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Callum breathed in the smell of cinnamon and yeasty goodness as he opened the door to Whale’s Tale café on Front Street in Crimson Point. After a long day of meetings with Ryder and potential clients he’d left the office fifteen minutes ago and made it here with time to spare.
It was dinnertime, and as always there was a lineup six people deep at the counter when he walked in. The owner stood behind it at the register taking orders, her blond hair twisted up in a bun, wearing a cheery apron tied over her burgeoning baby bump.
He grinned at her as he stepped up to the counter. “Hey, Poppy.” She was the sheriff’s wife, and a total sweetheart. He’d met her his first week in Crimson Point and came in pretty much every day to get his coffee fix.
A smile lit her face. “Hi, Callum. Picking up some dinner to take home? We’ve got a homemade mulligatawny soup that I highly recommend, and some fresh homemade butter rolls.”
“Thanks, but I’m actually meeting someone here.” The soup sounded good, but he perused the pastry case to the left instead. He normally got the cinnamon roll—baked fresh every day with generous amounts of brown sugar, cinnamon and butter, and iced with a cream cheese frosting. “Think I might change it up and go with the caramel pecan sticky bun.”
“Good choice. They’re Boyd’s favorite, by the way.” She moved to the pastry case. “Coffee and a sticky bun, coming right up.”
He paid and took his order to a table in the corner and sat facing the door. The habit was ingrained in him, the need to always have good sightlines and situational awareness stamped into his DNA after years of conducting dangerous missions in some of the worst places on earth. Moving to Crimson Point was a welcome change after all that.
The seaside community was small enough that most locals knew at least of each other, and taking the job at Crimson Point Security allowed him flexibility in an environment where he could put his skills and experience to good use.
He spotted the man he was meeting the moment he appeared through the window out front. Big. Alert. Moved like an operator. Dark hair and short beard.
The guy stepped inside and scanned the interior, his gaze finding and locking on Callum. Callum stood and waited for him to approach. “Asher?”
“Yeah, but call me Groz.”
He nodded and folded his arms across his chest. They stood on opposite sides of the table, silently sizing each other up.
Groz was a few years younger than him, but a couple inches taller, and built like a linebacker. Since he was a PJ and a good friend of Travis’s, he had to be a pretty decent guy. Still, Callum didn’t know him, and he wasn’t so hard up for rent help that he would consider sharing his space with just anyone.
If he was going to cohabitate with someone, then they had to click on at least a few levels. “You smoke?”
“Nope. You?”
“Negative. Single?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yup.” And that wasn’t likely to change anytime soon, since the only woman he could see himself having a relationship with was rarely in the same time zone as him, let alone the same country. “Tidy?”
“Tidy-ish. Mentally sound?”
“Most of the time.” He eyed the taller man. Cocky. But from the glint in his eyes that said he was enjoying this “interview,” he had a wicked sense of humor. That was a major point in his favor. “Emotionally stable?”
“Slightly immature at times, I’m told, but otherwise yeah.” Groz quirked a brow at him. “Anything important I should know about you up front?”
“Like?”
“I dunno, like any weird bowel problems or whatever?”
“No. All good there.”
“So no anal leakage or anything?”
Callum fought a smile. “Not lately.”
“Outstanding. I can handle a lot of things in a roommate, but I draw the line at anal leakage.”
Oh yeah, their sense of humors synched all right. “Beer or whiskey?”
“Depends. Beer most of the time, but whiskey when I want to really unwind and relax.”
Good answer. “Favorite movie?” You could tell a lot about a person by their taste in movies and music.
Groz’s eyes lit up. “Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended edition.” His expression sobered. “You need to tell me right here and now if you’re not a fan. Because I can’t live with anyone who doesn’t respect the combined genius of J.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson.”
He shrugged. “I like it.”
Groz looked concerned. “You like it...a lot? Or a little.”
“Somewhere in between. Favorite character?”
“Aragorn, obviously. And not just because he snagged Arwen. Although she’s ridiculously hot.”
He nodded, certain he’d already sized Groz up. A slightly cocky geek with a savior complex and a dry sense of humor. He could live with that. “Agreed.”
They stared at each other for another few seconds, then both of them broke into grins at the same time. Callum held out a hand. “Good to meet you.”
Groz shook with him. “You too. I’m gonna grab something. You want anything?”
“I’m all set.” He sat back down and waited for Groz to return. “So, you’re with the 125th STS too?”
“That’s right. You served with Boyd?”
“For a good while.” He took a sip of his coffee, tore off a chunk of the caramel sticky bun. It was the bomb, chewy yet crunchy from the chopped pecans. No wonder Boyd loved them so much. “My place is a two-bedroom up the hill on the way to Travis’s. There’s a small kitchenette downstairs, but we’d have to share the kitchen on the main floor for most meal prep. You interested in stopping by to take a look before you head out?”
“That’d be great. I’ve put in for a transfer here to a local fire hall. Should know within the next couple weeks.”
Callum nodded and did another quick scan of the place. A couple tables were occupied and there was a steady lineup at the counter, but no one was close enough to hear them, and no one was paying any attention to them anyway. “How’s Brandon doing? Kerrigan looked stressed all day and said she hadn’t heard from him.” Callum had set him up with Andy for a meeting this afternoon. He should be there right now and would hopefully get some of the answers he needed.
“It’s ongoing. He was at my place for a couple nights but left yesterday. Not sure where he is now.”
Before Callum could ask anything else, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at it, surprised when he saw the number. “It’s Brandon,” he said to Groz, then answered. “Hey. Everything go okay with Andy?”
“No.” A loaded pause followed, making Callum tense. “Look, there’s no easy way to tell you this. But Andy was murdered just before we got there.”
****
Val waited until he and Matthias were safely back at their rental unit before calling the boss. “Seattle’s taken care of,” he muttered. Taking down those security cameras had been as challenging as killing the target.
A grunt. “Any problems?”
“No.” There had been people around in the marina, but no direct witnesses.
Matthias had used the custom silencer he’d been bragging about for the past week. The shots had been suppressed enough that the sound wouldn’t have carried far. Maybe to next door, which explained the woman’s scream as they’d reached the parking lot. A neighbor must have come to check on him.
“Did you get anything out of him before?”
“No. He insisted he hadn’t been talking to anyone.”
“Did you get his phone?”
“It wasn’t on him, and we didn’t have time to search the place.” Judging by that scream he’d heard, they’d gotten out of the houseboat just in time to avoid collateral damage.
“Dammit. He served with Sukhi. He could have been talking to Jaia. She might have even met up with him.”
Nothing they could do about it now. And he was already done with this whole shitty mess. He wanted it finished and his son secure. “Any leads on her location yet?”
“No,” he snapped, “but she has to be there still, and so does Whitaker. There’s been no sign of them anywhere else. The longer this drags on, the bigger the problem they become, and I’m out of time.”
Val tensed, something in the man’s tone triggering a warning bell in his head.
“Your mission has changed. Forget the capture. I want them both taken out.”
The call ended before Val could even process the words. Suddenly numb, he lowered his phone, letting out a string of curses.
“What’s the problem?” Matthias said around a mouthful of sandwich as he walked in from the kitchen.
Val stared a hole through his face, tamping down his anger until he could speak again. It was this asshole’s fault that Jaia had been spooked enough to disappear again. His fault that the orders had been changed. “Nothing.” No goddamn way he was telling Matthias about the new kill order on Jaia.
Val wouldn’t kill her. He couldn’t live with that on his already stained conscience. Goddammit, he’d served with her brother. Killing a vulnerable, defenseless woman who was only trying to do the right thing? Fuck that. He couldn’t stop the bosses from having someone else do it, but it wasn’t going to be him.
For the hundredth time, he wished there was some way out of this mess. A way for him to just disappear without anyone else getting killed. But if he tried to drop off the radar now...
His son’s laughing face flashed through his mind.
He spun away and stalked to his room, thinking fast. There was a chance that Jaia and Whitaker were working together somewhere in the area. If they were, Val had to figure out how to isolate them.
But first he had to find them. And for that he was going to need help. Then he could send Matthias after Whitaker while he captured Jaia personally.
Alive. After that...
He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do.
****
Robert tossed the encrypted phone into a drawer in his home office desk and leaned back in his chair, dragging a hand over his face. Unbelievable. This whole thing had turned into a fucking nightmare, and there was no end in sight.
He lowered his hands to the desk. Stared at them, his imagination turning them red with blood. Before this was over, they would be much bloodier still.
He hadn’t wanted Jaia to die. No matter how enraged he was by her betrayal—stealing the files and spying on him—he still hadn’t wanted her death on his conscience. But now she and maybe Whitaker had connected with Andy Dumas. He’d seen Dumas’s phone records.
Dumas could have passed more classified intel to them. Whether Val and Matthias had intervened in time to stop it was unclear at this point.
He took out another encrypted phone and shot off some messages to one of his techs, asking him to expand the trace of Dumas’s phone records for the past seventy-two hours. Just as he finished, it rang. But it wasn’t his tech calling. It was his boss.
“Doug,” he answered, not looking forward to this conversation.
“You better have good news for me, Bob.”
“Seattle’s taken care of.”
“How many were taken care of?”
“Just the one.”
“Well, Christ, where are the others?”
“We don’t know.”
A loaded silence answered. “That’s unacceptable. Totally fucking unacceptable, do you understand me?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing about it? Because you have no goddamn idea who I have breathing down my neck right now. We’re past talking about losing contracts and kickbacks, Bob. They’re talking criminal charges if this thing goes south on us. They’ll make us the scapegoats and bury everything else to cover their own asses. Which means you and I either go to jail for the rest of our natural lives or meet some other unfortunate premature demise before the trial happens.”
A cold wave of alarm broke over him. “I’m doing everything I can.” He’d pulled on all of the strings available to him except a risky few that he was saving as a last resort.
“Yeah? Well, your everything isn’t good enough. Let me make myself clear—you handle this A-fucking-SAP and make it go away. Otherwise...” The threat hung loud in the sudden silence. “Understood?”
“Yes,” he bit out, and hung up.
He shoved out of his chair and stalked to the custom gun safe hidden in the wall. His personal weapons were in there, along with more burner phones and enough cash to last him six weeks. He’d wanted to stay out of this personally, but now he had no choice.
Taking out another phone, he made a call. “It’s me,” he said, hating that he’d been forced into this extremely tenuous position. “I’m calling in that favor you owe me.”
“Your line secure?”
“Yes.” He explained what he needed. Hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.
“I’m on it. Contact you once I know more.”
As soon as that call ended, he made another. To someone he trusted a lot more than the man he’d just spoken with. “Alert the team. Wheels up tomorrow, oh-five-hundred. Meet me at rendezvous point Charlie.”
Things were too far out of control. It was time to take matters into his own hands.
