Submission is Not Enough Kobo

by Lexi Blake

  Ten sat back. “I’ve been following up on some leads we got back in Africa when Erin here managed to lure McDonald to Stephanie’s clinic.”

  “I thought that was my brother.” This was the first he’d heard of Erin being involved.

  Fain snorted slightly. “As if. Case didn’t come up with that plan and neither did Ian. That was pure Argent. One of the smartest, meanest women I’ve ever met. I totally mean that as a compliment.”

  “No offense taken. I am quite mean,” Erin replied. “And it was my plan, but it was Avery O’Donnell who made it happen. She took something awful that happened to her and turned it into me getting my…into bringing Theo home. So she gets all the credit and there’s not a damn thing mean about that woman.”

  What was that about? There was a tremor to her voice that told Theo she was emotional about something. Li’s wife, apparently. They were close, but he wasn’t sure what she meant about her being the woman who saved him. Then again, he’d thought his brothers had been behind the plan to rescue him.

  What had he thought? That Erin would be sitting at home like a good little woman? Not a chance. She was fierce. She would have been right there, making plans, taking chances.

  Erin cleared her throat and turned to Ten. “So you’ve been following her? Physically?”

  “When I could track her, yes. I even managed to take a shot at her while we were in Malaysia. Had her right in my sights, but she dodged a dog that was coming at her and I missed,” Ten grumbled.

  “It’s a good thing since we now know she has a whole other unit.” Fain had his tablet out. “I’m sure by now she’s got some support, but I worry what would have happened to those men if you had managed to take her out. She didn’t exactly leave their cell doors open.”

  “They could have starved,” Robert agreed. “One time she left Victor and I alone for three days and had to rehydrate us. That was when she started leaving us with Tony. He’d been around some, but he came on full time then.” Robert stared at Ezra. “He was with the Agency, too.”

  “I’m still not so certain you weren’t, too, lost boy.” Ten Smith’s Southern accent was deep as he stared Robert’s way.

  Fain gave him a nod. “I was wondering about that, too. If he was deep cover, the higher-ups wouldn’t admit they lost him. You see the footage?”

  “The footage from the CCTV cameras at the park?” Theo knew exactly what they were talking about. Robert had fought brilliantly. He had to be well trained. “My first thought was Special Forces.”

  “The military would look for him,” Ten pointed out. “There would be records.”

  Robert leaned over. “Can you figure out who I am?”

  Fain considered the situation for a moment. “I can try, but if you are what I think you are there’s likely not a trail to be followed. You would have signed away your life.”

  “And I would have to have been the stupidest asshole operative if I got myself caught by Hope McDonald.” Robert shook his head. “I’m not with the CIA. I’m not smart enough. I’m just an asshole no one cares about. What have you found out about McDonald? Where is she now?”

  Theo wanted to push the subject, but it wouldn’t matter until Robert was willing to deal with it. When they found the threat, he could quietly start trying to figure out the secrets of Robert’s past. “And do we know where her base is? She’ll have to have a suitable place to hold the men.”

  “She had to move fast when we caught up with her last time,” Fain explained. “So I managed to find a few things she left behind. She wiped all the computers, but we went in with a team and took everything from the sheets on the bed in the cells to the drinking fountain.”

  “Did you get a sample of the drug?” Erin asked quietly.

  Everyone in the room went tense.

  This was the question. Who would get control of that drug? There was zero question every government in the world wanted control of it, wanted to test it, to see how it could aid their cause. It was what governments did.

  Fain grimaced. “Yeah, she was careful about that. You know how doctors can be.”

  Faith leaned forward. “Luckily, I did manage to come into a small dose.”

  Ariel leaned forward. “I would love to help you break that down, though you understand the drugs are only a part of the problem.”

  “How did you do that?” Nick asked. “I thought you had no contact with your sister.”

  “How small a dose?” Knight talked over Nick.

  “Has it been analyzed?” Penelope pulled out a notebook.

  “I want to know how she got hold of it, myself,” Brody was saying.

  Ten sent the Aussie a nasty glare. “Back off.”

  It was so obvious. He was the one who’d forgotten everything. Why was he the only one who could see what Fain had done? Case had told him Fain was solid for an Agency man. Fain had been the reason he and Robert hadn’t been hauled into some government hospital and put through twelve million tests. “Guys, Faith isn’t dealing with her sister. Fain slipped her the sample so if anyone asks he simply doesn’t know. Give the dude a break.”

  Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that the asshole had made Erin smile. It wasn’t like she was flirting with him. He was being a jerk again, making Erin feel bad about something she had zero control over.

  What had she said? Change back. He couldn’t change back, but he could acknowledge when he wasn’t treating her right and try to fix it.

  Fain’s hands came up in the universal sign of “that’s not my problem.” “Whoa. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t find anything like that, but if I did, I would probably need a doctor to figure out what all was in it so we could use the components of the drug to try to find her new place of business.”

  “Ah, you’re going to look for shipments.” Erin turned to her friend. “Have you managed to break down the components of the drug?”

  “Not entirely,” Faith replied. “It’s more complex than merely breaking it down. I need to know exactly how she formulates it and that’s about more than a recipe. She could be mixing certain drugs to form the base. She could be changing materials with heat or cold or separating them and putting them back together but changed. The point is, I think she’s manipulating the materials to create something completely new. I need to know exactly how many doses she’s making in order to look for what she would order. I’m still working on it, but I have a lab set up here in Chelsea and Walt is going to help me figure this thing out. Dr. Adisa, you’re more than welcome to help.”

  Ariel nodded. “I would love to be there, but Walter is your best bet. His CDC experience was extensive and we all know he’s good at breaking down chemicals.”

  “He’ll be on it tomorrow. I’ll recall him. We know there were seven cells at the center in Malaysia,” Knight pointed out.

  “And there were seven men who attacked me and Robert.” He’d counted them carefully, tried to memorize their blank faces, seeing his own there. He’d known that mere months before he would have been one of them. He would have been the man trying to bring the lost “brother” home.

  “Two are dead.” Robert’s face had gone blank, likely thinking what Theo had been. He would have been one of those men, too. Perhaps one of the ones who threw themselves into traffic because failure was not acceptable and the “family” secrets were more important than individual lives. “So unless she’s found some more subjects, she’s dosing five men roughly three or four times a week depending on how long they’ve been with her. Or how stubborn their systems are.”

  Ten’s hand ran over his wife’s as though seeking comfort or perhaps giving it. “The trouble is we now believe she’s refined the drug.”

  “I haven’t done all the work I need to do, but I do believe there are some differences between the drug she gave to Robert and Theo and the one she’s using now,” Faith explained. “We believe she’s managed to amplify the drug that targets the long-term memory center of the brain. Ezra found so
me handwritten notes she tried to burn.”

  “She didn’t get them far enough into the fire,” Fain continued. “It was the only break we caught. According to her notes, she can wipe a memory with one dose now. We believe she was using the secondary site to experiment. She had her primary team, Theo, Robert and the man they called Victor. She used the first iteration of the drug on the primaries. The secondaries were more, shall we say, expendable.”

  Nick’s lips turned down in a fierce frown. “And how do you know this? You say you didn’t find other notes.”

  “Bodies,” Ten said, his voice flat. “They found fourteen bodies.”

  Theo’s stomach threatened to go south again.

  Robert stood up, his skin pale. “I need a minute.”

  He strode out the door. Theo stayed in his seat. He knew what Robert was about to go through and he would want some time alone. It wasn’t easy to figure out how expendable you were, how close you’d come. If Robert hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, he could have been on that secondary team.

  “All right, so we’re waiting on the components of the drugs to be fully identified,” Theo said, trying to keep his voice even. “After that we’re going to do what? Look through every pharmaceutical vendor to figure out where they’re sending these drugs?”

  Erin shook her head. “She’s got a new partner. She’ll use them. All we have to do is figure out where that company is sending the right mix of drugs and we’ll know where she is. I suspect we could also hack into their systems and track new real estate acquisitions or older properties that have been recently renewed. What kind of equipment would she need to formulate the drug?”

  Damn but she was smart. “They’ll send it to her. If we can find the big-ticket items, we can find her. The invoices won’t be so obvious, but they also can’t simply ship expensive equipment without leaving a paper trail. The majority of employees in Collective companies have no idea they work for one. It’s only the men at the top who are committing the crimes.”

  Knight’s fingers tapped along the conference table. “Yes, it would be easier to track the equipment than the drugs. That kind of equipment requires careful handling. I’m sure they’ll use some kind of a cover corporation, but we can guess from the time and type of equipment. I believe she’s somewhere in Europe. I think we should start looking for shipments to Eastern Europe.”

  “We should call Adam in,” Erin offered. “He can hack into the system and get us the data we need.”

  Something was wrong. Ten and Fain should be jumping all over this discussion. They should either be agreeing or explaining why everyone else was off base. They were used to running meetings, not sitting by quietly with grim eyes as though they knew something no one else did.

  He looked down and saw that Ten’s hand clutched Faith’s. His face was perfectly passive but that hand told the tale. He needed comfort.

  “What’s happened?” The question came out in a croak. His throat still hurt from the night before and now it felt parched and ragged.

  All eyes were suddenly on Ten and Fain.

  “We’re worried she’s got a reliable man working for her. Someone who could potentially get around Adam,” Ten explained.

  “You think The Collective is supplying her with a hacker?” Knight asked. “So they would go through the proper channels and then the hacker would go back and erase it?”

  “Or send us on a wild-goose chase.” Fain stood, his tablet in hand. He moved toward the back of the conference room where he connected the tablet to the media system.

  Ten began to talk as Fain set up the projector. “I started to suspect something was wrong a few days ago when Big Tag gave me the heads up about what was happening with Erin.”

  “Are you talking about the fact that someone managed to tag her laptop?” Brody asked. “I found that surprising since we use one of the best firewalls on the planet.”

  “It’s a specialized system that Adam, Chelsea, and Hutch came up with,” Erin explained. “And it’s fairly new. We’ve been using it for about eighteen months. They test it constantly. I couldn’t believe she managed to get in. Adam is still trying to figure it out, but Serena’s been traveling so his focus is a little off. It’s hard with Chelsea working for the Agency and Hutch gone. We need a second communications person.”

  He was definitely getting nauseous again because something bad was coming. He could still see the tension in Ten’s face. They hadn’t gotten the bad news yet.

  “I think I’ve figured out who got McDonald onto Erin’s system.” Fain killed the lights and a single photograph appeared on the wall in front of them.

  Hope McDonald was smiling, walking down a street with a tall, thin man. There were two men walking in front of them and two behind them, obviously protecting the two between them. McDonald appeared to be talking, a designer handbag tossed over her shoulder.

  “This was the shot I could get of him.” Fain’s voice floated through the tense air as everyone seemed to have stopped breathing. “Apparently Ten trained him well. Or maybe it was Big Tag. It definitely explains how he’s kept an eye on the team. He used his own backdoor into the system. From what we can tell he’s downloaded a ton of documents on McKay-Taggart operations.”

  The man in the middle was glancing up but there was no way to mistake him.

  Hutch.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Erin stared at the screen, trying to make it turn into something else. They’d gotten it wrong. That couldn’t be Greg Hutchins on the screen with Hope McDonald. It was some kind of a joke.

  Except Ten and Ezra looked pretty damn serious.

  “I don’t understand.” It was all she could think to say. She thought about reaching for Theo’s hand, but he’d withdrawn, turning his chair away from hers.

  One step forward, a whole mile back. Every time they made the tiniest breakthrough something shitty happened.

  “Where was this taken?” Theo ignored her, staring at the screen. His voice was flat and she could see his hand was fisted in his lap. “And when?”

  “Three days ago,” Ezra replied. “And it’s a street in Tallinn, Estonia. We believe that’s where she’s got her new lab set up. The pharmaceutical company has a small base there. And it’s close to Russia. We’re fairly certain she’s found ties to the Russian mafia.”

  Then they could have an in. “With the Denisovitch syndicate?”

  Ten shook his head. “Already tried to work that angle. Charlotte’s relatives claim they know nothing about it. I don’t think they’re involved, but her cousin also won’t work with us unless there’s a direct threat to his family. He’s got a reputation to protect. We’re on our own here.”

  “So we think we know where we’re looking.” Theo turned toward Damon. “I’ll be on a plane to Estonia in the morning.”

  Erin felt the room go cold. “No. No, you won’t.”

  Theo turned hard eyes on her. “I will. She’s got Hutch. I can’t leave him with her. You have no idea what she could be doing to him.”

  Ten frowned Theo’s way. “I don’t think you understand.”

  “Theo, he walked away from us,” Erin said gently. “He left us. No one took him. We even tracked him getting back into Europe. He was alone.”

  Now that she thought of it, Hutch had used press identification to cross the border. He’d claimed he was a Western journalist covering the immigrant crisis caused by the Syrian civil war. Posing as journalists had been one of the ways McDonald had gotten Theo and the others around the globe.

  “So she found him later and took him,” Theo argued. “Like she tried with me. She’s trying to get the team back together. Can’t you see that?”

  “His body language is relaxed.” Ariel was studying the screen. “There’s nothing about the way he’s standing that tells me he’s tense or doing anything he doesn’t want to do.”

  Theo turned on the profiler. “It’s one picture. One second of the day. You can’t possibly figure out what’s
happening from one picture.”

  If his harsh tone bothered her, Ariel didn’t show it. She was serene, her voice soothing and calm. “That is true, but I’ve been given more than a simple picture. I’ve read Mr. Hutchins’s files. I find it interesting that during his first incarceration by Dr. McDonald he managed to work with you, and yet this time he’s obviously the one who gave her access to Erin’s computer. There’s no evidence he did anything like that the first time.”

  “He fought her. He fought for us,” Theo insisted.

  “But according to all accounts of the operation to rescue you, Mr. Hutchins didn’t fight. The only person he hit was you,” Ariel pointed out.

  Ezra turned the lights back on. “It’s true. I was there. He had multiple opportunities to help us out. He chose to retreat to the plane where from what I can tell he was preparing to move out when Case managed to get inside. We have to accept the probability that she turned him.”

  “No.” Theo wasn’t listening at all. “He was upset. He went after her. She somehow found him and forced him to work for her again. He’s the one who sent us the intel that she had a new backer.”

  “He needed a way in,” Nick explained. He was going through the files he’d brought in. “Yes, here it is. I got the notes from Miles. Hutch sent the e-mail and that granted him access to the systems. That was when he pulled all the files down and found his way into Erin’s system.”

  “You’re wrong. I’m calling my brother. You’re all fucking wrong about this.” Theo stalked out.

  Erin stood, but Ariel shook her head.

  “He won’t listen to you right now,” Ariel said. “He needs time to process.”

  She was probably right. Theo—this Theo—wasn’t always rational and if she pushed him, it might start a fight she couldn’t win. “I need to process. You guys don’t know Hutch. He’s a good kid. Ten recruited him.”