Alexei grimaced. “Last nightnotgood.”
“I was talking about Mexico. What happened lastnight?
“Youfirst.”
“I was helping Elena consolidate the data extracted from the solid-state drives you guys brought back from the mission theotherday.”
“Notgoodnews?”
Sean leaned his head back against the seat and tried to ignore the unease settling heavily in his gut. “We have security footage of Cillian Halloran and Declan Wolcott delivering a possible Splice shipment to the cartel responsible for the Splice attack in Mexico City this pastspring.”
“What?” Alexei said flatly, his one hand tightening on the steeringwheel.
“It matches thetimeline.”
“When Cillian start working forDeclan?”
“I don’t know. This is information we only learned about today.” Sean grimaced, running a hand over his face. “There’s a good chance that when Declan escaped in June he had other cargo on his jets. If he left with a shipment of Splice, or even the raw materials, he’d have to offload it somehow. Declan may have known Cillian from the shipments they delivered to the Reborn IRA over the years. If they’ve teamed up to sell the last of Valerie’s Splice stores, Cillian’s services as a chemist would be in highdemand.”
“Yjob.” Alexei angrily shook his head. “Directorknow?”
“He knows. Elena is submitting an updated report. We were finalizing the details when youshowedup.”
“Is not good if those two worktogether.”
“You have a gift forunderstatement.”
“Have gift for otherthings.”
Alexei slipped his hand free of Sean’s and slid it up his thigh to cup his groin. Sean pushed into the touch with a small gasp, turning his head to glare atAlexei.
“Stop it. Keep your attention on the road,Lyosha.”
“Only want to distract from badthoughts.”
Sean manfully didn’t whimper as Alexei very deliberately rubbed his hand between Sean’s legs. “Distract melater.”
Alexei smirked and removed his hand, settling it back down on Sean’s thigh. After a moment, he sighed heavily, the humor leaving his face. “Will need to up security details for familiesagain.”
“I know. I put that recommendation in my part of thereport.”
Since June, both their families had been watched over by MDF agents due to the realization they could be targeted by certain people in the CIA. Sean had already been targeted once back in Belfast, and with everything that had happened in June, he wasn’t willing to let his family become collateral damage. His parents and three brothers had only just started to come around to the fact that he’d lied for years about what he did for a living and embrace who and what hewasnow.
As for Alexei and Kyle’s family, their parents, at the behest of the MDF, had ended up fostering the girl Sean had saved during the June mission. Phaedra Armstrong was just one of many victims that Valerie hard tortured through Splice experiments at her biotech lab. Phaedra was the only survivor, coming away from that horror with the ability to see what was happening anywhere in the world, inrealtime.
Her clairvoyant power was exceedingly rare, and the MDF was keeping her identity restricted only to a select group of people with the highest security clearance within the agency and the Dvorkins. At ten years old, Phaedra was still a minor, and the MDF couldn’t legally retain her services. They’d trained her on how to better control the power she was frightened to use, but that was all they could do for her right now. Growing up on the base wasn’t possible, so the director had asked the Dvorkins to foster her. Considering how close Phaedra had grown to Sean throughout her rescue and short time on base, and through him, Alexei, Phaedra had been more than willing to live with theDvorkins.
She’d lost her entire family through Valerie’s sadistic experiments; any distant relatives had been told she’d died for security purposes. DNA identification was still ongoing for a good number of the dead found buried on Declan’s ranch in mass graves, so it was easy to add her supposed death in with everyone else’s. The MDF had created and filed a new, legal identity for her, and despite her young age, Phaedra knew how important it was to keepsecrets.
Trauma would do that to aperson.
The MDF had assigned an agent to live on-site at the residential apartment complex the Dvorkins lived in to ensure Phaedra’s safety. Sean knew Alexei hadn’t minded the extra protection for his family, but he had a feeling one agent wouldn’t be enough with everything going onrightnow.
His brothers, members of the rock band Atomic Grace, had finished their tour at the end of summer before going their separate ways. Sean didn’t think they’d be all that thrilled about bodyguards being foisted on them again for national security reasons, but oh well. The latest clusterfuck wasn’t something Sean was willing to let his familyignore.
“Not what I expected to come home to after finishing my mission,” Seanmuttered.
“What you think would happen?” Alexei askedcuriously.
