Chapter 18

Chapter

Eighteen

MCQUADE

W illiam Henry Mackintosh expired three hours and forty-seven minutes after he arrived courtesy of Remy and Locke. It took a little under thirty minutes for him to regain consciousness, then another twenty of him screaming before he passed out again. Finally, at the ninety-minute mark, we got him awake and talking.

Granted it was another couple of hours for the gibberish to be translated into English, after which I put a bullet in his head. It ended his suffering and mine.

Irritating man.

Locke skipped the questioning by moving up to drive. We didn't invite Patch into the interrogation. She didn't need to see this. Thankfully, she didn't ask so we got to avoid that fight.

Remy and I bagged the body up silently. The plastic layers on the walls made cleanup straightforward. I stripped off the plastic body suit that kept his blood off me. Once everything was bagged and stored, I checked my watch.

"We still need to find a place to get rid of him." One drawback of being on the move constantly. We were going to have to make use of multiple dump sites. We were still in Nevada and heading south again.

"We've got some options in Arizona," Remy said before opening the door to the soundproof room where we'd worked. I was a half-step behind him. The door closed with a pressurized hiss. It required a code to open it.

I didn't try to fool myself that my sugar bear could get in there if she wanted. I just had to trust that she didn't want to. "Who do you know in Arizona?"

To be fair, he'd trusted my sourced support in Colorado. While I didn't expect it from someone with his pedigree and background, I could probably trust it. The real mistake would be assuming he didn't have contacts of his own.

"I know quite a few people," he said, a faint smirk on his lips.

I swallowed my snarkier response as I caught sight of Patch scowling at her computer screen like it had betrayed her.

"Problem?" I asked, bypassing Remington even as he also headed in her direction.

She spared an almost distracted look at me. "No, I was examining the infrastructure of Mad Dogs' various enterprises. They have diversified in this damn near elegant pattern, and it's pissing me off."

"How is it elegant?" I moved to lean against the corner of her desk where I could see the screens she studied. "Businesses are businesses."

"Yes, and no. All businesses, even super-secret government shady ones, leave a paper trail. It's how they get caught. You can pretend you don't exist all you want, but purchases have to be made, buildings inspected, and taxes paid."

Taxes. I snorted. "You'd think even the government could avoid that one."

She shot me an amused look over the edge of her glasses. I hadn't realized she even wore them. Apparently, they were for long hours focused on the computer.

"No one screws with the IRS. Not even the U.S. government itself." Her droll tone was at odds with her humor, though she sobered swiftly. "While Section Five might have begun as a government operation, I don't think it's stayed that way. In fact, I have a feeling it's a hellish set of nesting dolls that took advantage of top secret status to build a profitable information network under the umbrella of national security."

I turned that nugget of information over.

"Any evidence or just a gut feeling?" I didn't doubt her instincts, but actionable intel was always best. It made my gut burn to think we didn't get as much out of Mackintosh as I would have liked.

"Gut feeling," she admitted, leaning back in her chair and rolling her head from side to side. There was a distinctive sound of clicking as if she'd popped her neck. I didn't miss the faint grimace that flickered across her face.

Straightening, I settled a hand against the back of her neck and began to work the taut muscles. They were locked up hard. "Tell me—" I spared Remy a look where he stood not even two feet away. "Tell us about the gut feeling."

Not answering immediately, she let her chin drop toward her chest as I continued the slow massage of the cramped muscles. A low groan escaped her and I accepted it for the encouragement it was.

"It's just… fuck right there." The low, throaty sound was definitely something I wanted to spend more time coaxing from her. "I didn't realize how sore my neck was…"

Another sigh, but she leaned into the massage so I kept the pressure steady and worked the area where the muscles seemed to be loosening.

"Mad Dogs is incorporated as Mad Dogs Inc, literally. The company itself is just a holding company. An umbrella corp that allows multiple shell games to be played simultaneously via a network of businesses from MD Professional Resources, that provides office support, to MD Outfitters that provides equipment for hiking and extreme sports."

Another little sigh left her. Those low sounds were the most unexpected aphrodisiac.

"Office support—they're looking for industrial espionage?" Remington's elegant, if irritating, accent put the brakes on my personal fantasies. Not that I could indulge them at the moment.

"Possibly," she said, lifting her head to look at him even as she leaned into my touch.

"That would make the Outfitters the wet work contractors and more." I didn't need her to confirm it, but it made perfect sense. In fact, it made almost too much sense.

It was the outsourcing and the outfitters that had gone for her. Who had held her. I locked eyes with the assassin and read equal intent in his gaze. The tempest of anger in the air sizzled against my skin, but like me, he locked it down as we looked at Patch.

"Yes," she said, leaning more into the contact with my hand. I shifted the massage to stroke the column of her neck. "That's the problem. While they all exist under the same umbrella, they don't share any kind of visible network or staff ties."

So they filed different paperwork. I didn't see a problem with that.

"Also, there are at least eight other ‘MD' operations that have been incorporated or dissolved over the last fifteen years. The most recent one to dissolve included a complete shut down of the whole structure. On the surface, it looks like they filed Chapter 11. Restructured the debt and the assets until the organization essentially vanished as a new ‘MD' took over."

"I presume there is something about this most recent one that bothers you," Remington said slowly, his tone conveying more than anything else the careful weighing of what she was and wasn't saying.

When she tilted her head back to rest against my hand, I stilled. The fall of her hair over my wrist tickled the skin. I was glad I'd washed up before touching her. The long sigh escaping her seemed to resonate with me.

"They apparently liquidated the operation a little over five years ago." No emotion colored those heavy words. Over five years earlier…

"You believe they liquidated the operation you worked for," I said, matching her tone evenly. I wouldn't shy away from that grim reality. No matter how personal this was for her, and I didn't make the mistake of thinking this wasn't personal, but she hadn't done anything wrong.

If they shut it down and scrubbed their employees, that was on them. Most black site operations, especially an off the books, private one that avoided answering to any kind of government oversight would find a few bodies a lot easier to deal with than any questions.

"Yes," she said, then swiveled back to the screen. She pulled away from contact with me as she scooted forward. You could practically see the shields going up around her. Her screens switched, information scrolling as she accessed their histories and paperwork.

I skimmed it, but I kept more of my attention on her than what was on the screen. What she'd found upset her more than she was willing to admit. Based on the way Remington tracked her motions, I didn't doubt he read the same into her response.

If it was another target, we'd deal with it. But I didn't think this was strictly a target or an information deep dive. Clamping my jaw closed, I forced myself to wait her out.

"I was trying to figure out what the hell Mad Dog had to do with Section Five… A cluster of operations based around a label like ‘mad dog' doesn't fit. Even if it started as a government sanctioned black op that went off books, why ‘Mad Dog'? Why sound like a liquor? Or a motorcycle gang?"

Now emotion bled into her voice. Irritation fluttered between each of the words—no, not irritation. Disgust. Something about the whole thing truly disgusted her.

"What did you find?" Remington maintained a kind of cool presence I wished I could offer. At the moment, I'd like to split a few skulls open, starting with the guys who'd made her feel this way. It wasn't what she needed from me right now though, so I kept my temper locked down.

If the fucking Brit could give her the kind of steadiness she craved, then I'd back his play. She stilled at his question, then shifted her gaze toward him. I could almost feel the tension spilling off of her and adding to the earlier turbulence.

"MadOg," she said, pronouncing it "Mad Dog" as we'd been calling it, but then she spelled it out. "M-a-d-O-g."

I still wasn't seeing the connection. They'd skipped the extra D, made it sounds like Mad Original, but that didn't seem like the point. Or was it…?

"Five letters," Remington said, seeming to hone right in on it and she snapped her fingers then pointed at him.

"Section Five." With that, she hit two keys on the keyboard and a wealth of information populated the screens. The keyword seemed to all be MadOg. Still mad dog, but not. The MadOg, the one she'd worked for, was listed as a failing operation. Everything had been liquidated, even the equipment sold along with the real estate.

She'd taken their secrets, then vanished before they could silence her. To cover their own trail, they shut it all down. Afterward, they erased all the witnesses. Cold-blooded, ruthless, and efficient.

All three of her screens began to fill in with more and more connections. Umbrella was not the right term. It was more like an iceberg. An iceberg where far more of it was below the surface. You only saw a sliver of the truth.

"It's a web, a violent, bloody web that focuses on profit and loss. To keep their books balanced, they have no problem going into the red. They'll bathe in it if they have to." The chill in her voice didn't belong there. I dropped my gaze from the intricate maze she'd uncovered. The darkness in her eyes pulled at me.

"It's not your fault," I said. Maybe she wasn't ready to hear it. Maybe she would never be ready, but I'd say it every damn day until she believed me. "What they did is on them, not you."

Head tilted, she closed her eyes. I could almost feel her shutting me out. Tugging her chair backward, I swung her around.

I had to brace my legs as the truck slowed. I wasn't sure if it was traffic or if Locke was pulling off for a break. Right now, the only thing that mattered was Patch.

"I know you don't want to hear that," I continued and crouched in front of her. I didn't want to loom over her and intimidate her into believing me. I could do that, but it was pointless. Instead, I gripped the arms of her chair and locked my gaze on her face, practically willing her to open her eyes.

"If I hadn't taken the information to blackmail them into leaving me alone…"

"You did what you had to do to survive." I believed that with every molecule of my body. "You could have gone to the media or warned your coworkers. Sure. They would still have shut you down and all those people would still have been scrubbed. The only difference is you would have been scrubbed with them. At least in the best case scenario."

That jerked her eyes open and she frowned. "Best case?"

"Yep." I kept my hands on the chair and not on her no matter how much I longed to drag her into my arms and hold her. "Best case. Cause worst case, they would have painted you as the bad guy. Wrecked the life of every single person you knew. Your family, your friends, your neighbor, the local dog walker. They would have painted you with a violent brush. In the end, you'd have no idea what was real and what wasn't."

Fear edged out grief, but neither could stop the anger surging into her eyes. That's it. Get pissed, Sugar Bear. Get mad. Those sons of bitches will cheerfully fuck you over. We're not letting them do that.

I wanted to shout it all from the rooftops, but she wasn't ready to hear that yet.

"In the end, you're just another crackpot. An out-there conspiracy theorist that resurfaces as an urban legend now and then. It's even better than plausible deniability for them. Because they'd have already debunked the rumors of their existence by proving you had no idea what you were talking about."

Every word I said seemed to generate even more fire in her eyes.

"I hate them," she whispered.

"Me too," I said and now I put a hand on her knee.

"As do I," Remington added his hand to her shoulder, then met my gaze over her head. She'd given us a kill list whether she realized it or not. I nodded once.

MadOg, or whatever they wanted to call themselves, were living on borrowed time. Still, neither of us said a word. It had to come from her.

She had to be ready to face the next step.

It didn't take her long. "How do we stop them?"

Not that I'd had a single doubt about her. My sugar bear was a fighter.