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  The only thing I felt I deserved.

  And back then, I believed he deserved a partner far better than someone irretrievably fucked up like me.

  Through no fault of Carter’s, I let my fear control me and rule my actions instead of fully trusting him to take care of me the way he promised he would and could.

  The man literally laid down his body and risked his life to protect me, and the thanks I gave him was to let him go and not follow him the moment I was released from the hospital. Instead of letting the doctors give me a medical discharge, like they wanted, I begged and pleaded and even lied more than a little about my condition and pain levels to stay in.

  Which is how I ended up transferring into intelligence work, first with the Army MIC, then, once they realized I had certain skills and personality traits they could exploit—and a lack of familial ties to worry about—I was recruited into the NSA and, later, the CIA. From there I was laterally transferred to a “civilian contractor,” which is a polite way of saying black ops, and so the rest of my career progressed until I officially left their employ when I hit thirty-nine and realized I could be self-employed and doing the exact same thing I was doing without giving up a share of the profits to someone else.

  The dollar signs danced in my head, I’ll admit it. I self-medicated with work and find myself regretting those decisions now.

  I could be over thirty years into a damned good relationship with a man I knew would always have my six, and instead I’m about to die wherever the fuck I am right now.

  With my hands manacled behind me and my shoulder all jacked up, I can’t try to work the hood off, or resist in some way.

  This is not the kind of helpless I enjoy.

  Dirt rasps under my raw and likely bleeding knees where I’m kneeling on the hard concrete floor. I can’t tell what time of day it is, or how long it’s been since I was taken, except I’m thirsty as fucking hell now, and my empty stomach’s taken a back seat to my dehydration and the frigid temps out here. With the hood muffling my hearing, I can’t tell what’s going on outside the building, or if I’m in a rural or urban location. Wherever it is, it’s likely isolated in some way. Protected, at the very least.

  Safe enough for an execution.

  Footsteps approach, more than one man. At least three.

  Then a booted foot painfully connects with my right hip bone, hard, and I go down face-first. Unable to put out my hands and catch myself, my forehead bounces against the floor, making stars erupt behind my eyelids.

  I am going to die here, like this, in my underwear.

  Not even my good briefs, either. These are plain ole tighty-whities.

  More blows rain down on me and I realize it’s only a matter of minutes, if not seconds, before they kill me.

  He will never know what happened to me.

  Will He ever try to contact me? Find me?

  I suspected that hug from Him outside the hotel would be the last time I ever saw Him in my life. And when the blows stop and I hear the unmistakable sound of a slide being pulled back, the last of my courage dissolves as the hard metal of a handgun muzzle presses against the back of my head.

  “Last chance, Eddie. Talk.” Fuck me, I’d swear it was him, which is why I can’t control what I say next.

  “I’m sorry, Carter,” I sob. “I’m so sorry.”

  But the expected shot doesn’t come.

  The man I’ve been dealing with suddenly leans in close in front of me. He must not be the one holding the gun. “What did you say?”

  My hysterical laughter brays free as I realize what I said. “J-just an old ghost from my past.” I suck in what air I can between the stifling hood and the snot now clogging my nose. “When I was a stupid kid and let Him walk away.” I laugh again. “You sound just like Him.” In my mind, those Hs are still all capitalized, just like they used to be. Maybe this man is my executioner, but he’s also my unintended last-minute confessor.

  “Who the fuck is Carter?” Is there a different tone in his voice now?

  Fear grips me as I realize why he’s probably asking. “We served together nearly thirty years ago! I loved him, and He loved me.” I choke back more snot and sobs. “Please, He doesn’t know anything about this. He’s in the States and has a wife and family. He has nothing to do with my life now.”

  “He wasn’t involved in this deal?”

  “No! None of it, I swear!” Terror seizes my system. I know Carter can handle Himself, but my soul would never know peace if harm came to any of His loved ones. “Please, we were together secretly in the Army back when we were kids. He wasn’t out, and neither was I.”

  “Together how?”

  Fuck it. “Sexually. We were lovers. Loved each other. He owned me and promised to always take care of me.”

  I hear movement. The gun disappears for a moment, then reappears, and I think the American is now the one holding it. He goads the back of my skull with the muzzle, and not gently. “Then why bring this Carter guy up now? There must be more to it than that.”

  “Just final regrets, that’s all.” I sadly laugh. “You sound just like him. We were both wounded in-country and almost died. I pushed Him away when He wanted me to leave the Army with Him. I couldn’t make myself be out. I stayed in, and he went on to law school and a career in state politics.” I’m babbling now and can’t help it. “Please, I swear, He’s guilty of nothing more than loving me back then. I wouldn’t let Him keep His promise.”

  “What promise?”

  In these last moments of my life I know I should stop talking, but it’s like I’ve lost the ability to control myself since I finally have someone to spill my soul to and have admitted why this man’s getting under my skin. “He promised to always take care of me. Never leave me behind. But I was young and stupid and scared, and He returned to the States. I stayed in after I healed up. He moved on and got married to a woman while he was in college, and now they have two sons, and—”

  Pressure from the muzzle disappears, replaced by blinding pain that smacks the back of my skull before my world goes dark.

  Part II

  Jace

  “All war is deception.”

  – Sun Tzu

  Chapter Six

  Three Days Ago

  Fuck my life.

  I do my damnedest not to roll my fricking eyes as I sit back in my chair and listen to the man drone on and on.

  And fucking on.

  This is one of the many bullshit, mundane tasks I endure to keep the true nature of my career a secret. I pretend to listen to government wonks and code monkeys say what they think I want to hear and stroke my ego. All while I’m trying my best not to kill all of them where they stand for being so.

  Insufferably.

  Booooring.

  It should be a crime.

  Retiring is looking pretty damned good as of late, I hate to admit. It’s been years since I’ve been on an assignment that really got my blood pumping. I’m still assigned the occasional wet-work, yeah, but I’m no longer the one who has to deal with the clean-up, and I haven’t been for years. I’m either assigned a team to lead who handles the mop-up after I’ve completed the interrogation, or I hire trusted locals I’ve worked with in the past to take care of it for me.

  No, this job isn’t thrilling. Wouldn’t even make a good spy novel. Right now, I’m sitting in a depressingly shitty office in a Soviet-era building in Kyiv and listening to this fucking asshole try to blow smoke up my ass in less than perfect Russian. But his Russian is way better than my Ukrainian, so I give him that much.

  When the cell in my pocket buzzes with a text alert, I reach down and silence it without interrupting our conversation even as my pulse races. It’s my burner, because like hell am I bringing one of my real phones into the country, and only three people have the number. This joker sitting in front of me has the number for my dummy phone that has my “work” number on it. I swap SIM cards on that one all the time to keep malware off of it, especially when I have
to travel here.

  At the first reasonable break in the conversation, I hold up a hand and excuse myself to the bathroom. While in the stall, I look at the message, which came from an unknown number. It’s a single word that sends my pulse hammering through my veins once more.

  EXCELSIOR

  Fuck, yeah!

  That means I have an assignment waiting for me.

  Not one of these bullshit cover assignments, either.

  I mean an actual field op instead of simply gathering intel. It’s been too damned long since a good, juicy assignment’s been dropped in my lap. I was beginning to think they were trying to give me a not-so-subtle hint that they wanted to put me out to pasture and get me to take my retirement without actually forcing me to resign or having to fire me.

  I delete the message and swipe into the phone’s settings to factory reset it. That’ll have to do until I can get out of here and dispose of the thing. I pop out its SIM card and snap it between my fingers, then flush that down the toilet.

  I can’t just duck out of this meeting, though. If I do, it’ll look suspicious.

  Mainly because my “company” was the one who set it up in the first place, to work with this bot farm about running some algos to try to decipher things Amazon’s been doing as of late, to see if we can piece together a better picture of Amazon’s AI.

  I mean, that’s my cover story.

  I was mostly scoping out this company because we’re pretty sure they’re behind a metric shit-ton of disinfo traffic that crops up on various social media platforms during every US election.

  It’s over an hour before I can finally get out of there after declining his offer to take me out to dinner. I claim that my breakfast hasn’t been agreeing with me and return to my hotel room. There, I use another burner I’d left in my suitcase to hook into a VPN and check a disposable e-mail account.

  That gives me a four-digit number, which I memorize before deleting the message, emptying the trash folder, and then deleting the account.

  I already know the country code, area code, and three-digit prefix. Those are fixed.

  The last four digits give me the full phone number I’ll need to call within twenty-four hours.

  Lucky for me, I can get a flight out to Budapest two hours from now instead of having to wait for my original flight to Paris tomorrow morning.

  The flat I use as a safehouse in Budapest looks untouched when I let myself in. None of the tells I left the last time I visited here four months ago have been disturbed, and a quick sweep of it shows it’s still bug-free. It’s one of several refuges I have sprinkled around Europe. Not even my handlers know about it—or most of the other safehouses I own.

  Hey, if they’re stupid enough to pay me in black money, I’m smart enough to put it to good use.

  But here I have supplies and privacy and can check in without worrying about the prevalent sniffers that are everywhere in the Ukraine and Russia. I grab a burner and set out across the city on foot so I’m not hitting the cell towers closest to the safehouse when I make the call using a secure messaging app.

  The call is connected, but no one speaks.

  “Excelsior,” I say.

  “Hold,” a man replies.

  A moment later, the call is connected. “Where are you?” Rich asks. That’s not his real name, but that’s what I call him. He’s my official handler, which likely means this assignment is big. I rarely hear from him in person unless it’s an off-the-books wet-work op being handed down straight from top brass.

  I’m eager to jump into it, whatever it is. I’m fucking bored out of my mind lately, and bored agents are dead agents.

  “Budapest.” Hell, lying about that when they could track me through my fake passport is stupid and will make them want to take a closer look at my movements. They know I frequently use Budapest as a jump-off point for missions in this region.

  “Perfect. Here’s your dossier number…”

  An hour later, after downloading the info to my secured tablet, shutting down the burner, and wandering around the city—including getting myself some dinner because I’m fucking starving—I have convinced myself I’m not being tailed and I return to my safehouse.

  If they look for me, they’ll find a hotel reservation over by the airport, which is where the cell towers will ping my phone’s location from when I called. Obviously, I’m not there. But it needs to look like I’ve got a place to lay my head while I’m here or they’ll start looking closer at me and my movements.

  Again, the whole “I don’t want to attract the bad kind of attention” thing.

  While I’m excited to get started, the more I read about this assignment…

  The more questions I have.

  Not necessarily good questions, either. My instincts are buzzing at eleven on a scale of one-to-ten that something feels…off about this assignment.

  Turns out Budapest was the perfect choice. My target is supposed to be meeting some group in Győr to deliver arms to them. That’s only a couple of hours from here by car.

  Even better, it’s barely an hour from my safehouse outside of Bratislava.

  Except…

  My target is a former agent who “retired” years ago and ended up going into business for himself. He was smart enough to never do anything to put him at odds with our employer, so he was left alone.

  Suddenly, he’s on the radar again, for something that appears to be completely unlike his former M.O.

  What feels off, to me, is it looks like the group he’s dealing with has been set up, as well. Another agent is supposed to eliminate them with extreme prejudice because of imminent plans the group has near completion. I distinctly remember some chatter through back channels a few months ago, warnings about it being a coordinated op from our end, and to stay clear of it, because they wanted to try to attract a couple of extremists who’d been laying low too well for them to ferret them out.

  But…

  Yes, I’ve been part of plenty of targeted ops before. Even ran some of them.

  This feels…different. More like entrapment than a legitimate honeypot. The subject I’m after is Edward James Fowler, former Army, brought over to intelligence after he was shot up in Afghanistan. No family, and he was a foster system kid who went in after high school.

  I could request his entire jacket, beyond what they’ve sent me, and study it in detail, but I don’t want to do that yet. It might trigger red flags if this is a set-up, and they might pull me from the assignment. If I’m not supposed to know the other half of this equation is a hinky set-up, too, that might go badly for me.

  I didn’t survive this long doing what I’m doing by being stupid.

  Of course, it could be exactly what it looks like on its surface, trying to take out two sets of baddies for the price of one op.

  If that’s the case, why isn’t it being coordinated between the agents handling the splinter group and me?

  Once I’ve finished reading, I shower, brush my teeth, and climb into bed. It’s not very likely I’ll have a restful night, but it’ll be my last chance to get some decent sleep before the completion of this operation.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not cavalier about taking lives, even if it sounds like I am. I’m not a sociopath who enjoys murdering people for fun.

  What I am is very pragmatic. I have a job to do, and it’s for the greater good. If me killing some shitbag who’s planning to car-bomb a holiday outdoor market full of civvies saves a few hundred lives, I’m happy to do that with a clear conscience. Saves everyone the cost of a trial and years in prison upkeep, too. Not to mention, it makes it impossible for said shitbag to be used as leverage in a prisoner-exchange deal at some future date, or made into a martyr if he decides to go on a bullshit hunger strike for attention and then becomes the darling of neolib bleeding hearts via social media.

  Or, worse, he somehow escapes and goes on to do more heinous deeds while becoming a twisted folk hero in the process.

  A clean, quiet “
disappearance” is far tidier and preferable to any of those options.

  And I use that example simply because it’s one of many that have crossed my path over the years. I’ve liquidated terrorists, assassins, and nuclear scientists working for hostile nations. I’ve taken out adult children of despots who were already eagerly following in their parents’ footsteps. I’ve helped instigate coups to topple dictators, and I’ve poisoned a private jet pilot spiriting a group of rich pedophiles to a private island in the South Pacific for a child sex party.

  Along with many other things I’ve done.

  I’ve never directly killed young children, though. That is a line I will not cross, even when I’ve had to bend my way around orders in the past. Sure, a few innocents have ended up as collateral damage over the years, and I always regret it when that can’t be avoided.

  Except what I do is for the greater good, and all that.

  Mostly. Some of it is a morally grey area, and it’s one of the facets of my career that I’ve come to accept.

  What also strikes me is that this will likely be my last active assignment. At fifty-seven, I am no longer viable in what is admittedly a younger man’s game. I don’t want to go out like Bruce Willis and his gang in RED, with agents young enough to be my grandkids trying to eliminate me.

  I suppose it’s exactly that fictional movie scenario playing in my mind right now.

  Why this job?

  Why now?

  Why me?

  They could send any twenty-something kid in there to follow Fowler and put a bullet in the back of his head when he’s not looking. They could leave some poison on his doorknob to frame the Russians for his death, although that might draw more attention to the case than people above my pay grade are comfortable risking.

  The more I think about it…

  Refusing to take the job short of landing myself in a hospital isn’t an option. But before I close out the books on it, I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing and not someone’s nefarious bidding.