Wasp (Uncommon Enemies: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by Fiona Quinn

  “Still.”

  “Well the Israelis are furious with the Americans over the new Iran agreement and of course the billion and a half dollars given to the Iranian government.”

  “It’s Iranian money, not American money,” Gage said.

  “That’s completely irrelevant. Now the Iranians have over a billion dollars to use against Israel, and a goodwill gesture from the US might help. Who knows? I put a toe in the water to see.”

  Zoe looked at Gage who had the same incredulous look on his face as what she felt. This was a stunning revelation. Were the Israeli’s responsible for killing Lily and trying to kidnap her? Were they going to take her out of the United States to Israel? Away from any kind of support or help? How could Zoe stuff that cat back in the bag and convince people that she wasn’t making a remote killing machine?

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  GAGE

  The more Gage heard, the deeper he saw the hole that Zoe had fallen into. Releasing her name, releasing her research, of course she was going to be the focus of international intrigue. He was only glad that they were dealing with the possibility of an ally being embroiled in all this. What if a different government figured out Zoe’s ability with possibly lethal microrobots? A country where they had little leverage, like Iran or Russia?

  Gage’s mind flashed back to Thursday evening, as he was getting in from field training. It had been a shit kind of day. The team he was working to build wasn’t gelling. They were nowhere near ready to be sent out on missions, but their training was coming to an end. Stressed out, the text from Zoe had instantly brightened his day. Sure, he could provide her with “a little stress relief.” He’d enjoy some of that too. He had been grinning broadly when he used the key Zoe had offered him once Lily moved out. It felt like coming home to slide his key into the lock, to hear the click, to know there was a beautiful woman in her bed waiting for him.

  Then the scream. He’d been stumbling around mostly blind ever since. Learning things about Zoe, learning things about himself and how deeply he was aligned with her. How much he needed to keep her safe. How personally threatening this all seemed. To know someone was training their sights on Zoe gave him the same feeling he had on the battlefield when he knew he was caught in someone’s crosshairs.

  “Do you have any copies of what Lily found at Montrim?” Gage pulled himself together enough to ask Ruby the question.

  “No. Nothing. She showed me and took it all away with her when she left. It was mostly us trying to follow the money trails. Accounting ledgers. The information I shared with my cousin is a tiny portion of a much bigger picture.”

  “Speaking of pictures, I have one I’d like you to look at.” Gage reached over to the seat beside him and pulled out an eight by ten color photo of a tattoo. Gage watched Ruby’s face carefully as he placed the image in front of her.

  She pulled it over and frowned, wiping away the last of her tears, the clutching at her Kleenex. “Someone tattooed that on themselves?”

  “You recognize it then?” Gage asked.

  “This is based on a form of the Sephirot. It comes from the divine tradition of the Kabbalah that is associated with an esoteric group back around the time of the Crusades. It has to do with the Knights Templar, which some say was a group actually formed by Jews to protect priceless treasures.”

  Gage lifted a brow, silently asking for more information.

  “Some historians believe that there was a group of European royalty who were descendants of Jewish Elders who had fled the Holy Land before the first century of the Common Era, when the area was invaded by the Romans.”

  “What kinds of treasure?” Zoe asked.

  “Oh, not what you’d think. Not chests of gold and jewels. They were priceless Kabbalistic and Essene scrolls that had been secretly stored around various regions of the Holy Land to guard them from being plundered as spoils of war by the Roman invader Titus.”

  “Titus?” Zoe glanced toward the wall of two-way mirrors where Titus was listening.

  “Yes, that’s right. When the Elders fled Titus, they married into the European continent’s noble families. According to lore, twenty-four men would eventually become the leaders known as the Rex Deus or sometimes called the Star families.” She tapped the picture where the design had a definite star shape. “They formed into the Knights Templar, not to be crusaders in the common sense of the word, but to retrieve the treasures. The legend says that those who survived through the crusades continued using the name Rex Deus, becoming the Jewish Illuminati, and their descendants secretly rule the world.”

  “Does this group really exist? The Rex Deus?” Gage asked.

  “No. It’s the stuff of conspiracy theories and wild imaginations. It’s a way to tell people that the Jews have a secret international banking system that rules the world and all kinds of other scary things that make people suspect Jewish people of great malevolence. With Sal’s and my work with USIPAC, we’re trying to fight stereotypes.” She tapped the photo again. “This upsets me. I don’t like to think that there are people playing with the concept of Rex Deus.” She stopped and looked from him to Zoe. “Now that I’ve told you what I know, what do you know? Who has this tattoo? How did you get this picture?”

  Ruby was looking at Zoe; but of course, Zoe had no clue. She batted her long eyelashes at Ruby, looking like a doe in the headlights.

  “It was on a man’s arm who was recently taken prisoner,” Gage said. “It ties back to Lily, and we’d like to know how. Could your cousin have anything to do with this group?” He pushed the photo closer to her.

  “Isaac? Oh no, he isn’t involved in anything but his laboratory. His head in a book. His eye to a microscope. Nothing else exists for him.”

  They all stared at each other. Zoe looked like she was in shock. Gage didn’t know what else to wring out of this woman. The silence was becoming embarrassing when a knock sounded on the door.

  “Hello,” Margot said with her big smile. “I have word that your car has been driven around by the valet. It’s outside the atrium.” She held out her hand toward Ruby.

  “Aren’t they coming?” Ruby stood and gathered her purse.

  “They’ll be done soon,” Margot said, holding the door and gesturing Ruby out.

  As Ruby moved into the hallway, she glanced over her shoulder with deep concern in her eyes.

  Zoe didn’t move as Margot shut the door. She didn’t say anything. She sat staring at the wall. Gage knew that she’d gone inside her head, wrestling with this new information. But the thought that Ruby’s cousin was out there with high-level, beyond top secret information, possibly putting the BIOMIST program at risk, spiked adrenaline through his system. They needed to jump on that and jump on it now.

  Gage moved to the door and opened it a crack to peek into the hallway. “Okay, Zoe.” He held out his hand. “Let’s go next door and see what they think.”

  In the observation room, the men stood in a loose circle. Titus was on the phone in the corner.

  “The Rex Deus? Descendants of the Knights freaking Templar? Is this going to get any more nuts?” Brainiack asked.

  “Who’s he on the phone with?” Gage lifted his chin toward Titus.

  “The CIA,” Prescott said in a voice that said what they all knew. This had started out bad and kept getting worse. “Titus needs to give them a heads up to go sit on this cousin. We can’t have Zoe’s name out there, and we can’t let him spread the word about BIOMIST or the RoboSphecius.”

  “Right. But this cousin…” Gage scrubbed a hand over his forehead. “Shit! I didn’t get his name.”

  “Yeah, you did.” Brainiack leaned back in the captain’s chair. “You held the phone under our optics, and we got a screen shot of the number. Nutsbe traced it. We’ve got all his vital stats, and they’re being passed to the right people. Things’ll be fine.”

  “You guys sure do work fast,” Zoe said.

  Brainiack turned to her. “We don’t have
the luxury of slow, ma’am.”

  “The cousin isn’t responsible for the ops group coming after Zoe.” Gage paced the small confines of the room. “He didn’t have time to find the right contact, bring it to their attention.”

  Titus tucked his phone back in its holster and joined them. “Agreed,” he said to Gage before he turned to Zoe. “The CIA is going to squash that bug, Zoe. They’ll keep this quiet.”

  She nodded her head vigorously.

  “We need to look elsewhere for the group that came after Lily and Zoe. Who needed Lily dead? And who needs Zoe off-grid?”

  “Montrim is under fire from the Senate committee. They could lose their federal paycheck. That would basically put them out of business,” Prescott said. “It’s not a stretch to think they’d kill Lily. It certainly doesn’t explain Zoe.”

  “Zoe, do you remember earlier you were telling us a story about Lily and you having dinner when she was in DC to interview for a job.” Titus had added a worry line to his scowl. “And you also mentioned WASPs.”

  “Lily asked for an update over dinner. I started on the WASPs in grad school. They had no military tie at the time, so I wasn’t keeping my research on them secret.”

  Titus pressed her. “But they became secret. They became above top secret, right?”

  “Where are you going with this?” she asked.

  “What was your answer to her about the WASPs.”

  “That I was under DARPA contract and couldn’t discuss it.”

  Titus put his knuckles on the table and leaned in. “And you were working on that at Montrim, in rented research space, but Montrim had no connection to your research, so they had no idea what you were working on.”

  “That’s right.” Zoe looked at him, baffled.

  Gage saw where Titus was going. “Did you eat dinner with Lily before her job interview or after?”

  “Before.” She scrunched her brows together. “Do you think Lily used her connection with me to land her job?”

  “What if she knew the secret of what was behind door number one, and she shared it with Montrim? They had to learn about what you were doing somehow.”

  “Why do you think they know about the WASPs?” Zoe asked.

  “They were negotiating with the CIA. They were supposed to gain access to your work, and then the Montrim microroboticists would rework your designs to meet the CIA parameters of use,” Gage told her.

  Zoe looked like she might puke. Gage pulled a chair around and pressed her into it.

  “Wait. Do we know which direction that came from?” Brainiack asked. “Did the CIA approach Montrim? Or did Montrim approach the CIA? I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for that discussion.” Brainiack turned red around the ears and turned to Zoe. “Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to joke. It was a figure of speech.”

  Zoe sent him a smile, but her face was still pale. Brainiack noticed too, because he turned and poured a glass of water from one of the bottles on the buffet and pressed it into her hand.

  “Lily told the reporter that Billings had copies of what she was handing to the reporter.” Brainiack said. “Maybe we can find out more in that direction.”

  “Asked and answered,” Titus told them. “Margot tried to get him to share the information Lily gathered when she was taking him down to his car. Billings is claiming they can’t release copies to us because we aren’t officially read into the CIA program, and we shouldn’t know anything that’s going on in a sealed Senate chamber.”

  “And yet he wanted Lily to hand the evidence to a reporter and made the call to facilitate that.” Gage wished he was back in a room alone with the senator. He’d help the guy see reason.

  “It makes sense,” Prescott said. “Billings couldn’t release this himself, so he needed a whistleblower to do it in order to keep his hands clean from any sign of sharing State secrets.”

  Everyone stilled as Titus’s phone buzzed. “Titus here. What have you got, Honey? I’m putting you on speakerphone.” He held the phone in the flat of his palm.

  “We had carte blanche with our search warrants.” There was a decided grin in the man’s resonant voice. His team had obviously had fun with the shake. “You asked us to put the apartment on the Richter scale, sir. If we shook it any harder, the whole building would have collapsed.”

  “You cover your tracks?”

  “We went in as a renovation team. If you can believe renovators would be pulling down drywall this time on a Friday evening, then we’re covered.” His booming laugh filled the room.

  “And?” Titus cut him off.

  “Negative, sir,” Honey snapped back to military precision. “There was no manila envelope of any kind in either location. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t even much in the way of paper in either locale. The apartment looked like it was all window dressing. He kept it as depersonalized as a motel room. His office is paper free. There’s not even a computer system in there. He must carry a laptop with him. We’re guessing the envelope is in his car.”

  “Nutsbe.” Titus raised his voice. “The guy went home, to his office and then directly to the farm?”

  Nutsbe responded over a speaker system. “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s pull that farm up on satellite and see what we’ve got going there. All right, I need Panther Force in battle rattle, pronto. We can’t leave that envelope in the wind. It’s fucking dangerous.”

  “I’m in,” Gage said, knowing it was a long shot that he’d be allowed.

  “You haven’t signed the contract, Gage. You’re a liability. You stay here with Zoe. Have some dinner, try to relax.”

  The thought of relaxing while that envelope was in Israeli hands didn’t sit well. Not being part of the team didn’t either. “What if I signed?”

  “It’s bad to make life choices based on adrenaline and momentary goals,” Titus said.

  Gage knew Titus was right, was giving him good counsel. But Gage had been on the fence for weeks. And now, seeing Iniquus in operation, seeing the team in play? Yeah. He was in. “I’ve been making up my mind ever since you showed up at the hospital. If this is what you do, I’m your man.”

  Titus considered him, then with a nod said, “Margot, facilitate Major Harrison’s Iniquus contracts and get him fitted out in tactical gear. Double time.”

  “Sir.” She caught Gage’s eye and headed toward the door. Gage gave Zoe’s shoulder a squeeze, dropped a kiss into her hair, and whispered, “I’ll see you in a little bit. Please get some more rest.” Then he followed after Margot, glad to know he’d be boots on the ground.

  As he moved toward the door, he heard Titus ask, “Prescott you in or you out?”

  “You get warrants in hand, and I’m in.”

  “Nutsbe, you on that?” Titus asked.

  “On it.” Nutsbe’s disembodied voice came through the speaker.

  Prescott was right behind him as Gage moved through the door. “I think I’d like to interrogate Schultz, now.” Prescott said. “Wring out some intel. See what we’re headed into.”

  Chapter

  Thirty-Four

  GAGE

  “Gage? Hey, man, I’m Honey.” The man to his right stood almost seven feet tall and was built for the gridiron. He held up his fist and Gage tapped it with his. They were doing weapons checks in the Panther war room.

  The man next to him raised a fist as well. “Dude, your glow is blinding me. You’ll want to kick some dust on them shiny new boots.”

  Gage bumped his fist.

  “I’m Thorn,” the man continued. “We’re a man down at the moment, glad to have you mix it up with the team. Give us a chance to see the newbie in action. Welcome aboard.”

  “Special Agent Prescott’s going to be riding shotgun tonight, so Sunday manners,” Titus said. “He’s finishing up his intel roundup with our prisoner. Here’s the deal, we aren’t looking for any blood tonight. We just need to get our hands on the Mercedes. That car is the only thing covered in our search warrant. We will not be entering
the residence.”

  Nutsbe put up a graphic. “We need to go in now rather than later. It’s a matter of satellite coverage with the weather pattern that’s moving in. Besides, no one wants the possibility of a gunfight in a sleet storm. That’s the bad news. The good news is, it’s a new moon, and we have thick cloud cover. It’s going to be a black as ink, boys.”

  Titus moved to the graphic. “We’re staging a tow truck down here around this bend. The plan is to roll the car over, hook it up, drive it out. One of our easier nights. But that doesn’t mean complacence. This group is Israeli Special Forces trained. Granted, they’ve been MIA for about a decade. They’ve got some age on their bodies and maybe not the same level of training they had back in their military days. But let’s not think we’re wrestling with Grandpa. We’ve had three bodies to look over, and they’re all hard as rocks. Maybe even put you princesses to shame.”

  Titus moved over to the picture of the Israeli unit. “If this team stayed intact, we’ve kicked the hornets’ nest by taking out four members. Gage went hand-to-hand with the first two, and Brainiack sniped the other. Levi Schultz is in our tank on his blind date with Prescott.”

  “That leaves possibly eight left,” Brainiack said.

  “Seems fair. There are seven of us who’ll be boots on the ground too, counting Prescott and Gage.” Thorn yawned. “I like a little challenge.”

  “Let’s not get cocky. They were trained to be some of the most lethal Special Ops in the world. This is their hidey hole. Imagine what we’d do to make our home safe. And gentlemen, we don’t have the luxury of time or intel.” Titus put his knuckles on the table and made sure he caught each and every one of them in his glare.

  Panther Force was comprised of elite military operators. He and Titus were trained Marine Raiders. The others were all Special Forces from various branches—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Their Ranger was out on loan to Strike Force, a fraternal Iniquus unit. Hence, one man down. They were the best of the best, and Gage was honored to be invited to join. Gage knew that though they were messing around, keeping things light so they were in good mental shape when they were under the gun, each and every one of them had lost brothers out on the battlefield to hidden threats. It went part and parcel with the job. But it meant that this easy camaraderie would be swapped for battle faces once they were in place.