Shadows (Black Raven Book 1) (30 page)

Whittaker nodded with enthusiasm, almost yelling, “Call a spade a spade. Essentially, Black Raven is a band of unregulated hired guns. Many have been trained on taxpayer dollars, before Connelly wins them over with big salaries. U.S. citizens spend millions of dollars training special forces. Outfits like Black Raven cherry-pick the best, by offering lucrative paychecks and perks that go with high-living lifestyles. Action needs to be taken, and it needs to be taken now. Aside from the drain on our military and our tax dollars, these private security contractors are highly skilled, and they’re using their skills without any oversight except the pocket books of the people who hire them. They’ve got to be stopped. At the very least, it is time for regulation. The public cannot afford to be unaware of this issue. It is a matter of public safety. Black Raven makes millions of dollar a year off of government contracts. The prison security outsourcing contract is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“How much?” The reporter asked.

Whittaker said, “That’s a great question. I’m researching it now. My estimate tells me in the last fiscal year the number exceeded two hundred million.”

The fucking asshole was way underestimating the number. Sebastian doubted that mistake would be continued for much longer. He muttered, “Ragno. Profile Whittaker. Figure out who is paying him.” He paused, his blood slowing as a hunch developed. “And cross-reference him, and any of his contacts, to anything that’s turning up in the profiles that you’re pulling together on Jennifer Root, Zachary Young, and BY Laboratories. Only serious money buys that kind of hatred and I want to know who is funding him.”

“We’re cross-referencing everything in this case,” Ragno said. “Problem is, these massive data searches take time. Especially since Young and BY Laboratories used encryption technology for most of their communications. Also, I’d imagine that any company that is paying Whittaker isn’t using their real name.”

“You can handle it,” Sebastian said.

“Of course I can,” she said.

Debates on the pros and cons of private security contracting firms weren’t new, yet he couldn’t stop watching this one. Until now, the hot-button debate hadn’t been on the radar of the average American. With the popular twenty-four hour news network seizing upon the story and dedicating so much time to it, Sebastian knew he was slipping into a new era.

Ready or not.

Whittaker said, “Connelly was implicated in a vigilante-style shoot-out last July, which resulted in the death of an FBI agent and a suspected kidnapper.”

“Suspected?” One of the Black Raven-friendly experts chimed in. “There was nothing suspected about it. The man had killed one woman, maimed another, and he was in the process of murdering a third, while extorting millions of dollars from her family. You need to get your facts straight.”

“It was an uncontrolled shoot-out on domestic soil, complete with hand grenades. I have the facts,” Whittaker yelled. “This was in the backyard of Americans. And last night’s shoot-out was outside of a shopping mall. Hundreds of rounds were fired from assault weapons. Four men died. As we sit here, the scene remains under investigation. So right now, headline news involves not only a prison break, but also questions regarding the company the government hired to keep the public safe from prisoners. Vigilante groups such as Black Raven are unregulated hired guns, and often, like now, they create havoc.”

“Vigilante group?” Sebastian said. “Vigilante? Great. That’s just fucking great.”

One of his experts chimed in, “You’re forgetting that they do a lot of good. Remember the oil summit last March? If private security firms hadn’t been providing protection there, the summit would have been a disaster, and the ramifications would have put the region in turmoil. To be blunt, turmoil there would have had impact on our prices at the pump.”

Ragno said, “Time for the conference call with Minero. After that you’ll have a helicopter transport to Raven One.”

As soon as he heard the words oil summit, he braced himself for the footage that was coming. “Give me about forty-five minutes after the conference call ends before I leave.”

“I’ll make the arrangements,” Ragno said. “If wheels are up at nine-thirty, you’ll be here and situated by eleven. The firestorm in the media has all of your partners wanting to talk to you. Insisting on talking to you, as a matter of fact. Several Ravens are here.”

“What’s Zeus’s status?”

“He’s still managing safe house forensics and dealing with local authorities on the shoot-out outside of the mall.”

“Has he found anything useful?”

“No. You would have heard,” Ragno paused. “Should I arrange a meeting of the partners this afternoon?”

“Let’s talk about that when I’m leaving Last Resort.”

Sebastian turned to Skye, whose eyes were glued to the televised image of him, captured on video as the oil summit became a bloodbath. He had hoisted his rifle of choice, a black M4 Carbine, and switched it to fully automatic. The camera captured him shooting to kill anyone who crossed his path, while he shielded his client. Beautiful. Fucking beautiful. It was a great recruiting tool, but not anything the average American needed to see while they had their morning coffee.

The report flashed to a studio anchor announcing breaking news at the sentencing of international terrorist, Stonefish. The screen flashed to an image of a crowded city street, cars parked haphazardly, some with police signals flashing, and a burned out, multi-story building, with flames and smoke shooting from two floors. According to the anchor, Stonefish was missing and presumed dead, as were two of the judges of the international tribunal.

“Ragno, you see this?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Let’s count it as a lucky break. We weren’t working security on any aspect of that tribunal, and now the media has something in addition to the prison break to focus on.”

“If this is luck, I’m screwed,” he said, “but I’ll take what I can get.” He turned to Skye, whose eyes were on him. In her expression he saw fear, worry, and questions. He sure as hell wished he had answers. “It’s time for you to talk to the marshals.”

Just leaving one room and going to another took time. Skye patiently spoke to Spring, before talking to Doctor Schilling. He heard Skye ask, “You’re okay to stay with her?”

Schilling nodded. “Of course. Until we find your father and return him to prison, you’re under our care. While you’re under the care of Black Raven, you and she are in my charge. Whether that means administering medical care or helping with cupcakes,” she shrugged, “it’s no different.”

A measure of relief filtered into Skye eyes. Her gaze encompassed both Sebastian and Schilling. “Thank you,” Skye said, “When Spring is ready to start putting the icing on the cupcakes, she might need help. She’ll ask if she does. Please don’t try to help, if she doesn’t ask for it.”

Schilling gave Sebastian a smile that matched the light in her brown eyes. “Looks like I picked the lucky straw for the day. I get to bake cupcakes. I’ll call another doctor. He’ll be there in a few minutes to stitch your arm.”

Sebastian guided Skye down the hall, past the open door to the room where he’d slept, to a conference room. He glanced at the bed and would have given his soul to be back in it with her, without the distractions of the day crashing around him like lava erupting from a volcano.

Hell.

Even with the firestorm he faced, the few inches separating them as they walked down the hallway weren’t enough. His body craved hers, like a starving man craved food, even as he tried to force his attention to the task at hand. Keeping her safe. Keeping her sister safe. Finding her damned father, who was the root of this particular problem.

The room had a table, six chairs, a wall of monitors, and built-in speakers. It had one fake window and lots of bright light from recessed lighting. They were alone, but as long as he had a live connection with Ragno, she was present, even though not physically there. Ragno’s presence was a good thing. Considering that he could barely keep his hands off Skye, being truly alone with her would be dangerous.

Mentally, he could pretend they never had sex. Physically, he had no hope of accomplishing that lofty goal.

He pulled out a chair for her, clenching his jaw as his fingers brushed the sleeve of her soft cardigan. As she sat, the end of her loose braid ran down his forearm like a caress. Or a taunt, dammit. As sparks shot up his arm, he wondered if she felt the same physical attraction. If she did, she was better at masking her desire.

He sat down next to her and moved his chair closer to the table, glad that it hid his arousal. “We’ll be live in a minute. It isn’t video. Only voice. The rooms full of speakers, so you can talk normally, and he’ll hear you. I can’t tell you what to say. Remember, you’re talking to federal officials.” He paused, glancing into her eyes. His legal training was deeply ingrained. At interrogations such as these, he always warned his clients of the manipulative capabilities of law enforcement officials. “I’m a lawyer,” he explained, “but I’m not your lawyer, and I’m not giving you legal advice; do you understand that?”

She nodded, as there was a knock on the door. An agent who Sebastian recognized as a physician walked into the room. He was middle-aged and balding. It wasn’t the perfect time to get stitches, but it was the only time that he planned to sit still that morning, before departing for headquarters. Sebastian stripped off his shirt, as the doctor laid a tray of scissors, bandages, surgical thread, and cleansing solution on the table and snapped on gloves.

He watched Skye’s eyes drift from the wound, to his chest, and to his shoulders. A pink flush formed on her cheeks, as her eyes found his. The flush was barely there, but still noticeable.
Ahhh
. She wasn’t immune to the pull that existed between them. Good to know it wasn’t a one-way street. Why that mattered, when he’d be far away from her in just a matter of hours, he had no idea. It just did.

The doctor started working on his arm, pouring alcohol on the wound and swabbing at it. When he felt the first prick of the needle and the pull of thread, he drew a deep breath, thought about a couple of things that would hurt more, and blocked out the feeling of what the doctor was doing. With his arm to the side, and his face turned to Skye, he continued. “The last thing I want you to do is give Minero information that you haven’t provided me. That being said, I need to tell you that you’re not a suspect here, but keeping information from them is a crime. These guys are good at drawing information from people. Their questions are probing, their pauses are deliberate, and they want to know more than you ever want to tell them.”

She straightened her back and pushed up the sleeves of her cardigan, her eyes serious. “I understand that. I only have to answer the questions that he asks, right?”

She was a smart woman. He locked eyes on her, detected more than a bit of the willpower he’d been battling since he’d introduced himself, and nodded. Minero didn’t stand a chance. “That’s right. Don’t volunteer information.” As the doctor tugged more loops of thread through his arm, Sebastian said, “Ragno, put the call through.”

Sebastian was an outsider on this one. Minero took charge, and Sebastian didn’t try to intervene. Minero began the call with only a slight haughtiness in his voice, but with a huge assumption, evident in his tone, that Skye somehow knew something about her father’s whereabouts. There was also thinly veiled disdain for Barrows and his work, which not surprisingly put Skye’s back up. Her entire posture changed, but her tone was polite and even as she professed to know nothing helpful, or where her father may be running, or who might be interested in her father.

Minero’s tone became accusatory. Sebastian almost chuckled as Minero hung himself by making the same mistakes that Sebastian himself had made with Skye, the mistake he’d continued this morning when he had mocked the news show’s images of the followers of Richard Barrows who wore foil-lined caps. The doctor finished with the stitches and began bandaging his arm.

“Mr. Minero, if you aren’t going to take the time to understand my father’s work,” Skye said, her cheeks flushed red, but her voice calm. “The importance of it, and what it could mean to someone, and who that person might be, you will never find him.”

With that pronouncement, Sebastian’s heart pounded.

An answer had been staring at him, the minute he realized the lengths to which Skye had gone to make sure no one found her and her sister. It had just taken him approximately twenty-four hours in her company to realize that answer. The light bulb moment hit him like a train.

Holy hell.

As he listened to Minero’s steady stream of questions, and Skye’s indignant answers of ‘No,’ ‘I don’t know,’ and ‘I can’t answer that,” goose bumps prickled up and down his arms, on the back of his neck, and crawled down his back. He nodded goodbye to the doctor. When Minero ended the call with frustration and a big zero in intel-gained, Sebastian realized that it was time for something different than bullheaded doubt and thinly disguised ridicule. Skye wasn’t just playing along with her father’s delusions.

She was an integral part of them.

There was a reason that ridicule and disdain of her father was a nonstarter. She believed her father’s claims, claims that he’d spent the last few days investigating and, unfortunately, disproving.

Is she just as crazy as her father?

His stomach twisted. He normally stayed away from women who didn’t have a firm grasp on reality, but he’d done something far different with her. Exactly what he had to do to figure out the depth of Skye’s delusions, and whether unraveling her thoughts and theories would lead to Barrows, Sebastian had no idea. He also didn’t have time to go there. Delusional conspiracy theories weren’t something he was prepared to chase.