Page 68 of Unmade

Well, fuck. How long could it take to drive from Atlanta to DC? Nine, ten, eleven, twelve hours? Fuck if I knew, but something like that.

“So, what’s the plan?” I had to ask.

“For now, not a damn thing.” That frustrated him. I could tell. “We have four operators on the case right now, and my orders are to sit tight.” He flicked me a look. “Don’t say a word about this to anyone, no matter how much you trust them.”

“Of course not.” I frowned. “When was the last update? Like, could they walk into the lobby here in the next hour or so, guns out?”

He chuckled quietly. “No. There are two options. Either they have a new plan to execute, or they were ordered to move closer and wait for further instructions. Could also be a combination of those two. Regardless, they won’t do anything when their last position was a shitty motel south of Atlanta. They’ll likely head to a safehouse nearby, and we’ll know more once we get surveillance up and running.”

A spark of anticipation ignited within me, and I leaned a few inches closer. “How many of them are there? How much do they know about Hillcroft? How do you set up surveillance just like that?”

He smirked wryly, no doubt thinking I was such a newbie for asking those questions, but he humored me. “When they arrived in Galveston, there were three of them. We lost track of one, and then someone else showed up last week. Hillcroft is a Google search away—they know we’re a private military agency. How they’ve figured outIwork here is still a mystery, so…yeah. As for surveillance, we use drones. Some will pick up conversations if the distance isn’t too great, and some can pick up heat signatures and give an operator a good indication of when it’s safe to enter a place to set up a camera feed.”

I really couldn’t fucking wait to become an operator here. This was the life I wanted.

“What if you have a rat?” I wondered. “Someone who fed them intel about your brother and now you?”

He blew out a breath and smiled faintly. “Anything is technically a possibility, but it’s so unlikely that we barely consider it. Every employee here is vetted properly, whether you’re an operator or not, and we’re all on a need-to-know basis.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t been vetted all that much.”

“You also don’t know shit about our operations,” he pointed out.

Hm. He had me there.

“Besides, you were vetted enough,” he went on. “This isn’t the government. In order to approach someone on the inside of Hillcroft, you have to already know the inside. Not even the senior field operators can tell you how Intel runs things, or which of the staff on the higher floors have access to sensitive information.” He paused. “The reason I’m telling you all this is because I want you to lie low for a few days. Don’t leave the building without clearing it with me first, because when push comes to shove, these fuckers still know too much.”

I nodded in understanding. “Yes, sir.” I forked up more food. “You must have your guesses about how they could know about you, though. Right? I mean, you and your brother worked that case for how long…?”

“Almost a year,” he answered. “Of course we have guesses. No matter how careful you are in the field, you’re not the only predator out there. The most probable scenario, which lines up with the fact that we walked into an ambush, was that we got caught in their surveillance at some point. Meanwhile—” he took a swig of his water “—we don’t think this information went up the flagpole—at least not very far—before Vince was murdered, because the ultimate ambush was fairly disorganized and handled by low-ranking street soldiers. In a more orchestrated attack, they would’ve had a leader of some sort who at least tried to dig up more intel. They would’ve been smart enough to use Vince as a bargaining chip to lure me out of hiding.”

“Ifthey knew you were even there,” I said. “Ifyou and Vince were caught on their surveillance and you unknowingly shared enough information to give them something to go on.”

“Right.”

I shook my head and finished the last of my food. Something didn’t sit right with me. How could they be so sure that nobody was fucking them over from inside Hillcroft? Maybe I had my doubts because we were in the middle of studying the Cold War and all the spies and double agents and…fuck.

“You’re not convinced,” Beckett stated.

“No,” I admitted. “How airtight can an agency be? You’re sitting here tellingmethings that feel very classified. What if I was planted by some German crime syndicate? Huh? Think about it. I did serve in Germany. Maybe one of those Hahn goons approached me.”

He smiled and shoveled some food into his mouth. “There’s also the chance Santa’s real and he whispered my name and address into their ears.”

I shot him a look. “First of all, that’s fucking arrogant. Second, Santa doesn’t need the addresses of little shits on his naughty list.”

That made him laugh, and he shook his head and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

“It’s not arrogance talking, Leighton. It’s experience. Why would the Hahns reach out to you about something that hadn’t even occurred yet? What’re the odds of running into someone in Germany who’d already visited Hillcroft months after his mom died? Why recruit a spy on the off chance that someone one day might hire Hillcroft to go against them? Part of training here is to narrow down your search field. The more you know about your target or enemy, the easier it gets to find more intel. And weknowthe crew that fired at Vince. Weknowthey’re low-ranking enough that the higher-ups don’t know who they are. In this chain of command, Karl Hahn’s closest associate in Europe or the Middle East orders someone to handle a shipment coming in through Mogadishu. That person, in turn, has an army of captains or regional presidents, who then give the order to someone a level below. In the grand scheme of things—on a global scale, Leighton—we’re talking dozens of steps down the ladder.” Done with his food, before the plate was empty, he shifted his tray to the side. “This is most likely what’s happening. The captain of the crew responsible for Vince’s death is on a quest to regain his standing with his superior. Considering most of that crew died with Vince, he has to start fresh. He has to recruit new foot soldiers, and that takes a while. He’s low on funds because his position in the Hahn organization is far from ideal. He doesn’t rake it in. But he’s determined, and he manages to disappear with the container ship he once used as a way to get around the world. We lost track of them for months. And now, all of a sudden, they pop up in Texas—on another freighter—with a crew that’s essentially useless.”

Well. Perhaps he knew what he was talking about. Perhaps I had a lot to learn.

“Useless, but they know stuff about you,” I said.

He weighed his answer. “Their intel is outdated. I haven’t lived in my apartment since I rotated back home, and they came looking for me but found a scrappy little shit with incredible aim.”

I smiled and sat a little straighter. “How’s that going, by the way? With Nassim or whatever his name is.”

He shrugged. “Beats me. Once the interrogations concluded—which gave us fuck-all—I was back on a need-to-know basis. But I’m assuming he was slapped with some charges and extradited to Germany.”

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