Private Eye

by Katrina Jackson

  Private Eye

  The Spies Who Loved Her

  Katrina Jackson

  Trigger Warnings

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  debrief #1

  four

  five

  debrief #2

  six

  seven

  a brief debrief

  eight

  back at command

  nine

  ten

  mission prep #1

  eleven

  twelve

  mission prep #2

  thirteen

  reconnaissance

  fourteen

  mission brief

  fifteen

  sixteen

  Lamont

  seventeen

  the honeypot

  eighteen

  scatter

  nineteen

  epilogue

  Trigger Warnings

  Hi everyone! As usual for this series, I’m putting trigger warnings here. There are three types of warnings for this book. There are graphic depictions of violence (shooting death) in the prologue and chapters seventeen and eighteen. There are graphic depictions of bodily harm in chapters: reconnaissance, seventeen and eighteen. And there is a racial epithet in chapter eleven.

  As usual, if you would prefer not to read this, I understand! If any of this would trigger you, please don’t read this book!

  If you’re looking for something less violent by me I highly recommend actually everything else I’ve written. If you read on, I hope you enjoy the book. If not, happy reading, elsewhere! : ) -k

  prologue

  Kenny hadn’t gone to college with many plans besides graduate and enlist. So when he’d scored in the top percentile on The Agency’s recruitment aptitude test – disguised as a psychology final – it hadn’t been hard to sway him away from the Army; he was still serving his country. Even if no one could know about it. Besides, The Agency wiped away all of his student loan debt once he made it through the probationary period. And as it happened, being a spy came naturally to the man who’d always been “the new kid.” Some of his missions even felt like a cake walk compared to being the Asian kid enrolling in public high school in Columbia, South Carolina halfway through his junior year. If he could survive that, he could survive anything, he often thought to himself.

  A bullet whizzed past his head.

  Okay, “almost anything,” he whispered to himself as he ducked behind the abandoned building and moved further into the alley where he was currently held up with a team of Russian soldiers advancing on his position. The best aspect of his current location was unequivocally that his back was secure; the worst was that the large cinderblock wall behind him meant that he was effectively trapped.

  “ETA?” he said into his comm unit.

  Lane’s voice was loud, too loud, in his ear, “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.”

  Kenny rolled his eyes.

  “Bad news, we’re outnumbered,” Lane started.

  Kenny sighed and did another cursory check around the alley, looking for anything that might help him get out of this predicament. “I already know that. What’s the good news?” He hissed.

  Kenny heard the answer in his comm but also from up above. “The good news is that I brought some explosives just in case.”

  He looked up and frowned, “How the fuck did you get up there?”

  Lane released the fire escape down to Kenny and beckoned him up. Only when they were both inside the abandoned building did Lane answer him.

  “So, funny story,” Lane said.

  Kenny rolled his eyes again. “Get to the point.”

  Lane clapped him on the shoulder and laughed, “These guys are idiots.”

  They moved to either side of a window at the front of the large empty warehouse he’d crawled into, looking down onto the street in front of the alley he’d just escaped. Kenny saw the ops team down below. They were dressed in all black tactical gear. It should have been difficult to see them except the geniuses hadn’t been smart enough to shoot out the street light. Their guns were held at the ready as their leader motioned for them to advance just a bit further. There was also a large black van blocking the entrance to the alley.

  They could have taken him down easily. But they were advancing, holding their fire, maybe even stalling for time. For what, he didn’t know. And he didn’t want to find out. Kenny realized how dangerous his situation had been, but he suppressed the panic he briefly felt, because he wasn’t safe yet. His hand twitched and he almost reached for his phone.

  Lane snapped his fingers and Kenny turned toward him. He signaled that they should head out. It was surreal on the street, eerie, too quiet. They looked left and right and waited quietly just in case, but the street really was deserted. Lane smiled at him and pulled a small pack explosive from his vest.

  Kenny shook his head but Lane smiled wider. The other man was notorious for making a big mess when a small efficient advance would do. But as he launched out onto the street towards the mouth of the alley, Kenny had no choice but to follow. Technically, Lane was the senior agent and Kenny respected the pecking order, especially in the field.

  They slowly made their way to the black van, their guns ready should anyone burst from it, but when they made it to the driver’s side door, they were both shocked.

  Lane turned to him, furious. “They didn’t leave anyone in the damn truck,” he whispered in outrage. “Fucking amateurs.”

  Kenny shook his head and kept his lips shut; he knew how much Lane hated dumb criminals. They didn’t have time for one of his rants. Kenny covered Lane’s back as he kneeled down to attach the explosive underneath the van. When it was armed, Lane gestured to Kenny to move across the street. They crouched into one of the many abandoned store fronts with a clear view of the alley’s mouth.

  “Can you fucking believe that?” Lane asked, a bit louder now.

  Kenny shrugged noncommittally, trying to avoid being dragged into this discussion again.

  “That is military protocol 101. In hostile areas and especially when you’re engaging the enemy, you don’t leave your vehicle unattended. How hard is that to understand?”

  “Maybe they’re not actually military,” Kenny offered, a spark of a thought coming to him but disappearing.

  Lane turned toward him and threw both hands out in exasperation. “It’s also common sense,” Lane yelled.

  Kenny barely noticed the quick movement of Lane’s thumb as he depressed the detonator. There was a three second delay before the van was catapulted into the air and fell back to the ground, landing on its side. Kenny flinched, but Lane barely moved except to shake his head. “Amateurs.”

  The blast caused a commotion in the alley; they could hear, but not see. The team was yelling and shooting at nothing or each other, trapped by the shell of the van, which was on fire and certain to blow at some point. Kenny frowned, maybe Lane was right; they didn’t seem like the kind of Russian tactical team he might have expected.

  Just then a member of the ops team squeezed out of the alley, followed by two others. One by one, they pulled the masks from their faces. In the pre-dawn darkness, lit only by a flickering streetlamp, Kenny recognized three of the corrupt Russian soldiers he’d been tracking.

  This was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission for someone else’s job; a quick in and out. But last night he’d run into Lane at an underground casino for the world’s wealthy and corrupt. That was the first sign that something was wrong. While The Agency was notoriously, and understandably, cagey about all of the operations they were running, the one thing they were good at was providing their agents with a heads up if there was a possibility they might run into a
fellow agent in the field on a parallel job. Agency protocol required agents be briefed about potential friendly encounters for their safety. It would be devastating for morale if an agent killed another. So when Kenny saw Lane at a blackjack table as he’d strolled toward the private poker rooms, his hackles rose. He only played one hand before begging off from his asset, claiming an urgent business meeting and rushed back to his hotel.

  He’d had a strange feeling as if someone had been in his hotel room so he made a hasty exit out of the service entrance at the back of the kitchens. He’d slipped past a convoy of Russian military vehicles just before they closed off a two-block radius around his hotel. When he called into his remote handler, she’d immediately redirected him to Lane. They couldn’t be sure if their covers were blown, but it was always best to assume they were vulnerable. They shut their ops down and were preparing to leave the country immediately when Kenny realized he was being followed. He’d tried to lose his tail and ended up trapped in an alleyway with one gun, one clip, and a wall too high to climb at his back. His cover had definitely been blown.

  He raised his arms, took aim and put a bullet dead center in the forehead of one of the soldiers he’d been tracking. Within a few minutes, he and Lane had taken out all survivors and were searching their bodies for anything of use.

  “Got something,” Lane said. He handed a cell phone to Kenny. It had been damaged and wouldn’t turn on. But it was the only thing of use they’d found, so Kenny pocketed it.

  “What now?” Lane asked as he stood.

  Kenny raised an eyebrow. “You tell me. My mission is a bust,” he said, looking at of the dead bodies around them.

  Lane grunted and scratched at his salt and pepper five o’clock shadow. “There’s no one here that I’ve been tracking, but that doesn’t mean anything. These Russian fucks are so corrupt it’s hard to know what they’re up to and who knows what.”

  “So we should leave.”

  Lane nodded. “It’s the smart thing to do.” Then he turned to Kenny and smiled, “Kierra doesn’t like it when I take too many risks. And Monica doesn’t like it when I make Kierra sad.” He winked at Kenny.

  Kenny was a good enough spy that he knew his face hadn’t betrayed his reaction. But the unexpected mention of Kierra caught him off guard and his mind immediately wandered to Maya. He felt his entire body clench with the urge to dig his own cell phone from his pocket.

  “So let’s scatter. Check in when you get wherever you’re going,” Lane said.

  Kenny nodded automatically.

  They walked away from the alleyway casually, but kept their firearms at their sides until all that remained of the explosion was the smell of charred metal. They were just on the outer edges of the business district. The sun had lightened the sky and the city was slowly coming to life around them. They separated without a word. Kenny headed east to the train station. He had a change of clothes, new identification, cash and other necessities in a locker there. He’d also memorized the schedule. If he hurried, he could be on a high-speed train out of the country within the hour. He didn’t know where Lane was headed and he didn’t want to know; just in case.

  He felt as if he held his breath on the walk to the train station. He kept his head down and sidestepped the early morning crowd of delivery trucks and shop owners. He didn’t let himself relax when he made it to the station or retrieved his stash from an old bank of lockers. He made a detour to the bathroom where he changed into fresh clothes that didn’t smell like sweat, fire and gun powder. He also pulled the SIM card from his phone and washed it down the sink as he rinsed his hands. But he still didn’t let his muscles loosen as he slipped into a seat in the quiet car or even when the train started moving.

  He was at least half an hour outside of the city before he finally started to breathe normally again. Only then did he allow himself to pull his cell phone from his pocket. He looked around and made sure that no one was looking as he extracted his personal SIM card from a secret compartment in his boot. He slipped it into his cell phone and waited while his information downloaded.

  There were lots of things he could do to reestablish his link with the real world. He could text his parents or even call them. He could text Chanté. Hell, he could check his personal email for the first time in… months. But Kenny didn’t do any of those things. Instead he tapped on the ChatBot app and swallowed an excited cry when he saw that bright green button at the top of Maya’s avatar. He lifted his head and looked around the car, once again making sure that he had not garnered any attention, biting his lips to stop the smile that wanted to spread across his mouth. The entire car seemed to be asleep thankfully. When he was satisfied that he was as anonymous as he could be, he tapped her avatar and requested a chat session. He fished a pair of headphones from his bag and plugged them into his phone. He waited patiently for her to accept his request. He agreed to her price. He finally let himself truly exhale when her face popped up on his phone screen.

  She was lying on her stomach, smiling at her webcam. “Hi stranger,” she said.

  MasquerAsiaN

  Did you miss me?

  She nodded before she spoke. “So much.”

  This was a terrible idea. It was too public. He had no cover. But he could already feel himself hardening in his pants.

  MasquerAsiaN

  Show me how much.

  She didn’t bother to ask for clarification; they both knew what he liked. She rose onto her knees exposing her soft, rounded stomach to him, her thighs jiggling gently as she spread her legs and sat back on her heels.

  He looked around one more time and grasped his dick through his jeans. He couldn’t do more than that and that was fine. Everything was fine as far as he was concerned. He hadn’t been executed by the Russian military in an alley, he was on a train west, he had a cell phone that might give him some useful information about his failed op. And most importantly, Maya was slipping her hand over her belly and into her underwear.

  Just for him.

  ***

  Maya used to dream about her future while trying to survive graduate school. She imagined herself just a few years after graduation as a rising junior associate with the best office on one of the middle floors of a fancy high rise, a solid stable of reliable clients, the support of at least one equity partner and, most importantly, a savings account with actual money in it. She’d seen her MBA as a stepping stone toward the kind of life that would make her family proud and allow her to give back even a fraction of all that her mother had given her.

  But those dreams had been pure fantasy. The idea of life in the corporate world was always better than the reality; Maya had known that instinctively. Her deep unhappiness with her graduate program, her advisor and future job prospects made every day feel as if she were heading toward her own personal hell instead of the realization of her dreams. Maya hated the world of financial futures, trading was too cutthroat, and investment banking would only be a legitimate possibility if she could set up shop outside of the US, a possibility snuffed out almost as soon as the idea bloomed in her head; she couldn’t bear to be so far away from her family.

  But all of that anxiety about her future had turned out to be for nothing. During her final year of business school, Maya got a frantic phone call from her sister; their mother had died of a stroke. The eight-hour flight home gave her a chance to consider the state of her life as she tried desperately not to feel any of her grief. In the kind of cold assessment of one’s life that always seemed to come too late, Maya found that she’d been wasting her time – and accruing an insane amount of debt – for a degree she wasn’t sure she wanted. And life’s responsibilities would no longer wait. Her mother hadn’t been current on her life insurance payments. Her twin brother and sister were in their final year of high school. Her graduate cohort was full of absolute douchebags. And all of the pressure of dealing with the minute details of burying her mother and keeping her siblings together had suddenly fallen on her.

  She a
rranged to take her final courses online and graduate a semester early because her mother hated unfinished tasks. While all of her classmates were starting underpaid internships, Maya found a 9-to-5 as a receptionist at an investment firm where she made just enough to keep a roof over her siblings’ heads and make sure they graduated on time; trying and failing to fill her mother’s shoes. It wasn’t the life she’d been dreaming of, but if given the choice again, Maya would choose Jerome and Kaya in a heartbeat.

  The unexpected year-long detour ended when Maya moved her siblings into their separate Midwestern college dorms and then moved herself back to New Jersey, since home technically wasn’t home anymore. Her stomach had been tied in knots as she prepared to grovel for a letter of recommendation from her former advisor so she could get her life back on track. But one conversation with Dr. Browne had confirmed that the life Maya had been living was no longer an option.

  But Maya was an optimist. She decided to be pleased that Dr. Browne had remained consistently useless when he informed her that he wasn’t willing to write her any letters of recommendation because he was “no longer assured of her capabilities.” She also took some comfort – as she’d walked out of his office and off campus for hopefully the last time ever – that he had apparently once believed her capable. Her advisor’s refusal to be a decent human being had been the final kick in the ass she needed to give up on the corporate world and chart her own path from the relative place of comfort that was Kierra’s second bedroom. It was like their sophomore year of college all over again, except Maya couldn’t afford rent for a couple of months and they had a kitchen – that neither of them used, because they couldn’t cook.

  And regardless of what her former advisor had to say about her work ethic, she’d immediately started applying for every position she was even kind of qualified for. She was broke, teetering on the edge of homelessness, overqualified and struggling to explain a year and a half detour on her resume without using her mother’s death as a gotcha in interviews. She’d been very cautiously rationing the last $200 in her bank account when a flyer at the local community center caught her eye. A local religious group had organized a discussion on the ills of pornography and prostitution, especially the rising numbers of cam models. The talk was – not cleverly – entitled “Downloading Sin.” Maya wasn’t sheltered by any means, but she’d had to look up exactly what a cam model was and what they did. She threw the flyer away, used most of what little money she had left to buy a cheap webcam and hadn’t looked back since. She knew immediately that she’d found her calling.