“I gotta tell you—it looks bad, Trace.” General Haym Solomon clicked a pen and set it on the desk in front of him. The pen doubled as a jamming device to block the inevitable listening devices that picked up chatter. They’d have a few minutes before it clicked off and their conversation would resume being recorded.
“When doesn’t it look bad?” Trace lowered himself into the seat across the desk from General Solomon. There were few days Trace felt more choked and awkward than in his uniform, but today—coming here, addressing the topic at hand—he was sure the collar had taken the form of a noose. “And just when progress is on the other side of the door.”
Solomon’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose, creasing his forehead. “The Lorings?”
Trace nodded. “We have them. And while they don’t have a full roadmap, they’ve given us a pretty decent tip.”
Solomon’s bushy eyebrows rose again, this time in impatient expectation.
“The wife says Ballenger is the one who sent the orphans and staff to the warehouse that night.”
“Ballenger?” Haym pushed back in his chair and rubbed his lower lip. “How would he know anything? He was supposed to be a cradle-robbing loser.”
“The cradle was robbed,” Trace said with no hint of the humor his words begged. “But I think we need to talk to Ballenger again.”
“Agreed,” Haym said.
“I’ve got Houston hunting him down. After what happened in Paris, it might be tricky getting him to talk to us again.”
“Speaking of Paris—what about Two?”
Trace gave a hefty sigh. He knew this would come up. “We’ve had a complication there, too.”
“You do know you’re supposed to avoid complications, right?” The wry smile on Haym’s face did nothing to appease the guilt and frustration Trace felt.
“When she was in Athens, she got ganged up on in the slums. Someone burned The Turk’s mark into her hand. Then she shot him in an alley—”
“Shot The Turk?”
Trace stilled, measuring the general’s response to that statement, then gave a slow nod. “She didn’t realize who he was when she pulled the trigger. She’d been trying to protect a boy she believed had information on the Lorings’ location.”
“Is he dead?”
Trace snorted. “You forgot the part where things are complicated.”
“So, he’s alive. And he knows she shot him?”
“And that she sewed him up and put him back on his feet.”
Haym’s expression went from wide-eyed disbelief to scowling fury. “You realize—”
“Fully. She and I will be having a long talk. The only good thing that came out of her foolishness was that The Turk sent the Lorings to her.”
Haym muttered something, shaking his head. “We do not need to owe that cold-blooded assassin anything.”
“Agreed. I’m hoping that Téya’s moment of weakness in having compassion on that murderer will even the score, that The Turk will call it even and walk away.”
With a loud, long guffaw, Haym held a hand over his chest. “You aren’t that naive, Trace.”
“No, sir, but I’m feeling that desperate.”
Thumbing away moisture from the corner of his eye, Haym shook his head. “All right. Back to the hearing.”
Trace nodded. There wasn’t much else to say or do. He was at the mercy of those who held more power than they should and made more money in one month wearing silk suits and ties than he made in a year running operations in the desert. When those suits got raises, he and his men went without a warm breakfast.
“I’m going to tell you something you won’t like.”
Again, Trace nodded. Waited.
Solomon’s gaze moved to the wall of bookcases where a framed print—Is that new? Trace hadn’t seen that before—smiled back. Make that, two dark-haired beauties smiled back. One, clearly older, the other—Francesca Solomon? Trace frowned. She had her hair down and makeup expertly applied. They both did. But Trace’s mind snagged on the younger woman. Francesca. She could easily be a model or actress. But. . .where was that Francesca Solomon, the softer one, the one with a warm smile and rare beauty? He’d only met the hard-as-nails one, the one who wore her hair tied back and skipped the makeup. The one who had steel in place of the Italian femininity evident in the picture.
“Hard to believe she’s mine sometimes—like that picture. Taken at my niece’s wedding. Frankie and her mother looked like angels. I was the luckiest man on earth that day.” He sighed.
Trace shifted uncomfortably. The general’s daughter might be able to dress up and play pretty, but she couldn’t fool him into believing she was anything other than a demon in disguise.
All that aside, what was the general’s point?
“I think Frankie’s behind this.”
“Sir?”
Haym slid something across the desk.
Trace lifted it and opened the file. A dialogue transcript. He scanned it and asked, “What is it?”
“Surveillance transcript of a meeting between Francesca and a man named Elijah Varden.” Trace heard the sneer in the general’s voice as he scanned the document. “He’s a major, serving under—”
“Marlowe.” Trace’s gaze stuck to the name at the bottom.
“Afraid so.”
Slapping the folder shut and tossing it on the desk did nothing to appease the burn in Trace’s chest. “It’d be too much to ask them to stand down and let me get this solved, wouldn’t it?”
“They’d blow you off, say you’ve had the last five years.”
“What about when they learn of the deaths?”
“You mean the Three, Four, and Five?”
Who else would he mean? “Five’s not dead.”
“Honestly,” Haym said, “I don’t think it will matter to them. In fact, they may try to blame you for their deaths.”
Figured as much.
“And Frankie knows you’ve been to Vegas, not to mention Marlowe and Perrault both know you were in Alaska for the TALOS demonstration.”
“Which is when I found out about the hits.” And rushed to save them. “You know, I’m tired of this fight. Maybe it’s better if I step aside and they put a full task force on this.”
“Trace,” Haym said, his words filled with sympathy as well as chastisement. “You know they’re just looking for a fall guy. Pin the blame on you and they can wash their hands, tell the public Misrata finally has justice.”
Click!
“Justice,” Trace spat, his gaze flicking to the pen and realizing the conversation was now recording. “They wouldn’t know the meaning.”
“Easy. I know you’re mad—”
“You really don’t have the first clue what I’m feeling. No disrespect, sir, but someone up that chain of command gave you the order to have me select, train, and deploy Zulu. Now, my mission entails protection against the very people who gave those orders, to find out who sabotaged us, who wanted those girls dead or arrested. It didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t now. And I’m certainly not giving up, not when this person has now stepped into the arena of premeditated murder.”
“You’ve been ordered to stand down. Your clearances are being revoked, pending this investigation.” General Solomon reached to the side and lifted a small paperweight and set it in front of him.
Trace recognized the resin piece with the inlaid gold-embossed gryphon. They both had one, a symbol of the ultrasecretive team they’d put together: Zulu. And with that gesture the general had just given, Trace mulled the last few words. Was that the general’s way of saying one thing but feeling another?
Defiance and rebellion had never been his SOP but they were imperative now, and that’s exactly what the general inferred in his double speak. “So I hear.”
“You understand, Trace, that I can’t help you. If I—”
“Understood, sir.”
“Being vague with the committee will only cost you time.”
“Yes, sir.”
General Solomon huffed. “You’ve gone stiff on me, son.”
“Protocol, sir.” Tensing his jaw helped him sound angry and agitated, the way he believed the general wanted. “I’m here at your request regarding an investigation. You’ve informed me I’m stripped of my duties and security pending the outcome. What is there to talk about, sir?” Tension coiled in his gut, ready to erupt.
“I’m not your enemy, Trace. I’m just—”
“Doing your job, sir.” Trace stood. “You’ve made yourself clear, sir. Thank you for taking the time to refresh my memory.”
Solomon tapped the gryphon paperweight twice.
Trace nodded. He understood. All too well. The general was in a position to lose a lot if things went south, but he also wasn’t a coward who’d hide under his desk until the storm blew over. That double tap on the gryphon was all the encouragement Trace needed to keep moving forward with their investigation.