Page 63 of The Ghost Assassin

I eye list and then him. “The Vice President?”

“He was a senator at the time, but yes.”

“How long did this committee run?”

“Six months,” he says. “But it dissolved three years ago. If this is related, that doesn’t sit well. It means whoever was pissed off, stayed pissed off for a long time.”

He’s right. Acid in a pot boils to poison.

I hand the list to Tic Tac but focus on Ellis. “I need a list of people you collectively pissed off.”

He motions to all the boxes—of which there are twelve. “That’s your list. Every decision we made impacted someone positively and someone negatively.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I wish I were,” he says.

I sigh and motion to Jay, Jack, and Enrique. “You’re all getting a crash course on what to look for in these files. It’s going to be a long night.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Our little makeshift team spends tedious hours going over files, hunting for anything that tells us the story we need to hear, or triggers something relevant to the case for Ellis. Nothing seems to lead us where we need to go, which I’m beginning to think is another direction.

Desperate to turn this around, I show Ellis the list of dark web prospective assassins Jack shoved at me outside Murphy’s apartment building. “I’ve heard of three and five,” he says, “but no one feels like our guy any more than the other.”

“Maybe it’s a soldier?” Tic Tac offers. “Someone who was trained to kill and conduct a covert operation?”

“That’s half the boxes,” Ellis says. “We’re the government. Military is our middle name.”

At some point, I fall asleep with my face in a file.

I know this because I jolt at the sound of my cellphone ringing and jerk my head upright.

I glance around the room to realize it’s dark, nightfall upon us, and the only person awake other than me is Ellis, who’s looking through files. I eye my caller ID to find Adams’ number, not Kane’s, who I was hoping for. It’s ten, more than twelve hours since Kane left the apartment. Where the hell is he? I decline the call and eye the three files in front of Ellis.

Tic Tac and Jack stretch and sit up. “What did I miss?” Tic Tac asks.

“Yeah, what did I miss?” Jack chimes in.

Meanwhile, Enrique sits up from where he was crashed on the floor and reaches for a pizza box, while Jay just doesn’t move. We’re torturing him with files. He’s such a wuss.

“What’s with those three files?” I ask Ellis, tapping the top one.

“I picked out files that connect to the people I think we screwed the most.”

“Oh, joy. You were a wonderful group of do-gooders, weren’t you? What’s the fourth file sitting to the side?”

“The worst of the lot, but the guy is dead. He killed himself.”

“You must have fucked him like a champion,” I reply. “What made his life not worth living?”

“Clyde Walker and his company held a top-secret government contract for years. Marie Rodriguez wanted to hand it to someone new, who she said brought a fresh perspective.”

“A friend,” I assume.

“I suspected as much. I actually voted against the change, but the now VP cast the deciding vote.”

“I have something,” Jack says, and he’s really been remarkably not irritating. I’m not sure what to think about that. “The dark web now thinks the assassin is a newcomer.”

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