A slow, grin spread across the smug bastard’s face. “There wasn’t until now. I’ve done a lot of shit over the past decade. Dark, dirty shit that’s helped some very important people. When this last guy contacted me, I knew I’d found the best bargaining chip around.”
“You blackmailed the CIA?”
“I like to think of it as more of a negotiation. I agreed to do this one, final job and help keep a lying sleazeball like Radcliff out of the White House, I walk away free and clear.”
“This last job…” Ellena looked to Walker. “Were you really hired to kill me?”
“Yes.”
Gabe felt her entire body tense beneath his hands. “No one is killing you, Elle. Not this asshole or anyone else.”
The expression on Ryker’s face was dead serious. “They will if we don’t stop them.”
“Them who?” Ellena demanded the agent tell her.
The bastard actually had the nerve to sidestep his answer. “This is where it gets tricky.”
“Give us a fucking name, Jason.”
Releasing a slow, steady breath, Ryker finally did. “Daniel Price ring a bell?”
“Price.” It took Gabe a few seconds to process the name. “Henry Radcliff’s chief of staff?”
“Hold on.” Nate put up a hand. “You meanGovernorHenry Radcliff?”
“The man, the myth…the mass-murdering asshole,” Walker answered dramatically.
Ellena frowned. “Mass murderer?”
“I thought that guy was a shoo-in to replace President Russel at the end of his second term next year,” Zade commented.
“He is.” Ryker looked first to Zade and then Gabe. “Unless we can stop him.”
Walker cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “I can see the questions burning in your minds, and it’s going to take this asshole forever to get there, so I’ll try to make this one short and sweet. For those of you who didn’t already know, Radcliff was a strategic combat Airforce pilot back in his hay day. He also liked to drink. A lot. His unit was given orders to bomb an abandoned village located on the outskirts of the Central Plateau as a warning to our enemies nearby.”
“Let me guess.” Kole sat up straighter. “They missed.”
Walker nodded. “By a hundred miles. Radcliff was sauced, gave his guys the wrong coordinates. Ended up hitting a fully populated village, instead. Women, children. Everyone was wiped out instantly.”
“Oh, my god.” Ellena put a hand to her chest.
“Why haven’t we heard about this before now?” Gabe posed the question to Ryker.
“Radcliff comes from old money. Not to mention, his father was a four-star general at the time who cared more about his rank and reputation than anything else. He made sure the media never caught wind of it. The incident was written off as a result of bad intel from local assets. Coincidentally, those assets, along with the other members of Radcliff’s unit, didn’t make it out of the war alive.”
“Coincidence, my ass.” Gabe saw exactly where this was going. “So Radcliff comes out of the war with a clean slate. Goes on to make his way up the political ladder, but now that he’s White-House-bound, the son of a bitch wants to make sure those ghosts stay hidden.”
“Exactly.” Walker nodded.
“But Vietnam was a really long time ago.” Ellena looked up over her shoulder to Gabe. “If the others in his unit were killed back then, how would anyone else even know about what happened? And what does any of this have to do with me?”
“Not you, directly, Doc,” Walker intervened again. “Unfortunately, one of your patients discovered the truth.”
Gabe cursed beneath his breath. “Mark Ellis.”
Walker nodded. “Dumbass actually showed up outside Radcliff’s office one night. Waited for him to come out, and when he did, Ellis started spouting off all kinds of shit about how Radcliff was a murderer. Said he knew all about Radcliff’s fuckup with Operation Monarch.”
“Monarch?” Ellena’s eyes flew to Gabe’s. “That’swhat Mark was talking about when he came to see me. He kept rambling on about monarchs. I thought…” She swallowed hard, her guilt obvious. “Damn it, I thought he was talking nonsense about butterflies.”
