhere in that chain of command.
“What did Stevens say?” I asked.
“He told Striker to stay in his lane.”
“Striker? Not Montgomery?”
“You heard right.”
“Whatever this super PAC is, someone doesn’t want Starling poking her nose into it.”
“Don’t call her that, by the way. She hates it,” said Cope.
“So, what’s the deal with the super PAC?”
“No clue. All information about it has been burned.”
“What’s Kilbourne know?”
“I’m going to let her lead me to it.”
“You don’t think she’s going to drop this even though she’s been assigned something else.”
“Hell, no.”
“What’s her mission, anyway?”
“Infiltrate the Islamic State.”
I shook my head and looked out over the water, finally understanding why Cope and I were discussing Starling and the super PAC. “Montgomery wants her out of the picture—permanently.”
“You got it.”
“How closely are you monitoring her?”
“Close enough that if someone kills her, I’ll have a lead on who’s behind it.”
“But not close enough to stop it.”
“Look, Irish, she’s one of how many now?”
I didn’t respond. In three years, the list had grown from fifty to sixty-four. Sacrificing one more, even if it led us to why agents were being killed and by whom, wasn’t something I could condone. I didn’t give a shit about the greater good.
“Irish?”
“Fuck off, Cope.”
“Come on, you have to agree it’s what needs to be done.”
I turned my head and leveled my gaze at him. “I will never agree. Never.”
6
Flynn
Crested Butte, Colorado
Four Years Ago
In the eight years since my brother Holt and I went to the same school at the same time, the bullying and taunting had gotten progressively worse to the point where I considered either dropping out of school or running away. Some weeks it got so bad, I thought about killing myself.
The worst part was that the more they called me a fat cow, the more I ate, and the more weight I put on.
Recently, along with the heifer jokes, my classmates had also started calling me a lesbian. While most of the girls in my class had outgrown their own tomboy stages, I hadn’t. For me, it wasn’t as much about outgrowing it as having no means to look more like a girl.
My father continued buying me jeans and western shirts, the only shoes I had were cowboy boots, and I’d taken to cutting my own hair just so he wouldn’t do it.
Maybe I could’ve talked to my brothers about it, but were they really that dense? Holt especially, since he knew how bad the taunting had gotten in elementary and middle school.
On the other hand, they had their own issues with our dad, especially si
nce Buck left. His share of our father’s bullshit was divided equally among the three remaining boys.
Right after I turned sixteen, Roaring Fork Ranch’s cook, Johnny, died of a heart attack while making what he referred to as “morning chow.” Since I’d spent so much time with him both when I was told to when I was younger and more recently just because I wanted to, I stepped in to help while my dad looked for another cook.
After three weeks of me handling all three meals every day, I think my dad stopped looking, and consequently, the job became mine—not that he paid me to do it. I didn’t mind, though. I loved being in the kitchen, trying out new recipes. It made me especially happy when the cowboys came back for second or third helpings. Suddenly, I was no longer invisible. As they piled food on their plates, they’d occasionally tip their hats and thank me.
I’d get up at four in the morning every day and prep both breakfast and lunch, which some of the ranch hands would help serve on the days I had school. The minute I got home, I’d get dinner going. The downside was, the whole time I cooked, I tasted whatever I was making—and I’d also sit down and eat with my father and brothers.
Being in the kitchen and around food gave me comfort and allowed me to forget, at least for a little while, about the pain of being mercilessly teased every single day. The side effect was I was gaining more weight. It was a vicious cycle.
Most evenings, like tonight, my father and brothers ate in the dining hall with the rest of the hands. I was just about to sit down to join them when my father rushed from the table and hurried outside, covering his mouth with a bandanna.
“His cough is getting worse,” I said to Porter.
“Yeah.”
“You have to make him go to the doctor.”
Cord looked up from his plate. “Did you say make him?” Both he and Porter laughed.
I clenched my fists. “I’ll do it, then.”
Holt looked from our two brothers to me and shook his head.
“Someone has to,” I said, staring him down. I knew my three brothers, who were bigger, stronger, and outnumbered my father, were afraid of our “old man,” as they called him. I wasn’t. What could he or anyone else do to hurt me that would be worse than the pain I’d endured for as long as I could remember?
“I need someone to take me to get my license.” I’d been driving since I was ten or eleven. Everyone on the ranch learned how once they could reach the gas pedals. Now that I was sixteen—almost seventeen—I could start doing it legally.
“I’ll take you,” offered Cord. I’d rather Holt do it, but he didn’t speak up. “Maybe we’ll get Pops to go with us and dump his ass at the hospital instead.” The last part, he’d said under his breath, but I heard him.
As it turned out, we didn’t have to trick our father to get him to go to the hospital; an ambulance delivered him there when Porter found him passed out in the barn.
After running several tests, the doctor came in while I was in the room and gave my father his prognosis. Perhaps if he’d seen a physician sooner, something could have been done to slow the cancer that had spread throughout his body. As it was, my father wasn’t expected to live as long as six more months.
“We need to get Buck home,” I said to my brothers when I told them what the doctor had said.
“He won’t come,” said Porter, walking out the front door and slamming it behind him.
“He will,” I said to Cord and Holt. “He has to.”
7
Irish
Washington, DC
Three Years Ago
“I heard all hell has broken loose in California with Kilbourne’s mission,” I said to Cope when we met at yet another undisclosed location.
“Things aren’t always what they seem.”
I studied him, waiting for him to elaborate. It had been three years since Cope let Special Agent Malin Kilbourne run with the mission involving the money that had come into the super PAC and the mystery surrounding the higher-ups and the agency’s response.
While he didn’t share much, he did occasionally reassure me that she was still very much alive.
“I heard Striker was being airlifted to a hospital.” Also in that time, Griffin “Striker” Ellis, once our boss, had left the agency to work for a private intelligence firm called K19 Security Solutions. The man who replaced him at the CIA, Kellen “Money” McTiernan, was the least likely candidate for the job, but he’d been given it anyway.
Rumor was he came by way of the NSA and was known to have an IQ above people like Einstein and Hawking. I hadn’t interacted with Money much outside of requisite meetings, and Cope wanted to keep it that way. The fewer people able to track my movement, even during a mission, the better.
“I also heard Ghafor was taken out.” The man was the known head of the Islamic State, the organization Kilbourne had been tasked with infiltrating. How she’d lived through that assignment remained a mystery neither Cope nor anyone else could explain.
“Like I said.”
“I see.” Which meant those on the inside of the mission didn’t want anyone in the chain of command to know whatever Kilbourne had unearthed. “So, he’s alive.”
Cope nodded.
“No ambush.”
“That’s right.”
“McTiernan and I are headed out there now to get a full briefing. Once that’s complete, we’ll be pulled into a high-level NSA assignment necessitating that we’re both off the grid.”
So McTiernan was now on the inside. “Who’s the target?”
“Montgomery for sure, but we believe it goes way beyond him.”
“Stevens?”
“Affirmative.”
“Higher?”
“All the way.”
“Jesus. Do you think—”
Cope shook his head. “I’d like to believe we were on the cusp of finding out this is connected to our mission, but I don’t believe it is, Irish. I can’t say it’s even related. This is about money, plain and simple.”
“Understood.”
“I want you to take leave.”
Since I was between missions, now was a good time for me to do it.
“I don’t want anyone assigning anything to you in my absence. And McTiernan’s.”
“Does he—”
Cope interrupted me a second time. “No, he is not aware of anything, and I intend to keep it that way as long as possible.”
Both Cope and I agreed that until we developed stronger leads, there wasn’t anyone we could trust—inside the agency or out.
The fallout from Malin Kilbourne’s mission ended up being widespread and complex. CIA Director James Flatley was dead, the president was facing impeachment and calls for his resignation, and Ed Montgomery was ready to tell everything in order to avoid prosecution—even death—himself. Considering his career spanned several decades, there were as many people anxious about what all he might divulge as he was about doing so. Until he testified, he was buried deep in protective custody.
The more both Cope and I learned, the more we doubted we could draw a line between Kilbourne’s mission and our own. Like so many other leads we’d once believed promising, this one fizzled as well.
8
Flynn
Crested Butte, Colorado
Two Years Ago
It took a few months, but Buck finally made it home. We’d all worried he wouldn’t make it in time. He said he would’ve come sooner, but he’d been on a mission. Our father didn’t believe him, but I did, and I told him so.
Buck cupped my neck with his hand and pulled me into a hug. “You have the sweetest, purest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, Flynn. Just like our mama did. Don’t let life ever change that about you.”
He was wrong. If my heart had ever been pure, I feared it no longer was.
So far, my father had outlived his prognosis by over eighteen months, not that the time between then and now was easy. I think it was his fear of death—and spending eternity in hell—that kept him alive. The
doctors had offered various types of treatment, most designed to keep him more comfortable, but he’d turned them all down. Which meant he was in almost constant pain. While he might believe he was tough enough to handle it mentally, the physical strain on his body manifested itself in chronic fatigue, periods of incoherence, and ultimately, a seizure so severe that it landed him in the hospital for several days.
The toll it took on me almost landed me there with him.
“You don’t have to go see him every day,” said Holt when I walked in the house after ten at night.
“If I didn’t, no one would.”
“You think if one of us was in the hospital, he would give a shit?” asked Cord.
I wasn’t going to argue about whether he would or not. That wasn’t the point.
Holt walked over and put his arm around my shoulders. “You don’t have to be everybody’s everything, Flynn. No one expects that of you. Fuck, tell the old man to hire somebody to run the damn dining hall.”
His words almost brought me to tears. Working in the dining hall was the one thing I actually liked about my life. If my dad hired somebody, the first thing they’d do is toss me out of there.
I took a deep breath and counted to ten while I let it out. “No.”
Holt shrugged and walked away, but Cord looked up from what he was doing. “I know you’ve had a long day, but there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“I’m not—”
Irished (The Invincibles Book 7) Page 2