“Whoa.” Parker stumbled back as the elevator doors slid open and Ethan finally stepped into Somerton Security’s main office. “Sasquatch sighting.”
Ethan pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and into his hair on a heavy sigh, and tried not to scratch self-consciously at the stubble covering his jaw.
As promised, Milner’s computer had been delivered to Ethan’s condo—a space Parker had sourced, rented, and forged a history for, and one Ethan hadn’t attempted to conceal. Still, he hadn’t expected Vega to find it quite so quickly. It meant Hernan likely had a PI on payroll, and that Ethan would have to be hypervigilant. He’d expected as much, but still, it made everything that much more difficult.
From the moment Ethan had received Milner’s computer, he’d fallen into the work, pushing himself to sleep less and discover more, breaking only for coffee and a protein bar. It had been closer to 4:00 a.m. than midnight when he’d stumbled his way into the bathroom and beneath the spray of the hottest shower he could stand, then collapsed, naked and damp, into bed, only to rise three hours later, shove himself into a suit, get into the car, and spend the next two hours driving aimlessly through DC’s city center to ensure he hadn’t been tailed to the office.
So yeah, he hadn’t shaved. A rarity for a guy who made his bed every morning, got his hair cut every month, and shined his shoes every Sunday.
But the last twelve hours had been a whirlwind of revelations, complications, and one incredibly difficult-to-read distraction.
And then there was Milner, who in addition to being a thief, turned out to be lazy and incompetent as well. Untangling the mess he’d left behind would take the average accountant several months, even with a full staff and a huge retainer. Ethan had just two days, which meant he had a better shot of teaching Parker how to combat rappel out of a Blackhawk helicopter at 150 feet.
But Ethan specialized in lost causes and hopeless situations. This one was just going to make him work for it.
But first, caffeine and a lot of it.
“Please tell me that’s for me,” he said, nodding to the huge black travel mug Parker was carrying but not drinking, which really should have been answer enough.
“Yep. Pulled it fresh from the lounge when security logged your car coming into the garage.” He handed it over, his lips twitching as if he was fighting a smile.
“There better not be sugar in here.” Why people felt the need to dress up coffee, Ethan would never know. It, like everything else in Ethan’s employ, had a job to do. If it couldn’t do it without bells and whistles, he had little use for it.
“Nope.” Parker grinned. A clear indication Ethan just wasn’t asking the right question.
“Syrup, nutmeg, milk of any kind?”
“Nope, nope, and nope. Plain and boring, just the way you like it.”
Ethan grunted. “Doesn’t need to be fancy to get the job done. Functional works just fine for me.”
“If only you had such an enlightened view about the dress code.”
“Don’t start.” Ethan sneered at Parker’s shoes, the laces mismatched—one green and one blue—the heel of one rubber sole making an odd flopping sound that probably meant the Gorilla Glue he’d used to fuse the rubber back to the canvas had failed. Again.
Parker claimed the damn things were lucky—something about MIT, pranks, and expulsion—and that he wore them only during “difficult” assignments.
Ethan was pretty sure Parker just liked watching the vein in Ethan’s head throb when they squeaked in time with Parker’s perpetually bouncing leg.
Mug in one hand, Ethan flipped on the lights and slung his keys on the desk. “Last chance. Because I swear, after the amount of sleep I’ve had, if I find so much as a single grain of sugar or one drop of whatever not-milk milk you imported-coffee-drinking hipsters are raving about now, I will ship you off to Ranger school in the Pacific Northwest, where the only stimulant you’ll receive is some pissed-off master sergeant’s boot up your ass, where dinner is what you can forage, and toilet paper doesn’t exist.” For good measure, and because he was feeling a little bit mean, he said, “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll tell Georgia where you keep the secret stash of artificial sweetener and Pop-Tarts that I know you have.”
“Sadist.” Parker scowled.
“’Fess up or pay up,” Ethan ground out.
“I solemnly swear that though I’m always up to no good, the only thing you’ll find in that mug is hot black coffee.”
“I better,” Ethan said, raising the tumbler to his mouth as he pulled his laptop out of his bag. Tamper-free dark roast hit his tongue at the same time the mug erupted in Darth Vader’s mechanical inhale-exhale. “I swear to God, one of these days I’m going to donate you to a lab.”
Parker shrugged unapologetically. “Been there, done that, got the MIT diploma to prove it.”
“Then to a Girl Scout troop looking to earn their science badge by making slime.”
Parker just slid onto the edge of his desk and grinned. “Someone’s cranky this morning.”
“I’m functioning on three hours of sleep, two hours of DC traffic, and coffee from a cup better suited to a six-year-old’s hot chocolate. Don’t push your luck with me.” Ethan yanked open his bottom desk drawer; pulled out a mug that had zero writing, no logos, and did not sound like a pissed-off, asthmatic robot; and dumped his coffee into it.
“Good, you’re here,” Isaac said, stepping into the office before Ethan could strangle Parker. “You tell him yet?” he asked Parker, who kept his distance. The pair had figured out how to work together, which seemed to mostly consist of pretending the other didn’t exist.
“Tell me what?”
“Nah, wanted to let the coffee kick in first.”
“Tell me what?” Ethan ground out, unable to believe he was being ignored in his own damn office. It was his name on the checks, for fuck’s sake. A little respect wouldn’t kill anyone, would it?
“I heard from my contact at the DEA,” Isaac informed him with a grim tone. “We need to talk.”
“Conference room?” Ethan asked, though he was already heading for the door.
“Everyone’s there and waiting,” Parker offered with a shrug, then followed him out of the office and down the hall.
Ethan swung open the conference-room door, found the rest of the team waiting as promised—a bad omen if ever there was one—and took his seat.
“All right. Let’s hear it.”
“Our initial requests for information were met largely with silence, and when I pushed, everyone gave me the same name—Curtis Strauss. He’s a senior agent with the DEA,” Isaac began, taking a chair and lacing his fingers over a knee. “Took a while to track him down—he’s in the field—but turns out that eighteen months ago he was the agent in charge of an operation aimed at taking down the Vega cartel.”
“Foreign or domestic?” Ortiz asked.
Isaac met Ethan’s stare across the table. “Domestic.”
“I’m assuming the investigation is no longer active,” Ethan said. If it were, the DEA would have been on his doorstep the minute they’d caught wind of Ethan asking questions. And since the cartel was still active and operating in the United States, Ethan was willing to bet a lifetime of drinking out of one of Parker’s mugs that he wouldn’t like the reason the DEA had pulled out.
“It’s not, no.” Isaac sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They got close—really close.”
“They had someone on the inside,” Ethan realized aloud.
Isaac dipped his chin. “Curtis wouldn’t give me the details, but they managed to place a man within Vega’s inner circle, and slowly the information started flowing.” Isaac sat up, trailed his fingers along the faux wood grain of the desk. “They were careful, Ethan. Deliberate. Had all kinds of intel but decided to play the slow game. To position Vega for a narco-terrorism charge.”
“Did the intel support the idea?” It wasn’t unheard of, cartels doing business with terrorists, trading drugs for guns or money or both. But it was a risky play for authorities that involved walking the line of entrapment.
“Curtis wouldn’t confirm that, and in any case, it’s irrelevant. The operation was scrapped.” Isaac sent Ethan a heavy look. “The costs were deemed too high.”
“Their agent was exposed.”
“Then murdered and dumped for someone to find. Cartel wanted the DEA to know, Ethan. Message sent and received—only saving grace was that the end was quick.” Isaac sighed, as if the thought of an operation he’d had no part in weighed on him anyway. “The DEA wasn’t willing to put another man at risk—”
“And without someone on the inside pulling Vega’s strings, their play was dead.”
“Ethan,” Parker said, shooting a worried glance toward Georgia, “if the DEA deemed the situation too volatile . . . I think you have to at least reconsider what we’re doing here.”
Ethan shook his head.
“Fuck. Just, fuck.” Ortiz swore and dropped his head into his hands. “Ethan, man, this was supposed to be quick. Undercover recon, I think you called it?”
“None of that’s changed,” Ethan assured his team, who, to a man, looked utterly strung out. Except for Georgia, who just looked ready to air-drop into Colombia with a machete and an attitude problem. Ethan couldn’t blame her, but he also didn’t have the luxury of managing her with kid gloves. Or any gloves, for that matter. “I’m the one taking the risk, I get to decide if it’s acceptable or not—”
“Ethan—”
“I’m not having this discussion again!” Ethan silenced Parker with a look but didn’t miss the mulish expression or the narrow-eyed glare that said the tone was both received and resented.
The room went silent, everyone exchanging cautious looks and heavy sighs. No one wanted to quit—Ethan knew that—but they didn’t really understand. Georgia did, in some ways, at least. She knew what it felt like to be left behind, to be forgotten. Loyalty, as much as love, drove her. But it wasn’t the same. Death, Ethan could accept. Knew how to process. It was the dying that he found so goddamned hard. Every day that went by was another step toward the end. Somewhere, right now, if he wasn’t already buried in a shallow, unmarked grave, Will was fighting a losing battle against his captors, against the elements, against disease, and, most of all, against himself.
Because Ethan knew the day would come, if it hadn’t already, when Will decided it was easier to let go. To give up. To leave behind the pain and the suffering and the exhaustion and embrace what came next.
From there, the end would come quickly. Ethan had seen it before.
Antiseptic and illness and the humid tang of his own breath inside a surgical mask rose from the depths of his memory. Ethan swallowed hard and pushed away scents that weren’t real, weren’t present, and weren’t wanted.
“We need to focus on what we can do and handle complications as they arise,” Ethan said. “Right now, I have to prioritize proving myself to Hernan Vega. So far, Milner’s financials are providing plenty of proof of what an incompetent asshole he was, but it’s not bringing me any closer to Will.”
“Maybe while you continue to put together that picture,” Isaac said slowly, “we assemble another one. We know that someone bought an outcome—the hit on the South American compound. Ortiz and I can start working backward from there, see what we turn over, maybe even see where the money leads.”
Ethan nodded; it was as good a plan as any, and definitely better than inaction.
“What do you need to get the job done?” Parker asked, his voice firm if resigned.
“More hours in the day, for one,” Ethan said, running through a list of everything he needed to do. “I’d hoped to spend the majority of my time digging through digital records, looking for transactions that would lead us to property holdings, payoffs, Colombian associates—anything that could trace back to Will. But for now, I have to focus my resources on providing Vega answers—and even then, there’s no guarantee he gives me full access. He’s paranoid but not stupid.”
“If access is the problem, then I might be able to help with that,” Parker said, a slow, satisfied grin curling his mouth. “A little program I’ve been working on in my spare time—highly experimental, and should anyone at the NSA, Homeland Security, or Interpol ask, entirely theoretical. Harmless.”
“Some kind of worm or virus?” Ethan asked.
“Please,” Parker scoffed. “That’s like calling Longclaw a paper opener.”
Ethan rubbed his forehead. “Translate for the culturally uninformed, please.”
“It’s a sword on Game of—oh.” Parker laughed. “You meant the important part. Right.” At Ethan’s glare, Parker continued. “The problem with worms is that unless they’re targeted to something really specific—searching for a single type of file, for example—they’re slow and unreliable. Basically the inelegant solution of the lazy amateur.”
There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make sense of tech speak. “Conclusions, Parker. I don’t give a shit how it works, just tell me what the hell it does and how it helps us.”
Parker deflated and mumbled, “Get me access to a networked computer and I can deploy a two-step program that will clone their network on one of ours, which I can guarantee makes their tech look like a T-15.” When Ethan cast him a blank stare, Parker explained, “Obsolete.”
“Star Wars humor,” Ortiz offered when Ethan cast a baleful look down the table. “Right. Not the time. What’s step two?”
“Huh?” Parker asked.
“You said two-step program. I’m counting, and so far I’ve got step one as ‘clone.’ So what’s step two?”
“Oh, right. I can then set it up so that our network is designated as primary—every transaction sent to the Vega network goes through ours instead.” Parker tossed Ethan a smug grin. “All those times you bitched about the ‘asinine cost’ of Somerton Security’s IT? Get ready to thank me.”
“And you can do this completely undetected?” Isaac asked.
“Yep. The ‘worm,’” he said, with air quotes and a roll of his eyes, “only has to run once, and I can disguise it as a deployed security update.”
Ethan sighed, the tension in his neck and shoulders easing off the tiniest bit. “What’s the catch?”
Parker grimaced but said, “I can deploy via a Trojan, but the fastest way is with a direct-access upload, which means you have to get your hands on a cartel computer that’s paired with their network.”
“Any chance Milner’s computer will work?” Georgia asked.
Parker shook his head. “No, I’ve already explored that option. All the security protocols have changed, and if Vega is as paranoid as you say, he’s probably set an alert to tell him if you try accessing anything you shouldn’t from Milner’s laptop, which would raise questions we don’t want to answer.” Parker shrugged. “It’s a complication, but if you can get to a paired device—a cell phone, even—the rest is easy peasy.”
Sure, because a man as paranoid as Vega left computers lying around. But Ethan didn’t complain. Parker handled the tech details; Ethan handled the fieldwork. He’d hold up his end. “I’ll get you access.”
“That simple, huh?” Ortiz asked with a smirk. “And this from the man who’s torched three satellite phones, two field laptops, and countless cell phones. Right.”
Yeah, yeah. Ethan and technology were in a long-standing war. Which side had fired the first shot was a detail lost to time, but more than once, Parker had threatened to saddle Ethan with a flip phone circa 2004.
“Access is the easy part,” Parker said. “The hard part will be building a recursive algorithm to interpret all the data, filter out the terabytes of irrelevant shit—I seriously hope this guy isn’t cruising porn every night.” He kissed the back of Georgia’s hand. “I’m gonna need the pink packets of awesome, babe. My brain only functions at fifty percent on organic sugar and half caf. This calls for the double-barreled, artificial guns, ’kay?”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes, then turned back to Ethan. “You got a plan for handling access?”
An idea, but it was monumentally stupid . . . and yet his gut said it was the right approach. There was someone within the cartel who had the access they needed. Someone who, if she couldn’t be incentivized to act in her own self-interest, could be convinced to do so for her sister.
“Let’s work on some options,” Ethan said, flipping open a new page in his tech-free yet totally functional legal pad. “Before any of us leaves today, we need to have a plan in place, and I need to know exactly, down to the smallest step, how to deploy the worm. And, Parker?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need you to run a few more outcomes through your program.” For the first time since Darth Vader had ruined Ethan’s first sip of coffee, Ethan smiled. “Seems you—it, sorry—got a few things wrong.”
Parker spluttered and sat up in his chair, an irritated scowl marring his face. “What?”
Ethan waved him off. “I’ll explain later.” Because while the program had been wrong about Ana Maria, it had still led Ethan to the person who’d been tipping off the authorities for years. He still wasn’t sure why Natalia cared—guilt, probably; a battered heart, maybe. But now he needed to know if a woman who appeared to be hanging on by the thinnest thread, spun from the love she had for her sister, had finally reached her breaking point.
If she could be persuaded that there was a better life waiting for her, and for her sister . . . if she would only be brave enough to reach for it.