"It's a pretty similar background as anyone else in a job like ours." She owed some truth about her past and this she could give him. "I came up in counterintelligence. Cut my teeth on field ops, surveillance, assets, the whole circus. Undercover's just counter intel with better lighting and worse hours."
"You're not wrong about that." His brow furrowed, and he rubbed the back of his neck.
She'd seen him do that a time or two when he was working out a problem at the bar with the team. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"How much of what you did and what Mark did crossed over?"
"There was some, but I moved into national security work right around the time he and I met. Different lane. We compared notes the way married people do, but not the way partners do. Why?"
"I don't know if I would've ever told you this or not. But I see no reason not to now." Sterling set his glass down on the deck beside his chair. "Have you ever heard of the Shrike Collective?"
"Excuse me." The glass slipped from her hand. It hit the deck and came apart, the sharp tones of shattering glass filled the quiet, followed by bourbon fanning darkly across the wood.
Sterling swung his legs to the side. "I'll take that as a yes." Crouching, he picked the big pieces out of the mess. "Hang tight. I'll be right back."
Where the hell was she going to go? She sat there staring out into the dark water. The channel buoys flashed green and red. In the distance, a white light lingered in the bay. A boat, perhaps. She wasn't sure, but it didn't matter. It was just something to focus her attention on while she allowed the word to settle in her brain.
Twice in less than a week.
It had crossed her mind often over the few years, but she'd never been able to put the puzzle pieces together. Hell, she'd never been able to find the majority of the pieces. None that fit with the few she had, anyway.
Sterling returned with a towel. He handed it to her while he took a small handheld broom and dustpan and finished cleaning up the mess. Seconds later, he disappeared again, only to return with a fresh glass. He poured her a new drink and held it out. "Here."
She wrapped both hands around the tumbler and cleared her throat. "Is that what you and Mark talked about?" Before the op that had taken her husband's life, Shrike had been an obsession that Mark couldn't let go. Not that she’d wanted him to. She understood his drive. His passion. His need to find the source and shut it down.
It hadn’t been her fight. But she wouldn't have wanted to take it away from Mark.
She believed it was real and more importantly, she believed in Mark.
"It was." Sterling sat at the edge of her lounge chair and rested a hand on her knee. "I'd been team leader on a couple of JSOC ops with Nick that Mark figured ran close to Shrike. Nick thought it might be a good idea for Mark and I to meet and have a chat. So, we did."
"And?"
"I gave him what I knew. Told him about a few other ops I thought could be connected. We promised we'd keep in touch." He squeezed her knee. " Nick, Parker Knot, over at DEA, Hoyt Maddison who works for Homeland, and I have kept a text thread going for years, comparing what each of us learned."
"They all knew Mark."
"I know, but I wasn't sure if you knew them."
"They both came to Mark's funeral."
Sterling ran his fingers through his hair. "I still speak to them every now and again. Parker and Hoyt have been following Shrike longer and have a deeper understanding than Nick and I do. They have a concept about operators and how they move in and out. But not one of us can put a name to whoever's standing behind it. We've all tried to find someone who would talk. Parker located one man who came close." He picked his bourbon up off the deck. "He's dead now."
"One of the men on the raid that killed Mark was working for Shrike." She couldn't help but fall back on the idea that coincidences didn't belong in the world of covert ops. The fact that she was in Calusa Cove, with a man who had working knowledge of an organization that didn’t exist on paper, but had most likely killed her husband. And now people who may have been involved with that same organization were falling from trees like iguanas on a cold day in January?
Yeah, that didn't add up to something that just happened.
"What? Are you sure?"
"I can't be a hundred percent positive, but ten minutes before Mark left the house, he got a call. I don't know who it was, and Mark had been running late, but he got off the phone lit up like a lighthouse. Said they had a lead on a guy willing to talk about Shrike." She swiped at her cheek. "A few hours later, Mark was dead."
Sterling inched closer, wiping away a few more tears. "I talked to Nick a few times about the raid. He never said one word about anybody on that team being involved in Shrike."
"I never said it was someone from the team. Besides, Nick was out of the country." Mark had always told her there were others working behind the scenes helping him, feeding him intel. Since she trusted Mark, she hadn’t needed the details. She was glad she’d never asked. If she had, she might not be sitting in this chair right now. Knowing someone like Sterling had been looking into Shrike, and maybe Mark's death, began to soften the knot of anger and frustration that she'd been carrying for far too long.
"Did you tell Nick about the call?" Sterling yanked his cell from his pocket and texted Nick.
"I did. I also told my current handler." She narrowed her stare. "I've had cases that were Shrike adjacent come across my desk… what are you thinking?"
