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“Shit.” Wolfe’s muscular frame seemingly shrank five sizes as he sat deeper into the chair. He kept his stare on Zaki, who wore the traditional Arabic attire of a white kandura and a head scarf, called a keffiyeh, which was kept in place with an agal. His keen eyes, like two black holes, seemed to take in everything and nothing at the same time.
Holographic or not, Zaki’s arrival never ceased to stir a whirlwind of emotions, good and bad, inside of me. I’d trained myself not to let any of them show.
“Welcome, sir. As you’re aware, we’ve initiated Obsidian Protocol. Focusing on the positive, the rescue team succeeded in retrieving all of the passengers. There was no loss of life, which is obviously the most important thing. No deaths also means we will be able to downplay the rescue and avoid media attention. Nor should there be any investigations.”
I glanced at the live feed of Colton’s rescue boat, catching the distressed wreckage burning in the background before it exploded in a giant fireball. Shock, fear, and relief to be alive played out on the young survivors’ faces. I turned back to OZ. “As you can see, our new guests are en route. They will be evaluated for any medical needs and given five-star care. Vivi’s team is prepping for their arrival. Pilot is on standby to fly them to Nassau as soon as it’s appropriate. Naturally, I&A is running thorough backgrounds and biometrics.”
My fingertips twitched, knowing what Zaki’s response would be.
“Why were they here?”
“We’re working on that, sir,” Gracelyn “Gray” Bauer, I&A’s crackerjack cyberstalker, piped up from her screen on the wall.
Even at this hour of night, the southern belle’s coppery chestnut hair had curled-for-church ends and her monogrammed, chambray blue oxford PJs were wrinkle-free. I’d bet money she was already sipping a tanker of sweet tea, knowing this would be an all-nighter.
“So far, I can tell you the boat belongs to a charter company in Nassau which specializes in extreme diving adventures,” Gray continued. “They also have a solid history of discovering shipwrecks and bringing up artifacts.”
“Colton’s already reported his initial site exploration,” Wolfe jumped in to say. “There was diving equipment and a side scan sonar on board. He was able to retrieve computer equipment.”
“Get it to me, we’ll have the techs get on that ASAP,” Scott Hayes, Director of I&A, spoke up from his home base in Washington D.C. From the way he was wedged up close to the table, I was pretty sure he was wearing a button-down and tie on top and boxers below.
“Thanks, Hayes, I’ll go ahead and handle it on this end,” I volunteered, albeit not altruistically. I wanted a crack at the data before anyone else could see what, if anything, the sonar had picked up.
“Thank you, Zee,” Scott said. “We’ll be getting more information once the storm passes Nassau, but it’s possible they’d simply been blown off course via strong current systems.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Zaki reprimanded.
I didn’t either, not given the distressed ship’s precise coordinates. Plus a sonar meant they were looking for something very specific. It could’ve been schools of fish, could’ve been shipwrecks, could be something more. But lightning wasn’t prone to striking twice in the same spot.
“Of course, sir,” Hayes quickly amended. “We aren’t ruling out any options. And, sir, since we have you, I wanted to alert you to the presence of a possible new invisible working the Amazon region. Not sure yet if this is a narco or human trafficker exactly.”
I grunted. “Just when I think I know all the spiders, along comes a new one.”
Flamboyant drug barons and infamous kingpins were a thing of the past. New generations of narcos operated in the shadows and off most everyone’s radar. Hence the invisibles moniker. They were clever masterminds of business and technology. Even the US government had given them the distinction of DTOs, Drug Trafficking Organizations, as a testament to the stability of their business structure. Their empires were diversified and imbedded with legitimate investments, and they had power and profits that made most Fortune 500 corporations look like lemonade stands.
“Alvarez will take care of them,” Wolfe said, his usual confidence settling back in. “Nice thing about trash is it likes to take itself out.”
“Someone’s taking out the trash, but it’s not Marco Alvarez.”
“Not Marco?” I asked. With the emerald mine in Brazil, Beryl had been forced to co-exist alongside of the Alvarez Cartel. We didn’t work with Marco, but we didn’t work against him either. As long as we stayed out of each other’s way, we had a tenuous version of peace. But our concord looked to be coming to an end, and not because of Marco.
Hayes nodded and continued, “Rumint coming in suggests that in the past three days, several of Marco’s top men were eliminated by a highly specialized sicario.”
“Shit,” Wolfe muttered, echoing my own thoughts.
Rumint. How much was rumor and how much was actual intel was always a concern. But Scott Hayes rarely, if ever, brought intel to Zaki that wasn’t actionable. He likely had dangled the trinket of information as a way to soften the blow of Zaki’s earlier reprimand, but still, Hayes had to believe a sicario single-handedly dismantling Alvarez’s cartel had some credibility. My mind could scarcely wrap around how, though. Marco’s top men, his cousins, ran a tight ship and were excessively brutal. For them to fall like dominos? Very few people had the skill and the balls to pull something like that off so quickly.
A devil I didn’t know was never a good thing.
“Who’s the sicario?”
“Good question, Zee,” Hayes said. “Hitman’s currently ghost status too.”
Ghost. The only one I knew of worked for us and he was on vacation…in Brazil.
The room blurred as my mind attempted to process what my heart couldn’t. Had Coop gone rogue? Was he working for this new entity? Had he turned? On me?
Sensing everyone’s eyes focused my direction, I schooled my expression. Afraid the quiver in my heart would come out in my voice, I looked pointedly at Zaki. Below the table, my fingers twitched.
