“Oh, she didn’t marry. The boy’s father is her bodyguard of all people. Nice fella, not sure I like that it got personal, but it was what it was.” Kimble turned emotional again. “They’re missing. That’s why I’m here. I-I can’t do this on my own, and I can’t trust anyone else.”
“What makes you think you can trust us?”
“Lack of options. Common enemy. You knew my daughter. I don’t know.” The man dropped his head. “I don’t know where else to go, and they have them.”
“Who? Who has them?” Luke asked.
“Cartel. I don’t have any other enemies, and I was their biggest.”
“Then why were you about to take Ivy out of hiding if they were still out there?”
“I didn’t know they’d been resurrecting, not at the speed they were. I thought we had it under control, and she’d get her life back, be able to come home.”
“You’re the fucking CIA, Kimble. You really want to play the card of I didn’t know after you just sat here and told us you have the highest security clearance possible?”
“I know. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I really have no other theory here. This is why I couldn’t trust my team. Where do you think my intel comes from? Them. I’ve been played. There’s something much bigger than me and my clearance going on here. I need your help to reel it in and find my family before they hurt them.”
“How do you know they’re alive?” Luke asked.
“Because I’m still alive. They need me. The group that took me, took my grandson. Ivy was at the little market when this happened. I have no idea what happened to her. They interrogated me for days, looking for intel, but I wouldn’t crack. They threatened my grandson… Said they’d find my daughter…”
That had Dace’s attention. If any of this were true, that means there was a good chance Cash had been harmed, and that didn’t sit well with him for obvious reasons.
“Don’t buy it,” Dace said for the other room to hear. “He’s using Cash. He’s threatening him. He knows we have Ivy. Process of elimination – he knows we have her.”
“How did they find you to begin with?”
“A mole.”
“A mole?” Liam asked. “Seriously?”
“Yes. Had to be. The intelligence we were collecting required the highest security clearance there is – higher than the president – so it had to be someone on my team. I think…I think it was the boy’s father. Eli Clayton.”
“What the hell, old man?” Eli said, yelling at the screen. “He knows I’m not the boy’s father, and he knows I didn’t have the intel to trade.”
“You’re unaccounted for,” Dace said. “He’s phishing. Let it go.”
Luke had heard everything said in the other room and agreed with Dace and Eli. “Who is Eli Clayton?”
“He’s an ex-operative. I worked with him on foreign stuff, he turned on his country and came to work for us as a confidential informant. He’s smart, savvy, and I trusted him. That will always be my biggest mistake because it may have cost me my family. He was the only one who knew where Ivy and my grandson were, and he was the only one who knew I was coming to town. This trip was completely off the books; the rest of the team had no idea. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Dace looked at Eli with a questioning eye. “Ex-operative? C.I.? Traitor to your country…wherever that is?”
“Oh please, did you think I learned my shit on the playground at school? Yes, I’m most of those things, but I’m no liar. And he is.”
“I was ready to hand over the last of what we’d been working on so Homeland could make their arrests and I could retire. There are several pending cases with warrants and the like. You can verify that easily to know I’m telling the truth.”
Carter looked at Dace. “He’s being truthful there. We do have several cases pending that are active, but I still feel like we’re being played here. He’s too detailed, well-rehearsed. He knows exactly what to say to get our attention. He knows we’re affiliated, and he’s playing on that.”
“You think he knows you’re here too?” Dace asked.
“Maybe. I was just up north handling a few of these cases when Eli contacted me. If Eli figured it out, it wouldn’t be hard for Kimble – at least to give a good story, anyway.”
“This was all sabotage. I was completely infiltrated, and all those cases are now at risk. This is what they wanted. Cartel has the most to gain by this.”
“How’d you get away, Kimble?” Luke asked, trying to catch the man off guard by switching gears.
“It wasn’t easy. They interrogated me day and night, withheld food, beat me. I’d been moved to multiple locations in a short amount of time. I think they were afraid the cavalry would be coming. The last night, we were down south on some kind of farm. The small crew left to watch me had a little too much to drink by the campfire. Pretty cliché, really. I asked to go to the bathroom, and they let me go alone because, well…I told them I had to defecate, and none wanted to assist, as you can imagine. I took my opportunity to run. That’s how I got the gunshot wound to my arm. If not for the booze, I’m sure I would be caught or dead.”
“And you just walked straight here,” Luke deadpanned.
“No, of course not. I have my own places to hide with transportation. You don’t get this deep in the agency and not have your own collection. Trust nobody – that’s the CIA. I did what I could to gather information, but there wasn’t a trail to follow. That’s why I think Eli Clayton turned and started working for them. He saw to it there was no trail.”
“The man’s lying. For Christ's sake, hand him the Oscar and call it a night.” Eli turned away from the screen and rand his hands through his hair in a huff. “How? How did I do all that when he’s the fucking agent with resources at his disposal?”
Luke heard Eli’s question and thought it was a good one. “So this Eli guy…he’s an agent?”
“Yes,” Kimble said. “He has to be. I think he was placed to watch me. I was getting to close to something. Something big.”
“This is sounding familiar,” Dace said. “It’s like he’s reciting something right out of our playbook.”
“If the cartel had this type of resurgence, they didn’t do it alone. They did it with help and resources, likely from our government if I’m this level of threat. This thing goes really high. I hate to say it, but our government has their hands all over this, and they’re in the cartel’s back pocket.”
“What would our government stand to gain by getting into bed with the cartel?”
“Everything. Drugs, money, power, their own off-book militia… Don’t underestimate the value of an outlaw. Our government is full of them.”
“Okay. Why now?”
“That, I don’t know. That’s where you come in. I know you’ve been running ops in the background of almost every mission I’ve been a part of. I know who you are, who you’re connected with, and what you’re capable of.”