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“Someone’s ghosting code inside their procurement logs. Subcontractor-level sleight of hand. We’ve identified four black-flag incidents in the last eighteen months. All too clean to be coincidence. We tried tracing the origin. Someone’s covering their tracks. Fast.”
Black-flag, missions that never officially existed, all drone related, all ending in blood.
“Would one of these incidents be mine?” Grace asked. A drone strike that killed four and almost buried her along with them.
“Yes, and another was a SEAL operation. Two dead, one wounded, one missing.”
Ma’am paused, as if weighing how much more to give. “The other two...harder to nail down. Deeper. Messier. Someone’s cleaning up after themselves, and every trail we could follow passed through OrdoTech contracts.”
“Seven fatalities,” Grace said quietly.
“That’s the number on paper,” Ma’am replied. “We don’t know how far it goes. Might be more if someone starts asking the wrong questions.”
Someone with enough clearance was burying the aftermath.
One thread tied them all together. OrdoTech.
Grace was definitely hooked, but she had to address something first. “We’ll get to the meat of why you kidnapped me in a minute.” Her anger simmered. “I have a bone to pick first. You’remonitoringme.”
“With a light touch,” Ma’am replied, unapologetic. “You flagged something yesterday. Quietly. Most analysts wouldn’t have caught it.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Grace said.
The woman huffed out an unexpected laugh. “Still feisty. That will help.”
Grace said, firmly, “Okay, spook, I’m intrigued. Kidnapping a federal agent is a very big felony.”
Ma’am didn’t blink. “Unofficial. Off-book. I’m not here as an interagency liaison. You’re doing something for me. I’m here because one of my people died in a test op that should have never gone live.”
“Eight fatalities.” Grace exhaled through her nose. So that was it. Revenge. Not oversight. Not chain-of-command cleanup. Personal.
She met Ma’am’s gaze steadily. “I get it. I’m already chasing what you want, and I’m already ruined with nothing left to lose. That’s why you want me.”
Ma’am flipped open the file. “You have two weeks. Internal embed. On paper, it’s a compliance audit. In reality, I need someone who sees what gets lost in system noise.”
She slid the top page forward. Grace didn’t move. “This borders on criminal.”
“You have plausible deniability. If you find something, you don't need to mention me at all. If you get into trouble...you’ll have backup.” The woman was wound tight, and that meant she had just as much a personal stake as Grace. “Get what I need. Get what you need. We both win, Grace.” Ma’am nudged the file. Grace’s fingers hovered before taking it. The threat of incarceration was minimal. Proving she'd been working with the CIA would be nearly impossible, especially if she denied everything. She sighed. She was in prison anyway.
The woman smiled, a cold, knowing tilt of her mouth, as Grace focused on what she’d picked up. The first code string was familiar. Too familiar. Her pulse picked up. Not much. But enough.
Grace burned for the uninterrupted time to chase this anomaly.
Ma’am nodded. “Black Kite Integrated Security. They handle contractor audits, external reviews, counter-intel sweeps, that kind of thing. One of their field specialists flagged something weird in OrdoTech’s procurement corporate shell games. Ex-DEVGRU. Good instincts. He flagged it through audit channels quietly. Knew it would probably get buried. Someone on the inside pulled the anomaly up the chain. That’s how it landed on my desk.”
Grace didn’t look up. “Who’s the digital hunter?”
“Nashir Rahim.”
The silence in the room turned dense.
Grace knew the name. She didn’t know the man. Not personally. But the name carried weight. Former SEAL. A rare survivor of a black-file op that left more ghosts than answers. She knew exactly how much he had lost.
“I assume you’re familiar with what happened to him,” Ma’am said.
Grace’s mouth tilted, not quite a smile. “You’re slipping, Ma’am. I scrubbed those files.”
Her voice dropped. “I know what you tried to bury.”