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James pulled out the chair next to Samuel, taking a seat. “I don’t,” he said quickly. “Call it gut instinct... But, Fred had a sister he told me he’d lost contact with. He said he hadn’t seen her for years. I knew him and he would never have given up looking for her. Maybe he finally found her...” James said bitterly, shaking his head.
“So then, she killed her brother?” Samuel asked.
James heard the doubt in his voice, and he understood it. But, it wouldn’t be the first time a family member had knocked off a sibling.
“Let’s just say Fred had been searching for her for all these years,” James said, thinking aloud. “He becomes a CIA agent, then works his way up to the head of the CIA. Suddenly, he has every resource at his disposal to find his long-lost sister. Then, when he finally does, he realizes she’stheBlack Widow. So, what does he do?” James asked, taking a breath. He couldn’t get the words out fast enough.
Samuel didn’t answer, but looked at him expectantly.
“He sends an agent like Lachlan to find her,” James continued. “I’ll bet my life Lachlan was instructed to find her but Fred issued a no-kill order. It’s not a coincidence that Fred asked the CIA’s best assassin to find the world’s best assassin. Assassins think differently, and Lachlan would’ve been able to put himself in her shoes. I think he found her, or he got close enough and Fred was able to, then Black Widow got scared and eliminated Fred.”
“Okay, so why is she back now? Why not live quietly?” Samuel asked. “She’s escaped us—us,” he emphasized. “She knows how to hide but instead she walked back into our lives and is doing a damn good job at making us play her game. Why?”
“For the same reason she eliminated Fred. She’s protecting something, or rather, someone,” James said, his heel bouncing on the ground.
“Jenna,” Samuel said, his voice rising a notch.
James nodded. “Something happened with Jenna, and now Black Widow has been forced to make a move. She’s protecting her asset, and we need to know why. We need to look at all connections between Fred’s family and the Starrings. Maybe they’re just family friends, but there’s a reason Fred knew to go to that house—a reason that Lachlan hadn’t given him.”
“Lachlan knows more than he’s telling us,” Samuel said, rubbing his jaw.
James agreed. “He’s loyal to Fred, which I respect, but the time for loyalty has passed.” James pulled out his phone and called Lachlan’s number.
“Hey, can you come to Samuel’s office now?” James asked, not bothering with a greeting.
“Give me two minutes,” Lachlan said then hung up.
James called Deacon, Cami, and Jarrod. They’d been scheduled to meet in an hour, but James couldn’t sit idly around. He had a strange feeling that every minute mattered, though he wasn’t entirely sure why because they didn’t know where Widow or Jenna were at the moment. They were clutching at straws, but nonetheless, James felt like they were close.
James watched Samuel work as they waited for everyone to arrive. James didn’t entirely know what Samuel was doing, but he was typing furiously and James knew him well enough to know that when Samuel wore this expression, he didn’t appreciate being interrupted with questions.
Within minutes, the team was assembled. James looked to Lachlan. “I understand your loyalty to Fred, and I deeply respect it, but Fred was like family to me. I can confidently say that whatever he asked you to do, he would feel comfortable with you sharing in this group, given the circumstances. It’s your decision, but we need every piece of intel. Something that may not seem important is almost always the piece that breaks open a case. So I’m asking you—begging you—please tell me what Fred asked you to do.”
Lachlan inhaled a deep breath, searching James’s eyes. James saw the moment he’d made his decision.
“Six weeks after we visited the house, Fred called me into his office. He told me he was sending me on an off-the-record mission. He told me I was to speak to no one about this mission, and that nothing was to be documented,” Lachlan said, shaking his head. “I thought it was weird at the time... I’d never been asked to do that—everything had always been official. But, I trusted Fred so I told him I would do anything he wanted. He asked me to find Widow and he issued a no-kill order. He sent me to Italy with a lead that she was in Rome, working as a tour guide. I don’t know how he knew that—I didn’t ask,” he said and James understood. Agents didn’t ask those questions, they took the intel given to them and used it.
Lachlan continued. “The only lead I was given was the name of a tour company and a photograph of her taken many years before. For three weeks straight, I toured Rome; if you have a historical question, just ask me,” he joked. “I figured if I did enough tours, eventually she would be my guide. This went on for weeks, like I said, and I had lost hope. Then, on the last tour before I was scheduled to fly back to New York, I was standing two steps in front of Widow. I knew it was her... I sensed the danger that seemed to surround her, something only someone like me would sense, probably. The problem was, she must’ve sensed it within me too. She began the tour and at our first stop, the Colosseum, she disappeared without a trace. The group had no idea what had happened to their tour guide, but I knew.” He shook his head.
“I called Fred and told him. I was expecting him to tell me to stay on but he called me back home. He had a lead on another case I was working involving a Parisian spy... it was a huge case and he said I needed to be on the ground and ready. I didn’t question it and went back home to Tennessee for a week before I was called to New York. I was there longer than expected but managed to wrap up the case, then flew home to Tennessee to find my wife...” His voice trailed off. James looked at Deacon, seeing the pain in his brother’s eyes as he was no doubt remembering Nicole. “Fred called me two days after I found Eden. I didn’t answer the call but he left a voicemail. He said: Lachlan, I know you’re hurting. And I hate to even ask this, but I need your help. I need you to find Widow again, I can’t ask anyone else to do this.” Lachlan sighed heavily.
“I listened to the voicemail three months later. It was too late,” Lachlan said with a thick voice.
“Why only you?” Deacon asked, thoughtful. “He had an entire organization at his fingertips, so why did he need an assassin if he’d issued a no-kill order?”
“Because he trusted him,” James answered. “He needed to keep this out of the organization and he trusted Lachlan. If the CIA knew he’d found Widow, he’d have had to issue a kill order. Widow was too dangerous, too much of a threat not to. So, he made sure no one knew.”
Lachlan nodded. “But why?”
“I think Widow is his sister,” James said, and the room went silent.
Lachlan leaned in, his eyes wide. “Say what?” he asked, then quickly added, “He had a sister?”
“I thought when I saw her on the train, that she looked oddly familiar, like I’d seen her before, but in reality, I’d only ever seen pictures of her. Despite my attempts to find her, I’d never gotten close enough to look her in the eyes. But when you made the connection of the house and the Starring family, I realized the reason she’d looked familiar was because she has the same eyes as Fred’s and they look like siblings. If they were standing side-by-side, it would be easy to identify them as being related. The fact that he asked you to find her discreetly and issued a no-kill order seems to validate this theory... he wanted to know where she was and likely try to reach out to her while he worked out how protect her from the CIA.”
“Would he have tried to bring her in? Recruit her? She’s an asset the CIA would’ve liked on their side,” Lachlan said thoughtfully.
James nodded. “That would’ve been my plan if I were him. Convincing the CIA would’ve been a hard sell, though, because they’d need to know they could trust her, but ultimately her skillset would’ve proven too tempting for them.”
