Al­varez and Thompson headed over to one of the tarps, where Thompson used a knife to cut the ropes an­chor­ing the cov­er­ing to the floor. Al­varez pulled the tarp up and shone his light un­der­neath.

  My God was not an ad­equate ex­clam­a­tion.

  Sit­ting on a wooden pal­ate was a large, mil­it­ary-grade, tur­ret-moun­ted gun. From the size of the mount­ing plate, Al­varez guessed it could be at­tached to any­thing from the bed of a pickup truck to the deck of a boat. Hell, even to a tank.

  Reed’s mi­li­tia had been on the FBI’s watch list as a po­ten­tial do­mestic ter­ror­ist or­gan­iz­a­tion for a few years, but the threat they posed had been pegged as mod­er­ate at best.

  There was noth­ing mod­er­ate about what Al­varez was look­ing at.

  From some­where else in the room came the call, “Agent Al­varez, I have some­thing.”

  Be­fore Al­varez could ex­tract him­self from the tarp, a dif­fer­ent agent shouted, “I have some­thing, too.”

  “Agent Al­varez, over here,” a third said.

  “I have some­thing here, too.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Agent Al­varez!”

  Chapter Eight

  THREE DAYS LATER

  WASH­ING­TON, DC

  Misty walked through her apart­ment, weav­ing around the stacks of boxes con­tain­ing her pos­ses­sions, and mak­ing sure she hadn’t missed any­thing. The movers would be here within thirty minutes, and the faster everything was loaded up, the hap­pier she’d be.

  Un­der Peter, the Of­fice had owned sev­eral prop­er­ties—scattered not only around the DC area, but also the world. ACORT had thought it’d ab­sorbed them all when the Of­fice was dis­ban­ded, but there were sev­eral ACORT hadn’t known about. As Misty was shuffled from one mind-numb­ing gov­ern­ment post to an­other, she’d kept track of the ones that hadn’t switched hands, sure the er­ror would be cor­rec­ted.

  Much to her sur­prise, all had re­mained un­claimed.

  Upon the re­birth of the or­gan­iz­a­tion, she had—after dis­clos­ing the ex­ist­ence of the prop­er­ties and re­ceiv­ing ACORT’s re­luct­ant agree­ment—re­as­ser­ted the Of­fice’s claim on them. One of the loc­a­tions, a neg­lected place known as the Farm, had once been used as a re­treat for agents who needed to lie low. Misty de­cided it would be the per­fect loc­a­tion for not only the or­gan­iz­a­tion’s new headquar­ters but her home, too.

  It wasn’t really a farm, but rather twenty acres of rolling hills in the Vir­ginia coun­tryside, thirty-two miles out­side DC. It had a four-bed­room main house, two smal­ler gues­t­houses, a swim­ming pool, a gym that came with a sound-mit­ig­ated gun range in the base­ment, and, most im­port­antly, a ded­ic­ated and un­trace­able con­nec­tion to the ’net. At the time of Peter’s death, the con­nec­tion had been the fast­est avail­able. Now, not so much. That would be one of the first things Misty would have her new chief tech­no­logy of­ficer take care of. Of course, she still needed to find the right per­son for the role.

  Misty had plans for the other prop­er­ties, too, but first things first. She had an or­gan­iz­a­tion to get on its feet. Though the new Of­fice was off to a pretty great start, with the rous­ing suc­cess of the Reed mis­sion.

  Best of all, it had turned into a PR coup for the feds. The breakup of an un­der­age sex-slave op­er­a­tion re­ceived near uni­ver­sal praise. And after An­der­son Cooper scored an in­ter­view with one of the freed girls who’d re­cently turned eight­een, even those who would have nor­mally cri­ti­cized the FBI’s heavy-handed ac­tion were tempered in their re­sponses.

  All that praise trans­lated into genu­ine grat­it­ude to­ward the Of­fice. Misty’s or­gan­iz­a­tion had already been re­tained for two up­com­ing mis­sions, with prom­ises of more to fol­low.

  Someone knocked on her front door. She looked at her watch. The movers were early. That was fine. She was ready for them.

  Only, when she looked through the door’s pee­p­h­ole, the two men stand­ing on her porch were the dir­ector of ACORT, Kyle Otero, and a sub­or­din­ate of his named Cameron Wash­ing­ton. She opened the door.

  “Sorry to drop by un­an­nounced,” Otero said. “But I’m hop­ing we can have a mo­ment of your time.”

  “No prob­lem. Please, come in.” She stepped aside so they could enter. “Just so you’re aware, the movers are due at any minute.”

  “Today is mov­ing day, then.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ex­cel­lent. I’m sure you’re look­ing for­ward to get­ting settled.”

  “I am.” She mo­tioned to the din­ing table. “Would you like to sit?”

  “Please,” the dir­ector said.

  After they were seated, she said, “What is it I can do for you, Dir­ector?”

  “Do you re­call someone named Chris­tophe St. Amand?”

  A tickle at the back of her mind. She had heard the name be­fore. Years ago. She closed her eyes and worked her way through her memor­ies.

  She fi­nally opened her eyes and said, “He works for Janus Sideropoulos, right?” If she hadn’t spent so much time out of the in­tel­li­gence game, she might have been able to place the name faster.

  “Worked,” Otero said. “Sideropoulos was killed two years ago.”

  “I see. Then who does St. Amand work for now?”

  “He took over the or­gan­iz­a­tion when Sideropoulos died.”

  “I take it that means he’s the one who killed him.”

  For the first time, Wash­ing­ton spoke. “That hasn’t been proven yet.”

  “True,” Otero agreed. “But we be­lieve that’s the case.”

  Misty looked from one man to the other. “You still haven’t told me how I can help you.”

  “Mr. St. Amand is, to put it lightly, a no­tori­ously private per­son,” Otero said. “There are no known use­ful pho­to­graphs of him.”

  “How is that even pos­sible?”

  With a nod from the dir­ector, Wash­ing­ton opened his briefcase, ex­trac­ted an eight-by-twelve pho­to­graph, and set it on the table.

  From the poor qual­ity, she could tell the im­age was a blowup of se­cur­ity cam­era foot­age. It showed a man from the chest up. At least Misty as­sumed it was a man. He wore large sunglasses, a med­ical mask over his mouth and nose, and spor­ted a lux­uri­ous head of hair that hung low over his fore­head and com­pletely covered his ears and neck.

  “Wig?” she said.

  A nod from Wash­ing­ton. “There are dozens of im­ages like this. Dif­fer­ent every time. Some­times it’s an­other wig, some­times it’s a hat. A couple times even a hoodie.”

  “But al­ways some­thing over his eyes and mouth,” the dir­ector ad­ded.

  Misty pushed the im­age to­ward the men. “Okay. So, you have a man you can’t identify. Is that the job? Find him and get a clean pic­ture?”

  “Ac­tu­ally,” Otero said, “we be­lieve you already know what he looks like.”

  Misty cocked her head. “Ex­cuse me?”

  “Not you ex­actly. Someone who worked with you.”

  “You’re go­ing to have to be a little more spe­cific.”

  “Sev­eral years ago, the Of­fice took a job from a dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the NSA. On that mis­sion, one of your agents came face to face with St. Amand. It’s in the mis­sion file.”

  When the Of­fice was shut down, the NSA took pos­ses­sion of Peter’s re­cords, though Misty had hid­den away a secret set in case she ever needed it.

  “Which mis­sion are we talk­ing about?” she asked.

  “The un­suc­cess­ful rendi­tion of Maurice Canto.”

  Now she re­membered. The sub­ject had com­mit­ted sui­cide be­fore the ab­duc­tion team could nab him. She also re­called the en­counter with St. Amand, and which agent had been in­volved. But she asked any­way, “And who was the agent?”

  “He is lis­ted as B2. No name. We are hop­ing you can tell us who he is.”

  She was the one who’d typed up all but a hand­ful of the Of­fice’s mis­sion files, so she could tell them, but in­form­a­tion was power, and as the head of a newly re­con­sti­t­uted agency, she could use as much power as she could get. “I would have to con­sult the data­base. There should be a con­ver­sion list that will—”

  “There isn’t,” Wash­ing­ton said, an­noyed. “We’ve checked.”

  “The con­ver­sion list is gone? It was there when you as­sumed con­trol of our as­sets.” A one-word lie—that should have been un­til in­stead of when.

  “Are you say­ing you don’t re­mem­ber who it is?” Otero asked.

  She snorted. “Do you know how many dif­fer­ent mis­sions the Of­fice ran, and how many agents worked with us over the years?”

  “The des­ig­na­tion is B2,” Wash­ing­ton said. “Seems like that should be a very easy one to re­mem­ber.”

  “Sorry to dis­ap­point you, Mr. Wash­ing­ton, but des­ig­na­tions were ran­domly gen­er­ated from pro­ject to pro­ject. I should, how­ever, be able to fig­ure out who it is. Is the reason you want to find him be­cause you’re look­ing for St. Amand?”

  “That’s clas­si­fied,” Wash­ing­ton said.

  “I ask be­cause chances are, this agent will be more open talk­ing to me than to you.”

  “Whether we are look­ing for St. Amand or not, who­ever the agent is, he will talk to us.”

  “Or she.”

  “What?” Wash­ing­ton said.

  “You said he will talk to us. It could be a she.”

  “Oh, for chris­sake. The point is—”

  The dir­ector put a hand on the other man’s arm. “Yes, we are look­ing for Chris­tophe St. Amand. And if you think your agent would feel more com­fort­able dis­cuss­ing the mat­ter with you, that works for us.”

  Misty smiled. “What I was ac­tu­ally go­ing to sug­gest was that you hire the Of­fice to as­sist with the search.”

  In the ex­change of glances that fol­lowed between the two men, Misty sensed this was a pos­sib­il­ity they had already con­sidered, and that Otero, at least, was open to it.

  The dir­ector fo­cused back on her. “If you are able to find the agent, then I have no prob­lem with bring­ing you on­board for this.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Misty said. “Good to be work­ing with you again.”

  She held out her hand to Otero, who, after a pause, took it.

  “You already know who it is, don’t you?”

  She con­tin­ued to smile but said noth­ing.

  “Hold on,” Wash­ing­ton said. “If you do, then you’ve just lied to a fed­eral agent. Two fed­eral agents, in fact. Give us the name and maybe we won’t file charges.”

  “Take it down, Cameron,” Otero said. “No one’s fil­ing charges. The Of­fice’s as­sist­ance would be greatly ap­pre­ci­ated.”

  “Thank you,” Misty said. “Now, per­haps you should tell me what the rush is to find Mr. St. Amand.”

  “No one said any­thing about a rush,” Wash­ing­ton said.

  “You’re not a very good liar,” she said.

  Otero said, “We have reason to be­lieve St. Amand is in the pro­cess of mov­ing large stocks of il­legal weapons and mu­ni­tions into the United States.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Iron­ic­ally, your people are re­spons­ible for this com­ing to light.”

  “How so?”

  “The Reed as­sign­ment. If your team hadn’t in­sisted on an im­me­di­ate raid, we would have still been in the dark.”

  “You found weapons at the com­pound,” she guessed.

  “Some, yes, plus space for a whole lot more.” He looked at Wash­ing­ton. “Show her.”

  After a mo­ment’s hes­it­a­tion, Wash­ing­ton pulled more pho­tos from his briefcase and laid them on the table.

  The first was a shot of a gi­gantic room, par­tially oc­cu­pied by shelves and sev­eral dif­fer­ent types of con­tain­ers. The oth­ers were close-ups of some of the items that had been stored—guns, bul­lets, rock­ets, ex­plos­ives.

  “This was at the Reed place?” Misty said, as­ton­ished.

  Wash­ing­ton nod­ded.

  “And you were able to tie it back to St. Amand?”

  “We traced one of the ship­ments through a series of shell cor­por­a­tions and then to a French ex­porter who we’ve long sus­pec­ted of be­ing one of St. Amand’s fronts. In the pro­cess, we’ve dis­covered that there may have been other ship­ments, po­ten­tially sev­eral dozens, to places other than Reed’s com­pound.”

  “You think there are more of these caches spread around the coun­try?”

  “That is the con­cern, yes.”

  She stared at him. “For what pur­pose?”

  “That is one of the things we’d like to ask Mr. St. Amand.”

  “What about Reed?”

  “He is the reason we are here today. Yes­ter­day, he was told about the stat­utory rape and sexual ab­use charges that were go­ing to be filed against him. Late last night, he used a knife that had been smuggled in to him to slit his wrists, and was not found un­til early this morn­ing.”

  “Who gave him the knife?”

  “It’s not im­port­ant,” Wash­ing­ton said. By his tone, she sus­pec­ted this was a very touchy sub­ject for him.

  “The per­pet­rator has been dealt with,” the dir­ector said.

  Someone knocked hard on the front door. “The movers.” She quickly gathered the pic­tures and stood up. “May I keep these?”

  “Of course,” Otero said. “We’ll for­ward you whatever other in­form­a­tion we think you may need.”

  “Thank you, gen­tle­men. You can be as­sured the Of­fice will jump right on this.”

  An­other knock.

  “Com­ing,” she shouted.

  SAN FRAN­CISCO

  Or­lando’s phone rang. On the bed be­side her, she felt Quinn stir.

  “Are you go­ing to get that?” he asked, still half asleep.

  Without open­ing her eyes, Or­lando reached over to her night­stand and found her phone on the first try. In a voice far more awake than she felt, she said, “Hello.”

  “Time to get up. We’ve got a new job.” Misty.

  Or­lando sat up, her eyes crack­ing open. “What time is it?”

  “Eight thirty.”

  That trans­lated to 5:30 a.m. there on the West Coast. Or­lando shook some of the cob­webs from her mind. “A new job? I thought we agreed not to take any­thing without con­sult­ing each other first.”

  “You’re go­ing to like this one. Be­sides, it’s really more an ex­ten­sion of a job than a com­pletely new one.” Misty filled her in on the visit she re­ceived from the dir­ector of ACORT.

  “B2 is Nate, isn’t it?” Or­lando said. “I re­mem­ber him and Quinn talk­ing about it.”

  Quinn turned his head and looked at her, an eye­brow raised, but she mouthed later.

  “Ac­cord­ing to Dir­ector Otero, Nate is one of the few people alive who’s seen St. Amand’s face,” Misty said. “We’re go­ing to need him on this one. You can get him, right?”

  Or­lando couldn’t help but glance at Quinn, which got him in­ter­ested again. “I’m, um, not sure.”

  “No Nate, no job. You’ve got to bring him in.”

  “If you’d asked me be­fore you said yes, we could have talked this out then.”

  “My choices were either to take the job or give ACORT Nate’s name and in­form­a­tion. Would you rather I’d have let them deal with it?”

  It might have been easier, Or­lando thought. But no, she wouldn’t have wanted Misty to do that. “Let me see what I can do.”

  “Make it fast. We need to get on this, like, yes­ter­day.”

  Or­lando sighed. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “I…I know you will. I’m sorry I didn’t con­sult you first. I won’t do that again.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call you back as soon as I know any­thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  Or­lando hung up and threw the cov­ers back.

  “What was that all about?” Quinn asked as she climbed out of bed.

  “Just give me a few minutes.”

  In the bath­room, she stared into the mir­ror, her gaze un­focused.

  The last time she’d seen Nate had been in the woods out­side Lon­don, where they had cap­tured the wo­man who had killed Quinn’s sis­ter—and Nate’s girl­friend—Liz. In an act of clear­headed­ness, Quinn had put aside his need for re­venge and de­cided the wo­man would be turned over to US in­tel­li­gence. Nate was not as for­giv­ing. If it had been any­one but Quinn who had made the de­cision, Nate would have ig­nored it and killed the wo­man him­self. In­stead, he had stormed off.

  By the time Quinn and Or­lando re­turned to Cali­for­nia, Nate had moved out of Quinn’s Los Angeles home. She had no idea where he’d gone. She’d sent out feel­ers to make sure he was all right, but no one had re­por­ted see­ing him.

  The only people she hadn’t asked were Daeng and Jar. If Nate was still talk­ing to any­one in her and Quinn’s in­ner circle, it would have been one of them. But she didn’t want to force them to choose sides, and had to trust that if Nate was really in trouble, they would let her know. She’d let the mat­ter drop, hop­ing time alone would help Nate heal.

  But now, if she didn’t con­tact him, the heav­ies at ACORT would. Bet­ter the devil you know.

  She turned on the shower as hot as she could take it and stood un­der the spray, let­ting the parts of her body that hadn’t woken up yet work their way back to life. By the time she re­turned to the bed­room, Quinn was sit­ting on the edge of the mat­tress, dressed in workout clothes.

  Be­fore he could ask her again what was up, she said, “We have a new job.”

  “Okay. Um…shouldn’t you be hap­pier about that?”

  “I am…I mean, it’s not the job it­self that’s a prob­lem.”

 

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