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Ace was the first one in the door. He hadn’t been to this particular building, but it seemed Bill had a decent setup here. A large desk sat at the back of the room, with papers scattered all over it. Two chairs faced the desk. There was a worn leather couch in the back of the room and an empty coffeepot on the table next to it.
Bill stood as Ace entered the room. He scanned Ace’s brothers before his eyes returned to Ace. He must have deemed them trustworthy, because he
didn’t seem on high alert.
“Glad to see you here, Ace. I’m sorry it took us so long to figure this out,” Bill said as he stepped out and shook Ace’s hand.
“Do you have any useful information for me?” Ace asked, wanting to get directly to the point.
Though Bill was only in his early fifties, a life of chasing criminals had aged him. Dark circles were a permanent fixture on his face, and his lips rarely ever turned up into a smile. He’d been divorced twice and never got to see his children. That, almost more than anything else, had Ace thinking it was time to get out of the CIA. He didn’t want to end up bitter and alone in some crappy apartment in a city filled with crime. Before coming back to where he’d grown up, he’d had no idea how important his home life was to him.
“I think we have valid information, but I’m having a difficult time knowing who I can trust at the moment. I only have six agents here in this building with me, and they are men I would risk my life for . . . so at least here, we’re secure,” Bill replied.
“I’m not sure I trust anyone but my family and you at this point,” Ace told the man.
“Yeah, I can see why you feel that way, but not everyone is a bad guy in disguise, Ace,” Bill said.
“That’s not what I’m experiencing right now,” Ace argued.
“You can’t do this on your own, so you’re not going to get much of a choice in getting assistance. I have a plan I want to go over with you, but you have to be willing to cooperate for it to work,” Bill told him. “You were on a case that went very public. We knew there could be some consequences from it. Now, we’re facing some of those. When we catch up to Nestor, we will get him behind bars, and this will be over.”
“Until another long-lost sibling emerges,” Ace muttered.
“Trust me, I’ve been through this case with a fine-tooth comb, and I don’t see how anyone could have known this was coming. Nestor wasn’t a part of this family. There were no documents until he stepped up and took ownership.”
“I don’t want to look back at what could have been done differently, I want to know what we’re going to do from here on out,” Ace said.
“We got the shooter from last night. He’s been interrogated, and we got some information from him,” Bill said.
That stopped Ace from speaking for a moment. He would really like to get his hands on even just one of the men who had put Dakota in danger. That had been an unforgivable offense.
“How do you know he isn’t just feeding you a line of crap?” Ace asked.
“We don’t know for sure, but he seems more than willing to cooperate to save his own ass,” Bill said.
“Maybe we should talk to him,” Mav piped in.
“That’s not going to happen,” Bill told Ace’s overeager brother. Ace had been thinking the same, though. Great minds and all.
“The agent told us Nestor is pissed. You were an outsider invited into his family home while he wasn’t. Then you killed off his brother. He feels he will never get to make the connection he so desperately wanted with Anton. Sounds like he has some issues of his own to resolve, and you have become the focus of his wrath. He wants you dead.”
“I know he wants me dead. The bullets flying at my head tell me that much,” Ace said with a huff.
“He’s willing to kill anyone in his way—not only willing, but glad to do it,” Bill said. “Apparently, torture and murder come easily to him. He likes to terrorize his victims before he does them in.”
“Sounds like just another day at the office,” Ace said with a humorless laugh.
“You might not like the plan I’ve come up with,” Bill said.
Ace was ready for this to end, so he didn’t care how it had to happen.
“Why don’t you just spill it so we can prepare?” Cooper said, losing patience with this entire meeting. Ace could understand how his brother was feeling. He wanted it over with too.
There was a window in the back of the room. Ace moved over to it while Bill shuffled through the papers on his desk. There was a perfect view of Mount Rainier from where he was standing, and for some reason, it calmed him.
He’d hiked that mountain many times in his youth, had spent a lot of time there skiing with his brothers as well. He’d been away from home for a long time, and even with the bad guys still on his heels, he was where he belonged, and he had no doubt this would get fixed.
Ace didn’t believe he was invincible, but he had been in sticky situation after sticky situation throughout most of his adult life. For that matter, he’d been just as reckless as a child and felt he had cheated death on more occasions than the average person.
