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“Alessa said you’re meeting with Rachel tomorrow?”
“I am. At her place. Is she still not talking to me?”
Maverick didn’t answer.
I squeezed Star’s shoulder again because we both knew what that meant.
“I’ll drop Kat off at Rach’s place tomorrow for the weekend, okay? Let Alessa know she can collect her from there.”
“Not sure when I became your go-between but I’ll tell her.”
Star huffed out a laugh. “You became that the day you met me.”
“And what an inauspicious day that was for my meeting with the Antichrist.”
Rolling her eyes, Star rumbled, “You can’t see it but I’m flipping you the bird.”
“Use it for better things, like emailing Eagle Eyes and getting him to call me ASAP.”
When he rang off, I leaned my ass against her desk and stared down at her. “What was going on in Kembesh?”
She blinked up at me. “Why do you assume I know?”
I scoffed. “Don’t give me the innocent eyes. We both know they’re wasted on me.”
She smirked. “That’s why I like you the best though.”
“You’re full of charm and BS.”
Rather than be annoyed, she looked even more like the cat who’d eaten the canary at my wording as she rocked back in her seat. “Kembesh borders Pakistan and a bunch of ex-Soviet states. Weapons flowed into Taliban forces there. That’s why the US established an outpost in that area. That and it’s where Dost Mohamet Khan used to live before the place was destroyed during the battle. Officially, his title was ‘government administrator’ for that region.”
“Unofficially?”
“Thick as thieves with the Taliban.” She sniffed. “Sparrows too.”
“When you said that you thought a CIA agent had turned, you thought they were working with the Taliban?”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure. I just knew someone was dirty.”
“Didn’t you have any suspicions?”
“No. We were a big team back in those days and it was constantly fluctuating. Looking back, I figure that’s how they stayed under the radar. It’s only because I’m so paranoid that I realized something was going on.”
“What would be the gain for a double agent?”
“The Taliban was looting their own artifacts and there were foreigners stationed there during the war that smuggled them out of the country. That added up to a lot of money being made.”
“Funding the war,” I stated, folding my arms across my chest.
“Partly.”
“And the two-timing fucker was a Sparrow?”
She flung her hands wide. “Why wouldn’t they be? Seems to me like you get any semblance of power in this fucking world and you get a choice—you wanna suck Brother or Sparrow ass?”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I chuckled. “At least the Brothers are—”
“What?” she demanded before I could finish that sentence. “What are they? For all we know they’re as bad as the Sparrows.”
