Page 55 of Duality

Marcus:“Time and place?”

The time and place corroborated what Liam and Adrian had shared. I groaned mentally. Finch had practically waved a red flag in front of Marcus with the mention of information about me and that it affected his brothers. There was no way Marcuswould have ignored that. But did that mean Finch was part of Marcus’s disappearance?

“I thought that was familiar,” Alexander mumbled next to me.

“What was familiar?” I asked, leaning over to peek at what was on his screen. His tobacco-and-leather scent tickled my nostrils, but I forced myself to focus.

“When I was going through the documents, I noticed that Citadel made several payments to a company called Eagle Holdings. The payments seemed standard, but I remember the company because the logo didn’t look like an eagle, it looked like a smaller bird, like a sparrow…”

“Or a finch,” Sebastian finished.

Adrian swore. “When Finch first showed up on base, he strutted into the barracks and said he wanted to be called Eagle, but that’s not how that works. Someone named him Finch instead, and the name stuck.”

Fuck. How did I miss that? That’s the exact type of anomaly that I was good at finding, and I missed that one.

“So it’s looking like Finch kidnapped Marcus,” I said flatly, my stomach churning.

Did Carter know? Had the Ghosts betrayed us? Fuck, we didn’t need to be going up against the Ghosts as well as Citadel. We didn’t have the resources. I didn’t see Carter sanctioning this, so that meant Finch had gone rogue. Right?

Liam was typing furiously on his laptop. “I found him. Finch’s legal name is Luke Jones. He served as an Army Ranger for six years before he was discharged. He wasn’t dishonorably discharged, but I’ve located some sealed files that will take me time to get into. After leaving the Army…” Liam hesitated, his eyes flying up to meet mine. “He was hired by Citadel.”

Goddamnit.

“Citadel tried to scrub him from their employee records, but I found an old set of emails between him and HR when he was hired, so they missed those.”

“They likely tried to scrub their connection to him from the record so they could send him out into the world as the perfect spy,” Alexander said, his lips twisted in a scowl. Fuck, he was probably blaming me.

“But why infiltrate the Ghosts?” Sebastian asked. “When did he join the Ghosts?”

I looked at Liam, frowning as I tried to remember. “It wasn’t that long ago. We don’t interact with the Ghosts face to face often, but I don’t remember seeing him until he walked into HQ with Carter.”

Liam paled. “Fuck, what if…”

“What if what?”

“What if he leaked the safe house’s location?” Liam whispered, his eyes wide.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. My fists clenched, and my stomach dropped. When we rescued Carter’s sister, we’d taken her to the same safe house that Eric and Brittany had been in when they were shot. Coincidence? Maybe. But in this line of work, I didn’t believe in any such thing.

“So the Archers rescue the Ghosts’ leader’s sister, and the Ghosts start working with the Archers or, at least, are friendly with the Archers,” Adrian summarized. “Citadel had hired Finch and then scrubbed his employment from their records to send him out into the contract world with the intentions of getting what? A position with the Ghosts?”

Alexander inclined his head. “That makes sense. I can’t imagine that you can just walk up and hand Carter your resume, though.”

I shook my head. “You can’t. Especially not when your former employer had a hand in your sister’s kidnapping. Carter never would have accepted Finch if he found out.”

The nephew of one of Citadel’s leaders had been in charge of luring high school girls, including Lily, and kidnapping them for the human trafficking ring we’d found her in. There hadn’t been evidence that Citadel had known about it, but Carter would have never hired Finch if he’d known where he came from.

“He likely never would have found out unless he had internal access to their servers like we do,” Liam said. “I never would have found it unless we hadn’t downloaded the HR servers.”

“Fuck. So Carter doesn’t know he has a mole. So every mission we’ve ever worked with them…” I trail off. “Liam, call the others. Tell them that we’re compromised.”

Liam swore but picked up his phone.

Sebastian handed me my phone before I could reach for it, and I dialed Carter’s number. Fuck, how did I miss this? Eagle Holdings with the logo of a small bird? That was right in front of my eyes, and I missed it. If I had caught it, we could have avoided all of it. Who knew how much Finch had compromised the Archers in the last two weeks? Citadel had been ramping up their attacks, and I’d practically handed them access to our inner workings.

The phone rang and rang, and when it went to voicemail, I hung up and redialed.

“It’s not your fault,” Sebastian said softly enough that Liam couldn’t hear him, but Alexander and Adrian did.