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

by CJ Lyons

  The suave smile came easily as did the quick kiss on the cheek. “Of course not. I’ll make it up to you. Promise.”

  She read the lie on his face, and her expression shut down. “So, why are you here, Billy?”

  “I thought we could talk.”

  “You mean you want to find out how bad it’s going for your team, and how much evidence we’ve collected against Rose.”

  “That’s a little more blunt than I would've put it.”

  “You know I support you and the Team, Billy. No matter what. But I won’t lie to you. It’s not good. That little incident on the Mall this morning didn’t help matters.”

  “So, how bad is it?” he asked, trying to get a handle on the oversight committee’s upcoming ruling.

  “Letting a known terrorist escape, almost giving him the time he needed to detonate a bomb right under this street, has a lot of people on edge.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but she raised a gloved hand to stop him.

  “The truth is, Billy. Rose didn’t warn anyone. That’s not sitting well with a lot of people.”

  “We had Lucky Cavanaugh with us. He’s ATF. The bomb was his design. He was the perfect person to disarm it.”

  “You said yourself there could be more threats against us. If Rose hadn’t let the Preacher escape in the first place, if she hadn’t killed the men with him, our people could have interrogated them. We could have discovered what else he had planned. Surely you can understand why the committee is concerned. That man came after us directly and came damn close to succeeding.”

  Billy tensed, feeling blindsided. The way Susan laid it all out it almost looked like Rose was involved, that she’d killed those men in the tunnel to make sure there was no one left to talk.

  “Any progress in finding the third man, the one who escaped?” Billy asked.

  She stopped and stared at him long and hard. They were on the opposite side of the Mall from the Hirshhorn Law enforcement officers and reporters crawled all over the area, now surrounded by crime-scene tape and work lights.

  “I want to help, Billy. I really do. But I can’t tell you anything about that.”

  “Susan, you just said my clearance is as high as yours. We can help—”

  “Like Rose helped this morning?” She nodded past him to the yellow crime-scene tape fluttering in the wind.

  “We needed to know if there was a traitor in our midst. No one could have predicted—”

  “I did,” she snapped. “I told you. Rose is out of control. She never should have set a trap in such a public place.”

  If it hadn’t been for the Preacher’s people hijacking a bus and bringing their hostages with them to the scene, the meeting would have been private—and safe from any civilians. But he wasn’t here to argue tactics with her.

  “What happened this morning was regrettable,” he conceded.

  Finally, she nodded and took his arm again. They continued down the Mall. “Sometimes where Rose is concerned, you can’t see the truth right in front of you.”

  “Which is?”

  “Homeland Security, the NSD, and FBI all want to question her about this morning, but she’s nowhere to be found—”

  “That’s why I’m here. I already spoke to the FBI and cops.” To hell with the others, they were a bunch of lawyers who had no clue about boots-on-the-ground business. “I’ll answer any questions you have.”

  She waved away his offer. “You mean you’ll lie for her. Again. Face it, Billy, Rose shouldn’t be running STR. She’s a liability, a loose cannon who's going to bring us all down.”

  “Rose is a powerful asset to the Team. She gets results. Every time. She has a way of seeing the big picture that cannot be replicated by anyone else I’ve ever worked with.”

  “Are you sure that’s not your libido talking? It’s obvious to everyone how you feel about her. Those feelings are getting in the way of your good judgment. And right now, they could cost you your team.”

  “My…respect for Rose has not interfered in my judgment in any capacity. For both of us, the Team comes first. Always.”

  “I don’t know if you’re lying to me or to yourself. All I know is that until you get past this infatuation with the woman, your career is over. And, to put it harshly, you’re not getting any younger.”

  Anger threatened to twist the genial smile from his face. He wasn’t ready to be put out to pasture, not yet, not by her, not by anyone. “Thanks, but I can do without your help.”

  She stopped short, her hand dropping away from his arm. He backtracked and faced her, regretted how harsh his words must have sounded. Susan had always supported the Team, had never questioned their actions—until now.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.” She walked away from him. He hurried after her.

  “Susan, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  She didn’t stop walking, but she also didn’t run away. Finally, she faced him. “I'll tell you what. Have dinner with me, and I’ll give you one piece of information from the investigation. Then we’ll see what more you can charm out of me while we eat.”

  He waited, staring at her, refusing to beg. Hating being manipulated. And feeling like, even though he was doing this to protect her and the Team, he was somehow betraying Rose. Finally, he nodded his assent.

  She frowned, obviously hoping for something more from him. Damn, he’d totally misread her interest in him, had thought it was all about work, nothing personal. Now he was going to have to work overtime mending those fences.

  “You’re not going to like it.” She placed her hand on his arm as if to steady him. “That detonator Rose held this morning? Preliminary results show it’s the one that blew up the school bus.”

  Billy took a step back from her, stumbling on the uneven path.

  “Best we know,” she continued, not smiling, clearly not enjoying this at all, “Rose Prospero is responsible for this morning’s explosion. The NDS thinks she might have set the whole thing up, a last gasp to save her position, prove to us how invaluable she is, to make us think twice about replacing her or disbanding the Team.”

  “Rose would never—”

  “You said yourself she’d do whatever it takes to stop the Preacher, even sacrifice her own life. Now that he’s gone, how is she going to fill that void? Prove to the world that it still needs the great and mighty Rose Prospero to save them? Time to face facts, Billy. The woman is a menace. She’s going to get you, your team, and Lord knows how many innocent civilians killed. And it’s your job and mine to stop her.”

  <><><>

  After leaving Susan, Billy drove toward the Special Threats Response Team’s offices. This place no longer felt comfortable, his home away from home. Now he viewed the offices as an outsider would, taking in details he’d always taken for granted. Someone within these walls was working against them, threatening to kill innocent children. It sickened him.

  He stopped outside the doorway of Teresa’s small office. “How are you doing?”

  She kept her domain like a small, dark cave with every available space covered with computer equipment, and monitors of different shapes and sizes. Yet, she had nothing personal in sight. Nothing that said who she was. No pictures of family members, friends, or even her cat. If she even had a cat. For the first time, it occurred to Billy how much of her personal life he was completely unaware of.

  “All right,” she said. “Quiet. Really, too quiet.”

  “After the last few days, I’d say quiet is a good thing.” Billy smiled wryly as he turned and looked down the hall. Marion Rockey was inside the computer lab, hunched over her machine, two screens filled with data. Someone else he knew little about—she was FBI, a forensic accountant, and a former world-class surfer who’d chased rogue waves around the globe. So why hadn’t she gone home to California when the Team’s operations had been suspended? Why was she hanging around here when there were no active ops?

  As if Marion felt his gaze on her, she stood and stretched, then
walked out into the hall. “How did the committee hearing go?”

  Teresa looked away—she and Marion had never gotten along—and shuffled through some files on her desk, her heavy hair falling down to shield her face.

  “That Arkansas senator would like nothing better than to shut us down. The one from Michigan thinks we should all be locked up.”

  Marion rolled her eyes. But concern stilled Teresa’s hands. She looked up at him. “Do you think you can convince them not to? Shut us down, I mean?”

  He sighed. He wanted to reassure her, but instead he just shrugged. “Only time will tell. So you took care of our visitors?”

  “They left an hour ago.” Again, she looked away.

  “Damn politicians,” Marion muttered. “Anyone want anything from the cafeteria?” Both Billy and Teresa shook their heads, and she walked away.

  Teresa waited until Marion was out of earshot. “About earlier. I’m sorry I yelled—I never should have lost my temper.”

  He had the sudden urge to pat her hand or shoulder—as if he were her father. She wasn’t that much younger than he was, even though he always thought of her as being a kid. She was probably in her mid-thirties.

  Rose would know for sure. She knew everything about everyone on the Team. He could look it up on his computer, but she’d have it all in that wonderful brain of hers: birthday, address, next of kin…probably even the name of Teresa’s cat and the reason why Marion was sticking around DC instead of out chasing some typhoon with killer waves.

  “No problem. It’s been one of those days. We all need to vent some steam now and then.”

  “I just know how much pressure you must be under, what with the oversight committee and these audits and all these agencies wanting to poke their noses in our business. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me.” She sniffed. “I don’t know what I’ll do if they decide to shut us down.”

  “Don’t think like that. You know Rose. She always has a plan.”

  Teresa nodded and gave him a small smile. “You’re right. I shouldn’t worry. Thanks, Billy.”

  “No problem. How about if you get me the sit-reps, then call it a night?”

  “Aye, aye, boss.”

  “All in a day’s work.” Except it wasn’t. Not really. Not when there was a traitor in their midst, and every one of their team members could be the next to be betrayed.

  Chapter 9

  EZ set up his equipment in the kitchen while Rose got on the phone with KC. “How’s Chase?”

  There was the sound of the beeps of a video game followed by a door being slammed shut. “About what you’d expect. Got him and Jay playing Grand Theft Auto in hopes of preventing our own little nuclear meltdown. Man won’t sit still and let his body heal.”

  “Jay can handle him?”

  “Sure. They’ll both have bruises after, but hey, brothers, you know.”

  Rose hesitated. She hated to take KC away from Chase, but she was down to a limited number of people she could trust in the field. “Think you could leave them alone for a night?”

  KC didn’t answer right away. “Only one night?”

  “Yeah. A recon mission. In and out. Unless you’ve got anything new on our masked friends this morning.”

  “Found fourteen local stores that sell or rent those masks,” KC answered, confirming Rose’s suspicions that Chase wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to take a day off. “You can also order them online. The guy Jared took down and my guy are still John Does. My FBI contacts said nothing out of the ordinary on the autopsies.”

  “Your marshal friend, Jared, he doing okay?”

  “Yeah. His first fatal shoot. Guess that will give him and Lucky something to talk about.”

  They were both silent for a long moment. “You okay?” Rose ventured. After all, Jared hadn’t been the only one to take out one of the bad guys this morning.

  “Me? I’m fine. I’m always fine. You know that. So, what’s this recon job?”

  “Possible bio lab outside Savannah, Georgia. EZ found a mention of it on the Preacher’s hard drive.”

  “We still haven’t found that missing fentanyl or those other drugs. Think they could be there?”

  “We also still don’t know what that CDC doctor was up to—could be a lab set up for her.”

  “Point being, you need eyes and ears on the ground.”

  Rose loved how KC cut to the heart of any matter. “Eyes and ears I can trust.”

  “You and me? Or me and Billy?”

  Rose imagined Billy and Susan Payne together, smiling, dancing, and sipping champagne. The senator was perfect for Billy—could offer him so much more than Rose ever could. She was surprised at how much work it was to keep her voice neutral. “Billy has his hands full keeping Senator Payne and her committee off our backs. I’ll arrange for a flight out of Andrews and meet you there in an hour to go over our intel.”

  “EZ pulling satellite photos?”

  “And any building plans he can lay hands on.”

  “You worried about flying out of Andrews? Leaves a paper trail.”

  “That’s why I want to go tonight. Nobody high enough up the chain of command will be there to see any paper until morning.”

  “In, out, home by breakfast.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Okay, I’m in. Let me tell Chase, and I’ll see you at Andrews.”

  “Thanks, KC.” Rose hung up.

  Instead of calling Billy, she sent him an email explaining everything and letting him know where EZ was. BlackBerry junkie that he was, she figured that was just as timely as calling without interrupting whatever he and Susan were doing.

  Billy and Susan Payne. Her mouth filled with a sour taste. Billy deserved to be happy, she kept reminding herself. Not because she didn’t believe it, she meant it with all her heart, just…some tiny fragment of idealistic dreamer that had survived everything she’d been through had always imagined someday, maybe, it could be her making Billy happy.

  She brushed the thought aside. Nonsense. Billy was her XO and best friend. Period. They had more than enough to handle keeping the Team safe and stopping the Preacher’s people without her introducing childish fantasies into the mix.

  Her next call was to Hollywood. Billy had told her that he thought Dr. Rayburn might be in the clear, but she wanted to hear it for herself. Sometimes Hollywood’s judgment about women left a lot to be desired.

  “Boss, I’m glad you called,” he said. “I think we know what the Preacher wanted from Celeste.”

  “What?” she asked, irritated by his use of the doctor’s first name. The woman had a PhD in pharmacology plus an MD, and he’d known her for all of eight hours. But that was Hollywood for you.

  “Here, I’ll let Celeste tell you for herself.”

  A woman’s voice came on the line, “Hello?”

  “Dr. Rayburn, thank you for your help. Could you fill me in on what you and Agent Harriman have discovered?”

  “Well, it’s all my fault, I guess.” Rayburn’s voice rolled up and down with a Southern lilt. “You see Telzec, the big pharma company, offered me a ton of money for some research I’ve been working on since med school. It’s a way to create stable aerosolized particular substrates. I thought it might be useful to create aerosolized vaccines, you know like for large-scale livestock vaccination. Anyway, I didn’t think of it until Hollywood said something, but it was right after I turned them down that I met my fiancé—well, he wasn’t my fiancé then, but you know what I mean—”

  “So after you turned down an offer from this firm, the efforts to discredit you began?” Rose summarized, wishing the research scientist would get to the point—she was as bad as EZ, meandering down a dozen conversational paths virtually simultaneously.

  “Yes, ma’am. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that that’s what was going on. I practically thought I was about gone mad. With him disappearing and then my house and my money. Anyway, I lost my clearance and my job, and Telzec ca
me back to me again.”

  “You had no job, no money, but you still said no? Why?”

  There was a hesitation. “Well, now, that’s where I went wrong. I should have trusted my instincts, spoke up, but with no one listening to me before and everyone thinking I was crazy—”

  Thankfully, Hollywood came back on the line. “What she’s trying to say, boss, is that Celeste realized her research could potentially be used to create biological or chemical weapons. She destroyed it all except for one copy she kept in her safe-deposit box—”

  “Which the thieves who stole her identity were able to access,” Rose finished for him.

  “Yeah. We just came from the bank. It’s gone. They’ve probably had it for a month.”

  Rose thought hard. Hollywood’s instincts about Rayburn seemed on target—the woman was a victim, not a threat. “I’m going to send you some files we’ve stumbled across. Could you ask Dr. Rayburn to go through them, see if she can glean any usable intel? We need to know what they’re planning and if there’s a way to stop it. Especially if we’re already a month behind.”

  “Will do.”

  She gave Hollywood the access code to the bio lab data EZ had discovered, then returned to the kitchen where EZ had made himself at home, using her personal laptop to download the specs she needed to put together an approach to the lab while running more decryption algorithms on the laptop with the Preacher’s drive.

  “Find anything else?” she asked.

  “Sending the schematics and sat comm data to your cloud account. Only other thing I found was, you mentioned Grigor? The badass from Razgravia, right? On the terror watch list?”

  Rose straightened, on full alert. “Yes. Why?”

  “Looks like the dude might have slipped the leash—no signs of him where he should be in Razgravia, and it’s got all the European intelligence agencies scrambling. Also, on the Preacher’s drive, there’s a mention about having an inspection tour at the bio lab with ‘G’ and the date is today. Mean anything to you?”

  Her breath caught in her throat, and the room swam. Rose clutched the back of the kitchen chair she stood behind, pressing all her weight on it so she wouldn’t fall. Blood and the echoes of her own screams filled her mind.