EDGE OF SHADOWS: The Shadow Ops Finale (Shadow Ops, Book # 3) (10 page)

Marion rolled her eyes. But concern stilled Teresa’s hands. She looked up at him. “Do you think you can convince them not to? Shut us down, I mean?”

He sighed. He wanted to reassure her, but instead he just shrugged. “Only time will tell. So you took care of our visitors?”

“They left an hour ago.” Again, she looked away.

“Damn politicians,” Marion muttered. “Anyone want anything from the cafeteria?” Both Billy and Teresa shook their heads, and she walked away.

Teresa waited until Marion was out of earshot. “About earlier. I’m sorry I yelled—I never should have lost my temper.”

He had the sudden urge to pat her hand or shoulder—as if he were her father. She wasn’t that much younger than he was, even though he always thought of her as being a kid. She was probably in her mid-thirties.

Rose would know for sure. She knew everything about everyone on the Team. He could look it up on his computer, but she’d have it all in that wonderful brain of hers: birthday, address, next of kin…probably even the name of Teresa’s cat and the reason why Marion was sticking around DC instead of out chasing some typhoon with killer waves.

“No problem. It’s been one of those days. We all need to vent some steam now and then.”

“I just know how much pressure you must be under, what with the oversight committee and these audits and all these agencies wanting to poke their noses in our business. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me.” She sniffed. “I don’t know what I’ll do if they decide to shut us down.”

“Don’t think like that. You know Rose. She always has a plan.”

Teresa nodded and gave him a small smile. “You’re right. I shouldn’t worry. Thanks, Billy.”

“No problem. How about if you get me the sit-reps, then call it a night?”

“Aye, aye, boss.”

“All in a day’s work.” Except it wasn’t. Not really. Not when there was a traitor in their midst, and every one of their team members could be the next to be betrayed.

Chapter 9

EZ set up his equipment in the kitchen while Rose got on the phone with KC. “How’s Chase?”

There was the sound of the beeps of a video game followed by a door being slammed shut. “About what you’d expect. Got him and Jay playing
Grand Theft Auto
in hopes of preventing our own little nuclear meltdown. Man won’t sit still and let his body heal.”

“Jay can handle him?”

“Sure. They’ll both have bruises after, but hey, brothers, you know.”

Rose hesitated. She hated to take KC away from Chase, but she was down to a limited number of people she could trust in the field. “Think you could leave them alone for a night?”

KC didn’t answer right away. “Only one night?”

“Yeah. A recon mission. In and out. Unless you’ve got anything new on our masked friends this morning.”

“Found fourteen local stores that sell or rent those masks,” KC answered, confirming Rose’s suspicions that Chase wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to take a day off. “You can also order them online. The guy Jared took down and my guy are still John Does. My FBI contacts said nothing out of the ordinary on the autopsies.”

“Your marshal friend, Jared, he doing okay?”

“Yeah. His first fatal shoot. Guess that will give him and Lucky something to talk about.”

They were both silent for a long moment. “
You
okay?” Rose ventured. After all, Jared hadn’t been the only one to take out one of the bad guys this morning.

“Me? I’m fine. I’m always fine. You know that. So, what’s this recon job?”

“Possible bio lab outside Savannah, Georgia. EZ found a mention of it on the Preacher’s hard drive.”

“We still haven’t found that missing fentanyl or those other drugs. Think they could be there?”

“We also still don’t know what that CDC doctor was up to—could be a lab set up for her.”

“Point being, you need eyes and ears on the ground.”

Rose loved how KC cut to the heart of any matter. “Eyes and ears I can trust.”

“You and me? Or me and Billy?”

Rose imagined Billy and Susan Payne together, smiling, dancing, and sipping champagne. The senator was perfect for Billy—could offer him so much more than Rose ever could. She was surprised at how much work it was to keep her voice neutral. “Billy has his hands full keeping Senator Payne and her committee off our backs. I’ll arrange for a flight out of Andrews and meet you there in an hour to go over our intel.”

“EZ pulling satellite photos?”

“And any building plans he can lay hands on.”

“You worried about flying out of Andrews? Leaves a paper trail.”

“That’s why I want to go tonight. Nobody high enough up the chain of command will be there to see any paper until morning.”

“In, out, home by breakfast.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Okay, I’m in. Let me tell Chase, and I’ll see you at Andrews.”

“Thanks, KC.” Rose hung up.

Instead of calling Billy, she sent him an email explaining everything and letting him know where EZ was. BlackBerry junkie that he was, she figured that was just as timely as calling without interrupting whatever he and Susan were doing.

Billy and Susan Payne. Her mouth filled with a sour taste. Billy deserved to be happy, she kept reminding herself. Not because she didn’t believe it, she meant it with all her heart, just…some tiny fragment of idealistic dreamer that had survived everything she’d been through had always imagined someday, maybe, it could be her making Billy happy.

She brushed the thought aside. Nonsense. Billy was her XO and best friend. Period. They had more than enough to handle keeping the Team safe and stopping the Preacher’s people without her introducing childish fantasies into the mix.

Her next call was to Hollywood. Billy had told her that he thought Dr. Rayburn might be in the clear, but she wanted to hear it for herself. Sometimes Hollywood’s judgment about women left a lot to be desired.

“Boss, I’m glad you called,” he said. “I think we know what the Preacher wanted from Celeste.”

“What?” she asked, irritated by his use of the doctor’s first name. The woman had a PhD in pharmacology plus an MD, and he’d known her for all of eight hours. But that was Hollywood for you.

“Here, I’ll let Celeste tell you for herself.”

A woman’s voice came on the line, “Hello?”

“Dr. Rayburn, thank you for your help. Could you fill me in on what you and Agent Harriman have discovered?”

“Well, it’s all my fault, I guess.” Rayburn’s voice rolled up and down with a Southern lilt. “You see Telzec, the big pharma company, offered me a ton of money for some research I’ve been working on since med school. It’s a way to create stable aerosolized particular substrates. I thought it might be useful to create aerosolized vaccines, you know like for large-scale livestock vaccination. Anyway, I didn’t think of it until Hollywood said something, but it was right after I turned them down that I met my fiancé—well, he wasn’t my fiancé then, but you know what I mean—”

“So after you turned down an offer from this firm, the efforts to discredit you began?” Rose summarized, wishing the research scientist would get to the point—she was as bad as EZ, meandering down a dozen conversational paths virtually simultaneously.

“Yes, ma’am. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that that’s what was going on. I practically thought I was about gone mad. With him disappearing and then my house and my money. Anyway, I lost my clearance and my job, and Telzec came back to me again.”

“You had no job, no money, but you still said no? Why?”

There was a hesitation. “Well, now, that’s where I went wrong. I should have trusted my instincts, spoke up, but with no one listening to me before and everyone thinking I was crazy—”

Thankfully, Hollywood came back on the line. “What she’s trying to say, boss, is that Celeste realized her research could potentially be used to create biological or chemical weapons. She destroyed it all except for one copy she kept in her safe-deposit box—”

“Which the thieves who stole her identity were able to access,” Rose finished for him.

“Yeah. We just came from the bank. It’s gone. They’ve probably had it for a month.”

Rose thought hard. Hollywood’s instincts about Rayburn seemed on target—the woman was a victim, not a threat. “I’m going to send you some files we’ve stumbled across. Could you ask Dr. Rayburn to go through them, see if she can glean any usable intel? We need to know what they’re planning and if there’s a way to stop it. Especially if we’re already a month behind.”

“Will do.”

She gave Hollywood the access code to the bio lab data EZ had discovered, then returned to the kitchen where EZ had made himself at home, using her personal laptop to download the specs she needed to put together an approach to the lab while running more decryption algorithms on the laptop with the Preacher’s drive.

“Find anything else?” she asked.

“Sending the schematics and sat comm data to your cloud account. Only other thing I found was, you mentioned Grigor? The badass from Razgravia, right? On the terror watch list?”

Rose straightened, on full alert. “Yes. Why?”

“Looks like the dude might have slipped the leash—no signs of him where he should be in Razgravia, and it’s got all the European intelligence agencies scrambling. Also, on the Preacher’s drive, there’s a mention about having an inspection tour at the bio lab with ‘G’ and the date is today. Mean anything to you?”

Her breath caught in her throat, and the room swam. Rose clutched the back of the kitchen chair she stood behind, pressing all her weight on it so she wouldn’t fall. Blood and the echoes of her own screams filled her mind.

“Rose?” EZ asked. “Did that help?”

No. No, no, no. Grigor. Here. Now. No. Couldn’t be.

She blinked the room back into focus, and then dragged in a breath. “Yes. Thanks, EZ, that was a big help.” She stumbled from the kitchen and down the short hallway. “I’d better grab my gear.”

Once in her bedroom, the size of a monk’s cell and furnished just as sparingly, she closed the door firmly behind her and sank onto the bed. Pulled her knees to her chest and curled up in a fetal position, her fist balled into her mouth, as nineteen days of torment shrieked through her mind, swamping her defenses like a tsunami.

Chapter 10

As Billy drove his Audi TTS convertible down the wide and winding roads of the Potomac Country Club, he wondered why anyone would want to live out here, barricaded behind steel gates and armed guards, rattling around in big houses, no neighbors in sight past the mature maples and pine trees surrounding each property. What was the point of working in a vibrant city like DC if you were going to spend most of your time commuting to and from your job, coming home to a golf-course designer’s fantasy?

The folks ensconced behind the brick walls of their mini-mansions had no idea about the reality of life for 99% of Americans. Yet they were the ones with the money and power to dictate that reality.

He shook his head as he passed his father’s empty house. Dad and his stepmother, wife number three, were vacationing in Corfu. They’d be home next week, long enough to exchange suitcases for a trip to Paris.

And Dad wondered why they had nothing to talk about when they did see each other.

He sighed and focused on his strategy for tonight’s dinner with Susan. He didn’t like this sudden shift in their relationship. He was far more comfortable with Susan as an ally protecting the Team rather than a romantic interest.

How to dissuade her without hurting the Team? Or condemning Rose?

Maybe it was a good thing he’d grown up with the pomp and circumstance that came with living out here among the rich Beltway movers and shakers. Combine that with his Delta training and the good senator didn’t stand a chance.

He parked the Audi and walked up the steps to ring the bell. Usually, Susan’s maid answered the door, but tonight the senator opened it herself.

Instead of the designer clothes he was used to seeing her in, tonight, Susan Payne wore faded denim jeans and an oversized sweatshirt, her hair pulled back into a simple ponytail. Instead of the forty-year-old rising political star he knew she was, she could have passed for a college student.

“Come in.” She led him through the foyer to the dining room. Carryout Chinese containers were scattered across the sideboard, contrasting with the silver-rimmed Limoges china stacked there. On top of the dining room table, an elegant Queen Anne mahogany affair that could comfortably seat twelve, were stacks of folders marked Top Secret. Susan’s laptop was open, ready for her.

He paused inside the doorway. He’d expected some kind of intimate dinner—been prepared to fend off her advances even. But she’d surprised him.

“I should apologize for my behavior this afternoon,” she said as she handed him a beer. Yuengling Black & Tan at room temperature, his favorite. “I didn’t mean to—”

He opened the beer and waved her off before she could embarrass them both. “Don’t worry about it. It’s been a difficult day for everyone.”