Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (3 page)

BOOK: Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4)
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“Yes,” I growled.

“That's going to be a problem.”

I didn't back away. “Why?”

She crossed her legs, smoothing down her skirt. Drawing my attention to her creamy, light brown thighs. Making my stiff cock throb painfully.

“I'm not wearing any panties.”

Chapter
Two

Breach

 

Michael

Most animals are put down once they get a taste for human flesh. No sense in keeping around a dog that's quicker to bite than it is to heel. The moment a tool becomes a risk, it ceases to become useful; it's a liability. Here's another example. Would you use a gun that had a fifty-fifty chance of blowing up in your face when you pulled the trigger? Probably not. I wouldn't. Nobody of any fucking sense would.

But the IMA were consistently showing that they exhibited zero fucking sense. Misfiring weapons are incinerated, biting animals are euthanized, but human beings, it seemed, were the exception to the rule; we made blood lust, especially the cannibalistic form of it, lucrative.

Somebody should have neutralized Callaghan years ago. As soon as he began to show signs of those same mad-dog-propensities. But instead of putting him down, the fools he worked with put him into power. Nothing had been quite the same since.

Callaghan had taken over the IMA through a series of carefully executed coups, starting with my dishonorable discharge and accusation of treason, and ending with the assassination of the previous head — which he pinned on me. The newly minted traitor. He was full of ruthless economy, the bastard.

He had to be, though. He had taken a group of trained mercenaries and turned them into a warring feudal mob. Powerful men bowing to him with their tails tucked between their legs, too afraid to say boo to their leader. Even when they should. Especially when they should. A leader who exists in a power vacuum isn't just a leader: he's a tyrant.

As a result, his organization had fragmented and grown increasingly corrupt. Callaghan thought little of loyalty, except in situations where it could be exploited as a potential weakness, and that belief was reflected in his men and their cutthroat — and cowardly,  self-serving — mentality.

When he had grown bored with his playing ground, Callaghan branched out into the media. There was less blood to spill in this sector, but controlling a live news stream fed into his massive ego, and in the wrong hands, in his hands, it could be used to lead witch hunts against his enemies, which I suspected was his main goal in such a merger.

Revenge. Against us.

I had cut transmission during the unveiling of his new telecommunications project, marking him as a failure in front of the very people he had been trying to impress. Callaghan would have my head on a platter just for that, if he could — hell have no fury like a sociopath humiliated — but that was just one humiliation in a long line of many.

He would never forget that I'd been Richardson's first choice, not him.

Christina was on his list, as well. He knew she was his best chance at getting back at me. But she was also the one who had shot him. She'd gotten him right in the knee. Shattered the patella. Because of her, he'd been forced to drop out of the public eye to lick his wounds. Nobody finds a gimp terrifying.

God, I hoped it fucking hurt.

But however badly he was hurting now, it wasn't enough. Not even close. A limp wouldn't stop him. It might slow him down, but it wouldn't stop him.

To do that, we needed to kill him.

“Angelica — do you have the files?”

“One moment, please,” she called back in her Sudanese accent. I could hear her shuffling around in the file room. What the fuck was she doing in there?

I wasn't a patient man by nature and she'd had plenty of time to put the file together while I'd been on the goddamn plane. Which had landed late.

Turned out that there wasn't even time to give Christina the fucking I'd promised when we got back on land. Soon as we got in the car and I turned on my phone, I was assaulted by a number of texts from Angelica, each subsequent one rising in urgency in terms of tone.

Where are you?

Have you landed yet?

I have something you need to see.

Call me as soon as you get this.

I was already dialing by the time I'd reached the last one. Angelica picked up on the first ring and said, “Come back to base as soon as you can.” And now she wasn't even fucking ready? My patience had officially hit zero.

“Goddamn it, Angelica, where the hell is that folder? Are you shitting it out in there, or what?”

“I said one moment. I am not used to Ms. Parker's filing system. It will take me a minute to locate it.”

“Don't blame Christina. You had a full two hours to get used to it.”

“Found it.”

Angelica sashayed into the room, causing the tight material of her skirt to creak with the rolling motions of her hips.

“Here is the dossier you requested so nicely,” she said, smiling as she handed me a thick folder bursting with papers. I eyed them warily.

“I don't recall ordering a side of sass to go with it. What is this? You writing his biography?”

I flipped through the thick stack of papers. I couldn't help but feel a little impressed. Angelica had gathered everything. Names, dates — I snorted — even his social security number and a photocopy of his birth certificate. “Jesus H. Christ.”

“Is there a problem?”

I slapped the folder lightly against my thigh. “You assembled all this today?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How?”

She smiled, pleased. “A magician never reveals her secrets, Mr. Boutilier.”

The wry response, and its deadpan delivery, made me think, suddenly, of Kent. Which was not surprising in and of itself. Angelica had been Kent's protege. It would not be unusual for her to have picked up some of his mannerisms in the interim.

I just hadn't expected how much it would hurt.

Fuck.

After Kent's death, I'd hired Angelica, figuring she would be the next best thing. Kent himself was irreplaceable. He had been killed in an explosion rigged up by radical members of the BN. This had been before their merger with the IMA. Back when I still worked for the IMA. Back when the BN had seen me as the sinister figurehead of an organization that had put so many of their best men to death.

Kent had survived the rigors of being an agent of MI6 during wartime, a real-life James Bond. When he retired from military service, he started freelancing, trading intel instead of seeking it out personally. The thought of him dying because of an oversight filled me with rage. Rage, and a deep, yawning regret that I felt like a bullet wound.

What a fucking waste.

“Mr. Boutilier?”

Angelica's voice broke through my thoughts. I had been standing there for the better part of a minute. The folder had dents from my fingers.

“This is good work,” I said. “Well done.”

“Was that a compliment?” she asked archly.

“Don't push your luck.”

Angelica was new to her field, but Kent had been one of the greats, and he had taught her well.

Some of the information in the folder was redundant. I had been trained alongside the man and despite much of the data being classified, very little of it was new. Back when the IMA had been a mere killing ring, Adrian had been a lowly agent who paid his bills in human lives. Just like me.

Callaghan and I had worked together.

Side by side.

Those, sadly, had been the halcyon days of the IMA. Richardson, with his weakness for women and his constant paranoia, had been a shit boss, but he hadn't been a fucking psycho. Until he had branded me a traitor, I'd never had cause to complain. I'd honestly believed that most of the men and women I'd killed had deserved it. Those that hadn't — their deaths hadn't weighed on my conscience heavily enough to prevent me from sleeping at night. People died every day; I merely hastened the process. I didn't languish in their suffering.

Richardson's scouts had pulled me out of the slums of Louisiana and given me the education I'd never had cause to believe I'd ever need, let alone possess. If they hadn't done that, I'd still be in a gang, selling drugs, fighting in the streets, stealing from the prone and naive. A conscience was a luxury I couldn't afford when my mantra growing up had been the version of the golden rule that they don't tack up in kindergarten classrooms — them or me.

Callaghan's history was more convoluted, and because he was a pathological liar it was difficult to separate fact from fiction. I had heard many rumors about him, in the IMA and out of it. He almost certainly had roots in the IRA; he was too young to be in the thick of it, but I wouldn't put a grassroots revival behind the shit-fuck; he loved to stir the pot. A stint in the psychiatric facility? Less believable. That bastard was manipulative as hell, and could talk and threaten his way out of anything. But it was possible that he hadn't been as self-possessed in his youth; he could have fucked up, bad. For the same reasons, I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he had killed his parents, as so many people believed. I'd seen him torture people with little recourse. If he had decided that his mother and father had outlived their usefulness they would have been dispensed with.

I couldn't believe Richardson hadn't seen his death coming, given Callaghan's colorful history. Not when he sat across from it, listening to its Irish brogue, looking it dead in the eyes.

He didn't have a scar to remind him.

Maybe that had been the problem.

Christina's name caught my eye. Her medical chart was in here from when Callaghan had beaten her so badly that the IMA had been forced to save her from dying until they were ready for him to finish her off. One look at her vitals showed how close he had come to doing just that.

I'd come so close to losing her without knowing what it was I'd almost lost.

Do something then.

I was doing everything I could.

Protect her — kill the bastard who wants her dead.

A slight movement in the corner of my eye made me tense and lift my head.

“I thought I dismissed you.”

Angelica didn't react to my harsh tone. “Are you all right, Mr. Boutilier?”

The concern sounded real, but Angelica was as skilled an actor as I was. She had no reason to care and probing for information could become a habit in this line of work. Even the most inconsequential blather could sometimes prove useful.

I turned back to the file for distraction.

Get a grip. You fucking get a grip right now
.

There was a highlighted chunk of text in the middle of the top page, which was still warm from the printer, and I focused on it gratefully —

Until I realized what I was looking at.

Prostitution.

Human trafficking
.

This was new. Fuck.

“Michael?”

In a staggering lapse of control, I'd spoken aloud.

I raked my fingers through my hair. The office was stifling and it was hot under the buzzing fluorescent lights. “I wasn't expecting this.”

“Are you surprised?”

Surprised
meant I had been taken off guard.
Surprised
meant Callaghan had succeeded in getting the drop on me.

I picked up a pen and made a few notes. Stalling for time, and both of us knew it.

“Am I surprised that he got in on the skin trade like so many other corrupt businessmen?” I mused, trying not to fixate on how slippery the pen felt in my fingers. “No, that doesn't surprise me. Not in hindsight,” I added pointedly.

Everyone's a fucking psychic in hindsight.

What surprised me was his choice of venue. Callaghan was a fastidious prick who generally washed his hands of sex. As far as I could tell, he'd had no lovers, male or female.

He was a rapist, but rape wasn't about sex; it was about power, and fear, and causing pain. Any shrink fresh out of Headfuck University could have told you that. But then, that summed up human trafficking to a T. It was about exploiting human fear and weakness to those in power who knew better but didn't care.

Tale as old as fucking time, that. Bringing in young girls from the Balkans and Mainland Southeast Asia to a land where they couldn't speak the language on the pretense of job opportunities. These women came to the U.S. thinking that they were going to be employed as a maid or a cook: an honest living with an honest wage that they could send back to their families. Instead they were subjected to abuse that bordered on torture, and promised more if they didn't behave themselves. The traffickers employed the use of middlemen to keep the money out of the hands of the girls, although they did encourage the girls to send for their sisters, and their mothers, and their female friends. More girls meant more bodies, and more leeway to keep them in line.

I had been contracted by men in the human trafficking industry before. Whores who knew too much. Activists whose influence posed a threat to their precarious business dealings. Rival traffickers. Indiscreet johns. On the flip side, I had also been contracted by members of these latter groups to kill the traffickers themselves. If they had the money, I never asked where it came from. Human trafficking was a brutal trade, but no more so than mine had been. And since there was a ready market for sex, as well as death, both enterprises persisted.

BOOK: Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4)
4.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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