The text arrives while I’m glad-handing at a glitzy reception at the French embassy.
Cole: New client. Meet at the office in an hour.
I set my glass on a tray carried by a passing waiter and head for the door. I’m done here, anyway. Every so often I get lucky, because here’s the thing: big decisions are made in backroom deals, yeah, but sometimes those back rooms are actually the corner of a party. Power brokers huddled in plain sight.
Not tonight, though. It’s not a complete bust. Halfway across the room, I catch the tail end of a discreet conversation that I file away. If I’m free tomorrow night, I might be able to make an appearance at the Kennedy Center tomorrow and make a new friend.
A lot of my job is knowing the right—or wrong—person at the right time. I keep my eyes and ears open and take nothing at face value. Everyone is lying, to themselves or others, and when I can use what I know to get what I want, it’s a beautiful thing.
A beautiful, twisted, broken thing, but that’s my life.
The how and why of what I do as a crisis management specialist—a fixer, one of Washington’s best—that’s not important. What matters is that I get results.
Thanks to a generous tip, the valet staff have my car close at hand. I slide behind the wheel, and as soon as the door is closed, I hit play on the audio file waiting on my phone. It’s the start of a dossier, read in a cool, electronic voice programmed by Wilson Carter, our resident hacker.
Our client, it turns out, is Jeff Mayfair.
Billionaire, philanthropist, and the older brother of a former SEAL buddy who has done some work with us—Scott Mayfair, who married Cole Parker’s youngest sister-in-law.
Fucking hell.
“Mr. Mayfair has no criminal charges in his background, either domestically or according to Interpol. He is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom. He has extensive holdings in both countries, recently divested from the parent company, Mayfair Enterprises…”
There’s nothing in the dossier that is a surprise to me. There’s also nothing there to hint at what his reasons for hiring The Horus Group might be, either.
By the time I pull into the parking garage beneath our building, I know one thing for sure. Our client has almost certainly been lying, somewhere and for some reason, and now it’s come back to bite him in the ass.
This is why my firm exists—to get the rich and powerful out of the trouble they should have avoided in the first place.
But we’re all human. I don’t judge anyone, as long as they pay their bill promptly.
Upstairs, I find Cole waiting in the boardroom with Jeff. Wilson is on one of the screens on the wall, video conferencing in from his home in some secret location in the Pacific Northwest.
Our fourth partner, Tag Browning, arrives just as we’re doing introductions. Seven years ago, Tag was a disillusioned DC cop going through a divorce. I used that to my advantage and laid the facts on the table for him. We were going to make a real difference in the world.
Nights like this, I sometimes wonder if we’ve done enough in that regard.
“Jeff, this is Jason Evans, our president,” Cole starts.
“We’ve met in passing,” I say. “I’m a big fan of your brothers.” In addition to Scott, they have another brother who is a pilot in Air Force.
“As am I.” Jeff sighs. “If any of this touches them, I’ll be damn sorry.”
“Why don’t you start by telling us what this is?” Tag gives him a big, disarming grin. It’s an act, and one he’s very good at.
“I’m being blackmailed.”
Ah, that old chestnut. None of us look surprised. I take a seat at the table—not the head, but one of the seats along the side.
Cole sets our standard non-disclosure agreement in front of our new client. “Tell us everything. Whatever you leave out will be the nail in your coffin.”
“There are photos of me with girls—underage girls—on Gerome Lively’s plane.” Jeff pauses as Cole loses his calm mask.
Well, no fucking shit my partner is unimpressed. Lively kidnapped his wife. But none of us are on Team Defend Predators.
“I’m sorry,” I say with all the chill in my voice. “We don’t work on that kind of case.”
But Jeff doesn’t move. He doesn’t get mad, he just keeps going. “The photos aren’t real,” he says levelly. “And I can prove it.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The proof is classified. I’m willing to risk sharing it with you behind that NDA, but I can’t make it public. Not without risking jail time and losing contracts worth billions of dollars that would put my employees out of work.”
A quick glance at the screen on the wall tells me Wilson is already digging.
Silence bounces around the room.
Cole doesn’t say a word. Tag glances his way, then to me. Finally, he looks up at Wilson, who gives a tight nod. Go ahead. I haven’t found anything—yet. Tag leans back in his chair, sliding into the good cop role with ease. “Look, Jeff. Can I call you Jeff?”
The billionaire nods.
“The thing is, as you say, proof can be faked just as easily as photos. Maybe—maybe—you can survive pictures, if there’s nothing else. Literally, nothing else can come out like this. And don’t get me wrong, I know we’re all men with urges here, but—”
“I don’t like younger women,” Mayfair interrupts. “I definitely don’t like girls. That’s disgusting. Lively was disgusting, and not only is that photo not real, but I went out of my way to never cross paths with him. That’s not the kind of business person I am. Period. You won’t find anything.”
“What do you like, then?” Tag shrugs. “Bondage? Threeways? A little good-humored humiliation?”
Mayfair’s throat bobs.
Tag grins, another broad we’re-all-guys-here friendly face. “Is that it? You’re afraid something else gets out?”
“I wish it were that simple.” Mayfair scrubs a hand over his face, then sighs. “I’ve never had a particularly long relationship, and while I like the physical side of it as much as the average person, I’m not into ropes and whips and chains—in either direction.”
When he doesn’t continue, Wilson looks up to the camera, making eye contact from the other side of the continent. “But you do make all of your intimate partners sign NDAs.”
Jeff nods. Then he gestures to the form document we had presented to him, with our own signatures on it. “It was presented to me as a good idea by our legal team, a long time ago, and no partner ever had an issue with it. But the photos I’m being blackmailed with…they have a copy of that NDA. It’s been forged with a young woman’s name. I have never met her in my life. I swear to you, that’s the truth.”
I stand up and pace to the sideboard, where someone—Cole, probably—filled a pitcher of water before the meeting started.
Once upon a time, we had a receptionist who made sure there were bagels or muffins there as well, but then I fucked her for a summer. And she took off for the hills.
So I’m not really one to judge another man for fucking up his life in the most ordinary of ways. I pour myself a glass of water. “Tell us about the blackmail. How long have they been in contact with you, what have you paid them already, and how did the contact begin?”
Without hesitation, he digs into the whole story. He hasn’t yet paid anything out. They made contact to his personal email address, not through an intermediary, and he’s been slow-rolling them with his responses for three days.
“Why did you come to us? Why not handle this with your internal security team, or with Scott?”
Jeff shakes his head. “I’d prefer my brother not be involved. He’s living his best life in California, and he’s been through enough.” He glances at Cole. “I came to you instead of my own team because I’m not sure it’s not an inside job. I know Scott trusts you, and if I went to him first, he’d probably say I should hire The Horus Group.”
“Well, our reputation stands for itself. We’ll do our best to help you,” Cole says, the first time he’s spoken since we sat down. His brow is still pulled tight, but the storm clouds have passed. It’s as close to an endorsement of this client as we’ll get.
I nod, then look at Tag, who turns to Wilson on the screen.
Our hacker jerks his chin up. “On it.”
The next night, following that hunch I had based on an overheard conversation, I make sure the wrong people see me buy a pretty young socialite a drink at the Kennedy Center.
By the end of the concert, she’s warned about me. He’s dangerous. The rumors are true. Jason Evans may look like a Washington insider now, but he’s an ex-SEAL who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, and his first clients were…well, Amelia Dashford Reid is dead now, isn’t she? He got her husband off a murder charge, you know. But that family…
Fuck those fuckers. That family—at least the younger generation—has removed themselves from the narrative, and the ghost gossip doesn’t matter. I’m not above using it, though.
Over the next week, a few things slide into focus.
First, we don’t think Jeff Mayfair is the only person being blackmailed with false documentation of connections with Lively. So far we haven’t found anyone else willing to admit it, but the routing number for the off-shore bank account has pinged around a bit on the Dark Web in recent months.
They’re a hired gun, and hired guns like regular work.
Instead of paying them off, Wilson had Mayfair make a low-key but public statement waiving all NDA agreements, personal and professional. It sparks speculation that Mayfair might be running for public office, and still the photos don’t make a peep anywhere—and the blackmailer doesn’t return with new demands.
The second thing that pings onto our radar is that my half-brother, Mack, has started a quiet and unexpected campaign to join the president’s administration. It’s an attempt to course-correct from the inside, and it’s an uncharacteristically bad move, but he’s the older brother, the more successful brother, and guidance between us has always moved in a single direction. He gave us the seed money to start The Horus Group. We’ve outgrown the need for him as a silent investor, but that history still exists.
And the third and final element on the three-dimensional chess board for our firm is the growing public acknowledgment that the current administration has lost the trust of its closest NATO allies. It’s been a long two years with an incompetent casino king position as the leader of the free world, and global relations are getting frayed at the edges. This is my area of particular interest. It’s why I was at the French Embassy. It’s why I’m concerned about Mack’s agenda.
I’ve narrowed my target to three vectors of interest. The French Ambassador, the principal secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada, and the newly exiled Belarusian opposition leader. Tracking their movements over the next week will show me the path that the world’s power brokers are setting us upon.
Which brings me back to the socialite.
A week after our drink at the Kennedy Center, I make sure she bumps into me at her favorite coffee shop, and now tonight—just like that, because pretty young socialites love danger and a warning is better than an endorsement—I’m a fill-in at her Friday night dinner party because someone else got food poisoning at the last second.
On the one hand, it’s not ethical to deliberately make someone sick. On the other, the loser I bumped off her guest list is a fucking asshole and I won’t lose sleep if he spends the night turning himself inside out into his toilet bowl while I listen to the tipsy ramblings of the French Ambassador’s very young wife—who just happens to be the socialite’s best friend.
That’s the plan, anyway.
But plans tend to go out the window when the rubber hits the road.
Also, I’m getting too fucking old for this.
Seven years ago, I lived for this shit, good or bad. It was all the same to me, a jaded ex-special forces operator who had lost his moral compass somewhere on a mountaintop in Afghanistan. I found it again a few years later. Well, it wasn’t mine, exactly. I’ve had to borrow one from Cole, who managed to re-grow his personal ethics when he fell in love in the most unlikely of places: right in the middle of the snake den.
Hailey Dashford Reid was the thorn in our side, the problem child who refused to play along as we—The Horus Group, Washington’s highest paid fixers—tried to rehabilitate her parents’ reputation. Cole fell head-over-heels for her, and now Hailey is also Mrs. Parker.
She remains a bit of a thorn in my side to this day, but it turns out she was right to refuse, and us cutting ties with a certain set meant we weren’t overly exposed when Amelia—her snake of a mother—was toppled.
Few people know that’s what happened, but then few people know anything about the truth of Amelia Dashford Reid’s life, her bizarre family relationships, her attachment to Gerome Lively, and the strings she was pulling in the most exclusive halls of power.
I don’t even know if I have the complete picture myself.
What I do know is that change is upon us. Seismic shifts on a geo-political level, and when the rumbling finally stops, everything will be radically different.
I intend to be standing on the rubble when it’s over. Everything that happened in the past is done, over. All that matters is what comes next, and who benefits from it.
But first, I have a dinner party to infiltrate. The French Ambassador is in my sights. Or rather, to start, his pretty young wife.
“Jason was a Navy SEAL, you know.” The hostess drops her hand to my forearm and squeeze. I flex against her touch and she giggles.
If I wanted to fuck her bareback tonight, I could. Jesus Christ, this was like taking candy from a baby.
And her friend, the ambassador’s wife, is no different. As soon as our hostess moves on to the next cluster of people, Camille leans in. “The special forces? The ones who catch all the bad guys?” Her smile widens. “We have such men in France as well, but we don’t make movies about them.”
From behind me, I hear a small snort of laughter, but when I turn my head to the side, I can’t see where it came from.
“That’s what I like the most about the French,” I murmur. “Your discretion.”
“I’m very discreet.” Her tongue slides daintily across the inner edge of the corner of her mouth. A subtle, non-verbal invitation. “You know, I have free time every so often. When my husband travels for work.”
Candy. From. A. Baby. “Any chance you might be free next weekend?”
“I’ll be all alone from Thursday evening until Monday.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” I wink at her and give her my card. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Camille.”
“And you.” She glances over her shoulder. “I should mingle, yes?”
“We both should.” I make it clear that I would rather be alone with her, but social duty calls.
As I move around the pool, I wonder who overheard that conversation. It doesn’t matter, really. If someone interferes, more the better. I have no intention of actually having an affair with Camille. She’s not my type. Too young, too absolutely unaware of op-sec.
My goal here tonight was threefold.
First, for my own reasons, I wanted confirmation that her husband would be out of Washington for those precise dates.
Pulling my out my phone, I text Wilson the update.
Jason: The Ambassador will be at the summit.
Wilson: Acknowledged.
Second, I wanted to create the impression for all curious observers that I am actively looking to get cozy with his wife. Misdirection achieved.
My third goal was the first thing I did when I arrived—I dropped two micro drones along the back wall of the property while being given the grand tour.
I quickly check the tracker app on my phone, to see that they haven’t been detected. The GPS trackers show them exactly where I left them.
Excellent.
As I put my phone away, I catch sight of a heart-shaped face from my past. Bee-stung lips, dark eyes with thick, sooty lashes. Black hair—that’s new—but there’s no mistaking who it is.
Ellie. She’s dressed as waitstaff, in black pants and a white shirt, wearing an apron, and in the split second it takes for me to register the familiarity, she pivots and disappears inside. I dart around the pool, following the woman who ghosted me five years ago.
The woman who was once my receptionist, and then disappeared without a trace.
Heart pounding, I stop inside the main hall of the Rock Creek mansion and listen for the direction of the catering noise. Clatters lead me almost to the kitchen, but I duck into a dark powder room as I catch sight of her in the doorway.
“I’m really sorry to do this.” Her voice drifts towards me. “Are you sure it’s okay if I go?”
“Yeah, we’re good. Thanks for your help tonight. You actually make a pretty good waiter, you know that?”
She laughs, but there’s a tightness to her voice. Does she know I’m this close?
The next beat of the conversation is obscured by another clatter, then there’s silence. I chance sticking my head back into the hallway, just enough to catch sight of the kitchen, but it’s empty.
She’s gone.
I sprint to the front door, not caring if I’m seen. She’s already made me, disappeared into thin air. Again.
The gate on the far side of the circular drive is closed, but of course she didn’t valet park her car.
She was here posing as the help. The little con artist.
“A waitress dropped this on her way out,” I say to the valet approaching. Despite the growing furor inside me, my voice sounds calm. I show him my phone. “Did you see her?”