Page 76 of Be Courageous

“What’s going on?” The question was for McKenzie.

“I’m so sorry.” She spoke with breathless apology.

Miles looked back at the man in the suit. “Let me guess. You’re McKenzie’s case handler.”

His father answered. “Miles, put the gun away and let us in.”

His hopes blown away, Miles met McKenzie’s pleading gaze. It persuaded him to put his Glock away and admit the trio before shutting the door firmly. Did his father not realize that Higgins’s negligence had gotten McKenzie abducted in the first place? Planting himself in the middle of the room, Miles folded his arms across his chest and glared at his father. “Start explaining.”

“Let’s all take a seat,” Higgins suggested.

Really? He needed to be sitting for this? With a sigh of frustration, Miles approached McKenzie, who searched his face with remorse. Taking her hand gently, he let her know none of this was her fault before drawing her down beside him on the end of the nearest bed.

His father occupied the armchair by the window, and Higgins had straddled the desk chair, sitting on it backward, in lieu of turning it around. “Well?” Miles prompted.

His father met his impatient glare and grimaced. “The first thing you should know, Miles, is that Higgins didn’t intentionally hang McKenzie out to dry. What happened last night was a sting operation gone bad. We’ve been setting a trap.”

Miles divided an incredulous gaze between them. “You’re working together? Trapping who?”

His father pitched his voice lower. “The Architect.”

The name sharpened Miles’s attention. “Oh. I knew he had something to do with this.” More than one broken Centurion had dropped The Architect’s name during interrogation, imbuing him with godlike powers to protect the Cohort. “Let me guess. He’s infiltrated the U.S. Marshal’s Service.”

“Worse than that.” Dad’s tone was grim. “But we know who he is now.”

Miles blinked in confusion. “What could be worse, and why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“Because The Architect’s been watching you.”

A shiver ran through Miles. “Who is he? And how?”

Dad glanced at Higgins, who gestured for him to go ahead and tell.

“He’s the executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch. As such, he has oversight of the CID. I’m sure you’ve heard of Steven Sauers.”

Goose bumps ridged Miles’s forearms as he pictured a benign-looking, ginger-haired man with spectacles. “Him?”

His father nodded. “Sauers spent three years in Savannah in the late seventies. Learning that was my first break in the case. He joined the Centurion Cohort when Jared Jones’s father was its leader. The membership rosters weren’t kept on computers back then, and the physical ledger with Sauer’s name in it went missing decades ago.”

“How do you know he was actually a member, then?”

His father smiled rather smugly. “A diligent bookkeeper backed up all the records onto microfiche.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Miles thought for a minute. “If he’s been protecting Centurions, how come so many are going to jail?”

“Well, it’s not a question of loyalty.” Drake shrugged. “It’s a question of extortion. For those who could pay—Ashton Ravenel, for instance—Sauers offered his protection and made the evidence vanish on our end. He let the Centurions who couldn’t pay burn, safe in the knowledge that they couldn’t finger him, as he’s hidden his identity for decades.”

Miles ran a hand through his hair. “Wow. But there still had to be a leak in WITSEC for him to find McKenzie.”

“There was no leak.” Higgins smiled apologetically. “McKenzie admitted to us she’d called you twice, once from Omaha and another time from Portland. Both times, Centurions showed up a short time later searching for her. Her calls toyouwere what gave her away.”

Miles glanced at McKenzie. “But I use a secure phone. How’s that possible?”

“I had the same question,” Higgins admitted. “So, I went to your father with my suspicions, and he confirmed the only way to monitor your phone was from inside the Bureau.”

His father gestured. “Remember that mandatory software upgrade on your phone a few years back? Every field agent in the Bureau had to have it, allegedly for security purposes. That was Sauers’s doing. We think he uploaded software onto your phone that allowed him to bug your calls—in fact, any conversation you have withinrangeof your phone, whether it’s turned on or not, was probably being monitored.”

Those words answered a question that had hitherto puzzled Miles. “That’s why you said on the plane that you knew what was going on, and I didn’t have to explain it.”

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