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“No, in a word. We’ve had a complication.”
“Another one?” Luc asks what we’re all thinking.
“Yes. As Atlas, Ever, and Jynx know, after they spoke to Gauld earlier today, he was being transported to one of our secure prisons, and if you needed any more information out of him, you’d have to question him from there.”
“Yes,” Atlas replies, suspicion already in his tone. We all know that this isn’t about to go anywhere good. Something has happened.
“Well, the transport van made it only a mile down the road before it was ambushed, and Gauld was taken out. He’s dead, and so are the agents that were traveling with him.”
“Fuck,” Rome hisses.
“How?” Rage demands.
“We don’t know. The only people that knew about the plan for him to leave today were your team, the agents traveling with him, and me,” Mr R’s reply is tight with tension.
“So, either the mole still has access to our organisation, or he had people lying in wait, which was incredibly risky.” Atlas points out.
“He’s already proven that he’s ballsy enough to pull something like that off, so it would surprise me if he had people watching the place to see when Gauld came out. He clearly couldn’t risk Gauld giving us any information, and I hope that the information he was worried about we already have,” Trick adds.
“I’ve got agents scouring the area around headquarters up to two miles out,” Mr R replies.
“Good, we can’t risk it. He’s already got more information than he should have.” Riot replies.
“Gauld said that if he told us anything, Hunt would know, and he’d lose his life. He knew this was going to happen. Has his body been recovered?” Jynx asks, and I have no idea where she’s going with it.
“Yes,” Mr R replies, curiosity in his tone as he too senses that Jynx is going somewhere with her line of questioning.
“I assumed he just meant that Hunt would know because he’d just assume that he'd talk, but now, looking back, it was more sure than that, and once he told you he was fully resigned to his fate, not just fearful of it,” Jynx starts to explain.
“You think he had a bug planted on him?” Ace asks, catching on before any of the rest of us can.
Jynx nods, “Is that possible? It would’ve had to have gone through pretty severe security measures.”
Everyone is silent as Ace thinks the question over and then looks at Pete.
Pete shrugs, “What if it was activated by word and laid dormant until then? I’ve heard of a couple of prototypes, but nothing actually in production.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Gauld told you Hunt’s name, right?” Ace asks Jynx and me.
I nod, “Yes, are you thinking that could’ve been the word that triggered it to activate?”
“He was already in the building then and had the majority of the security checks already performed,” Jensen points out.
Chapter Sixteen
“Exactly, so it could have gone undetected,” Ace replies.
“It’s an interesting theory for sure,” Riot replies, a deep frown on his face, “how are we going to know for certain that he was bugged?”
“A very thorough autopsy, which is why I asked if the body was recovered,” Jynx replies.
“Yes, it would also explain why they were still hanging around and hadn’t cleared off as soon as Gauld was dead. They wanted the body, but we arrived too quickly,” Mr Rising replies.
“It would add credibility to the theory,” Mason agrees.
“It also presents another security breach,” Trick points out grimly.
“Fortunately, even with it activated, he would have heard very little that could be a threat to anyone except that he gave information to us about Hunt’s locations.” Mr R reassures everyone.