EDGE OF SHADOWS: The Shadow Ops Finale (Shadow Ops, Book # 3)

by CJ Lyons

  Chapter 1

  Two Years Later

  National Mall, Washington DC

  Rose Prospero paced up and down the steps leading to the Hirshhorn sculpture garden. Snow from last week’s storm still covered the Mall's open space stretching between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, although most of it had melted in the fifty-degree temperatures DC had enjoyed since then. She turned and scanned the area above the sculpture garden from the carousel to the food kiosk beside it and back. Rose hated being boxed into a corner. Hated even more risking anyone from her team because of said corner.

  But right now, time was too short to play it safe.

  “You’re good. I can’t see you,” she said into her throat mic. Rose had chosen the sculpture garden for her meet because it was private and with its lower elevation a single operative could easily cover all the approaches from above. With her team stood down, all official activity suspended, she was as short on people as she was on time.

  “Excellent,” KC replied from her sniper’s perch on top of the food kiosk. “Although I still don’t understand why you and Lucky picked seven in the freaking morning to meet out here in the dark. Why couldn’t you guys just have coffee and sticky buns at Angelina’s like normal folks?”

  Rose smiled at the former FBI agent’s griping. No one on her team was “normal folk.” And with Lucky entering WitSec, meeting in the pre-dawn January darkness out on the cold, deserted Mall was the safest place.

  What KC didn’t know—not because Rose didn’t trust her, but because KC had been called in at the last minute after Billy was summoned to another damn special hearing on the Hill, fighting to get the Team cleared back to active status—was that Rose’s meeting with Lucky Cavanaugh was a trap. With Lucky playing the role of bait.

  “Here comes the groom,” KC said in a singsong parody of the wedding march. “At your ten o’clock. Right on time.”

  That was Lucky. Loyal and steadfast to a fault. Rose almost hadn’t asked him to help her—he’d already sacrificed so much in their fight against the Preacher’s homegrown terrorist network—but he was the only bargaining chip she had that a traitor on her team might take a chance on.

  If there was a traitor on her team. If not, then she and Lucky could have a nice, long good-bye chat before the US Marshals whisked him and his new bride away.

  She’d never prayed so hard that she was wrong. But the churning in her gut told her she was right.

  “Anyone else around?” she asked KC as Lucky’s form strode down the steps opposite her, entering the sunken sculpture garden. KC’s higher elevation gave her an excellent field of vision, allowing her to cover all approaches.

  “No pedestrians at this end of the Mall,” KC reported. “A lone jogger down at the far end of the reflecting pool and a few vehicles on Jefferson.”

  “If you see anyone, even one of our people, let me know immediately.”

  There was the slightest hesitation before KC answered. “Will do.”

  The FBI agent was no dummy. She knew the Team was stood down, removed from active ops until cleared by the Congressional Oversight Committee. But she was a professional, tabling her questions until after the job was done—one of the reasons why Rose had chosen her.

  Rose knew KC’s curiosity about what this meet was really about would need to be satisfied, but right now, she had to focus on getting Lucky out of here alive.

  She met him halfway in front of the sculptures she thought of as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, although there were three of the roly-poly figures, and handed him an earpiece and microphone.

  “Thanks for coming,” she told him, giving him a quick hug to hide his movements as he inserted the comm devices. “I wish there was another way to do this.”

  He glanced around the deserted sculpture garden nervously. While undercover with the Preacher’s organization, he’d had to live with a target on his back for months. Now Rose was putting him right back in the crosshairs. “Me, too. Who’s on with us?”

  “Just little ol’ me,” KC chimed in over the earpiece. “How’s Vinnie?”

  Vinnie Ryan was the civilian who had helped Lucky and Rose take down the Preacher last week. “Good, despite all this. Sorry you couldn’t make it to the wedding. We kinda had to rush things with WitSec and all.”

  “Jared and his guys treating you all right?”

  “Yeah. Except I’m gonna owe him my pension. He keeps beating me at poker.”

  KC’s laughter rang through Rose’s earpiece. “He grew up in Las Vegas. Worked as an Elvis impersonator to put himself through school.”

  “Great. Now you tell me.” Although he was talking to KC, Lucky kept his gaze on Rose. To anyone watching, it would appear as if they were having a serious conversation. “Chase okay?”

  KC’s better half, Chase Westin, had been seriously injured last week in a helicopter crash, breaking his ankle in several places and requiring surgery. “Busting free of the hospital today unless he does something to piss off the nurses. I have to pick him up this afternoon.”

  “Does he know—” Lucky stopped, gathering his thoughts. “I mean, I don’t want him thinking I’m running out on him, on any of you—”

  Rose put a hand on Lucky’s arm and answered for all of them. “You need to take care of Vinnie now. No one thinks you’re shirking your duty. Not after what you two have been through.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Good. Thanks.” They walked toward the steps leading to the carousel up on the Mall. “So, you really think someone on the Team is working with the Preacher’s group? That they’d risk their cover to come after me?”

  Rose heard KC suck in her breath. Guess the cat was out of the bag. “Yeah, I do.”

  Instead of arguing with her, he sighed. “It would explain a lot. But I hate to even think—”

  “I got movement,” KC interrupted. “School bus pulling up to the curb in front of the carousel.”

  “At this hour?” Rose said. “None of the museums are open until ten. Can you see inside?”

  “Hang on. Yeah. I count eleven kids, look to be around nine or ten years old. And four clowns or something.”

  “Clowns?”

  “Bunch of balloons, and they’re wearing big-headed anime masks.”

  “Funny time for a private party.”

  “I don’t like this. They’re just sitting there. No one’s getting out.”

  Rose’s cell vibrated in her pocket. She raised it, not taking her eyes off the perimeter. “KC, I just got a text.”

  “Me, too,” KC said grimly.

  “What?” Lucky asked, craning his neck to look over Rose’s shoulder.

  She hesitated and then turned the phone so he could see. Displayed on the screen was a photo of the kids on the bus, in the foreground a stack of C4 explosives. The words accompanying it read, Give us Lucky or they all die.

  Chapter 2

  Congressional Special Intelligence Oversight Committee Hearing

  “Let me get this straight, Mr. Price.” The senator from Michigan was in his sixties with white hair and a paunch that would make him a natural to play Santa Claus.

  The disdain undercutting the esteemed senator’s condescending tone revealed his true opinion of Billy and the Special Threats Response Team. Not to mention the Team’s leader, Rose Prospero, the woman Billy was here to defend. At any cost.

  “You expect us to believe,” the senator continued, dripping acid with every syllable, “that Rose Prospero planned to allow a deadly terrorist to escape from custody and threaten millions of lives?”

  Of course Rose hadn’t planned to allow the Preacher to escape from custody last week. Rose rarely planned anything. No, Rose was all intuition, somehow piecing random, seemingly unrelated bits of information into patterns that defied logic but revealed the truth.

  Billy was the logistics man, the planner, the doer, a straight-line kind of guy. His mind might move faster than most other men’s, but it proceeded in a logical fashion.

  Unfortunately,
last week when Rose allowed the Preacher’s escape in order to save his civilian hostage, she’d committed treason along with a host of other offenses under the Patriot Act. Technically.

  And technically, as Rose’s second-in-command of the Special Threats Response Team, it was Billy’s duty to see her prosecuted for those offenses. But the truth was, following her heart worked for Rose. For all of them.

  Without Rose, thousands—including the good senator and his comrades—would have died in a nasty explosion. She’d stopped the Preacher and helped Lucky Cavanaugh diffuse the bomb.

  Not only was it in the Team’s best interest to see Rose avoid prosecution, it was in the country’s. This was a no-brainer. Team, country, God.

  The Congressional Special Intelligence Oversight Committee didn’t even make the list.

  “Ms. Prospero’s results speak for themselves,” Billy answered. “Her decision saved tens of thousands of lives last week.” He paused, pulling his thoughts together. Usually these hearings were short and sweet: Billy would tell the politicians what they wanted to hear, and they’d sign off on whatever resources the Team needed to do their job. This meeting was supposed to be a discussion of returning the Team to active duty status, not a witch hunt targeting Rose. “It’s a matter of record that the Special Threats Response Team has performed in an exemplary fashion, infiltrating and stopping dozens of terrorist cells. Including those led by the Preacher.”

  He caught the gaze of Senator Susan Payne, the STR’s liaison on the oversight committee. Usually their staunchest ally, this morning she didn’t even flash him a smile. Instead, she focused on the reports in front of her.

  The windbag from Michigan continued, “Your contention is that Ms. Prospero planned for two tankers containing deadly chlorine gas to come within seconds of detonation, right here in the center of the nation’s capital? What contingency plans did she have in place? Why did it take the DC Metro Bomb Squad almost twenty minutes to arrive? Shouldn’t they have been alerted beforehand?”

  Billy tried to move the focus away from Rose and onto the bigger picture. “If we’d known about the bombs, of course we would have called ATF and the Metro guys. The point is that no one knew what the Preacher had planned. We had to make a tough call—but that’s why you created this team in the first place. To go where other agencies can’t, to respond faster than they can to threats against our nation’s security.”

  What really bothered the senator—everyone on Capitol Hill, in fact—had nothing to do with how Rose and Lucky had saved them along with thousands of other lives.

  All the politicos cared about was their wounded pride. They should have been notified. They should have been evacuated long before any danger became imminent. They should have had a say in their fate, not “some maverick former CIA officer and her ragtag team of cowboys.”

  The last had been a direct quote from the president’s chief of staff when he’d called to warn the Team about the investigation and informed them that they were suspended from all operations. He’d talked like it was just a formality, but after seeing the anger the committee held toward Rose, Billy was glad they’d called him to testify first instead of her. What was needed here was a cool head and some hard-forged negotiation skills.

  “Nevertheless,” another senator jumped on board, “Prospero let a dangerous terrorist run free on a guess. A hunch. She had no evidence that he would lead her to that bomb. She risked thousands of lives and our national security on a hunch. That’s unacceptable. There’s a reason why we have protocols and safeguards, checks and balances in place. No one person, not even the president, should be making those kinds of decisions alone.”

  Silence. The other committee members nodded in agreement at their colleague’s words. Billy spread his hands wide in surrender. “I would be the last to defend any soldier disobeying a direct order or violating the chain of command. But this is not traditional warfare. Our enemies don’t play by the rules—don’t play by any rules.” Billy paused, waiting until he had all their attention focused on his next words. “However, I agree with Ms. Prospero’s actions last week and believe that to the best of her ability, given the time constraints and level of threat, she followed the operational protocols our team functions under.”

  “Remember, sir, you are under oath,” the senator persisted. “Your testimony is that, to the best of your knowledge, Rose Prospero followed all safety and security protocols and procedures during the operations that took place six days ago. Without ever violating a single federal law?”

  Billy didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir. Ms. Prospero did not violate a single federal law and worked within the operational parameters established by this committee when the Special Threats Response Team was created.”

  And there it was. Not merely stepping, but leaping over the line. Perjury was the least of it. Although, strictly speaking, maybe it wasn’t perjury. After all, Rose had violated many federal laws that night last week, not just a single one. Fine hairs for lawyers to debate. Billy knew the truth of what he was doing here today. And the price to pay if his lies were discovered.

  “Of course,” Billy continued, ignoring the senator who had opened his mouth to fire off another accusation. “The real heroes are right here on this committee. You all have the hardest job of all, watching and waiting, pretending nothing’s happening because you know you can’t tip our hand to the terrorists. I commend you, Senator. All of you. To have the strength and fortitude to carry on and give us the freedom we need to do our jobs. On behalf of my team, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all.”

  Billy poured every ounce of sincerity into his little speech, gauging its reception by the expressions of the committee members’ faces. Only Susan Payne looked at him with a smile, enjoying watching Billy dance his way out of the tight spot her fellow senators had placed him in.

  There really was no response that wouldn’t cause the Michigan senator to lose face. He stammered, flushed for a moment, then nodded cordially. But Billy could read the anger in the man’s eyes for having been maneuvered neatly into a corner, even as the others on the committee nodded as well, not even hesitating to take credit for the greatest intelligence coup of the decade.

  A coup that would have never happened without Rose Prospero. Billy and the rest of the Team were good, but it was Rose who had seen through the Preacher’s plans and improvised a way to stop him.

  It was also Rose who figured out that a traitor lurked in their midst, working for the Preacher. Someone high up who could reach into the most secure intelligence and law enforcement databases, and unmask their undercover agents. Maybe even someone in this very room, right now.

  A traitor who still had a deadly plan in play. Which was why Billy needed to get the hell out of here and back to work where he belonged. He wanted to check his phone, see if there were any messages from Rose or KC, but phones weren’t allowed in the committee’s secure meeting room.

  Best he could do was deal with the threat to Rose and the Team coming from within their own government. This committee had unleashed the Department of Justice’s National Security Division to investigate STR while the Team was on suspension. Talk about insults. The NSD was the intelligence community’s equivalent of the IRS. Legal pit bulls who only cared about rules and regs, not results, the NSD had the power to disband the Team and charge Rose with treason.

  As a former Delta op and decorated veteran, Billy understood the need to follow orders, but condemning Rose Prospero to life in prison for saving the Capitol, that was just not going to happen. Not on his watch.

  “Right now,” Billy continued, “our team is poring over the evidence we’ve gathered, trying to determine what threats the Preacher’s organization still holds for us. We don’t want anything like this to ever happen again. To be brutally honest, it was a close call. Too close, for all of us.” He leaned forward, palms up and empty, reminding them they were all on the same team, working toward the same goal.

  “This so-called evidence
that you’ve obtained,” another senator, this one from Arkansas, chimed in, “who besides your team is evaluating its veracity?”

  Billy shifted in his seat, wondering at the sudden change in attitude. This was more than wounded pride, he realized. These guys were out for blood. But how did impugning their evidence help things?

  “Our computer expert, a former NSA officer, is analyzing a copy of the hard drive we obtained from one of the Preacher’s associates. The original drive is, of course, locked away safely in the FBI’s secure evidence vault.”

  The senator didn’t look impressed. “I’m talking about the physical evidence, Mr. Price. Specifically, the bodies.”

  Why the hell bring that up? STR had no jurisdiction over the bodies. Hell, they hadn’t even gotten copies of the autopsy reports. And since they were on suspension, they’d been unable to access any of the new evidence or follow up any investigative leads. All Billy’s team had was the hard drive—well, a copy of it. The feds would be poring over it with their tech guys as well. “Metro PD and the FBI took over the crime scene. I believe they supplied the committee copies of the post-mortem results from the autopsies of the Preacher and his three accomplices.”

  “You mean two.” The Michigan senator leaned forward as if he’d caught Billy with his hand in the cookie jar. He flipped open one of the reports littering the conference table. “We only have autopsies on two accomplices. Both killed by,” he made a show out of putting on his reading glasses, “multiple gunshot wounds from an AK-47.”

  Arkansas jumped on board. “But didn’t Rose Prospero’s report state that she stabbed the first man, slit his throat, incapacitating him, and used his weapon on the other two? What happened to that man?”

  Shit. This was what happened when the damn FBI and Metro cops took control of an investigation. They’d treated Rose as a witness, excluding her. And with the Team suspended, sequestered from the ongoing investigation, no one bothered to let Rose or Billy know that one of the Preacher’s men got away.