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“Please. If it’s not an intrusion,” Edge answered.
“Of course not.”
The Invincibles team and I had spent many evenings on this ranch and at this table. Quint’s father was Z Alexander, the current chief of MI6, and our former boss. While the ranch still belonged to Z, Quint had run it for years along with Decker Ashford, who Z had adopted out of foster care when he was a teenager.
“Lynx,” I said, turning to him. “Do you have an answer for us?”
“Soon. I promise.”
I watched as Edge leaned down and murmured something to Decker, who stood and followed him outside.
“What’s going on?” Grinder asked Lynx.
“Something about the murder of a local man.”
It wasn’t long before Lynx left and Decker came back inside.
“There was a murder right before we left for the Chinese mission back in August. Edge believes he may have played a role in it.”
“He didn’t.”
Every head at the table turned to me. I couldn’t explain why I was convinced he hadn’t. As with so many things, it was a feeling.
“A woman was arrested and is currently in county lockup, awaiting trial. Edge says he knows she’s innocent. I’ll contact Mac at the sheriff’s office in the morning and see what else I can find out. Edge plans to visit the jail tomorrow. He’s contacting an attorney now to meet him there.”
I was certain the woman who’d been arrested was innocent, like Edge believed, but this time, I’d keep my premonition to myself.
“The victim had ties to the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas,” Decker reported the next morning. “Hammer was able to negotiate the release of the woman arreste
d for the murder, but there was a condition.”
Sterling Anderson, aka Hammer, was an attorney with ties to the intelligence community, who just happened to live in this part of Texas. “And that was?”
“She’s being released into Edge’s custody.”
I closed my eyes and brushed my lower lip with my finger, processing the information I was foreseeing. The most logical assumption was that someone within the ABT or its parent organization, the Aryan Nation, had murdered the man. The other possibility was that a rival gang was responsible for his death. Either way, it would be difficult to prove who carried out the hit.
Hammer’s best bet to get the woman exonerated was to find enough counter-evidence to prove her innocent, or at least to establish reasonable doubt.
In anticipation of Edge coming to me, asking for the Invincibles to take on this investigation, I made several calls.
The first was to a contact at the CIA, Sumner Copeland. Cope was a handler and would know if the agency had anyone inside either the Aryan Nation or the ABT. If not, we would need to get our own team in place as quickly as possible.
I took another look at the operatives I’d wanted to meet with while I was in the States. There was a good chance we’d need their help on this investigation. Later, I’d give Grinder a list and ask him to reach out to them.
“Smoke is inside the Aryan Nation,” reported Cope when I asked if they had already anyone undercover. As far as operatives went, he was at the top of my list to recruit.
Broderick “Smoke” Torcher was a brilliant agent—a warrior, a renegade, and a bloody genius. There wasn’t a single situation he couldn’t step into and master. The man was older than me by a handful of years, making me believe he would be ready to retire from the agency, given the opportunity.
After my call with Cope ended, I compiled a list of names for Grinder. There were two women included, Calla “Casper” Rey and Siobhan “Siren” Gallagher. Casper was a former CIA agent who’d quit the company and gone independent when her husband, Beau Rey, was killed in what many believed had been friendly fire. However, the CIA wouldn’t own it.
Siren was an active officer in Irish Military Intelligence. Recruiting her would be more difficult, but eventually, I would.
The first three men I added for Grinder to contact were Breckin “Ink” Ryan, Garrett “Rage” Williams, and Mick “Jagger” Reynolds. Ink would be ideal to infiltrate the ABT. Rage and Jagger would prove useful if we needed someone undercover in a rival gang.
If we were able to recruit any or all of this target group, the Invincibles would be capable of handling this investigation as well as take on any other mission presented to us—black ops or otherwise.
Given that no one on the list worked for MI6, I wouldn’t piss off Z Alexander by luring away more of his best talent.
