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ChapterTwenty-Four
Ethan
Me being undercover wasthe lie we used to explain my absence from the FBI office, embellished with details about how I’d kidnapped a witness on orders. Danvers reinforcing that narrative meant that after initial questions and open disbelief from some colleagues I was back at my desk, albeit pushing paperwork.
After a few days of me beingnormaleveryone seemed to accept I was back, and most if not all wanted to talk to me about Ryder and wasn’t it tragic he’d died. I showed the real grief I would feel at his loss in my expression, reinforced by the added worry that I hoped to hell Sanctuary had gotten Ryder out of there okay. Within a week of Ryder’sdeath, I was in a position to observe how Danvers exploited his federal responsibilities to work his own agenda. In the office, he was the same Danvers I’d trusted at the start—amenable, confident, and in charge, juggling different projects that presented as legitimate.
Even after Danvers had pulled me to one side way back, and asked me to form a team of undercover experts, I’d never even thought to suspect that the ops were off the books—I’d wanted away from my desk and the paperwork. I’d dragged Ryder and Luca into the new team, and to my embarrassment it hadn’t been me that had spotted the first cracks. Ryder admitted he’d been tracking everything we’d been asked to do and had seen a pattern of Danvers ensuring he had plausible deniability for every op, backed by a trail of faked documentation and forged authorizations. I’d been too trusting, searching for the excitement instead of focusing on the job, and when I glanced around this floor with other teams, I wonder how many of them still didn’t see the real Danvers. The same skills that made him an asset to the FBI also made him millions he had stashed in untraceable accounts. I had to trust that Ryder and Sanctuary were working in the background to pin Danvers down, but my mission was to get access to Rouxier and to ensure that Josh and Ben remained safe.
Danvers walked past the desk where I’d been busy doing nothing for the last hour. “Myers, with me now.” I closed my screen, exchanged eye rolls with my nearest colleague—one of the many accountants who worked in this department—then followed Danvers to the elevator in silence as we headed down to the basement parking. We took his vehicle, but he tossed me the keys and I assumed I was the one driving.
“Where to?”
“Drive.”
I assumed further instructions would come as soon as he felt safe to give them to me, so I didn’t push, and instead left the parking lot and took a road heading out of the city. Five minutes after, he opened his phone, muttered something under his breath, and gave me general directions. I kept my thoughts and questions to myself when I realized we were heading towards Rouxier’s mansion. Was this it? Was I trusted enough to get close to the one person I wanted to be near?
“Pull into the McDonald’s,” Danvers instructed.
“I’m more a Burger King kind of guy,” I deadpanned.
He shot me an irritated glance. I guess we weren’t stopping for food, although coffee sounded good right about then, as he told me to park in the far corner next to a red Mazda. I wondered if we are meeting someone, but the car was empty.
If this was a car switch, then it was clumsy one, right out under CCTV. Something about this didn’t feel right. He tossed me the keys again, and I spent a little while adjusting the seat of the Mazda to give me time to get a better idea of what I was handling here.
“You’re worried someone’s tracking your car?” I asked, all kinds of casual, as I started the engine.
“No questions,” he growled in what I assumed he thought was a threatening tone. This was not the dynamic I was going for, and I turned off the engine and faced him. “They know where we are.”
I pointed at the McDonald’s. “There’s CCTVright there. If there is tracking in your SUV, andtheysee a switch to the Mazda, what dotheythink we’re doing, and who the fuck isthey?”
“Let’s go,” Danvers snapped.
“Oh no, I’m not doing this. If this is some deliberate setup, after everything I did to prove I could be valuable, and I end up with fuck all money out of this, then I’m out of here.”
Danvers cursed under his breath. “With how much he pays I’ll do what he says and feed into his spy fantasies, and so will you.”
“Who?”
“Drive.”
“It’s your funeral,” I said, then turned on the engine. “One job to pay back what I owe, one more to get enough to disappear, and I’m out of here. You’re the one hanging around with whoever these master criminals are.” I snorted a laugh to underscore my derision.
Sanctuary tracked down bank deposits connected to Danvers short of eight million, more than enough for him to disappear, yet Danvers was still playing for both sides. Was it greed? Or was he being manipulated? How high did this thing go? Why was he letting his face get caught on CCTV with a car switch?
My gut told me this was way more complicated than I imagined, and that Danvers was being wielded as a blunt instrument by someone else. Who? I’d come into this scenario imagining I’d connect Danvers with Rouxier, ride off into the sunset, collecting Josh and Ben on the way, and maybe get my happily ever after. All I could hope for was that Sanctuary were holding up their end, and given they were tracking me every step I took, that they would find what happened at the McDonald’s odd as well.
Danvers dialed in the navigation system, and a quick glance told me we were heading toward the Rouxier family mansion, reaching it after fifty minutes’ driving, and diverting onto a small road that took us behind the big house into a large barn at the rear.
“Drive in,” Danvers instructed.
I followed my orders to the letter, pulling up behind a ‘68 Thunderbird, one of many in a big collection of classic cars. I shut off the engine, and half turned to Danvers.
“Any intel you want to give me before we do whatever we’re here for?”
“Only that he knows you sold Ben to the highest bidder, and he’s not happy with that.”
Shit.Shit. “I’m not walking in there to get a bullet through my brain.”
