Page 79 of Duty Compromised
“Voicemails? What voicemails? You can look at my phone. I never got any calls from you after our one conversation.” He pulled out his phone with shaking hands, careful to move slowly with Donovan’s gun still pointed at him. “Look—nothing. And I never sent any text about a safe house. I was waiting to hear from you before I arranged anything. When I couldn’t find either of you, I started making calls.”
“To whom?” Ethan’s question cut like a blade.
“Ty’s phone. Charlotte’s phone. The Vertex lab. When I couldn’t get anyone, I called Citadel. Nobody knew where you were. I thought you’d gone completely dark.”
I studied his face, looking for tells. The muscle tic when he lied. The way his left eye would narrow slightly when he was spinning bullshit. But all I saw were genuine fear and confusion. Either George had gotten a lot better at deception since our Army days, or he was telling the truth.
“Ethan,” I said, not taking my eyes off George. “We need Jace.”
Ethan already had his phone out. “Way ahead of you.” He hit a button with Jace’s name.
“Boss man,” Jace’s voice filled the room through the speaker. “How’s the surprise Missouri vacation treating you?”
“Jace, we need a full diagnostic on a potentially compromised phone.” Ethan was all business. “Bureau issue. Can you walk someone through it?”
“FBI phone? Ooh, Christmas came early.” The sound of rapid keystrokes filled the room like machine-gun fire. “All right, person-who-might-be-toast, listen very carefully and don’t get creative. We’re going to crack open that phone and see what’s been living inside it.”
George looked at me, and I saw real fear there. Not fear of dying—we’d both faced that plenty of times. This was fear of having betrayed a friend without knowing it. Fear of being a tool in someone else’s game.
George took the phone with trembling fingers. For the next few minutes, Jace walked him through a series of steps to perform on his own phone—settings, diagnostic modes, hidden menus I didn’t even know existed. George followed each instruction precisely, the phone’s screen flickering through various interfaces.
“Okay, now the interesting part,” Jace said. “Go to Settings, then About Phone, then tap the build number seven times… Yeah, I know it sounds like a cheat code. Trust me.”
More tapping. More screens. I watched George’s face grow paler with each step.
“Holy shit,” Jace breathed. “Boss, you seeing this? I’m getting the remote feed now and… Someone’s been having a party with this phone. Professional-grade piggyback program. Calls rerouted to fake voicemail, messages spoofed from his number. This is next-level stuff.”
“How long?” Ethan asked.
“It’ll take me a while to figure that out. Right now, I’m only looking at the last forty-eight hours, but it could be much longer. Every call from Ty’s number got intercepted and sent to a dummy voicemail. Never even rang on George’s end. And that text about the safe house? Definitely came from his number, but he didn’t send it. Someone was playing puppeteer.”
The gun in Donovan’s hand lowered slightly but didn’t disappear. “Could he have installed it himself? Cover story?”
“Negative,” Jace replied. “This kind of breach requires external access. Someone had to physically clone his phone or compromise it remotely using FBI credentials. Inside job, definitely, but our boy George here is a victim, not a perpetrator.”
The relief that flooded through me was immediate and overwhelming. George hadn’t betrayed us. But that raised an even bigger question.
“If not George, then who?” I asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question. But I can tell you this—it’s somebody who knows what the fuck they’re doing. I’ll keep looking into it.”
The room went silent except for George’s ragged breathing. I watched the knowledge sink in—he’d been violated, used as a weapon against us without even knowing it. The George I knew would be tearing himself apart right now, replaying every interaction, every moment he might have compromised us.
Donovan finally holstered his weapon, though his hand stayed close to it. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Cross.”
Ethan’s expression shifted, something almost like amusement flickering across his features. “I was planning to come see you anyway. Try to officially recruit you. Have a mission in Kenya you’d be perfect for.”
“Kenya can wait,” Donovan said flatly. “We’ve got bigger problems.”
“Agreed,” Ethan said. “Jace, what’s your read on the situation?”
“Based on what I’m seeing? You’ve definitely got a mole in the FBI, but they’re using George’s credentials and equipment to cover their tracks. The real insider might not be from Vertex at all. We might have been looking in the wrong henhouse.”
George sank onto the couch, head in his hands. “Jesus Christ. They used me. Used my access, my clearance. How many operations did they compromise?”
“Worry about that later,” I said. “Right now, we need to control the narrative. George, you’re going to report that Charlotte and I went to that safe house. There was an explosion. Unfortunate accident. Bodies presumed destroyed in the fire.”
His head snapped up. “You want me to lie to all my colleagues in the FBI? They’re not all traitors. There’s probably just one.”
