Page 56 of Agency
He snorted. “Got two. Alex, Rachel, and all them… they’re good. They’re family. But there’s things I don’t tell even my family.”
“Two of them?” Andrew asked, brain clearly already working.
“Yeah…” Thomas replied, but trailed off.
“What about our taking Candice to the one you’re not using?” Andrew replied, glancing to both me and Jericho as he did. “It’s somewhere close by, right?”
Made sense. We didn’t want to hand her over to the cops, that was for damn sure. I mean,yeah, she’d been sent to assassinate Stella, and had caused some massive utility damage to a private business along the way.
Big whoop.
But, she hadn’t tried to kill Thomas, or me. And she’d backed away from Stella for some reason. There was something going on here, and we needed to figure that something out. And we would. Eventually. What mattered more, though, was getting whatever information we could out of our mystery lover. Maybe finding the mole, maybe flipping her so she could be an informant.
Something?
Anything?
Regardless, we couldn’t keep her here.
“Fine,” Thomas said after a moment. “Okay. You use one, I’ll use the other. But, if anything goes hinky on my end, I’m rabbiting with Stella. Understood?”
“Can’t say I’d do any different,” Jericho replied. “Our client is the mission priority. Hopefully, whatever we can figure out with our mystery woman here will help keep both of you safe.”
“Agreed,” Thomas said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get a pregnant woman down fifteen flights of stairs.” He went to turn away, but paused and looked back to us. “Remember: no calls. Not even to the home office. Understood?”
“Understood,” Jericho said. “Running silent.”
“Good hunting, gentlemen,” Thomas said, before shaking each of our hands in turn.
And, with that, Thomas went and gathered up Stella. Still shaken by having had a gun pointed at her, she didn’t need much convincing. Before he left, Thomas scribbled down an address, along with some directions to the cabin, and passed them off to Jericho.
We waited till he and Stella were gone before going into Carmen/Candice’s room. She’d stayed quiet the whole time, and now her eyes rose to meet ours as we stepped within.
“Um, hi,” she said, voice lacking all the confidence and bravado I’d first noticed back at the Beaver. Not that I could blame her. After all, she was unarmed, tied to a chair, and completely at our mercy.
But, to see her like this was strange. So strange to see her… meek, for lack of a better word. Especially since meek wasn’t what I would have used to describe that kick she’d delivered to my temple.
“So, how you guys doing?” she asked, her voice filled with forced levity as she singsonged the question.
We all just stared.
“Good? Me, too.” A long pause. “Thanks for asking.”
Still nothing from us.
“So help me God,” she began with a world-weary sigh, “if you guys try and do the whole ‘we’re not angry, we’re just disappointed’ bullshit, I’m going to scream.”
That was actually kind of funny, and I had to turn away to keep her from seeing my smirk. When I looked back, her furrowed brow and the way she chewed on her lip left little doubt about the battle being waged within her.
“I didn’t know she was pregnant,” she said after a moment. “I only go after really bad people–never civilians, or innocents. Drug dealers, terrorists, organized crime, really awful people. Never a pregnant woman before.” Now came her turn to look away. “And I didn’t know any of you three would be here, or else I wouldn’t have taken the job. They mentioned the name of some security company and said you guys were good, but I had no idea any of you worked for them. I knew you were ex-military, but not that you’d be bodyguards for someone like Stella Beltran, pregnant or not.”
“Wait…” I began as Jericho and I exchanged looks. “What kind of person do you think Stella is?”
“All I know is that she basically stole a drug cartel from her father down in Mexico, and that she was here setting up a deal with some gang in East St. Louis.”
“You seriously think Stella is the leader of a drug cartel?”
She blinked in the dimness of the room as she looked to each of our faces.
