Page 98 of Passion and Payback

“That would be my guess, yeah.”

“I...don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Your face says you’re not happy, but you’re not going to throw a fit.”

“That’s...close, yeah. If he got the information you wanted, then heard the news, it was probably easy to figure out what happened.”

“Probably,” I said with a smirk.

He gave me a withering look. “Point is, if he figured it out and sent you more stuff, I’m guessing that’s his way of accepting it since it’s going to help.”

“That would be a pretty fair assumption,” I said with a shrug. “He’s not one for being direct if he can avoid it, and this feels like a very Stitch way of giving me his stamp of approval. Which begs a lot of questions about him as a person and what he’s doing these days.”

“Questions you won’t be asking,” Hunter said knowingly.

“Right you are,” I said with a snort. “Ask him no questions, and he’ll tell you no lies. Plus, if it’snotthe government he’s working for, that’s even more reason to keep my nose out of his business.”

“What, a mercenary group like those guys Mitchell had?” he asked curiously as steam from the frying meat rose into the air.

“There are more groups and organizations out there than just mercenary groups,” I said seriously. “Intelligence agencies that work under the radar while still being open secrets because every nation with the connection and money wants to use them. Wetwork organizations of different moral qualities?—”

“Wetwork? What, like killing people?”

“You could call them assassins, but that’s a little Hollywood.”

“And I assume ‘killer for hire’ sounds like hiring some random thug off the street.”

“Pretty much.”

“Of course. We wouldn’t want to offend the people who kill for money by labeling them something too basic or corny...onsecond thought, no, that’s an excellent idea. Let’s not offend them.”

I smirked. “A good thing most of them are treated with respect and aren’t touchy and prone to killing random people for insulting them, accidentally or otherwise. At least, that’s what I’ve gathered.”

“What would stop one of those groups from not being so in control?”

“Probably because there are more groups out there that are in control and professional. They have more resources and connections, making them better equipped and trained and unwilling to deal with people going crazy.”

“Are you telling me these assassin groups keep other groups from doing what they want because it would make them look bad?”

“It’s pretty common. When you operate outside the law, particularly international law, you want to avoid crossing too many lines. If another group or one of their own starts making too much mess or noise? Well, you don’t want attention drawn to you or to scare off potential customers, so you deal with it in-house.”

“Assassins killing assassins,” he said, turning to grab the veggies and sauce. “It does sound like a movie.”

“And that’s not including the cells that operate under government control,” I said, frowning at the thought. The conversation reminded me of a few groups that primarily operated through information gathering and selling. There were the alphabet agencies, of course, but other, far more infamous groups operated independently of any government.

Which presented more questions about my friend Stitch that I still wasn’t going to ask.

“And how do you know about all this? I can’t imagine you ran into it doing military stuff.”

“I was co-opted by many different groups,” I said with a shrug. “I can’t even tell you all the players in the game, but the rule of thumb was don’t ask questions, and if you hear something you weren’t supposed to? No, you didn’t.”

He turned to eye me. “And how many of them tried bringing you on board?”

“A few,” I answered slowly. “Never was given much information about who made the offer, but I was able to put together some pieces for a couple of them.”

“And those couple were?”

“Either the FBI or CIA, for one, I’m leaning more toward CIA, though. They operate internationally, more than people know, and are always under the radar. They’re known to poach from the military if they can. And the other one, I’m pretty sure was The Company.”

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