Code Name: Aries by Janie Crouch

12

Ian

The guys didn’t say anything until Wavy was in my room.

Landon turned to me, eyes comically wide. “There’s a girl in your bedroom.”

Sarge was a little more serious. “Sorry boss, I didn’t know you had company, but we got another video about Bronwyn.”

I squeezed his shoulder as we all walked into the living room. “It’s okay. Wavy doesn’t mind waiting.”

I shot Landon a look before he could make a smart-ass comment. He wisely kept his mouth shut.

I turned to Sarge. He’d been back for a couple of days, but I hadn’t had a chance to debrief him yet. All I knew was that the mission to find Bronwyn had been unsuccessful. “Are you doing okay?”

Sarge nodded, but didn’t say anything. From the report, he’d come back with bruises and cuts on his face, but no explanation for how he’d gotten them. If Sarge was keeping secrets, he had his reasons. I’d let it go for now.

“I’ve been up to my neck trying to get Varela resituated at Mosaic so that we could get as much intel from him as quickly as possible. I haven’t had a chance to really look over the Bronwyn intel.”

“She was in New York to steal something,” Sarge said. “From a criminal.”

I looked at him. “You know that’s her specialty, right? That’s why we brought her into Zodiac in the first place.”

Bronwyn Rourke was a chameleon—able to change her looks, her posture to appear as anything from a princess to a minivan-driving soccer mom. She could slip in and out of places no one else could get into. No one would think she was attractive at all unless she decided to play up her looks, and then it changed everything about her.

She’d come to work for Zodiac under unique circumstances, and nobody knew much about her. Except, evidently, Sarge.

“I don’t think she was doing it of her own free will,” Sarge said, massive arms crossed over his chest. “She was stealing something, but she was doing it for someone else.”

“You think Mosaic is blackmailing her?” I asked.

“I don’t think it’s quite that simple. But I’m not sure what it is yet.”

At some point, we were going to have to address the issue that Bronwyn might have gone rogue. None of us wanted to think that, especially Sarge, but it was the most likely possibility, that Mosaic had offered her a lot of money, and she was working for them now.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

Sarge clicked on his computer. “This new footage is different. Worse than her robbery in NYC.”

The footage wasn’t great in terms of quality. It was grainy, taken from a distance, and enhanced to be usable. This told me immediately that Sarge was spending a lot of his own time looking at anything that could possibly be Bronwyn because no facial recognition software would have picked up her face based on this.

She was huddled on the ground in an alley, folded over on herself, obviously sick or in pain.

“How do you know that’s her?” I asked.

“I got a shot of her face. It’s her.”

If Sarge said it was, I would believe him. Landon and I leaned in closer.

“Is she injured?” Landon asked. “It looks like it.”

Sarge shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The footage wasn’t easy to watch. The woman was in pain and alternating between holding her head and then her stomach. She vomited more than once, and then to make matters worse, some knife-wielding thug came up to her, kicking at her with his booted foot.

He evidently thought she was down for the count because the thug crouched and started patting her, looking for a wallet or valuables.

Bronwyn didn’t hesitate. As soon as he was close enough, she reached up, grabbed his wrist, and broke it. The man howled, then got pissed. He jumped up and gave her a real kick, which she dodged.

Then he came at her with the knife. Bronwyn leapt up and with a speed that was almost blurry, the knife was buried in his own gut.

“Shit,” Landon and I both whispered at the same time.

In a court of law, this would be considered self-defense. I would consider it self-defense too, but we all knew that Bronwyn had been more than capable of disarming him without killing him.

Whatever adrenaline she’d found fled from her body, and she slid back to the ground. That was when the camera caught a clear shot of her face, and I could see why Sarge was certain. It was her. It was definitely Bronwyn Rourke.

She stared down at the dead guy with an agonized expression. A couple of seconds later, she grabbed her head again like she was in pain and then stumbled out of the alley.

“Do we know where or when this was?” I asked.

Sarge reached over to shut off the footage. “It was taken off a security camera in Anchorage.”

I ran a hand down my face. Alaska.

Landon plopped down in a chair. “This doesn’t make any sense. First, she was in London. A couple weeks later, she’s in New York, and a week after that in Anchorage. What the hell?”

I looked over at Sarge, waiting for him to tell me he wanted to go out there again to look for her.

He could read my mind. “I know the trail will be cold by the time I get there, although I’m going to go anyway. I was wondering if you could have Varela poke around inside Mosaic. See what he can find out.”

“The Varela situation is sensitive.” I let out a long exhale. “I want to find Bronwyn. You know I want to do whatever we can to help her, but Varela can’t go in and start asking random questions about something he shouldn’t know anything about without it making him seem very suspicious.”

Figuring out how to use people like pawns had always been part of my job, but this time it wasn’t something I wanted to do. Varela was a sadistic asshole, and I wouldn’t lose any sleep if he got killed, but as a tool, I wanted to use him as strategically as possible.

Sarge crossed his arms over his chest. “There shouldn’t be anything more important than getting one of our own back. The end.”

“This is bigger than just one person. You know that. Bronwyn is part of this team, and I will do whatever it takes to get her back. But the primary objective is to bring down Mosaic.”

Sarge stepped forward, eyes narrowed. “That’s because of your personal baggage with Mosaic. I don’t know exactly what happened when you went up against them before, but I know that taking them down is personal for you.”

“Taking down Mosaic should be personal for all of us. You know what we’ve discovered—a new, multifaceted Mosaic. Four different leaders rather than one. Spreading their terrorist efforts across weapons sales, black-market technology, and now human trafficking.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Sarge said. “We all want Mosaic to go down. They’re monsters. We’ve seen what they’re doing to people. But you’ve got blinders on when it comes to them. You’ll sacrifice Bronwyn to eliminate Mosaic because this is some sort of personal vendetta with Erick Huen.”

Silence fell between the three of us. Sarge wasn’t wrong. I didn’t look at Landon, but I knew he would probably agree.

I didn’t have my normal objectivity when it came to Mosaic, and definitely not when it came to Erick. The nightmares from two years ago demonstrated that. And Erick had had a front-row seat.

I ran a hand through my hair. “So, what are you suggesting?”

“We focus our efforts on getting our personnel back, and then we find a way to take Mosaic down. We don’t have to sacrifice Bronwyn.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and walked to the window. Talking to Wavy there this evening had been the highlight of my week, hell, my whole year. Just talking to her.

She would want me to get Bronwyn back. I would never drag her into this ugly situation by asking her opinion, but if I did, I had no doubt that she would say to start with saving the ones who mattered to me.

I spun back around to face my friends. “If I admit I’m not completely objective when it comes to Mosaic, will you admit that you’re not objective when it comes to Bronwyn?”

“Yes.” Sarge didn’t hesitate. Didn’t flinch from the truth.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on between the two of you? Is it a romantic connection?”

“Let’s just say Bronwyn and I have history. You’ve always wanted to know why I was so obsessed with Prague? She’s the reason.”

My eyes narrowed as I studied him. He’d been almost...haunted by the city for years but would never say why. I’d thought it was because some thugs had gotten a jump on him when we’d been there for a SEAL mission years ago. I’d had no idea Bronwyn had any connection to Prague at all. Then again, nobody knew much about the younger woman or her past.

Except, evidently, Sarge.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Are you going to tell me the truth about what happened in New York? I know you saw her.”

“Fine. I did see her. We had a . . .” He touched his cheek, which had been bruised and cut when he’d come back from the city. “. . . conversation. She needs our help. That’s all that matters.”

“Okay. I’ll task Varela with concentrating on Bronwyn, finding out whatever we can. I don’t know that it’s going to be enough, but we’ll try.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Sarge said.

“I want multiple teams ready to move on whatever intel we find,” I told Landon. To Sarge, “I’ll let Varela dig into it for three days. After that, I’ve got to pull him off. If Mosaic finds out he’s working for us, he won’t be useful. He probably won’t be alive.”

Sarge didn’t like that, but it didn’t matter. No matter what Sarge or Landon said, or what I thought Wavy would tell me, I was objective enough to know that we couldn’t deviate from our primary purpose of taking Mosaic down for one person, even a member of the team. I would allocate more resources for finding Bronwyn, but I couldn’t set us up to win one battle—albeit an important one—if it meant losing the war.

“Fine. We’ll hope it’s enough.” Sarge left without another word, getting into the elevator without Landon.

Landon stood and slapped me on the arm. “Sarge’s infamous people skills at work again.”

“He has the right to be pissed.”

“And you have the right to make the decisions you’re making. Sarge knows that. Try to enjoy yourself with Wavy. You deserve time to be happy, Ian, and there’s nothing you can do right now anyway. So enjoy yourself with a lovely woman.”

Lovely she was. But I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen.