“You’re exactly right.” Liam came through clear on the comms. “You guys are right in the heart of the system.”
Dace was piecing it all together. “We can see him traveling still, to your right.”
“Well, there are a couple of options to my right.”
“Get back to Watermark, no need to follow him,” Dace said. “I think he just showed us how he got in and out without notice, and how he’s been here for days, maybe weeks, undetected.”
CHAPTER 31
“He’s a high-level detainee who is also an informant,” Carter told the group, delivering an unexpected break in the case. “He was pulled back in for a different case and started singing…about everything.”
“And he gave you all this shit on Kimble?” Dace asked with a satisfied grin.
“Sure did. He knew we were on Kimble and tossed it in for total immunity on that case too.” Carter tossed a file on the table. “It’s all in there.”
“So Kimble was an informant too?” Dace asked.
“Yes. They were both working with this backroom group made up of all sorts of officials from all over DC. Turns out, Kimble was running an unsanctioned black ops unit to do all their dirty work. Both were informants, infiltrating, and reporting on each other while the club stayed off everyone’s radar.”
“So we have a bigger issue than Kimble and the cartel,” Dace pointed out.
“Perhaps. But we can dig into that later. He isn’t telling us everything, and the club went silent. He’s getting a deal for turning over the operatives and Kimble now. That’s how I got brought in – the operatives are a part of my pending cases. They’re basically a militia for hire, and that’s how they’re resurging.”
“This is a part of Esteban’s cartel.” Declan was especially riled by that idea. Declan met his wife, Lydia, when he was a part of her protection detail, hired by Esteban Valdez. She’d been none the wiser to his illegal activities and wound up under Brother’s Keeper’s protection when she witnessed her husband murder a man.
Esteban took a fatal hit in a standoff that nearly cost the brothers more lives. Since they’d been dismantling his organization with the help of their operative, Eva, who also happened to be Esteban’s daughter. Valdez had been one of the world's most dangerous criminals and always managed to stay out of legal trouble because he owned the local law enforcement, judicial system, and public officials. The man was fucking dangerous, and any remnants of him were a threat.
“It is, and they’ve managed to get this far without any attention, not even Eva’s. Whoever is at the helm of this thing is who we want. He or she is how we close these cases and how we continue to interfere with these organizations and rattle their foundation, so they all fall,” Carter said. “For now, we start at the bottom. We need Kimble.”
Dace was pacing the room. Something was still off about the entire thing where Kimble was concerned. “I believe him. I believe David was truthful. At least most of the time.”
“What the hell, man?” Eli said. “You think this is me?”
“No. I think he was testing us to see if we were an option or an enemy. He really doesn’t know who to trust. He knew you were here. Ivy was here…he has your pictures, alive and well, from days ago on his wall. And who hangs a wall like that – goes to the trouble to print pictures. It’s ridiculous when you think about it.”
“I’m still not following,” Luke said, gaining several head nods in support.
“He was played. Someone turned on him, and he doesn’t know who. The men who showed up and took him at Moss Bridge were his men—”
“Who turned on him,” Eli stated. “They double-crossed him and took orders from someone with more power than Kimble.”
“Bingo. He knew we had Ivy and Eli and wanted to feel us out because he really did question their loyalty and affiliation. He came here and refused protection because he wanted us to tail him, find his safe house, find all that shit in there. He was feeding us clues because he really is in too deep and needed someone to come looking if he disappeared.”
“What does that mean for the deal going down over on the beach?” Declan asked.
“It means he was probably a part of it, and it didn’t go as planned. Maybe he wasn’t there voluntarily.” Dace sat down and blew out a deep breath. “It means his black ops militia for hire was never in his back pocket like he thought. Everyone turned on him, and he doesn’t know who ordered it.”
“Dace, what you’re suggesting is…” Carter shook his head as the words he was trying to say stalled. “It’s… It’s fucking huge. Bigger than we initially thought. His clearance goes higher than the president of the United States. You know what that means?”
“It means we could be dealing with anyone, including foreign and domestic governments and defenses.” Dace nodded. “This shit goes above our pay grade, boys. DC has a little dirt under its nails, and we might be the only ones not on a terror groups’ payroll.”
“He may not be behind Ivy’s attack, or Cash,” Eli pointed out. “We need to get him back in here.”
“Too late,” Liam said. “Just got a coded message on our offline system.”
“How the fuck did he get access?”
“No clue. I’ll deal with that later. But I’ll tell you what I do know. The only way to crack our tech is with our tech, and there’s only one other place in the world you’ll find comparable – I created it for certain branches of our government. There’s a fucking clue.” Liam seethed, angry a loophole was found in his work. “His message said he’s been found and going underground. May have a critical lead. He’ll be in touch.”
“Have Ronan and Ryker grab him,” Dace said to Wylie.
“You’re too late.” Liam was frustrated as his fingers glided not so gingerly across his keyboard. “He’s not in town. He found a way around all of them. All of the teams guarding the tunnel outlets. He’s thirty miles outside Portland, headed to the coast.”
“Dace.” Carly came bursting into the lair with a tear-stained face and panicked. “She’s gone. Ivy’s gone. She went to the gym downstairs and didn’t come back. When I went to check on her, she wasn’t there. Her towel was on the floor, and her water bottle tipped over…and this.”
“It’s a satellite text communicator.” Wylie grabbed the device and turned it on. “There are a few messages on here. Looks like she got it yesterday. Or at least the first message came yesterday?”
“How the hell did it get in the building? And why didn’t we pick it up?” Dace fumed.
Liam put images up on the screen of video footage moving in double time until it went black for a moment. When it came back on, Ivy was on the other side of the entry door and climbing into a car.
“No alarms, no alerts, nothing…” Liam said. “He fucking jammed us. He fucking jammed it all. Son of a bitch. That’s how he got her out of the building. I don’t know how he got that texter in the building, but once inside, it wouldn’t be detected because we have all sorts of signals coming and going in here. It’s only the outside we block from getting in. Shit. A security upgrade is a must now. They have too much of our technology.”