Page 81 of Don't Let Go

“Hmm… I’m seeing a psych hold on his file dating back a decade during recovery time. Remy, it sounds like he had a hard time getting over you.”

“If he’d died that would have solved the issue.” The bland response made McQuade laugh and I had to admit, I grinned. “So, seven years ago, he takes a walk and now he’s in bed with Stone. Who is our third man?”

I flipped back to the screen and stopped cold on the man staring back at me. That was a face I’d never wanted to see again.

“Sugar Bear?” McQuade prompted but I couldn’t find the voice to answer them, not yet.

The man staring back at me stirred up a tempest of memories, all better forgotten. I licked my lips and then did a quick search, looking for a photo to match it too. Maybe I was remembering him wrong.

It had been a few years…

No images were prompted by my search and I had to drill down. He’d been scrubbed. That made sense. We had created sniffers, search and destroy protocols, when necessary, to eliminate public data on our operatives.

It protected them from accidental search and the whole world was connected these days. Those types of programs were exactly how I scrubbed myself, my history, everything about me.

Those programs were how I became nobody. It kept me safe for a long time.

Now that same type of system was protecting him. I didn’t think so. I had caches of data on the dark web, set up andaccessible via IP address and pass code phrases that only I knew the answers to. They were a combo of pop culture and associated candy flavors.

The system made sense to me, and would likely fuck with anyone else. You only got two shots to get it right and then the info would self-nuke.

I found the file I wanted?—

“Fallon,” Locke said softly. “You still there?”

“luv?” Even Remy prompted me, the worry in their voices breached the barricade I erected around myself. It was like the water coming over the storm wall.

“One second,” I managed and it even came out in an even, and grounded voice. “Just verifying.”

The challenge popped up with a Taylor Swift song lyric accompanied by a photo of a woman from the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

The answer was Bruce Springsteen.

The files opened immediately and I paged through them to find the jpegs.

Marty Cartwright stared at me from his identification badge. He’d been my direct report supervisor, and the man who gave me all my instructions. Comparing the photo to the one Remy had sent, I lined them up side by side.

“I know him.” No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep the tremble out of my voice. “I worked for him. When I left Section Five—when I walked away, he was my boss. His name is Marty Cartwright. Or at least, that’s who he went by. That could have been an alias. He certainly doesn’t exist anywhere now.”

The rather generic name returned a lot of possibilities, too many to parse right now. But even using matching data to filter the search didn’t turn up anything with him in it.

“I’ve got a direct line on him,” Remy said, the offer was there. If I wanted him gone, all I had to do was say the word.

“Tempting,” I admitted.

“Do it,” McQuade said. “If he’s in bed with Stone and this Aussie bastard, then we’re better off scratching all of them off. Maybe it doesn’t kill the body, but I’ve always found that cutting off the head can do a lot of damage.”

“But if they aren’t the head,” Locke interjected. “We may be open?—”

An alarm went off and I jerked. Then flipped the screens back. The alarm was an intrusion onmysystem.

“Patch,” Locke said in a tight voice. “Talk to us.”

“Right. Now.” McQuade’s order cut through the chatter and anxiety. “We’re on our way to you.”

“Standby, we’ve been on an open-line between us and someone is trying to tag my system. Pretty sure it’s coming from where you are.” Remy was in a hotel. McQuade and Locke were at that facility.

“What do you need?” Locke was already thinking.

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