Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
He’s silent for a few heavy beats. “They sat on a committee together.”
“Were you on that committee?”
“I was.”
“Why didn’t I know that until now?”
“Because it’s all top-secret information, and you still don’t have clearance.”
“I need to see those files before someone else dies.”
“I have them. I’m looking through them, but they’re marked up. You won’t understand what you’re seeing.”
“If you bring them and you to me, you can explain.”
He sighs. “I could lose my job and get thrown in jail, but I’ll do it. I’m actually here. I have the files with me.”
“Why?”
“Because the minute you had clearance, I was going to give them to you.”
“Are you allowed to even have those files?”
“Don’t ask those kinds of questions.” He hangs up and I’m fairly certain he’s coming here.
Thirty minutes later, Jay is helping him carry boxes into the living room. “This is it,” he says. “It’s all redacted.”
“Who else was on the committee?” I ask.
He reaches into his blazer pocket and offers the list to me. “I’ve had them all put on lockdown, which may well be why they’re still alive. But they can only be locked down for so long.”
I eye list and then him. “The Vice President?”
“He was a senator at the time, but yes.”
“How long did this committee run?”
“Six months,” he says. “But it dissolved three years ago. If this is related, that doesn’t sit well. It means whoever was pissed off, stayed pissed off for a long time.”
He’s right. Acid in a pot boils to poison.
I hand the list to Tic Tac but focus on Ellis. “I need a list of people you collectively pissed off.”
He motions to all the boxes—of which there are twelve. “That’s your list. Every decision we made impacted someone positively and someone negatively.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I wish I were,” he says.
I sigh and motion to Jay, Jack, and Enrique. “You’re all getting a crash course on what to look for in these files. It’s going to be a long night.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Our little makeshift team spends tedious hours going over files, hunting for anything that tells us the story we need to hear, or triggers something relevant to the case for Ellis. Nothing seems to lead us where we need to go, which I’m beginning to think is another direction.
Desperate to turn this around, I show Ellis the list of dark web prospective assassins Jack shoved at me outside Murphy’s apartment building. “I’ve heard of three and five,” he says, “but no one feels like our guy any more than the other.”
“Maybe it’s a soldier?” Tic Tac offers. “Someone who was trained to kill and conduct a covert operation?”
“That’s half the boxes,” Ellis says. “We’re the government. Military is our middle name.”
At some point, I fall asleep with my face in a file.
I know this because I jolt at the sound of my cellphone ringing and jerk my head upright.
I glance around the room to realize it’s dark, nightfall upon us, and the only person awake other than me is Ellis, who’s looking through files. I eye my caller ID to find Adams’ number, not Kane’s, who I was hoping for. It’s ten, more than twelve hours since Kane left the apartment. Where the hell is he? I decline the call and eye the three files in front of Ellis.
Tic Tac and Jack stretch and sit up. “What did I miss?” Tic Tac asks.
“Yeah, what did I miss?” Jack chimes in.
Meanwhile, Enrique sits up from where he was crashed on the floor and reaches for a pizza box, while Jay just doesn’t move. We’re torturing him with files. He’s such a wuss.
“What’s with those three files?” I ask Ellis, tapping the top one.
“I picked out files that connect to the people I think we screwed the most.”
“Oh, joy. You were a wonderful group of do-gooders, weren’t you? What’s the fourth file sitting to the side?”
“The worst of the lot, but the guy is dead. He killed himself.”
“You must have fucked him like a champion,” I reply. “What made his life not worth living?”
“Clyde Walker and his company held a top-secret government contract for years. Marie Rodriguez wanted to hand it to someone new, who she said brought a fresh perspective.”
“A friend,” I assume.
“I suspected as much. I actually voted against the change, but the now VP cast the deciding vote.”
“I have something,” Jack says, and he’s really been remarkably not irritating. I’m not sure what to think about that. “The dark web now thinks the assassin is a newcomer.”
“Okay, now you’re being irritating,” I snap. “First it was for sure one of the top five assassins on that list you gave me. Now, it’s someone new. This is guessing and it does us no good.”
“Open minds breed open ideas,” he counters.
“Whatever the fuck that means. I liked ‘horror movie’ Jack better than ‘motivational speaker’ Jack. Either you have something solid, or you don’t.”