“I can neither confirm nor deny your allegation,” Dani said, trying to lighten the mood. “All I can tell you is I need to look like someone who would gladly kill you.”
“Like one of those female assassins in FPS games?” Axel asked. “I could see that.”
He spent every moment not devoted to study playing first-person-shooter video games. Dani kept waiting for him to get bored with his hobby, but he had a YouTube channel where he narrated his virtual exploits and had already gained over ten thousand subscribers.
“Maybe,” she said to him.
“Okay, I can work with this,” Erica said, pacing.
“Whatever you like.” Dani rolled her eyes. “Just make me look deadly. Can you do that?”
She pretended not to see their curious gazes. No way would she admit she was about to team up with Gustavo Toro, a man whose callous disregard for life defined him. A man she was depending on for her very survival.
She did it in the hope Toro would lead her to the person ultimately responsible for Nathan Costner’s murder. She did it because no one should escape justice—even the rich and the powerful. She did it because it was her job.
A part of her hoped her brother and sister would never understand what it felt like to be her.
CHAPTER 19
The next morning Dani stood in front of SAC Wu, whose frank appraisal unsettled her.
“This is your best approximation of a female assassin?” he asked her.
She looked down at her recently acquired wardrobe. “I figured black goes with everything,” she said. “And it’s suitable for all occasions.”
“I like it,” Toro said. “You don’t look like a Fed now.”
Which had been the whole point.
“The hair is a bit much,” Wu said. “It’s going to take a while to grow it all back.”
Her sister had shaved both sides of Dani’s head, leaving a thick mane covering a wide swath down the middle dyed jet black and plaited into a braid beginning at her forehead and continuing halfway down her back.
“At least it stays out of my face,” Dani said. She decided not to tell them about the special barrette she’d put in her hair. She hadn’t worn it since her last classified military op.
“Now you’re Nikki Corazón for sure,” Toro said. “You look like you could hold your own in a bar brawl.”
She shot him a look. “I’ll try not to disappoint.”
Everyone turned at the sound of the door opening.
“Excuse me, sir,” a slender woman in her forties with a decidedly bookish air said to Wu. “I’ve made the adjustments. Are you ready?”
Wu nodded. “Come in, Sandra.” He turned to Toro and Dani. “This is Sandra Feehan. She designed your wearables.”
Sandra lifted a box that looked like it could have held cigars and opened the lid. She reached inside, took out a man’s smart watch, and handed it to Toro. “This contains a tracking device.” She waited for him to take it and continued. “I’ve also tapped into the health-monitoring features so they relay information about your pulse rate, stress level, and sleep to a dedicated system.”
“But will you know if I get my ten thousand steps in?” Toro said. “Because that shit’s important.”
Sandra ignored the question and turned to Dani. “I had to modify this for your wrist,” she said, holding out a heavy black leather cuff bracelet. “This was originally meant for . . . uh . . .”
Dani could practically hear the unspoken words as Sandra trailed off. Their time had been short, and everyone had assumed a male agent would go undercover with Toro.
She took the bracelet, which felt heavy. Uncomfortable with the reminder that she was no one’s first pick to go on this assignment, she covered her awkwardness with a question.
“Does this have a tracker as well?”
Sandra smiled. “Of course. And both of your cell phones will too.” She pointed at what appeared to be three decorative silver coins set into the leather. “This coin provides the same data as the watch.”
“No hidden weapons in these things?” Toro said after Sandra left the room. “I was expecting one of the watch’s dials to release knockout gas when you turn it.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even get an exploding pen.”
“This is the FBI,” Dani said. “We’re also not getting a briefcase that turns into a parachute or a shoe phone.”
“You’ll get your gun back when you and Agent Vega leave for the meeting,” Wu said. “I’m not wild about it, but everyone knows what you carry, and it would be suspicious if you had something different or went unarmed.”
“I never go anywhere without my piece,” Toro said.
The comment reminded her of an earlier conversation with Wu. “Did you get what I requested?” she asked him.
Her supervisor opened a lunch box–size case. Dani reached inside and reverently lifted the matte black Sig Sauer P220 semiautomatic nested in foam packing.
“Tell me this isn’t straight from the factory,” she said.
“Give me some credit, Vega,” Wu said. “There was no time for you to go to the range, but I had the range masters put a couple hundred rounds through it.”
She sniffed, catching the scent of gun oil, then thumbed the release and pulled back the slide to work the action. “Chamber’s empty,” she said.
Wu handed her two full magazines.
She took them both and seated one with a satisfying snap. She stashed the extra in the upper left pocket of her leather jacket, then grasped the slide and racked it back with a jerk of her hand to chamber a round.
“I need it to go bang when I pull the trigger,” she said by way of response to Wu’s raised brow.
“Do I get extra ammo?” Toro asked, watching her slip the Sig into a holster attached to her black webbed belt.
“You get exactly what you came here with,” Wu said to him. “No more.”
Toro motioned to Dani. “Except a partner in crime.”
Dani took advantage of the opening to ask a question that had been on her mind since they had learned about the Colonel.
She looked at Toro. “What would make a retired military officer go rogue? Did he say anything to you about his background?”
“He made it a point not to reveal anything about himself,” Toro said. “I never even knew his name, much less whether he was actually a colonel. He certainly never talked about his business dealings or his contacts.”
She turned back to Wu, who had reviewed the dossier prepared by Johnson and her military intelligence cohorts. “Did the analysts uncover anything we can use for leverage?”
“Treadway is divorced,” Wu said. “Kids are grown. No grandkids. He’s fifty years old and in excellent health.”
“He’s a ranking officer, so he’s a trained tactician,” she said, thinking out loud. “I just don’t get how he would sink to this.”
“You have no idea how low he can go,” Toro said quietly. “You’d better hope your cover is never blown.”
CHAPTER 20
Dani stood beside Toro at the mouth of a nearly deserted alley and checked her watch. Two minutes past the meeting time.
Toro jerked his chin in the direction of a rapidly approaching black panel van. “That’s them. We won’t know for sure whether it worked or not right away,” Toro said as the van slowed. “The Colonel is strategic. He might give us some rope to see if we hang ourselves before he orders the rest of the group to jump us.” The creases around his mouth tightened. “Problem is, we won’t know until it’s too late . . . which is the point.”
As the van pulled to the curb and glided to a stop, Dani felt the familiar tightening of her stomach before she went into an unknown situation. There was no time for her to respond, but she had been forewarned.
The vehicle’s side door slid open, and two men beckoned to them. Dani hauled herself inside after Toro, noting that the rear compartment was sealed off from the front, separating the driver from the passengers.
“You’ve got a strange idea of a date,” the taller of the two men said to Toro. “We’ve never had a couple on the team before.”
“Nice to see you again, too, Chopper,” Toro said, reaching around her to slide the door shut.
The one called Chopper eyed her with suspicion. For the hundredth time, she entertained doubts about her cover, but Toro had concurred with Wu that no other agent had a prayer of getting inside the Colonel’s group.
The shorter man directed a sneer at her. “I don’t like working with women.”
“The Colonel is okay with it,” Toro said. “That should be good enough for you.” He gestured toward Dani. “She goes by Nikki.”
Dani knew better than to smile or make small talk and kept silent as the van began to move.
“This is Jock,” Toro said to Dani, tipping his head toward the shorter man. “He competes in iron man events in his spare time.” He turned to the man who had greeted them. “And this is Chopper.”
Chopper’s lips twisted into a grim smile. “Not because I like to ride custom bikes.”
“He has an affinity for edged weapons,” Toro said by way of explanation.