Page 34 of Duality (The Archers #1)
EVELYN
“ M arcus is missing,” Adrian announced from the entryway of the dining room.
I froze mid-scan of the document before me and lifted my head to look at him. Marcus was missing? Sebastian and Alexander stilled next to me. Liam looked up from his computer at the end of the table, and I nodded at him. He started typing, and I knew he was tracking Marcus’s phone.
“What do you mean, missing?” Alexander said tightly.
We weren’t supposed to go anywhere alone, and of all the people to disregard that rule, Marcus, the rule stickler, was not the one I had been worried about.
“He left four hours ago to meet Finch and still hasn’t returned.”
Finch? Carter’s man?
“What was he doing meeting Finch?” I asked, frowning.
And what was he doing going alone? We were all traveling in pairs, and I thought he had joined Danny and Grace when they left for HQ this morning.
Maya was having lunch with their dad, Detective Patel, to see if there were any rumors floating around the city about this new client of Citadel’s.
Danny, Grace, and Izzy were at HQ, streamlining our operations.
We had to put a hold on taking new missions right now, and it was eating at me.
People needed our help, and we weren’t able to help them without putting them in more danger.
I needed this Citadel situation wrapped up, and Marcus had gone alone somewhere?
What if Citadel had captured him, or worse, killed him on his way to or from the meeting?
“Marcus didn’t say why,” Adrian said grimly. “I tried to get him to let me tag along, but…”
Alexander groaned, rubbing a hand over his attractive face. When he had walked into the dining room earlier dressed in sweats, I had wanted to climb him, but I shoved those urges down now. This was serious.
“But my brother is a stubborn bastard.”
Adrian shrugged. “I was going to say a stubborn asshole, but that works, too.”
Alexander frowned and started rustling through the papers in front of him. He pulled the laptop he was working on closer and started typing. Had he found something? Or knew where Marcus might be?
“I tracked his phone,” Liam announced, not even glancing up from his screen. “It’s off now, but the last known location was an abandoned garage off Fenton by the location of the first attack. I’m accessing his last messages now to see if there are any clues.”
The large projection screen behind him turned on, and Liam started sharing the messages he was pulling from Marcus’s phone.
Finch: “Mad-Dog, it’s Finch. I’ve got information you need to know about your girl. It’s bad and affects your brothers.”
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 Marcus would 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.
“Marcus shouldn’t have gone alone. I should have been more insistent,” Adrian said. “That’s on me, not you.”
I shook my head. “I should have caught the Eagle Holdings thing. I’ve been through those files already, and I missed it.”
“I nearly did as well,” Alexander comforted me. “It wasn’t until Finch became a suspect that I even put two and two together. It’s not your fault.”
“I should have seen it sooner. I should have kept our safe houses more hidden. He…” I closed my eyes. “Two people are dead because I didn’t catch it.”
Brittany and Eric’s lifeless bodies on the cold morgue tables flashed before my eyes. Two lives lost because of me. The grief crashed over me like a wave. It felt like my world tilted. I could have stopped this.
The call went to voicemail again, and I redialed. Adrian scooted my chair back and picked me up, settling me in his lap. I was too busy fighting back tears to fight him. My throat burned with the effort of swallowing down my sobs.
He wrapped his arms around me, and Sebastian and Alexander scooted their chairs closer so the three men surrounded me.
“Look at me,” Adrian commanded firmly. “This is not your fault.”
“They’re my people. Their safety is my responsibility.” Numbness settled over me, and my voice sounded robotic, even to my own ears. The world felt like it blurred around the edges.
Alexander squeezed my knee gently. His voice was calm, steady, but there was an intensity behind his words that cut through the panic clouding my mind.
“I know what it feels like to carry the weight of something bigger than yourself. To think that if you just work harder, plan better, control every detail, then maybe, just maybe, you can keep everyone safe. But that’s not how it works. ”
He leaned forward, his piercing gaze locking onto mine. “You can’t control everything, no matter how much you try. There will always be variables you can’t predict, risks you can’t account for. And trying to shoulder all of it alone? It’ll crush you, Evelyn. Trust me, I’ve been there.”