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“They didn’t give her a new partner?” Byte asked.
“Not last time I heard. There seemed to be some things they wanted to verify before she was reassigned.”
“What kind of things?” Ivy asked.
“I don’t know them all, but there seemed to be some discrepancies in her paperwork. We couldn’t collaborate on our after-action reports, and it’s not uncommon for things to be overlooked or not recalled correctly. She’s a good agent. I’m sure it’s nothing she needs to worry about. That’s what I told her too.”
“So, here’s the thing. If you haven’t been trying to kill Voodoo, and she didn’t try to kill you, then who did? Who had the most to gain with you both dead?” Ghost asked.
“I can’t think of one single person who’d want us both dead. Until this week, I would’ve said my wife didn’t have any enemies. She wasn’t a field operative; she didn’t even work for the CIA. Nothing would be gained by taking her out. I, on the other hand, have hundreds who would sleep better knowing I wasn’t a threat to them. We know the score. You might take out the threat, but retaliation will give way to multiple attempts on your life. My last assignment alone left me with a target on my back. It really could be anyone, but how that carries over to Gwen, I honestly don’t know.”
“Then let’s look at each of your enemies and see who would find satisfaction in killing the most important person in your life. Because if you didn’t try to kill Voodoo, someone else did, and for all we know, you’ve just led them to her front door,” Ivy stated.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
“You were right,” Ghost told Carter. “The list of suspects is growing.”
The group had started a list of his missions dating back to when he and Gwen were newlyweds. The second dry-erase board listed specific individuals who could wish him dead.
“It’s simply cause and effect. There are a lot of lives affected with each assassination or arrest. It’s the ugly side of what we do. As worthy as most are of death or incarceration, they are still family heads, sons or daughters, employees or employers.”
Aria pointed at one job that he did about six months before Voodoo was in his life.
“Tell us about this one.”
“It was a rather bloody one. In fact, it’s the one that killed my first partner. It’s also the one that first introduced me to Gwen.”
Carter wasn’t used to speaking openly about his jobs. His training had drilled in him the need to say as little as possible. But he was in a room with fellow spies and military personnel. Most of them had just as high, or even higher, clearance than he did. The only exception was Byte and Chaos, but if they wanted details, they’d find them, no matter how deep the bodies were buried.
“Give us the details,” Ivy instructed.
“We—Johnston and I—were working with an informant who had creditable intel on a large drug ring. This group made their own style of designer drug, and buyers ranged from your everyday drug user to high-profile partakers. When it was discovered several congressional politicians were engaging in the drug, we were called in. Do you remember when Congressman Thomas from South Dakota died suddenly?”
“If I remember correctly, they said he’d had a heart attack,” Ghost answered.
“Apparently, it was the drug he’d ingested ten minutes earlier that caused the heart attack. DC wanted answers. Two other politicians were in the hospital trying to remove the poison from their systems.”
“And your partner? Did he do drugs too?” Seven asked.
“No!” Carter barked.
“Calm down, mate. I’m just trying to get an understanding of the situation.”
Carter knew he’d been abrupt, but he hated sitting in the same room as the man who’d slept with and married his wife.
“Right. No, Johnston didn’t take drugs. We traced the manufacturing back to a small village in China. Unfortunately, Johnston’s gas mask failed and he inhaled the toxins. Afterwards, the agency sent Gwen and a team of researchers to understand why the chemical was deadly when in its airborne state and not so when taken orally. She’d been tasked to come and brief me and my team, which now included a new partner.”
“Then,” Chaos said, “he pursued my sister and six months later, they were married.”
“Let’s go back to the drug. Was Voodoo able to determine why it was deadly in the gas form? Obviously, it was deadly in pill form, if it was behind the senator’s death.”
“It was behind the senator’s heart attack. It was the heart attack that killed him. That was a clear distinction Gwen made in our debriefing. When the product was airborne, it was raw and undiluted. In pill form, it was mixed with other ingredients which diluted its strength.”
“Gwen was excited about their findings,” Chaos recalled. “She’d done fieldwork for the agency before, but this one sang to her soul. She always believed there was magic in the Chinese herbs and toxins. That in their raw form, they were both beautiful and deadly.”
“That describes Voodoo,” Ghost stated.
“It does,” Chaos confirmed. “It also was why she chose to leave the agency. She wanted to concentrate her studies on the Eastern way of medicine.”
