Page 14 of Radar (Iniquus Certified Cerberus Tactical K9 #2)

Xander

Thursday

Iniquus Campus

Xander had showered at Cerberus and changed his clothes.

He would loosely describe his style as “always ready for a hike.” Traveling from country to country, urban space to rural, bog to coffee house, this particular look let him slide into a space and slip by anyone’s notice.

Camouflaged without wearing camo, Xander was an everyman except for his height, and there was nothing he could do about that except stand near a wall.

The kennel hand had spruced up Radar, so he wasn’t tracking mud through the Atrium of Iniquus’ main headquarters as they followed their escort to the tactical forces wing.

Reaching Panther Force War Room, the escort tapped on the door, and Nutsbe opened it, a giant bullmastiff at his side. Today, he was in his wheelchair.

“Oh man, who’s this beast?” Xander asked as he followed Nutsbe into the conference room, shutting the door behind him.

“This glorious monster is my service dog, Beowolf.”

“Awesome. I’m happy for you.” Xander paused his forward momentum. “Is it okay to have Radar here? I can take him back to Reaper."

“These two are buds. They lived at Cerberus together.” Nutsbe waved away the idea, then reached for his wheels to roll toward the conference table.

The two men, sitting cattycorner at one end, looked up from the file they’d been studying.

Nutsbe spun his chair and pointed to the black leather captain’s chair beside him. “So, what did you need to see me about?”

“I brought you a card from Bratislava.” Xander reached into his pack and handed him the slightly bent pink envelope with the purple glitter ink script and the cupcake sticker on the back that Anna had asked Xander to deliver.

Nutsbe accepted it in one hand and swept the other out to indicate the other two men in the room.

“Titus, good to see you.” Xander leaned forward with his hand extended toward the Panther Force leader.

After receiving the welcome, Titus turned to indicate the man in a well-tailored suit who gave Xander a genteel nod. “This is Iniquus counsel, Sy Covington.”

“Glad to meet you, sir.”

Titus closed the file as Xander settled in his seat, gesturing for Radar to lie down under the table out of Beowolf’s way.

Nutsbe glanced at the children’s card, written in Slovak, and laid it on the table before unfolding the single handwritten page in English, also written in a curling purple glitter pen.

Who would send State secrets in purple glitter pen? Xander liked everything about the subterfuge, and he stored the tactic in his memory bank.

There was a knock at the door, and Titus opened it to Steve Finley, an FBI domestic terror agent who had helped put the East Coast Zoric family in prison and was also Anna’s fiancé.

Finley scanned the room, and apparently sensing something afoot, simply lifted a hand in greeting as he took a seat next to Xander.

“I saw Anna two days ago,” Xander said under his breath. “You know about the movement to Singapore?”

Finley nodded.

“She got an invitation. The Family trusts her.”

Worry clouded Finley’s eyes. “How’s she holding up?”

“Ignorance is bliss, and she doesn’t have that luxury,” Xander replied.

With one hand on Beowolf’s head, Nutsbe read through the letter. Then he lifted his gaze to meet Sy Covington’s.

Sy tipped his head, inviting Nutsbe to share.

Nutsbe cleared his throat, but that didn’t quell a warble of emotion as he read: “Hey, sweety, I have some gossip about little Amanda Bradshaw. You remember her? She’s leaving for an exchange program with the United States and is very excited about the opportunity. She should arrive on Friday.”

“Amazing,” Covington said with a smile and a shake of his head. “Not a done deal, obviously, but we had hoped all along that she’d be included in a Russian prisoner exchange.”

“I wonder who they got in return,” Titus said.

“Do you think her parents and her university know?” Finley asked.

“Brother,” Titus said, “you’re sitting in a sacred room. What you hear here—”

“I didn’t hear anything here,” Finley said. “Unless I’m specifically told that I’m hearing something, I hear nothing in Iniquus, ever.”

“Exactly,” Titus said.

Nutsbe lowered his chin to read more. “Also, I have terrible news to tell you about Uncle Leo and Aunt Jo. The neighbors found their bodies in the McMahan family swimming pool. Not to bring terrible pictures to mind, but enough time had passed that any further investigation into their death isn’t going to be possible.

The neighbor, Darina Zoric—I think her name is—told the Belgrade investigators that, of late, Aunt Jo and Uncle Leo seemed to be drinking heavily.

I know they were having their troubles, but I’m sorry for your loss.

The Serbian police speculate that they might have been too inebriated to get out of the pool once they had fallen in.

I imagine that this will be in the Serbian newspapers soon, and surely in the United States as well.

So, I wanted you to hear it from me first. I’d look for an article sometime next week in New York.

I’d imagine it would be a small mention in the obituary section as Uncle Leo’s crimes might make waves at his old place of work.

I know there were some concerns about your involvement with their affairs, but alas and alack, that is now in the past. Though I know the family will never fill the hole that Leo and Jo left with their deaths, any bad feelings or concerns go into the hereafter with them.

I advise you to move ahead with your life. Your future is bright. Love to you!”

Whole-body shaking, Nutsbe handed the letter off to Covington, then he bent to wrap himself around Beowolf.

“Wait,” Xander leaned forward, posting his forearms on his thighs. “Leo McMahan? This is retired FBI counterintelligence chief out of New York, Leonard McMahan, who went missing?”

“Cone of silence,” Titus said.

“I was supposed to be on the lookout for McMahan when I was in Albania a few weeks back as a favor for a different alphabet. Obviously, that was a dead end, no pun intended. My orders were to have a look around, observe, and report if I saw him, but I had no other information.” Xander caught his chin between his thumb and index finger, processing that Darina, a known Zoric enforcer, was at least peripherally involved in the McMahans’ deaths.

The Zorics didn’t work out of Serbia. Their intervention had to be a gift for one of the other crime families.

Had to be, otherwise, it didn’t make sense.

“Dead, huh?” He pressed his hands on his knees and straightened his arms. “Good that it’ll come out in the paper.

When you see it, if you can let me know, I’ll forward the article to my department so we’re not wasting man-hours.

” Xander hated that the old families had been consolidating over the last few years. And this looked like proof.

“Will do,” Titus said.

Finley patted Nutsbe on the shoulder. “Looks like you got a reprieve. I’m happy for you, man. Looking over your shoulder every second of every day for a Russian shadow to pop out at you is hell.”

“Mostly I was worried about Olivia,” Nutsbe’s voice was gruff. “The idea of endangering a loved one, now that’s true hell.”

Xander had witnessed that. He had seen the power of love brandished as a weapon to destroy. Love was easily exploited with the threat of “do as I say if you want your family to stay whole and healthy.”

Just look at William Davidson.

William Davidson had ‘f-you!’ kinds of money.

He had the kind of money that meant he was beholden to no one under any circumstances.

And yet, Medved’ Zoric—who easily had the means to follow through—had threatened Davidson’s family.

Davidson handed over his whole Doomsday-prepped island, leaving his family without that security blanket.

What Davidson might not have realized was that, by providing the Zoric family with a safe haven, he removed an obstacle from the path, shortening the attack timeline.

Davidson, hoping to protect his family, only pushed his loved ones further into harm’s way.

Play in a cesspool, and you can’t wash off all the shit when you go home. You reek of it as you track it through your house and into their lives.

Time and again, Xander saw the lesson played out for him—love was good and love was excruciating pain.

The utter joy of a loving connection, the comfortable banality of it, and then evil snaked its way in.

Just look at Anna and Finley and how wonderful yet, at the same time, painful that relationship was.

Look at Nutsbe processing his reprieve. Obviously, the man had been in hell.

It was one of the reasons why Xander never dated the kind of woman who might turn a dinner into something more.

Purposeful, busy women—that was the ticket to the relationship carnival ride Xander was willing to go on. Anything else was a liability.

A tap sounded at the door.

Johnna White, CIA, walked in with Suko Hiro, Xander’s handler at the DIA, followed by Adele Gutterman from the Mossad.

CIA, DIA, and Mossad walked into a bar … It could be the start of a joke if this weren’t all so deadly serious.

Similar to the Color Code for the CIA, the Mossad had a specialized group with a specific global target.

Their members tattooed their left wrists, in the area where a thick watch strap could hide the telltale symbols.

When Xander had crossed paths in the field, he’d seen the tattoos with multiple colors specific to their calling within the group, almost like a religious sect.

Adele’s tattoo was white ink on fair skin, all but imperceptible unless you knew to look.

A secretive group, Xander had limited information about them.