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“She’s a reporter, an investigator by nature.” X sat down in an office chair and crossed her arms and legs. “How do you propose to make her give up the story of a lifetime?”
I sat in the chair across from her. “She’s already concerned for her own safety, as she should be, but I don’t think she’s considered that others in her life could be in danger, too.” It was something the usual WITSEC informant turning on a mob boss or drug syndicate would expect, but reporters weren’t necessarily cognizant of the same dangers posed by such ruthless foes.
X nodded. “What’s the plan to get her to see the light without telling her more than we’ve already agreed she can know?”
I leaned forward to prop my elbows on my knees to brace myself. “It’s not about sharing the information; it’s about reframing it. Alder has been analyzing the data we downloaded from the cloud Armand and her editor have been accessing. Not all the research is hers. She’s building on an investigation that was already underway.”
X frowned. “Her deceased colleague was working on a story about the Carbonados,” she surmised accurately. “And Ms. Armand has taken over where he left off?”
I nodded. “I know it sounds bad.”
“Bad doesn’t begin to cover it, given that any day now, the subcommittee in charge of our very existence could pull the plug on us. This is our top-priority mission, and if Ms. Armand blows the lid off even a small part of the Carbonados before we shut them down, our supporters won’t be able to cover our asses.”
That explained why X had been more agitated than normal recently. Two years ago, the secret security subcommittee couldn’t throw money at us fast enough, but about a year ago, their attitude had begun to shift. Right around the time we had become aware of the existence of the Carbonados group. None of us liked the coincidence of that. We had done the deepest dive into the senators’ staffers that we could without crossing a legal line that would get us all thrown in Leavenworth, but we hadn’t found any way to connect the dots. Not yet. Pulling the plug on our entire agency was a new level of threat that possibly meant we were running out of time.
“After we stopped the dirty bomb incident last month, I thought the subcommittee was in a better frame of mind,” I said.
“CIA questioning hasn’t led to higher-ups in the organization, and our detractors are more than happy to label the incident the work of a couple of independent actors.”
“Damn it,” I muttered. “Luka is the lynchpin in all of this. If we can get enough proof to tie the bomb back to him, we can take down the Carbonados and save HEAT at the same time.”
X stood and glared down at me. “You do realize that’s been our directive for the past month, and we’re nowhere near completing the mission.”
“The warrant situation has effectively tied our hands.” I said it gently, hoping she wouldn’t take offense.
While it wasn’t her fault that the subcommittee had raised the bar on requirements for us to obtain secret warrants, especially in sensitive cases like surveilling the spouse of a foreign diplomat, her inability to convince them to reverse their decision had led to one of the biggest obstacles we’d faced on this job.
Someone cleared their throat, proving there was life elsewhere on the first floor, after all. Two shadows emerged from the dark tech room. Jensen and Alder had been working down here all along but had probably wanted to fly under X’s radar while I was being chewed out for bringing Ashlee into our operation.
“Boss?” Jensen called as they approached.
“What is it?” X and I asked at the same time.
Jensen and Alder stopped in the doorway. Jensen shifted from one foot to the other and Alder cleared her throat. They never acted this nervous, even when our lives were on the line in the field, although at those times, we were all running on adrenaline.
“Spit it out,” I said.
“About Ms. Armand,” Alder started.
Jensen, her team lead, took over. “We know why Ms. Armand thought Izak Kovac was the connection to Carbonados. Her late colleague was paying off informants, mostly couriers, who move in and out of that embassy.”
My pulse rate blew through the roof. “Anything actionable for us?”
“Not without a warrant,” X interrupted, “which we will not get when we tell the judge our basis is the work product of investigative reporters.”
“But there’s good data.” Alder glanced at the tech room.
“Which we are not going to look at,” X said, then looked at me, “until we can acquire it for ourselves.”
I scowled at her. “Without the warrants, we need to conduct surveillance.”
“Find another way in,” X said.
Jensen and Alder exchanged a look, then glanced at me. They knew what X meant, and so did I.
“So, you ream me out for involving the reporter, and now you want me to paint a bigger target on her back?” I asked.
X arched her eyebrow again. I was treading mighty damn close to insubordination.
