Both Sean and Alexei refused to talk outside of requesting their lawyer. Sean didn’t know where Alexei was, as they were still being kept separated, but he knew they were in no immediate danger, not while they were holed up in a district station.
That changed the second Sean got eyes on the newcomer.
“Good morning, Mr. Smith,” Helena Voakes said with a pleasant smile. “I understand you called for your attorney. He’s in a mediation today and sent me to cover for him.”
“And you are?” Sean asked, playing along, even though he knewexactlywho she was.
Helena took a seat across from him at the table, rather than beside him. “Jane Johnson.”
An alias using some of the most common names in existence. It would be funny if the situation hadn’t done a complete 180 in the last few seconds.
Sean’s former case officer in the CIA was an unwelcome surprise. What’s more, his time with the CIA had been spent under Helena’s direct command, and through her by several degrees, Deputy Director Carter Bennett.
When he’d returned—alive—from the Belfast Market Blast some years ago, an attack secretly perpetuated by Bennett, Sean’s status as a metahuman had supposedly been locked down within the upper echelons of the CIA. He’d left his fellow agents behind without much of a goodbye, and that included Helena. They hadn’t been friends when they’d worked together. He’d spent a lot of time in deep cover, and Helena had handled multiple agents, so they never had daily interaction.
But she reported to Bennett back then and still did now, if MDF reports were accurate. Sean couldn’t ignore that detail, because she washere, before even anyone affiliated with the MDF had arrived.
Helena drew a work tablet out of her purse, along with a slim black disk that was biometrically activated with the touch of a finger. The electronics jammer flashed on and Sean spared a glance at the floor-to-ceiling opaque plas-glass wall to his right. He was under no illusions they didn’t have an audience.
“I understand your cousins missed you at breakfast this morning,” Helena said.
“Cousins,” Sean echoed, the slang term for fellow CIA operatives sounding foreign on his tongue. “Yes, it’s a shame they couldn’t be there.”
“Isn’t it?” Helena smiled again, but her hazel eyes, when Sean met them, were flat and emotionless. “You’re in luck. I come bearing a message from them.”
She unlocked her tablet and slid it across the table. Sean’s hands were cuffed to the table, so he couldn’t reach for it. Sean kept his eyes locked with Helena’s as he leaned forward before eventually breaking the staring match in favor of looking at what she wanted him to see.
Jamie and Kyle were in a rooftop garden in the holopic, caught in mid-conversation with a woman whose blurry face was in profile. Sean knew where and when the picture had been taken, and by whom. Nothing short of a military-grade AI program could break the blur caused by nanotech strips on Yulia Vitsina, a spy out ofGlavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye, the Russian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate.
She’d called herself Yulia Lebedeva at the time, but sustained digging produced her true identity and ties to the GRU. While her face wasn’t viewable, the double-headed golden eagle stamped on the back of the leather tablet case was impossible to miss.
So were the unspoken connotations the holopic projected.
Because here was a Russian spy chatting up Senator Richard Callahan’s son at an Empyrean brand party. It offered up proof that the dinner with the Pavluhkins in Paris that every media stream was chewing on wasn’t a one-off instance. Continued contact had happened, and the senator’s campaign couldn’t weather much more in this storm without going under.
“I’d ask where you got that, but I can make an educated guess,” Sean said flatly.
“I’m here to deliver a message,” Helena said.
“I’m not interested in what you have to say.”
“I think you will be.” Helena tapped a perfectly manicured fingernail against the tablet. “Hewill be interested.”
In no world would Jamie ever believe anything coming from the CIA, not after the shit Bennett had pulled recently. Sean leaned back in his seat and flattened his fingers against the tabletop.
“No, he won’t.”
Helena smiled calmly at him, folding her hands together on the tabletop. Sean wasn’t put at ease by the gesture. He knew, despite her forty-three years of age, that Helena was a force to be reckoned with.
“How did you know I was here?” he asked.
“You called us earlier.” They both knew he’d done no such thing, but this was a game that needed to be played. Helena slid the tablet back toward herself, locking it without looking. “I think you know why I’m here, Mr. Smith.”
Sean stared at her over the table, questions tumbling through his mind, but this wasn’t the time and place to ask if she’d helped Bennett plan his murder through intermediaries.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Helena waved off the question. “It’s the only thing that matters.”
