3
King was in the depths of sleep when he heard what sounded like someone knocking on his door. He rolled over in his bed and first blinked at the ceiling, then propped himself up on his elbow to take in the rest of the room. Light from the windows was feeling its way around the curtains. It took his brain a moment to remember he was in a hotel in London. An ache at the base of his brain reminded him of the evening full of drinks. The knock on the door turned into pounding as it matched what he was feeling in his head.
“All right! I’m coming!”
Out of reflex he picked up the Glock he’d laid on his nightstand and walked over to the door. When he glanced through the peephole, he could see Sam bouncing and looking down worriedly at her feet. Her arms were folded across her chest. He could tell something was eating at her. He opened the door and immediately turned to walk back inside the room.
“What the hell, Sam?” He turned back to face her.
“Could you put on some clothes?” Sam said as the door shut behind her.
King looked down. He was in his boxer briefs. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to see it again.”
He posed for her, giving his muscles a flex.
Sam didn’t react.
“Nothing?” King laughed.
Sam stared blankly.
“You know you love it.” King walked over to the closet, pulled a black V-neck T-shirt off a rack and threw it on. “Well, what is it? I was trying to sleep off last night.”
“I told you two not to switch to tequila.”
“Okay, Mom.” King picked up his blue jeans and pulled them on. “It was Dbie’s fault anyway. Kyle and I wanted bourbon.”
Dbie Johnson—the tech wizard on their newly formed mercenary team—flew into London yesterday evening and met the three of them for the final few rounds of drinks. Sam had already done the smart thing and dialed back her alcohol consumption. Kyle and King were winding down, but Dbie brought a whole new energy when she arrived, and her excitement dialed things back up. King was paying for it now. He was sure Kyle was too.
“You should have gone with water.”
“Can we move on?” King opened his dopp kit and pulled out a bottle of ibuprofen. “There’s gotta be a reason you interrupted my beauty sleep.”
Sam walked over to the bed and took a seat. “It’s just the number of a safety deposit box.”
“What?”
Sam held up the envelope. “Probably just some old shit Thomas wanted to leave me with as a joke.”
King smiled. “I knew you were curious.”
“Well, now you know. Let that be the end of it.”
King’s eyebrows furrowed from confusion. “The end of it? Knowing it’s a secret safety deposit box left just for you makes it only the beginning!” King was quiet for a moment. “So that’s it? Just a box number? He didn’t say anything?”
“Not really. Just the words ‘Only you would understand.’”
“Are you kidding me? That’s fantastic! It’s like some sort of clue. And it means we’re going to get that box.”
“It doesn’t. And I’m not going to open it.”
“Yes you are, Sam,” King said. Then he stopped before pleading his case. “Wait, you were pounding on my door, insistent that I wake up, just to tell me that? What’s really going on?”
“There is something else. I just wanted to get that bit out of the way.”
“All right, well, what’s so damn urgent that it couldn’t wait an hour or two?”
“It’s about Sarah Gilbright.”
King nearly choked on the water he was using to wash down the ibuprofen. He had not expected to hear Sarah Gilbright’s name. In fact, it had been more than two years since he had. But there was no denying the way his stomach swirled when he thought of her. Sarah was the agent with the CIA who had been tasked to watch him when the agency had first started sniffing around back in King and Sam’s vigilante days.
The CIA director at the time, William Manning, had tasked the blonde beauty to follow King’s movements. It wasn’t long before they both crashed into each other, and a whirlwind of love and violence surrounded them for the next couple of years. When King chose to pursue Natalie Rockwell instead of Sarah, it broke both of their hearts, because King not only had to leave Sarah, but things didn’t work out with Natalie either. He saw Sarah again after that. She helped save the day on a mission in Greece. But that was when King had to fake his own death. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since.
“She okay?” King said.
“She’s alive, as far as I know. But she could be in trouble. And so are a lot of other ally agents from around the world.”
King walked over to the bed. “Sam, you have this really annoying thing you do.”
Sam straightened and put her hands on her hips. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. You drop a bombshell, then when I ask you a question, you only half answer it. Like you want me to work for it or something. Drives me up the wall. Can you just tell me what’s going on?”
Sam didn’t touch on his personal remark. “Let’s get Kyle and Dbie in here so I only have to explain it once.”
“See. There you go again. Not giving me the info. Why not just say something’s going on and that we need to get Kyle up before you mention trouble—and the name of a former lover.”
Sam smirked. “If I avoided saying the names of your former lovers, I’d never be able to mention another woman’s name at all.”
“You’re not very good at this whole ‘ribbing me’ thing anymore.”
“Yes, well, while you were dead, I suppose I lost practice. Now can we go get the others? Kyle’s room is right across from you. Dbie’s is down a floor.”
King finished his water, grabbed his Glock, and followed Sam out the door. They walked across the hallway, and King gave the door a solid rap. Sam leaned her ear to the door when she heard what King had. The sound of shuffling around came from inside the room. King knocked again. There was more shuffling; then they heard Kyle shout,
“Just a second!”
Sam folded her arms. King could see in her eyes that she thought something fishy was going on. But not “get your gun ready” fishy, as he’d thought to himself as well. After a couple more seconds, Kyle answered the door with only a towel around his waist.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
King started forward, but Kyle put his hand on King’s chest. “I was just getting in the shower. What’s up?”
King took a step back and gave Kyle the side eye. “You tell me.”
“Wha-what do you mean?”
“What took you so long to answer the door?” Sam said.
Kyle furrowed his brow. “I was taking a shit. What the hell’s y’all’s problem?”
King stepped forward again. Kyle pushed back, but when he did, Sam slipped under Kyle’s arm and walked in.
“It smells like tequila and bad decisions in here,” Sam said. “Not like you were just in the bathroom.”
King followed behind her, and the two of them had a look around the room.
“What is wrong with you two? Let me shower, and then I’ll meet you in Xander’s room.”
King walked over to the window. He saw the reason Kyle was being so jumpy.
“I guess not all rooms are the same,” King said to Kyle. “Yours is decorated differently than mine.”
Kyle was annoyed. “Yeah? So what?”
Sam walked over and saw what King had seen.
“Yeah,” Sam said, “different than mine too.”
Kyle wasn’t amused.
“What do you see different, Sam?” King said.
“Well, the carpet seems darker. And the painting over the bed is different.”
“Yeah, mine too. But that’s not the biggest difference.”
“No?” Sam played along.
“No.” King played with the curtains by moving them around a bit and taking his time inspecting them as if they w
ere a suspect in a case. “Kyle, your curtains are much different from mine.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “So what? Yours a different color or something?”
“No . . . It’s not that.” King stepped back and pointed down at where the curtains met the floor. “Mine are longer . . . and they don’t have . . . feet.”
King pointed at the red painted toenails peeking out from under the curtain. Kyle could see that King was proud of himself. And he wasn’t happy about it. Sam ripped back the curtains. Obviously Sam and King knew a woman was hiding there, but they did not expect to see who they did.
“Dbie?” Both King and Sam said in surprise.
Dbie didn’t move. Instead, she just stood there and smiled. She had a towel wrapped around her. Her shoulder-length dark hair was a mess. And King almost didn’t recognize her without her black-rimmed glasses on.
“Well. Didn’t see that coming,” King said.
“Hi, X,” Dbie waved, then looked at Sam with a nervous smile. “Sam.”
Sam—in her usual pull-no-punches way—said exactly what was on her mind when she turned to Kyle. “I see you haven’t changed as much as I thought. What about the girl you just told us you’re seeing?”
Kyle shrugged.
Dbie cleared her throat. “Also me.”
Sam started for the door. “Get dressed, you two. We’ve got important matters.”
King waited for Sam to leave the room. Then he looked between the two of them and smiled. “Not sure about Sam, but I totally approve. See you kids in my room.”
King gave his best friend a wink on his way out. He couldn’t have been happier to be back together with his team. He’d missed them more than he’d known.
4
King, Sam, Kyle, and Dbie all stood in the middle of King’s hotel room. Everyone but Sam was holding a bottle of water—rehydrating from last night’s fun.
“How bad is it?” Kyle started things off.
“Potentially?” Sam said. “Devastating. For US intelligence and many other ally agencies.”
“Start with Sarah since that’s the carrot you dangled,” King said.
“Sarah Gilbright?” Kyle said.
“Yes,” Sam said. “But understand this isn’t concrete. These agents don’t even know they are in danger.”
“But you know this how?” King said.
Sam looked at King. “Raúl Ortega.”
“Ortega?” King was in disbelief. “You’ve been trading texts with a drug lord?”
Sam shrugged. “Well, yes, actually. And it appears to have paid off.”
“Why would you be in communication with Ortega, for any reason?”
“After what happened in Mexico City, I reached out to him to follow up on the conversation the two of you had on the street when he decided to take your deal.”
“The deal to not traffic humans if the US government left him alone?”
“Yes, that deal,” Sam said. “I told him I would be the one making sure he kept his end of the bargain. And I also let him know that if anything should arise that might help you to better do your job of protecting the United States, it would help us justify keeping any heat off him in the future.”
“We’re making deals with drug dealers now?” Kyle said.
“I’d make a deal with the devil to learn what he shared with me last night.”
King didn’t like the sound of that. But he was impressed Sam had the wherewithal to make such bold statements to someone in the criminal underworld.
“Okay then,” King said. “Out with it. If Sarah’s in danger, I want to help.”
Sam smiled. “We all know what you want with Sarah.”
“Ha ha. Now, out with it already.”
“All right. Ortega said he received a phone call from a man who asked what it would be worth if Ortega could gain knowledge that there was an undercover agent in his cartel. Ortega played along and told the man he was listening. Then the unnamed man asked what it would be worth to have the knowledge of eight undercover agents in various criminal organizations all around the world. Ortega told me he knew immediately what the man was angling at. If someone did have such a list, each name on that list could potentially be worth millions of dollars to get rid of the named agent that could potentially bring down their entire organization. Ortega told the man he would be interested in such a list, and told him if he could prove it, he’d be prepared to heavily compensate the man.”
“Okay,” King said, “I get how such a list could be very valuable. And that being the case, why would Ortega ever call you? He must need something big from us if he’s telling you about this phone call.”
“Of course he does, but that is no matter right now. What matters is does this list actually exist, and if it does, who has it.”
“Agreed. But I’m still not sure what this has to do with Sarah.”
“All right, so maybe I shouldn’t have even mentioned Sarah. I obviously don’t know if she’s on the list, but I do know she is on an undercover assignment. So she could be in danger. That’s why I brought her up.”
“Why? Because you didn’t think I wouldn’t understand the severity of eight undercover agents possibly being uncovered? Thus putting a kill order on them immediately and possibly much worse?”
Sam was about to respond when Dbie chimed in. “I know I’m new to this part of all this espionage stuff, so excuse my ignorance, but can you explain how things get worse than a kill order?”
King fielded the question. “The obvious and immediate danger of bad people knowing the good guys are secretly in their organization is, like I just said, the good guys could be killed. The far-reaching consequences could be as bad as starting a war.”
Dbie sucked in a breath. “What? Going to war over a list of names?”
Sam explained. “Yes, an agent working inside a criminal organization is one thing. The only real danger there is the agent is killed, or the case they were building is lost. But if one or more of the agents revealed are, say, Americans working inside maybe the Russian or another government, for other countries that is an act of war. And they could respond as such.”
“Wow,” Dbie said. “So what now? Call CIA? Let Director Lucas know?”
King looked at Sam. For a moment neither one of them answered. Sam finally broke the silence.
“X, this is your team, your call. This is the reason we wanted to break away from the CIA in the first place. We can just alert them and bow out.”
“This is our team, Sam. And I’m not sure we can bow out of this one. We have to at least find out if the list is real.”
“I agree,” Sam said. “But we can just tip Director Lucas about what Ortega mentioned and field one of the three or four jobs that we have been offered.”
“Those jobs are fine, I’m sure,” Kyle said. “But none of them involve protecting our country from possible harm. That is still who we are, right?”
“It is,” King said.
“And why would we take the other jobs anyway? Money? Now that you’ve come back to life, X, and retaken control of your fortune, we certainly don’t need cash. Well, you don’t anyway.”
King looked at Sam. “We left the CIA to put our lives on the line for jobs that mattered to us, but that didn’t mean taking jobs that have nothing to do with protecting the US, Great Britain, or any of our other allies.”
“I agree with you,” Sam said. “I was just laying out our options. I have no desire to hunt bank robbers or find a stolen painting. Though I loved the movie, we’re no Thomas Crown Affair. We are quite overqualified for heists.”
“Yeah, X,” Kyle said. “You’re a fine enough looking guy, but you’re no Pierce Brosnan.”
“Sounds like it’s settled then,” Dbie said. “What can I do?”
“Is this what you want to do?” Sam asked King.
“Until we find out the list is real or not, we can’t ignore it.”
“Agreed,” Kyle said.
“All right, we officially have our fir
st mission,” Sam said as she pulled out her phone. “Dbie, I’m texting Ortega now, letting him know that you will be the one looking into this for us. You speak with him and couple the info he gives you with whatever you can find on just how a list like this could even be made.”
“It’s obviously some sort of top secret leak, right?” Kyle said.
“I would have to think that to get a list of that many operatives, there must be some sort of clandestine operation involving multiple agents from the US and its allies, all working on something together. If the list is real, I can’t see it working any other way.”
“So we have to call Director Lucas.” King said it more as a statement than a question.
“We’ve no choice,” Sam said. “If anyone would know about it, it would be him. I’ll call him on the way to our meeting, Xander. Kyle, you and Dbie get started with Ortega. See if you can get him to find anything that might link us to who reached out to him in the first place.”
“Got it,” Kyle said.
Sam glanced at her phone. “Ortega just texted back. He’s awaiting your call.”
“He’s gonna want a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” King said.
Sam shrugged. “If what he’s telling us is true, won’t he deserve one?”
5
King and Sam were in the back of their ride, cruising down Oxford Street, both lost in their own thoughts. The gray-covered sky loomed above the street where not all that long ago King had saved Bentley Martin from an exploding car—setting in motion one of the biggest challenges of his career. Running down Saajid Hammoud and his brother hadn’t been easy, but it was made even more difficult by Bentley fooling him entirely. It wasn’t one of his finer moments. And as their car pulled up to Barclays Bank, he knew from the look in Sam’s eyes this wouldn’t be one of his greatest stunts either. But he just couldn’t help himself.
“Why are we stopping here?” Sam said. “Our meeting doesn’t take place for another few blocks.”
King looked over at Sam and gave her the look of a child who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Power Move (Alexander King Book 4) Page 2
