Rogue: Reference photo and files. Appears target was framed as the killer. Suspect Kaufman Syndicate sent people to motel to clean house. Dead killers can’t talk. Target escaped. Strickland was somehow implicated. Onyx is a program. Not a person. Many more operatives than just this one.
A minute later, he got a response.
Royce: Suspected as much. Strickland’s dirty. Target’s the scapegoat and, I assume, a loose end. Stay with her. Keep her alive and gather more intel. Trust no one, as we’re now loose ends to be cleaned up. Going dark to activate countermeasures. Will contact when secure.
Rogue’s phone rang with an incoming call from an unknown caller.
Rogue received it, expecting it to be Royce on a burner phone.
“That was quick.”
Royce didn’t respond. No sound came across the line for a long moment.
A female voice finally whispered, “You sent that warning at the motel.”
Oh shit. It was her. Rogue’s finger tightened around the cell phone as if holding onto it would hold onto her. “Yes. I did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like innocent people being killed.”
“What makes you think I’m innocent?”
He glanced at the wadded butcher paper he’d salvaged from her room. “I saw your work. Your research. The pictures. The names. And because you’re running, not fighting. And the hunters who came for you tonight were hired by the same people who sent me to find and eliminate you.”
“Why didn’t you...eliminate me?” she asked.
“It goes back to what I said about not killing innocent people.”
For a moment, silence stretched between them.
“Who are you?” she asked.
His lips twitched. “Someone who might be able to help. If you’ll trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone,” she said softly.
“Smart. But they got close tonight. You’re running out of options. They aren’t going to stop until they catch up with you.”
“And kill me,” she said without fear in her tone, but maybe an edge of anger.
“Exactly.”
Another pause.
“Tomorrow. Seventeen hundred. Diner at the junction of 71 and 620. Come alone or not at all. And ditch your phone. They might track it.” The call ended.
For a long moment, Rogue stared down at the phone in his hand. He’d crossed the line from hunter to protector. If Royce was right and people in higher positions were involved, he’d transitioned from asset to liability. The hunter had become a target. The only way to come out alive in this scenario was to take out the people responsible.
He drove back into town, stopped at a fast-food restaurant and bought a burger and a drink. While there, he tossed the burner phone into the back of a pickup truck with an Oklahoma license plate. Hopefully, the truck would be heading back to Oklahoma soon.
Determined to get some sleep, he got a room in a cheap motel and carried his go-bag inside. After he showered, he checked his weapons, a stash of ammunition and wondered about the woman he was to meet the next day. Would she show up? Or was it a trap? Either way, there was no going back. With or without her, he now had to find the evidence that would convict the people behind the senator’s murder and expose them for illegal arms trade and the creation of the Onyx program, which built lethal weapons out of little girls.
Chapter 2
Rogue and Swede spent the day trying to track Onyx, or at least this one operative of Onyx. She must have lain low all day, refusing to have her face pass in front of any surveillance cameras or use her burner phone. She’d have been smart to turn it off or get rid of it altogether.
He and Swede had found her through facial recognition and by following her phone number whenever she’d used it. The other hunters had to have used the same technology.
