“Aw, come on. Just one kiss.”

  “No.”

  He snickered and gave up the fight. “How was the trip?”

  “Fine. Thanks.”

  “Did we get the job?”

  “What job?”

  “That’s what this was all about, right?”

  She smiled but said noth­ing.

  “If you don’t want to talk about that, how about telling me what that phone call was about. It didn’t sound good.”

  Her smiled faded. “I was re­turn­ing Helen’s call.”

  “Helen called? Well, it’s about damn time. Did she apo­lo­gize?” Helen was the head of an or­gan­iz­a­tion, based right there in San Fran­cisco, that had used Quinn and his team for sev­eral jobs, but there had been a fall­ing-out in con­nec­tion with Quinn go­ing after the people re­spons­ible for Liz’s death.

  “No apo­logy, and I didn’t ac­tu­ally talk to Helen.”

  Quinn cocked his head. “Wait. You just said you were re­turn­ing her call.”

  “When I asked for her, I was trans­ferred to some guy in ‘op­er­a­tions schedul­ing’ named Jose.”

  “Okay. What did Jose want?”

  “You’re not go­ing to like it.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “He said, quote, we are mov­ing in an­other dir­ec­tion and your ser­vices will no longer be re­quired. End quote.”

  “Our ser­vices will no longer be re­quired? What the hell?”

  “I told you there would be re­per­cus­sions from Lon­don.”

  The tar­gets Quinn and Or­lando, their team, and sev­eral of their close as­so­ci­ates had gone after were people Helen Cho’s op­er­a­tion were in­ter­ested in. This would have been fine if Helen had as­signed them the mis­sion, but they had been ex­pli­citly told to leave it alone. Quinn, how­ever, was not about to let the people who had killed his sis­ter roam free.

  He had known Helen would be pissed, which was one of the reas­ons he’d given her the per­son who had pulled the trig­ger end­ing Liz’s life. The as­sas­sin, though, was not the biggest tar­get they’d cap­tured. That dis­tinc­tion be­longed to the people who had hired the killer. They were the trophies Helen wanted. Un­for­tu­nately for her, Quinn had already prom­ised them to MI6.

  It looked like Helen would never for­give them for that. At least she wasn’t their only cli­ent. Still, Quinn pre­ferred that he and Or­lando chose who they worked for and who they didn’t, so hav­ing it de­cided the other way around did not sit well.

  “Any other good news?”

  “Jose told me that he had been in­struc­ted to in­form some of their sis­ter or­gan­iz­a­tions—”

  “Sis­ter or­gan­iz­a­tions?”

  “That’s what he called them. He said he’d been in­struc­ted to tell them they should avoid hir­ing us, too.”

  “Did he in­form you who these sis­ter or­gan­iz­a­tions are?”

  “He’s email­ing me a list.”

  “Isn’t that nice of him.”

  “Funny. That’s ex­actly what I told him.”

  Quinn dropped into a chair. “So, do we have any job of­fers?”

  “Four­teen, ac­tu­ally.”

  He perked up. “Now that is good news. What have we got?”

  “I’ve already turned them all down.”

  “What?”

  “Most of them were small ops offered by orgs we don’t want to be in­volved with.”

  “Okay, but most is not all.”

  “There were three jobs from ac­cept­able cli­ents.”

  “And you turned them down, too.”

  “I did.”

  He nar­rowed his eyes. “Are we go­ing on a va­ca­tion I don’t know about?”

  “No va­ca­tion.”

  “Then, what? You uni­lat­er­ally de­cided we’re re­tir­ing?”

  “No re­tire­ment. Not yet, any­way.”

  “Or­lando, what the hell is go­ing on?”

  Her lip ticked up­ward in the smal­lest of grins. “I’ve kind of com­mit­ted us to some­thing. A gratis job.”

  He stared at her in dis­be­lief. “Gratis? You do re­call that we haven’t taken any pay­ing work since last year, right?” While he was cor­rect, the im­plic­a­tion that they needed the money was not. If they wanted, they could have re­tired right then and there and lived out their lives in com­fort.

  “It’s for a friend of yours.”

  “For the love of God, will you just tell me?”

  “It’s for me.”

  It was doubt­ful his brow had ever been as fur­rowed as it was at that very mo­ment. “What are you talk­ing about?”

  “I have a job that I want to hire you for.”

  “We already work to­gether. We’re part­ners, re­mem­ber?”

  “We do, and we are. I guess it would be more ac­cur­ate for me to say I’m hir­ing both of us.”

  Quinn closed his eyes and rubbed the side of his head. “Was it your goal to give me a head­ache? Be­cause if it was, mis­sion ac­com­plished.”

  Or­lando twis­ted back to her com­puter, opened her se­cure vid-chat soft­ware, and clicked on a num­ber from her fre­quent call list. After two rings, a live im­age of Misty Blake ap­peared.

  “Af­ter­noon,” Misty said. She was in Wash­ing­ton, DC, where it was already sneak­ing up on three p.m.

  “Uh, hi,” Quinn said, his con­fu­sion not lessened in the least.

  “Why is his face all scrunched up like that?” she asked. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Or­lando said.

  Misty’s eyes widened. “Oh, you haven’t told him yet, have you?”

  “I thought it would be bet­ter if we did it to­gether,” Or­lando said.

  “Tell me what?” Quinn said.

  “The Of­fice would like to en­gage our ser­vices,” Or­lando said.

  This didn’t help al­le­vi­ate his be­wil­der­ment. “The Of­fice doesn’t ex­ist any­more.”

  “Cor­rec­tion. The ori­ginal ver­sion doesn’t ex­ist any­more,” Misty said.

  “Misty’s re­viv­ing it,” Or­lando said.

  The Of­fice was the or­gan­iz­a­tion that provided Quinn most of his work un­til a few years ago, when Peter, its head and founder, had been killed. When that happened, the powers that be shut down the or­gan­iz­a­tion, and Misty, Peter’s as­sist­ant, had been shuffled off to a series of menial fed­eral jobs. Though she had gained tre­mend­ous know­ledge about the es­pi­on­age world thanks to Peter, as far as Quinn knew she had zero polit­ical clout to pull off be­ing put in charge of her own in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tion.

  “Are you say­ing the NSA is al­low­ing you to re­start the Of­fice?” Quinn asked. Though the Of­fice had been semi-in­de­pend­ent, it was a gov­ern­ment agency, un­der the over­sight of US in­tel­li­gence power­brokers.

  “They have,” Misty re­spon­ded. “And as a com­pletely in­de­pend­ent or­gan­iz­a­tion, I might point out.”

  “Come on. They would have never done that.”

  “Well, they have,” Or­lando said.

  Misty smiled un­com­fort­ably. “Peter had a col­lec­tion of…um…I guess you would call it…uh—”

  “In­form­a­tion,” Or­lando jumped in.

  “Yes. In­form­a­tion. He kept it sep­ar­ate from the Of­fice’s re­cords. I dis­covered it about a year ago.”

  “Black­mail ma­ter­ial, you mean,” Quinn said.

  Misty shrugged. “I guess some might think of it that way.” She smiled. “The NSA has agreed to of­fi­cially part com­pany with us, with the un­der­stand­ing that most of the work we do in the next three years will be routed through ACORT.”

  ACORT was a spe­cially cre­ated, post-9/11 agency that op­er­ated mostly in the shad­ows as the NSA’s rapid re­sponse arm, for both do­mestic and in­ter­na­tional is­sues, and primar­ily out­sourced its work to in­de­pend­ent or­gan­iz­a­tions. The ac­ronym stood for the Ad­vis­ory Coun­cil on Or­gan­iz­a­tional Re­dund­ancy in Tech­no­logy, a cover name, meant to ob­scure the group’s true pur­pose. Those in the know re­ferred to it as either ACORT or the Coun­cil.

  “You keep say­ing us and we,” Quinn said.

  “The NSA in­sisted on one con­di­tion for let­ting the Of­fice go—that I needed to work with an ex­per­i­enced dir­ector of op­er­a­tions. They tried to push one of their people on me, but when I told them who I wanted for the job, they couldn’t say no.”

  Quinn slowly turned to Or­lando. “You?”

  “Don’t sound so sur­prised,” Or­lando said.

  “I’m not sur­prised, per se. Of course you’d be per­fect, but we work to­gether.”

  “We do. That’s not go­ing to change. Though, if you’re in­ter­ested, I’m sure Misty and I can find a po­s­i­tion—”

  Quinn’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. I am not in­ter­ested in a man­age­ment job. I like work­ing in the field.”

  “And you will con­tinue to do so,” Misty said. “Though I could really use your mind for mis­sion plan­ning and ana­lysis.”

  Quinn shif­ted his gaze between the two wo­men. “You guys are ser­i­ous.”

  “We are,” Misty said.

  “Think about it,” Or­lando said. “We’re build­ing an or­gan­iz­a­tion from the ground up. We’ll be able to put it to­gether how­ever we think is best.”

  While Quinn knew Or­lando also en­joyed work­ing in the field, this big­ger-pic­ture stuff—the or­gan­iz­ing, the set­ting up of sys­tems, all the tiny de­tails—was the kind of thing she dreamed about.

  Quinn was not as ex­cited to punch a time­card.

  Read­ing his mind, Or­lando said, “No one’s ask­ing you to jump in right now.”

  “Eh, that was pretty much ex­actly what you were just ask­ing.”

  “What I mean is, you can work with us on a per-job basis for now. Later, if you think you’d like to help more, the op­por­tun­ity will be there.”

  “You’re say­ing us, too. Which tells me you’ve already ac­cep­ted the po­s­i­tion.”

  “I have.”

  “Isn’t that some­thing we should have talked about?”

  “We are talk­ing about it.”

  “I mean be­fore you said yes?”

  Her ex­pres­sion softened. “Prob­ably. But the truth is, you wouldn’t have been able to change my mind, and you would have ul­ti­mately sup­por­ted my de­cision.”

  “Maybe, but I still would have liked to have been in­volved in the dis­cus­sion.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have talked to you first.”

  He frowned and took a breath. “Just tell me this—doesn’t this mean we have to move to DC?”

  “Not sure if you’ve heard about it yet or not,” Misty chimed in. “But there’s this thing called the in­ter­net. Al­lows people to work from wherever they want.”

  “We’re stay­ing here,” Or­lando said. “For now, I’ll work out of the house, and then find an of­fice in the city.”

  “Helen isn’t go­ing to be happy hav­ing an­other op­er­a­tion in town,” Quinn said.

  “Good. Serves her right for cut­ting us off.”

  Quinn raised an eye­brow. “Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but she cut us off after you already com­mit­ted to Misty.”

  “The timelines might be a little fuzzy, but we both know she’d been plan­ning to dump us since we screwed her in Lon­don.”

  Quinn rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Tell me about this job I’m ap­par­ently do­ing for free.”

  Chapter Five

  ROME, ITALY

  The smell of wet earth and blood per­meated the base­ment, the odor so strong that jars of va­por rub were kept at the top of the stair­case for vis­it­ors to ap­ply un­der their noses be­fore des­cend­ing.

  The room was di­vided into two areas, by a thick plaster wall that ex­ten­ded from roughly the cen­ter point of the longer side of the room and stopped in the middle of the space, cre­at­ing the dual al­coves known as Sec­tion 1 and Sec­tion 2. At the closed end of each al­cove sat a sloped con­crete slab covered in rub­ber, the angle al­low­ing any li­quids on it to drain into a spout at the back corner. Pipes would usher the fluid away and into the river fifty meters to the south. Power­ful spray nozzles at­tached to flex­ible metal pipes hung above each pad to aid in the cleans­ing.

  At the open end of the room was a row of two dozen hooks from which hung full-body rub­ber ap­rons. Four of the hooks were empty, their ap­rons in use by four of the five men at the closed-off end of Sec­tion 1. The fifth man, Baldo Kro­nig, didn’t re­quire the cov­er­ing, as he was do­ing the bleed­ing.

  Kro­nig, a pro­fes­sional cour­ier, had made the mis­take of al­low­ing him­self to be dis­pos­sessed of a pack­age he’d been hired to de­liver. Those who had taken the pack­age had nearly killed him. It would have been bet­ter for him if they had.

  “I don’t know,” he said, for what seemed the bil­lionth time.

  Drake was a brute of a man, so when he twis­ted the ply­ers, he eli­cited more than a com­mon scream from the cap­tive. “You know who they are,” Drake said. “They paid you to give them the box.”

  “No one paid me!”

  “Give us their names, and all of this is over.”

  “I have no idea who they were!”

  As Drake twis­ted the tool again, the skin around Kro­nig’s nipple tore.

  The man’s scream was so in­tense, Drake and his col­leagues winced. Not want­ing to leave the job half done, the big man yanked the ply­ers, tore the nipple free, and held it in front of Kro­nig’s face.

  “Look what your re­fusal has done. This was not ne­ces­sary.” He re­moved the nipple from the tool and pushed it against Kro­nig’s lips. “Open your mouth.”

  Kro­nig pressed his lips to­gether.

  “Open your mouth.”

  The cour­ier shook his head.

  “Then give us the names.”

  For a mo­ment, the head shak­ing con­tin­ued, and then the man said, “Uh…uh…it was…it was Domi­n­ique’s men. I-I re­cog­nized one of them.”

  “From when they paid you?”

  “Sure. Yes. From when they paid me.”

  Drake handed the ply­ers to one of his as­sist­ants, and then grabbed Kro­nig by the jaw and forced the man’s mouth open. He tossed the nipple in­side, pushed the jaw closed, and pinched the man’s lips to­gether.

  “Chew, Mr. Kro­nig.”

  Kro­nig tried to spit the skin out but Drake’s grip was strong.

  “We know you are ly­ing. Chew.” Domi­n­ique would have never in­ter­rup­ted the ship­ment. She was way too smart for that.

  Kro­nig stared back, ter­ri­fied, his jaw still.

  “Very well,” Drake said. He nod­ded to his two other as­sist­ants.

  One grabbed Kro­nig’s shoulders and the other the man’s head. Drake began mov­ing the man’s jaw him­self. Drake could feel the squish of the meat through the jawbone. He moved the jaw again, and was able to catch the flesh one more time be­fore Kro­nig swal­lowed the nipple whole.

  When Drake’s men let go of Kro­nig, the guy’s head drooped for­ward.

  Drake let the cour­ier whim­per for a few seconds, then grabbed the ply­ers and clamped the tool onto the man’s re­main­ing nipple.

  “Who did you give the box to?”

  But Kro­nig could take no more, and after Drake began to twist, the man passed out.

  Drake slapped the cour­ier a few times, but the man re­mained un­con­scious. Drake turned to one of his as­sist­ants. “Get the ad­ren­aline.”

  Be­fore the as­sist­ant could take a step, the sixth man in the base­ment, who’d been stand­ing at the other end of the room, cleared his throat. “Don’t waste your time.”

  Drake turned and said, “Very well, sir. What would you like us to do?”

  The sixth man pushed off the wall. “He knows noth­ing. Dis­pose of him.” He headed for the door.

  Drake and his as­sist­ants stood si­lently un­til their boss was gone. Drake then grabbed a long, thin spike and stabbed Kro­nig through the heart.

  When he pulled the spike out, he said, “You heard Mr. St. Amand. Dis­pose of him.”

  Chapter Six

  TWO NIGHTS LATER

  WEST­ERN OK­LAHOMA

  Quinn scanned the com­pound, first us­ing the nor­mal set­ting on his bin­ocu­lars, then night vis­ion, and fi­nally thermal. The place was sprawl­ing—a large main house and seven ad­di­tional struc­tures laid out in rect­an­gu­lar form­a­tion. The open area in the cen­ter was di­vided into a large park­ing lot, a play­ground, and a combo out­door meet­ing space/eat­ing area, com­plete with pic­nic tables and a couple of half-bar­rel bar­be­cues.

  At first glance, the place could be mis­taken for a sum­mer camp, or maybe a ranch-type re­sort. That was, if you ig­nored the eight-foot-high, barbed wire-topped, elec­tric fence sur­round­ing the prop­erty. The bar­rier was there be­cause in­stead of play­ing host to kids and va­ca­tion­ing fam­il­ies, the com­pound was home to a private mi­li­tia bent on top­pling the US gov­ern­ment, no mat­ter which party was in charge.

  Jack­son Reed, head of the Clear Vis­ion mi­li­tia, had ob­vi­ously val­ued sight­lines over de­fens­ive po­s­i­tions when he’d chosen the loc­a­tion. On three sides the land was flat enough that his people would be able to spot any­one head­ing their way long be­fore the in­truders ar­rived. On the fourth side, the ground had been sliced up by thou­sands of years of flood­ing, cre­at­ing an un­du­lat­ing ter­rain of ridges and dry gul­lies im­pass­ible by vehicles and nearly so on foot.

  To im­prove their de­fenses, Reed’s people had dug a fif­teen-foot wide, ten-foot deep trench just out­side the fence. The only way over it was via the bridge by the main gate. Ac­cord­ing to the brief­ing, the bridge was re­mov­able and could be quickly dragged into the com­pound by a couple of trucks. If there was no time for that, re­mote con­trol charges were ap­par­ently in­stalled on either side that would drop the plat­form to the bot­tom of the trench. The wa­ter­less mote wouldn’t stop a de­term­ined as­sail­ant for long, but it would buy the mi­li­tia mem­bers time to arm up and pre­pare for a fire­fight.

 

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