Page 85 of Agency

Jericho simply nodded when Andrew and I looked to him, and then we began to undo our work. As we revealed more of Joergensen’s naked corpse, Jericho pulled a pair of latex gloves from a back pocket and passed them over to her.

“Here. You’ll need these.”

Pulling on the gloves, Ambyr crouched down next to Joergensen to begin her examination. She went immediately for his head, and twisted his face to the side with one hand as she brought the razor-sharp blade in closer. Rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in, and the mercenary’s broken neck bent at a disconcerting angle as she exposed the back of his hairline.

She swallowed hard as she brought the knife up, then ran a fingertip over a thin, pale scar at the base of the corpse’s neck.

“What are you…?” Andrew asked.

“It can’t be,” she said, gritting her teeth as she sliced, and the skin unfurled to reveal dark, coagulated blood beneath. “Just fucking can’t be.” She began to dig her finger into the slit she’d just made.

“Ambyr, stop!” I said, trying to reach for her probing hand.

“No,” Jericho barked as she ignored me. “I think she’s onto something.”

She continued to dig for another moment, and then her eyes widened. Not necessarily in surprise. But maybe satisfaction? Because, less than a breath later, she was pulling out some bloody glob about the size of a grain of rice and leaning in closer to look at her discovery.

“What is that thing?”

“What do you think it is?” she asked, then turned away her face away and lowered her head, so we all could see the way the pony tail pulled her hair up at the nape of her neck. “What do you thinkthisis?”

And there, etched in flesh like some ancient script chiseled into stone, was her own matching scar.

“Because I’ve got my guesses,” she said, letting her ponytail drop.

“Holy shit,” Andrew said as he leaned in closer to look at what could only be a tracking device of some sort. “You really are 007, aren’t you?” he asked in a joking tone.

But none of us were laughing. Not this time.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ambyr

“This thing shouldn’t exist,” Alice said as she gestured to the X-ray, and the too small object buried under the skin at the nape of my neck. The device sat there like a mechanical tumor, or maybe a cybernetic monkey perched on my back. Holding up the tiny mason jar we’d found in one of her kitchen cabinets back at the cabin, she frowned as she gave the small, bloody device a rattle.

“You’re talking about the tracker, right?” I asked as I sat there on the examination table. “And not the plate in my skull?”

“Oh, that plate? Yes, that should definitely be fine to exist. Probably necessary to be there, even.” She rattled the tracker again, for emphasis. “This, though? This is different.”

The guys were all in the free clinic’s small examination room with me, and they stood arrayed around the cramped space with arms crossed and faces dour.

Not that I could blame them. This had been one long, eventful morning.

First, we’d re-tarped Joergensen, then finished burying him, sans tracking device. I’d wanted to cut my device out on my own, but none of them would agree. I’d relented, but only after Jericho seemed like he might get out the cuffs again. Instead, Jericho had broken radio silence and used a burner phone to get in touch with Dr. Alice Thorne, here, the feminine counterpart to the owners of our safe house, while Morgan hunted down the bullet holes inside the cabin. Then, we’d burned Joergensen’s clothes and other effects in the burn barrel out back, and dumped the Audi as far from the cabin as we could, before heading to the free clinic where Dr. Thorne said to meet us.

And then, after getting some borderline horrible, and probably well deserved, looks, we cut to the front of the line and slipped into the examination room. A couple tests later, and some more disapproving looks from the doc as she looked over my three somewhat-former lovers’ obvious wounds and scrapes, and here we were: sitting and hearing about how this tracking device shouldn’t be possible.

“I mean, yes, there are prototypes for it, proofs of concept with some medical device companies. But nothing like this is available on the market. Not that I know of, at least.”

“Well, now you know of one,” I said, rubbing to mitigate the sympathy pains coming from my old car accident scar that wasn’t a car accident scar.

No. Not sympathy. Embarrassment. Embarrassment at having been found out and discovered.

“And knowing is half the battle,” Andrew said, then looked around at the rest of us. “What? Isn’t that how that saying goes? Fuck you, guys. I know you all watched G I Joe.”

Ignoring him, the doctor cleared her throat and looked back to me as she tucked the jar away in a lab coat pocket. “Well, you’re right, Ambyr. Whether or not it should exist, it does seem to.” Dr. Thorne looked back to the X-rays for a long moment.

The doc was even prettier in person than she had been in the photo, in spite of the white lab coat and severe look she wore. Or, maybe because of that look she wore? To know that a woman who was keen-minded and intelligent was also wrapped up with three guys only added to my estimation of her.