Page 60 of S.O.S. Mizzay

Call her superstitious, but those words would never pass over her tongue.

“We already know all this, Agent Andriopolos,” Smalley growled.

Ooh.He was really angry. He never called her anything but Missy.

“Get to the point,” he snapped.

Seriously? He thought she was going to take that from him? How about she—?

“Uh, not to be a pain, Agent Smalley,” Prez spoke out, cutting off the tirade she’d been conjuring. He smirked directly at Chuck. “Youagencypeople might know all this stuff already, but SOS is only now being brought up to speed. So please, if you will, let the lady talk.” His amusement chilled as his attitude became lethal, almost daring Chuck to speak again.

“Yes. Stand down Agent Smalley,” Baskins put in, circumventing a possible fight. “Or rather…” Baskins paused, regarding Chuck closely before glancing around the table. “You know what? We’re all friends here, and this mission is off the books, so let me be blunt. Cut the shit, Chuck. I don’t know what stick you have up your ass, but we’re all here trying to help.”

Smalley’s eyes grew angrily narrowed before he sprang to his feet. “Help? Is that what you call this? Because from where I stand, it looks like we’re flushing fourteen years’ worth of work down the toilet. We’ve kept Sawyer safe all this time. Now we’re just going to throw him to the wolves?”

“Sit,” Baskins barked. “We’re not throwing anyone, anywhere. We’re only here to listen to a plan right now. A plan we won’t act on it until everyone agrees we have an air-tight way to move forward.”

Smalley slowly lowered back to his chair, but clearly he wasn’t happy.

“Okay,” Del spoke up patiently. “So now that weallhave some background on our suspects, tell us what resolution you’ve come up with, Mizzay.”

This was it. Do or die.

Missy understood that if her pitch didn’t go well, Cobble would be told to go back into hiding. Indefinitely. Which he absolutely would not do. If these best-of-the-best here today couldn’t come to a consensus, Cobblewouldgo rogue.

Of that, Missy had no doubt.

She took a deep breath.

“First of all,” Missy spread her fingers on the table, fanning them out to ground herself, “we need a fall guy among the FBI ranks.” She looked at Baskins, Smalley, Tertia, and Vessers. “We’ve purposely left the DOJ out of things for the past few years, keeping them completely in the dark about who, here, is still investigating, hoping someone would become complacent and make a mistake. They haven’t, but don’t youze worry. What I’m proposing will hopefully remedy that.”

“Howevah,” she took a deep breath, “a number of people currently working in the Boston FBI office now know the investigation has never been completely dropped; that it’s been percolating on the back burner. Therefore, I propose we bring it to a boil again, front and center, making an arrest to set in motion the rest of our plan. We need the arrest to look believable, and once we have our fake ‘traitor’ in custody, we can start our subsequent balls rolling.”

Baskins sat back with a smile on his face. “I think I like where this is going,” he praised, bringing his palms together in front of him, almost as if in prayer.

Missy risked a glance at Chuck, but he was still sullen.

Fine, if that’s the way he wanted to play it.

“I’ll volunteer,” Agent Vessers threw out, raising her hand. “I’ll be your scapegoat.”

It was a nice offer, but not only did Perk’s face grow red as his new wife volunteered— looking like he was going to explode any minute—but Vessers wasn’t the right person.

“Thank you for your offer, Sloane.” Missy adored the eager woman, and was sorry she didn’t fit the bill. “But you haven’t been with the Bureau long enough. This all started fourteen ye-az ago, and youze have only got ten under your belt.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Agent Elody Tertia rose to her feet. “I’ve been around for the entire time,andI’m not exactly buddy-buddy with the three agents here whom you’ve targeted. That means they won’t know if it’s out of character for me to be implicated.”

“No!” Chuck exploded out of the blue, his chin actually quivering as he spoke to Elody. “I’m not having you put your career on the line for this.”

Ahh.Here it was.

Missy and her colleagues had been speculating—ever since Tertia and Smalley had pretended to be Perk’s parents in a previous case—that there might be something going on between the pair.

Chuck’s attitude confirmed it.

“Don’t go there, Chuck,” Elody cautioned, narrowing her eyes at him. “Idecide what I will and will not do. Not you.” She was clearly winding up to deliver yet another hardball. “And seriously? It’s about time you stop thinking about everything in terms of how it affectsyou.”

“What are you talking about,” he growled.

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