Chapter Four

Showered and dressed in his Iniquus uniform of gunmetal gray compression shirt and gray camo tactical pants, Nutsbe shook hands with FBI Joint Task Force members Kennedy and Finley as they came through the door, taking their usual seats at the conference table.

Those two had been both Iniquus adversaries and close partners on a number of cases over the years.

Nutsbe wondered which side of the coin they landed on with this case.

The only other guy in the room was Sy Covington, one of Iniquus's top lawyers, so either way, Nutsbe knew this was bad.

"Let's dive straight in," Kennedy said. "I was working at an FBI station in Eastern Europe. Your name is lighting up communications between Russia and Albania."

"Oh." Yup. This was what Nutsbe had been afraid of.

"It's hard to tell what's going on from the context of the conversations," Kennedy said, a worry line formed between his brows.

"It's my name explicitly?" Nutsbe's heart thumped hard against his breastbone. They had his name. Shit. "Nutsbe Crushed?"

"Thaddeus Crushed," Kennedy said, "explicitly. Looks like you've ruffled some feathers."

Nutsbe laced his fingers, planted his forearms on the table, and leaned forward. "So you didn't hear my name in your New York office?"

Finley and Kennedy turned to each other, checking to see if their partner had that information.

Finally, Kennedy turned back with his lips pursed. "Is New York working with you on a case? We aren't here to step on toes."

"If they were working with me, they'd say Nutsbe, not Thaddeus." He unraveled his fingers and knocked on the table. "Thaddeus is my legal name." Nutsbe swallowed hard and focused on Kennedy since he worked internationally. Finley worked out of D.C., where he worked on terror threats, and he was probably here as a backup of some kind. "Did Russia mention that I was targeted for a hit?"

Again, the two looked at each other before turning back to Nutsbe. "A hit?" Kennedy asked.

"Plutonium tea?" Nutsbe asked. "Nerve agent on my doorknob? A quick trip down a long flight of stairs?"

"Why would they care about you?" Finley asked.

"No one in your chatter is talking about specifics?" Covington sat to Nutsbe's right, pressed back in the captain"s chair with his ankle comfortably on his knee. His elbows relaxed on the armrests while his hands perched on his stomach. Zero tension. But then again, he was legal counsel, and no one was potentially putting him in the crosshairs.

"From what we've picked up, it seems that Nutsbe—Thaddeus—created a problem that they hadn't considered." Kennedy looked directly at Nutsbe. "My sense is that you opened a can of worms. We wondered if it was an Iniquus mission. Yours was the only name we picked up."

"But you knew it was my name. Not some rando Thaddeus Crushed from elsewhere."

"Thaddeus Crushed, working in Washington D.C., connected to the FBI," Finley said. "We did a public search of the area, and there are no other Thaddeus Crusheds on the East Coast. Closest one is in Ohio, and he's in his mid-seventies. We could have done a deeper dive into government records, but our team member, Prescott, remembered being on a mission to save DARPA scientist Zoe Kealoha when you mentioned that name to the good doctor."

"Yeah, she wasn't keen on calling me Nutsbe. Small world. And damned good memory on Prescott's part." Nutsbe slid his palms down his thighs to his knees and left them there. "Well, Russia and Albania are chatting about me. Listen, I need a heads-up if they decide to kill me. If you hear anything, I'm an immediate call."

Kennedy's brow drew in a little tighter. "Of course we would."

Nutsbe jutted forward. "There's no, of course, about it. That's not how these things work. What you'd do is weigh me and my life against whatever was going on, and you'd figure out what outcome was the most advantageous to you."

Covington shifted in his chair.

"Respectfully," Nutsbe added.

"So you know what this is about, the whys of your name on the channels," Finley's even tone was a counterpoint to the agitation that Nutsbe was feeling. "We're hoping you can share the information with us. That way, we can do our due diligence and keep you safe if things go from a simmer to a rolling boil."

Nutsbe turned to Covington. "What do I do here?" His lips were buzzing. That had only happened to him on a few occasions in his life: his first jump out of a plane, his F16's engines dying in the sandstorm, waking up to find that he'd had both of his legs amputated.

"Command prefers that you cooperate with the D.C. Joint Task Force once they've assured you that they'll protect your confidence," Covington said with carefully chosen words.

"How do you see that playing out?" Kennedy asked.

"Simple," Covington offered an easygoing smile. "You didn't get the information from Thaddeus Crushed. You came across the information. I know your protocols will create chain of command and process issues." He opened his palms upward. "But this is a choice you need to make," He laced his fingers again and gave a nod as if the decision was a done deal.

Nutsbe thought Covington was working the special agents. There was a men's club chumminess to all this. A brotherly pact he was articulating.

"You assure us that this is a protected conversation, knowing the full strength of Iniquus stands behind Mr. Crushed," Covington smiled a slow smile. "or we shake hands, and I will escort you to your car," Covington spoke with a monied southern drawl. It put people at ease.

Nutsbe's mom loved that kind of voice. She said it was "solace." Nutsbe always knew when he found his mom curled on the couch, knitting and watching To Kill a Mockingbird, that she was emotionally wrung out and needed a dose of Atticus Finch to make her feel safe and calm.

I should call Mom. As soon as the words formed in his brain, he jerked that thought to a stop. Nutsbe needed to stay away from his family unless and until he figured out how Russia discovered his name and what that would mean in the shakeout.

Thiswas why Iniquus employees went dark once they signed their contracts. They worked to have a zero footprint, especially the members of the operational teams. Nutsbe even paid for his house in full with his cash signing bonus. His trust held the title. It would be nigh on impossible to trace his personal address back to his name.

Nutsbe scanned through the normal modes of tracking someone down. Yeah, all his official papers—driver's license, voter registration, income tax forms—all listed his barracks apartment on Iniquus's high-security campus as his address. And like Finley said, there was nothing beyond the absolute necessity in terms of his name in the public sphere.

Who had a reach that could touch Nutsbe's info?

Banks had his voice for phone recognition. That technology certainly existed. If someone had recorded his voice along the way, they'd have to put it together with Thaddeus. That was the confounding part. The planes of his face were mapped, and his fingerprints were taken as part of his security clearance. The FBI had access to that.

The FBI's reach and capabilities were the problem here.

As Nutsbe thought through the possibilities, Kennedy and Finley had taken a moment to discuss Covington's proposal. And though they didn't look thrilled about it, Kennedy said, "You've got a deal."

"Not quite," Nutsbe said. "More. I need updates on what's going on. You don't keep me in the dark when it comes to the me part of the case."

"We've got you," Finley said.

It wasn't an official "We've got you" it was a verbal handshake kind of deal. That Covington had put the weight of Iniquus into play was an incentive. Nutsbe knew these men, and they had always been forthright and dependable. He just hoped that when he was talking about their counterintelligence chief, the one that might have a trickledown effect on their career trajectories, they could hold onto their ethics.

"This touches close to home for you. So, here we go," Nutsbe said as he splayed his fingers wide on the dark mahogany of the conference table. "Panther Force was working with a longtime client out of New Jersey. A couple of years ago, they approached us because they had an executive that they were concerned about."

"Who was the client?" Kennedy asked.

"Confidential," Covington said.

"What was the concern?" Kennedy asked. "Just in general."

"At the time they came to Iniquus, their in-house security detected emails and phone calls going to Albania," Nutsbe replied. "At first, they thought that their guy—" Nutsbe looked at Covington. "Can I say that name?"

Covington gave him a nod.

"First name Blerim. Last name: Hotel. Oscar. X-Ray. Hotel. Alpha. He pronounces it Ho-JAH, just like the former Prime Minister of Albania Hoxha, but there's no familial connection. I checked." Nutsbe bit at the inside of his cheek. "At first, the company thought Hoxha might be concerned about his family and that he was reaching out to relatives."

"They brought it up with him?" Kennedy asked. "That he shouldn't be making international calls of a personal nature from the company line?"

"Right," Nutsbe said. "He reassured them that this was about business. The CEO wasn't satisfied with his answers, so he quietly got Iniquus involved. It was handed to our team because this was right before Panther Force provided a close protection detail for their execs heading over to Montenegro for a retreat near the Albanian border a couple of years ago."

"So you started looking into this guy's background to see if he presented a threat to his coworkers while they were abroad," Kennedy said.

"Exactly," Nutsbe said. "Hoxha had ties to Albanian intelligence."

"Recently?" Kennedy asked.

"No. Decades ago. Hoxha would be sixty-four-ish," Nutsbe said. "He came to the U.S. when he married in his early thirties and became an American citizen. But since he raised a bunch of red flags for the company's president, we were allowed to make audio recordings of Hoxha's phone lines."

Covington leaned forward. "That's his work number that goes through their switchboard, but it's also the company-owned cellphone that is issued and is supposed to be dedicated to work calls only. This is a precaution to keep any spyware, malware or tracking from attaching to the company, and also so the company can legally monitor their workforce. New Jersey has a one-party consent law. And whether Hoxha remembered or not, when he was hired, he gave written consent to record all calls made on company phones."

"What industry?" Finley asked.

Covington steepled his fingers under his chin. "Confidential."

"But we can look up Hoxha's name and find that out," Finley pointed out.

"You could," Covington agreed. "But you didn't get that information from us. We can give you Hoxha's name because he is no longer with the company. He's dead."

Finley leaned forward. "Dead, how?"

"Hard to say." Nutsbe raked a hand through his hair. "I have had my finger on that pulse since the company pulled us in two years ago. About six weeks ago, at the beginning of August, Hoxha didn't show up for work. Hoxha had access to the company's highly confidential and possibly highly lucrative data. They were very concerned with the how and why of his and his wife"s sudden disappearance. The company started looking for him."

"You all went looking?" Finley asked.

"We don't operate such cases out of state," Covington said. "Our client did, however, inform us that their local PI discovered the bodies of husband and wife at their beachfront property. In the heat of the summer without the air conditioning on, the bodies had advanced to a point where evidence was scarce. The coroner listed it as a murder-suicide."

"The police are investigating it further?" Kennedy asked.

"I couldn't tell you." Nutsbe frowned. "And that's not why you're here. You're here to know why Russia and Albania have my name in their mouths."