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Crossfire (Cross Duet #1) 6. GRAYSON 10%
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6. GRAYSON

6

GRAYSON

“We have a problem,” I said.

My handler was likely already in the loop, but this was our first conversation since the botched job. As I wore a path in the Chicago concrete, it felt like the world had gone sideways, and I was scrambling to find my footing.

The chaotic symphony of traffic and distant sirens wasn’t just a backdrop; it was a mirror to the turmoil raging inside me. Each wail felt like it was echoing my frustration, the buzz of the city a reminder of the constant danger lurking in plain sight.

“Before we get into that,” Daniel said, warmth radiating from every word as he continued, “are you okay, Grayson?”

“I’m fine.”

His relieved sigh was so loud, I could even hear it over the surrounding noise.

“Are you sure?”

“It was close.”

“They said you made it out.” Daniel’s voice crackled through the phone, each syllable laced with tension. “But I was worried you might’ve been injured by the blast. The explosion took out a chunk of the building next to it.”

My hand tightened around the phone. “Was anyone hurt?”

“No, but it means more people looking into it. We’ll need to figure out a way to contain this.”

And yet we had a leak of some kind, saying God knew what to cops right now. I glared at the police station across the street, its imposing structure a stark backdrop against the sunny sky, hoping I was waiting at the right location. Police officers in the city of Chicago were assigned to districts, and based on the geographical area where cops picked up the mysterious woman, this should be the precinct they took her to.

Only time would tell, however.

“Did you find the SUV Nightshade fled in?” I asked.

Nightshade. The code word we used for Vosch when speaking out in the open.

“He abandoned it a few blocks away. We’re going through it now. Since he had to ditch it so quickly, maybe we’ll find something.”

Unlikely.

And now, the guy was in the wind, free to conduct whatever horror he had planned with no one to stop him. Endangering lives.

“This is on me. I was waiting for a clear shot. If I had fired, maybe I could’ve…” My words trailed off, lost in a sea of what-ifs.

Daniel’s silence screamed his disappointment. You’d think a covert operative wouldn’t care about something like that, but it sliced through my gut like an unpolished knife.

“This was a tough mission,” Daniel finally said. “You’re the first one who made it out alive.”

If he thought that made me feel any better, he was sorely mistaken.

“How will I redeem myself from this?” Failing wasn’t something I was accustomed to, and now this guy was loose in my home city. These were my people to protect, and anyone he killed would leave blood on my hands.

“You’ve saved more lives than I can count,” Daniel countered. “The FBI may take over?—”

“Don’t let them cut me out of this.” My sharp words were edged with desperation.

“Grayson…”

“This wouldn’t be the first time the CIA and FBI worked together,” I reminded him.

“You know how this goes. We’re supposed to be discreet. When things become more public”—like an explosion—“they tend to step in.”

I hated how jurisdictions sometimes overlapped into gray zones like this one. It made everyone seem to whip out their dicks onto a table and size ’em up.

“Please, just make some calls,” I pressed.

Daniel had been in the CIA for over two decades, and he had connections throughout prominent levels of the government—people who would listen if he said his operative needed to stay engaged.

“I want to be the one to take him down,” I declared with steely resolve. “I had a shot, and I let it slip through my fingers. This is on me. Let me finish this.”

I couldn’t escape the relentless replay of that pivotal moment when I had Vosch in my crosshairs and didn’t squeeze the trigger. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, waiting for the perfect shot, but now, the fallout of my failure bore down on me. If only I had pulled that trigger, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

“I have to finish this,” I asserted.

Daniel allowed several seconds to pass.

“I can’t make any promises,” he hedged.

The tension in my body began to melt. “Thank you.”

“Now, let’s talk about our other problem,” Daniel pressed.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, wishing I had more information—a name at least. If I had that, I could at least tell Daniel, who had shown up while we solved the why . It was embarrassing enough to fail at the hit, but to have not gotten anything other than a physical description of this woman was maddening.

Sure, spying and tracking someone’s identity weren’t my swim lane in the CIA, but still.

“Let me ask you something,” I started. “If the police brought someone in to give a statement or even for questioning, what are the odds that they would give the CIA their information?”

Daniel’s voice was hesitant. “There are laws against that.”

“Laws against cooperating with the CIA to protect this country?”

“Laws to protect the privacy of US citizens, and law enforcement upholds them, else they could be in deep shit.”

Yeah, well, there are laws against murder, too, but here we are.

“But let’s say that person might be a suspect or a witness that could help bring down a direct threat to United States citizens. Would they enforce it then?”

I could picture Daniel’s broad shoulders pulling back as he inhaled, probably scrubbing that silver beard of his as he finally answered.

“Police will not give us the identity of a person giving a statement or brought in for questioning.”

I clenched my eyes at the certainty in his tone.

“What if we show them it’s part of a CIA investigation?” I countered.

“Chances are low, and even then, it would require the involvement of a judge and a whole procedure with evidence and hearings. Hearings with information the CIA doesn’t want released.”

How was it possible that something as simple as asking for a goddamned name could be this complicated?

“So, you think if I were to walk into a police station right now and tell them what was going on—just high level, not details—they still would not cooperate?”

“You already know we can’t tell anyone anything, so I’m not sure why you’re even asking me this.”

Desperate brainstorming, hoping for a loophole—that’s why.

“You know we have to keep information contained, even from other government branches. It’s crucial for our organization’s success and for protecting US secrets. I don’t need to remind you of that.”

I ground my teeth. “I’m simply asking if there are any ways to get a name from the cops.”

“If we can’t do our job without tipping off law enforcement, we should not be doing our job at all.”

I had no right to feel offended; it was weak, hoping the police department could help me with a name. This was my mess. I shit the bed. It was embarrassing to ask another branch of the government to hand me a mop to clean it; I’d go get the mop myself—or at worst, at least contain the cleanup to my team.

“I assume this has something to do with our surprise guest?” Daniel deduced.

“You know about her,” I confirmed.

“Seth gave me the debrief, but I want to hear what you know.”

I rubbed my brow bone. “Female. Late twenties. No accent that I heard, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one. Dark brown hair. Five foot three, one hundred and ten pounds.”

“Any identifying features?”

“No tattoos or piercings that I observed.”

“The description is vague enough to match millions of people,” he chided. “We need to find out if she’s working with Nightshade or the buyer he was supposed to meet.”

I hesitated, clearing my throat before dropping the bomb. A different one this time, no pun intended.

“I think she’s just a civilian.”

A pause.

“That’s impossible. The odds of a civilian?—”

“I thought so, too,” I interrupted. “But she ran right into the arms of the cops. No one working with either would have done that.”

He was silent again, digesting all this.

“She must be involved.”

I knew better than to argue with my boss when he was this flustered.

“I take it, from your line of questions, she’s at the police station?” Daniel prodded.

“She is.”

“Hold on. I’m conferencing Seth in.”

Seth was the best IT guy I’d ever worked with—and for good reason. He had an uncanny ability to navigate the digital world like a hacker himself. But there was more to Seth than just his skill with computers. He had a razor-sharp mind and an insatiable appetite for success. I’d seen him work late into the night, his eyes glued to the screen, determined to solve even the most complex problems. It was this drive that had propelled him to get promoted to our team, and now he had his sights set on even greater heights.

Seth was vying for a promotion—with his longer-term goal of replacing Daniel whenever he moved on or retired. The question was, could Seth’s ambitions help me with finding this woman?

“Seth,” Daniel started. “Where are you at with pulling the footage?”

“I’m starting with the cameras around the garage and working my way out.”

“The surprise guest,” Daniel pressed. “Can you run facial recognition?”

Keyboard clicks cascaded over each other, followed by a long silence.

“Don’t have a clear shot of her face,” Seth answered.

“From any angle?” I asked in disbelief.

“Might be one from another camera, but not the one on the southeast corner. That’s the one I’m scrubbing right now.”

“Hack into any security camera within a five-block radius of that garage,” Daniel said. “Go through all the security footage, starting with any image of that woman and backtracking her movements until we can see where she came from.”

“Before or after I track Nightshade’s movements?”

“After. How long will it take to track his?”

“Nightshade stopped at another garage. Figuring out which vehicle he got into is like a needle in a haystack in a metropolitan area. We have to follow each vehicle one by one to see where it went and see if we can identify the driver.”

“Nightshade wouldn’t be sloppy enough to drive his own getaway car. He’s probably hidden in the trunk or a fake compartment of a van,” Daniel said.

“Welcome to my haystack.”

I scrubbed the side of my face.

“How long do you think that will take?” I asked.

“So far, I have twenty-four vehicles I need to track down.”

“Twenty-four?” I choked.

“And counting. It’s a twelve-story parking garage. Each level holds a hundred vehicles, and twenty-four got out before we roped it off. That number will get bigger, the wider we cast our net. If I was Nightshade, I might hang low in the parking garage, but Daniel’s team is clearing it, car by car, so…”

“For-fucking-ever.”

“The second thing you asked me to do, boss, was reverse-engineer where we think Nightshade came from. Same exercise, but backward, following the SUV from where it entered the parking garage. You want me to prioritize this surprise guest over Nightshade?”

“No.”

“Can we get another tech team to help?” I wondered aloud.

“We have another tech team helping,” Seth replied. “This shit takes time.”

“So, in other words, you can’t help me identify her,” I said.

“Not at the moment.”

“Can you train me how to run facial recognition?” I asked.

The guy had the nerve to laugh out loud. Guess he forgot that between the two of us, I was the deadlier one. Seth spent most of his time behind a computer screen or behind the long lines of a scope, his finger on the trigger he never had to pull.

“There has to be someone else we can call to help go through this faster,” I insisted.

“We can’t pull in more resources without risking an intel leak that could compromise future missions on this target. Not after that explosion,” Seth disagreed.

Great.

“Seth,” Daniel said. “Prioritize following Nightshade’s movements after the detonation. Give me real-time intel. I just arrived at the scene. I’m going to pose as a bystander to see if they pull more than one body from the rubble.” More than one, meaning the woman arrived with someone else we missed, but left them to die. “Grayson, do you have eyes on our surprise guest?”

As if the universe finally decided to throw me a bone, the front door of the police station swung open again. Lo and behold, out walked the enigmatic brunette, her arms crossed tightly over her stomach, like she was trying to hold herself together.

At least I didn’t lose her on top of all my other incompetence today.

“I do.”

“Good. Tail her. Get a name, address, or photo if you can. Be discreet. Don’t blow your cover. We’ll debrief tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I have to go,” Daniel announced.

I did, too.

Because she was on the move. On foot this time, headed toward a city bus stop.

The woman with no name and a mystery that could unravel everything.

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