Epilogue

Frasier stood to one side of the big DCO conference room as Thorn briefed the other members of the Committee and brought them up to speed on the people he thought were responsible for the bomb that killed John Loughlin.

Almost everyone on the Committee seemed uncomfortable with where the organization was heading, but no one said anything, not even that ballbuster Rebecca Brannon. That surprised him. Thorn had already appointed Coleman the new director without consulting them, going with the whole “we must act decisively in this time of danger and uncertainty” bullshit. Frasier never would have thought Brannon was the kind of woman who’d go along with someone else running the show, but she merely sat at the table alongside her fellow Committee members with a calculating look on her face.

“We’re sure it was an inside job,” Thorn said. “Initial indications are that the explosives used came straight out of the DCO bunkers.”

Frasier almost laughed. Of course it was an inside job.

He’d just gotten back into town from that fiasco in Maine when Thorn had called him and said that Loughlin needed to die—ASAP. Less than an hour later, one of Frasier’s most trusted friends at the DCO had dropped off a copier paper box full of C-4 plastic explosives to Loughlin’s office, then remotely triggered the device the moment the director had shown up for work.

At the front of the room, Coleman gestured to the projection screen. “The investigation is still ongoing, but we’ve already positively identified these people as part of the assassination plot. There may be others, but these twelve are the ringleaders.”

Xavier Danes frowned. “You’re sure of that?”

Frasier wondered for about the hundredth time what Danes’s deal was. In all the time Frasier had worked for Thorn, he’d never been able to get a handle on whether Danes was a saint, a demon, or something in between. The guy was a consummate politician. He never gave anything away.

Coleman smiled, clearly enjoying his rapid rise to power. “Within two hours of the explosion, all twelve vanished off the radar. I think that’s conclusive evidence of guilt.”

Xavier considered that, his expression once again unreadable. “I see.”

“Since we need to move quickly, I’ve already authorized the assassination of all twelve former DCO members,” Thorn continued. “They are to be eliminated immediately, on sight.”

Several Committee members shifted in their seats and exchanged looks, obviously stunned Thorn was going to kill the rogue DCO agents. But again, none of them said anything. That was how the Committee worked. If Thorn suggested something and Danes and Brannon didn’t object, none of the other five would even open their mouths.

“John Loughlin was a good man,” Thorn added. “He did a lot of good things for this organization, but he also let in a lot of bad apples. We need to clean house before we can move forward as an organization. To that end, I’ve put a team together under the control of my head of security, former DCO agent Douglas Frasier, to move out and quickly deal with these rogue agents…unless there are any objections?”

Of course, there weren’t any. The whole fancy Committee had turned into a bunch of church mice. Now it was all on Frasier to make all their problems go away.

As he studied the photos displayed on the screen, he realized the hardest issue would be deciding which one to kill first—Landon Donovan, Ivy Halliwell, Kendra and Declan MacBride, Clayne and Danica Buchanan, Angelo Rios, Minka Pajari, Jayson Harmon, Layla Halliwell, Braden Hayes, or Dreya Clark.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.