“She was seeing Saint.”
I hadn’t seen that coming. “No shit?”
Lynx didn’t respond.
“How much does she know?” I asked.
“Only that there was a brush pass, but not the details of it.”
I drained the rest of the beer from my glass and set it on the table. “Early start tomorrow,” I said, tossing some money on the table and hopping the fence to leave.
Lynx called a meeting for zero eight hundred the next morning, oddly at Emme’s apartment rather than at Saint’s.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when she responded to my knock at her door. “Sorry,” she added when she saw I brought her coffee and bagels from her favorite place. I looked around when she invited me in; I was obviously the first to arrive.
“Lynx is on his way over, too,” I said, just now noticing she was clad in only a robe. She must’ve realized it at the exact moment I did since she scurried down the hall.
“Give me a minute. Make yourself at home,” she hollered behind her.
While I waited for her to change, Decker Ashford arrived.
“Hello. Who are you?” Emme said to him a few minutes later when she came back into the kitchen.
“I’m Decker Ashford, ma’am,” he said, stepping forward to shake her hand.
“Emerson Charles,” she responded, looking at me although I had no idea why. “I’m sorry, I know you told me your name, but why are you in my apartment?”
Evidently, she hadn’t been briefed on this meeting or that it was taking place here. Damn Lynx. “Decker is part of a team we’re working with to locate Saint and Dr. Benjamin,” I told her at the same time there was another knock at her door.
“Would you like to get that?” she snapped.
“Uh, sure.”
When I opened the door, Lynx walked in.
“I would offer you gentlemen something; however, I was unaware a meeting was taking place in my home this morning.” Emme glared at me as she said it, only pissing me off more at Lynx.
“You didn’t make Dr. Charles aware of the meeting?” I finally asked, getting tired of Emme taking her anger out on me.
“I called, but it went straight to voicemail,” he said to her.
“Are we expecting anyone else?” she asked.
“No, and let’s take this over to Saint’s apartment,” Lynx suggested before I had the chance to.
“I’m curious why you didn’t meet there in the first place.”
I looked at Lynx, expecting him to answer, but he didn’t. I motioned Decker to the door, expecting Lynx to follow. He didn’t do that either.
Several minutes later, he and Emme walked into Saint’s apartment together. I watched as he introduced her to the other men in the room from the Invincibles: Rile, Miles “Grinder” Stone, and Lynx’s younger brother, Keon “Edge” Edgemon. Both Grinder and Edge had formerly been employed by the MI5 side of SIS, aka Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, which was akin to the US Department of Homeland Security.
“Are we ready to get down to business?” asked Decker once the introductions concluded.
I took the lead. “Emme, as you’re aware, the CIA and MI6 have been working jointly undercover at IPP the last few months.”
She appeared to be listening but walked over to the window, keeping her back to us.
I continued. “These gentlemen were asked to come on board after the CIA received word of a brush pass between one of our agents and Saint.” I took a step closer to her. “They’re with a private security and intelligence firm who will be leading the mission from this point on.”
Emme tapped her lips with her fingertip. “What was the mission?”
“To locate Saint and Dr. Benjamin,” I answered.
“That isn’t what I asked. I said, ‘What was the mission?’ Not what is the mission.”
I looked at Lynx, who shook his head. If I didn’t believe we were close to uncovering information that might give us our first real lead about the mole who was feeding the Chinese information about agents who in turn were dying, I’d walk out.
“Maybe we should consider working from a remote field office rather than at MIT,” I suggested, given Saint’s odd message.
“A remote location? Where? Or is that another question you’re refusing to answer?”
Refusing to answer? What the fuck was that all about? “The Boston CIA field office.”
She looked between Lynx and me. “Gentlemen, until you are prepared to be completely honest with me, there’s nothing further for us to discuss.”
I stepped closer. “Emme, you’re a target.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?” Hadn’t Lynx covered any of this with her?
“Are you saying you believe I’m in danger?”
I really wished we didn’t have an audience. “I’m sorry, but I do, Emme. Now you understand why I’m suggesting we work from the field office.”
“I want my apartment swept.”
I hadn’t heard that her apartment or even the building had been compromised. “Do you think that’s necessary?”
“Yes. It’s necessary,” said Lynx, evidently no longer mute. “She also needs a keypad entry installed.”
“We’ll take care of both,” said Decker, motioning to Grinder and Edge.
Emme walked toward the door. “If you don’t need me for anything else right now…”
“I’ll walk you over,” Lynx offered.
When they both left, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d worked with Emme—Dr. Charles—for several months and recognized the signs when she was getting agitated. Had we been alone, I might’ve been able to diffuse her increasing ire. As it was, she probably felt as though we were ganging up on her.
“Come with me,” said Decker, motioning for me to follow him to one of the bedrooms he’d set up as his office. “You wanna tell me what the fuck is really going on?” he asked after shutting the door behind us.
I walked over to the window and looked outside. “We need to bring Cope in on this.”
Decker studied me.
“I can make contact or you can, but this isn’t a conversation I can have without him present.”
Deck nodded. “It sounds like Lynx is back. Hang on,” he said, going out to the other room.
“He’s gone again,” he said when he returned a couple of minutes later, closed the door like he had earlier, and pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Cope.”
“We can’t discuss this over the phone.”
Decker raised a brow, and I stopped talking. If anyone could guarantee the conversation we were about to have wouldn’t be overheard either outside the walls of this room or over a phone line, it was him.
11
Irish
Cambridge, Massachusetts
August of the Preceding Year
I couldn’t say why Cope and I trusted Decker with a yearslong mission that only he and I knew about, but we did. Maybe we’d both just reached the point when we knew we couldn’t go it alone any longer.