Page 49 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

Now I Have A Name

Cobra

Norkus texted me the address to a storage unit not far out of town.

What was it with the CIA and storage units? Why were they always nickel and diming tax payer dollars? They could never spring for an air conditioned office?

Norkus was there, in a suit, as always. Her heeled boots gave her a couple extra inches in height, but she was still a petite menace.

In front of her were three men, hogtied, their heads covered.

“Who are they?” I asked, fairly certain that none of them would be the one I needed. If one of them was, she would have only had one body on the ground, not three.

“The answer to your greatest wish,” she said, tilting her head and giving a dramatic bow.

Yup. She was just like Jericho. A pain in the ass.

“Cut the game show antics. I’m not a 60’s housewife.” Time was of the fucking essence, and the entire ride here, from the second my daughter drove her car out of sight, I had this sinking feeling in my gut that something bad was happening.

Norkus bent down, pulling off the bags on all three heads. “The three men who beat your wife, and that Paradigm spy of yours.Charlotte McClanahan, yes?”

The three men were badly bruised. I wouldn’t be able to pick them out in a lineup after this. They were so badly broken thatI had to take her word for it.

“I was wondering why Beaufort was asking me to run queries for Ray, Anna, and Teresa Guerro. It took days, but when the dots connected, then all seemed to circle around that pretty baby mama of yours.”She made a heart with her hands, peering through them to me with one eye.“Cute, no?”

“Get to the point!” I gritted out.

“You know how it is in the spy game. It’s all about contacts, and as a member of the Company, I always have a bit of an advantage.” She gives me a wink. “Plus, I’m charming. Cute, too.”

“An advantage you’re willing to give up so that you can join Paradigm. Get. To. The. POINT!”

She rolled her eyes, annoyed that I was in the way of her theatrics. “The name you’re looking for is…”

She opened her arms wide, her game show mannerism was about to drive me to murder. Her, specifically.

“Raymond Clark. More specifically Special Agent In Charge Raymond Clark, of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” She looked down at the three.

“The Dane Cook of Federal Agencies.” She rolled her eyes again, obviously having no respect for that particular government bureau. “These three agents are his lackeys.”

She paced around, and gave a swift kick to the head of one of the men who tried to shout obscenities through the gag.

“It’s hard to respect them, when I was able to singlehandedly take all three of them down.

” Sonia looked at the back of her nails.

“I’ve taken down twelve-year-old militants with more bite.

Then again, what can I really expect from an agency that arrests people at a courthouse before they get to see a judge in compliance with the law?

I mean, the cops at least bag criminals.

You assholes go after those following court orders. ”

She shook her head.

“Raymond Clark.” My heel bounced up and down.I wanted to run to wherever her lead would take me. “Where can I find him?”

“I’m getting to that,” she said, her tone likea teenager that was pissed she was being interrupted by a parent. “You Vasilievs really are the biggest buzzkills.”

She sighed, like I’d just ruined all her fun.

“Bottom line up front, Raymond Clark was your neighbor in Barstow, California. The moment you ran off with Paradigm to track down the nuclear warheads in Monaco—oh, yes, I knew why you were in Monaco.Good job on the squid kill, by the way. Very artistic—this guy started weasling in on your lady.”

Monaco. That had been the mission that forced me to leave my newborn and wife.

Nuclear Warheads were going into the hands of people who weren’t afraid to use them, and they needed a fresh face to infiltrate the organization.

Paradigm wasn’t the organization that it was now.

We didn’t have as many agents, and I was the only one with the right qualifications: A degree in engineering, an unknown identity.

The squid kill was the same day I found out I’d received divorce papers.

When one of Sonia’s prisoners tried to roll from his belly to his side, she kicked him like Lionel Messi. He rolled over his tied hands and feet and back around until he was in the same position he’d been before.

“Among his crimes—of which there are many—mail tampering seems to be one of his hobbies. You see, he blackmailed someone at the post office. The postal worker’s wife was of dubious legal status, despite serving in the military.

They enlisted for a fast track to citizenship, butCongressman Colley’s bill halted all those programs and they just missed the cut off.

Oh, and she was pregnant at the time.” Norkus tsked.

“Teresa Guerro’s mail was re-routed to him, prior to it making it to her mailbox. ”

That explained why she never got any of the money I sent—why she thought I abandoned her.

It wasn’t one big misunderstanding. It was orchestrated by Raymond fucking Clark.

The third man, whose bruised face looked as soft as an over boiled potato, began to cry. She kicked him in the mouth, and yelled.

“Shut the fuck up.” She swept her hand over her pixie-short black hair, smoothing it back behind her ear. “I’m talking.”

She turned back to me and smiled.

“He starts coming over with cooked meals, offering to help with the kid and yada yada yada. They moved in together a year later. Nothing happens for about eight years. Then, Teresa Guerro suddenly becomes very… clumsy .”

Her last word was heavy with implication. “She started going to the hospital a lot. She was tripping down the stairs, slamming her face into door knobs, slipping on ice on the driveway… I mean, Teresa Guerro was a delicate bitch that seemed to bruise like an overripe apple—”

“Watch it,” I growled. She was making a damn point. I knew it. But I was about to go into a homicidal rage if she kept disparaging my wife, even hyperbolically. “Or you’ll figure out exactly how artistic a murderer I am.”

“Oh, Guerro, you’re going to want to save that for what comes next.

” She gave me two finger-guns, with a pew-pew.

“The first time anyone said anything was Dr. Annie Zhou, who worked at a Florida ICU. Her cousin is a Uyghur from China. You’re familiar with Uyghurs, no?

Who am I kidding? Of course, you are! Anyway, the good Dr.Zhou wrote down that her patient—that’s Teresa Guerro, by the way—confided inher that she was the victim of domestic abuse.

Dr. Zhou and the nursing staff arranged for her daughter to be at the hospital as they closed down the floor to anyone called Raymond Clark, and had his picture on the wall, to ensure that he was removed from the premises anytime he entered.

And he didn’t enter. He complied. He maliciously complied. ”

She shook her head. “Two days later, Teresa Guerro recants her story and goes home with Raymond.”

“Why the fuck didn’t anyone stop that? Why weren’t the police called? Why—”

“Here’s the thing.” She snapped her fingers, and winced.

It was a genuine expression of frustration and not just her dramatics.

“I looked into that. I am nothing if not a thorough bitch. It’s only mandated that they report if she’s in a vulnerable population…

like if she was pregnant, for example. Otherwise, the cops and the doctors can’t do anything unless the victim lets them. ”

“How many fucking people die because—”

“A lot.” She interrupted. “A lot of women die of domestic violence because the system fails them. The numbers are staggering.”

She sighed, then stood still, her stare distant until one of the bastards on the ground groaned, bringing her back to the present.

“Let’s not get distracted. After the lockdown, Dr. Zhou was admitted to the ER, her cousin deported back to China. And Teresa Guerro lived with Raymond Clark for another year before their house mysteriously burned down, mother and daughter disappearing.”

“Was Raymond Clark in the house when it burned?”

“Yes, but he didn’t die. He got out with just a few burns. Tragic, huh?”

I hoped he sustained injuries at least, but I didn’t ask about it.

“Teresa Guerro spends the next eight years bouncing from place to place, living hand to mouth, rarely using anything that could be traceable. Not a bank card, rarely did she file taxes, and she never lived in the same place as where she registered her vehicle. Any address she used was a shell address, re-routed to where she actually worked. I mean, if I didn’t know that she wasn’t an agent,I’d think she was a spy for all the precautions she took. ”

One of the guys whimpered, as he bled from his eye. Norkus looked down at him like the leak from his skull was a character flaw.

In her head, it probably was.

“Is this all you have? How did you get these three?”

“You really need to stop interrupting me!” She rolled her eyes again , and mumbled, “Ugh. Men .Am I right?”

I bit my tongue because so far, she was painting a picture. I just wish she’d paint a little fucking faster.

“This unstable existence lasted through your daughter’s high school years, then she graduated, joined the Army.

Teresa probably felt a little safe. A little complacent.

Then, about ten years ago, while your daughter was on her first deployment, Teresa was in Arizona.

She checked herself in, limping to an ER in Tucson.

Her clothes were ripped, her face bruised.

She had the markings on her hands and wrists that were consistent with… ”

“I get it.”

“She declined a rape kit but….”

“I get it ,” I said, more forcefully.

I didn’t need to hear more. It wasn’t Norkus’ right to tell me. If Teri wanted me to know, it was up to her to tell me.

“Special Agent In Charge Raymond Clark was doing something at the Mexico-Arizona border at the time, and took a couple days furlough around Tucson that same weekend.” My nostrils flared at her words, my fists clenched.

“As you know, when you have been tracked, it becomes very difficult to be un tracked . ”

She was fucking right. Once someone finds your breadcrumbs, it becomes really, really hard to cover your trail. Once our targets were locked in, they were rarely able to shake us again. Especially if no one was around to teach her how to do it.

“What I got from these three scumbags is that for the past ten years, Raymond Clark has been psychologically torturing Teresa Guerro, occasionally sending random people to send her a message in the form of a mugging, or…”

Norkus stopped talking, as if she just ran out of steam. As if what she was going to say would be harder than everything else she’d already told me.

“He’s been on a campaign to make her miserable, and continue his abuse. He and his friends make a game of it, because they don’t think women should have the right to defy them. So you have federal flunkies who abuse their power, and are, in essence, red-pill fuckwads as well.”

She’d lost all mirth and playfulness. The biting sarcasm was absolutely gone.

While anger spiked in my veins, she was filled with nothing but sorrow.

“Is there anything else?” I finally said, swallowing the lump in my throat.

“Teresa never told her daughter about any of it. She sheltered your kid. I…” She swallowed too, getting choked up. “I really admire that about her.”

She let out a long breath, as her words sunk in.

Trinity hated her mother. She hated her for leaving a stepfather she loved. A stepfather that was hurting her… Fuck!

“Raymond Clark is here, in town. I guess he found out about Trinity’s wedding through the papers, since her in-laws took out a full-page spread in the society pages.

I put a tracker on his car.” She pulled a small device out of her pocket that linked to the tracker, giving me a ten-digit military grid coordinate, which was accurate within ten meters.

“I’d suggest you go find him, because he’s going to go after your wife.

These three knew that she’d been seen in a car, and at the bar, with a man—I’m presuming you—and he didn’t like that one bit.

He’s scared of losing his favorite plaything, and he’d rather destroy what he loves rather than let someone else have it. ”

I plugged the coordinates into an app I had on my phone. “What are you going to do with these three?”

“Oh, I called your brother to come pick them up.” She smiled big, as if she’d just revealed she had exciting afternoon plans. “I promise, I won’t kill them until you have your chance.”

Then she winked at me, and smiled. She gave mea girly finger wave, then put her hands into the form of a heart as she chipperly called, “Happy hunting!”