Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(87)
Cut from the same cloth, they were. Both patriotic with a deep sense of duty. Both experiencing intense regret over Billingsworth’s death. Both having been screwed over by the CIA and Rwanda Don.
And, as if on cue, Ozzie scratched his head and started attacking his keyboard. The clickety-clack was so loud it snapped Rock’s attention away from Dunn and over to the kid.
“What’s up, mon frere?” He’d seen that expression on the Ozzie’s face more than a time or two and referred to it as bloodhound mode.
“Give me a second,” Ozzie muttered, frowning at his screen. “When Dunn said you were The Interrogator and he was The Cleaner, it struck a chord with me. I think I…” He shook his shaggy blond head, growling, “Screw you, CIA database. You think you’re so smart with your encrypted algorithms and backdoor defenses, but you’re not smarter than ol’ Ozzie.”
Dunn glanced over at Rock, lifting a questioning brow. “Oui,” Rock smiled, “he talks to his computers like they’re alive. But, believe me, the kid’s not insane. If there’s a way to—”
“Got it!” Ozzie announced, lifting a hand to Eve who was sitting beside him. The woman—her eyes had been flying at full mast ever since they’d been down in Costa Rica, and Rock wondered how she kept the things from drying out like a frog’s carcass in the July sun—looked at Ozzie’s raised palm.
“Slap me some skin, woman!” Ozzie demanded, his dazzling smile lighting up the entire courtyard. Rock recognized that look, too. Ozzie was on to something…
Could it be? Has he really found—
“Oh,” Eve immediately reached up and slapped Ozzie’s hand, but the guy wasn’t going to be satisfied with only that. He was feeling celebratory—and completely oblivious to the fact that Rock was on the edge of his seat waiting to hear the good news—so he hooked an arm around Eve’s neck and smacked a loud kiss on her lips. When he released her, the poor, overwhelmed woman was beet red and, even through the haze of frustration and anticipation clouding his head, Rock heard a low growling noise.
Then he realized it was Wild Bill.
Ozzie must’ve heard it, too. Because the kid smirked before pursing his lips and blowing Bill a kiss. “Don’t you worry, Billy boy.” He wiggled his blond brows. “There’s enough Ozzie to go around. So if you wanna come over here and gimme a ki—”
“For f*ck’s sake, Ozzie!” Boss thundered. “What have you found?”
“Oh,” Ozzie turned his computer around, and on the screen was what appeared to be some sort of report. The sorry sucker had more than a few lines redacted. And even if the kid hadn’t already been cursing about the CIA database, Rock would’ve known he was looking at some form of Company document just by the number of blacked-out paragraphs. No one was as efficient and/or slap-happy about redacting information as the spooks.
“What are we looking at?” Boss asked. Everyone, including Rock, leaned forward to try to read what words were still legible.
“This is a thesis, written about ten years ago by a budding CIA psychiatrist,” Ozzie explained. “From what little I could gather from reading what remained of the text, it proposed a way to deal with an individual or group of individuals—which I took to mean terrorists, but it could very easily be homegrown bad boys—by splitting up the duties of investigation, interview, and elimination among a trio of operatives. It outlines a way to basically kill our country’s enemies, not those we take out with bombs and drone strikes, but those individuals we happen to catch and can’t necessarily prosecute by…erm, traditional means, without placing the responsibility of said duties on any one person’s shoulders. This thesis proposes that a team of three agents, trained in each specific area, could be utilized to annihilate these threats.”
Rock’s heart was a riderless racehorse, galloping out of control. And when he glanced out of the corner of his eyes, it was to see Dunn breathing heavily and staring at Ozzie with a mixture of hope and dread.
“And here’s the kicker,” Ozzie sucked his teeth, nodding excitedly. “Guess what this thesis calls those three positions?”
“The Investigator, The Interrogator, and The Cleaner,” Vanessa whispered quietly, and Rock looked over to find her staring at him, her eyes filled with unshed tears, her expression hesitantly hopeful.
Oui, ma petite, this might just be it. This might be the lead we’ve been waitin’ on…
“Ding, ding, ding!” Ozzie shouted gleefully. “Give the girl a gold star!”
“But why three?” Boss queried. “Why not just let one guy do all the dirty work.”
“Because,” Ozzie said, turning the computer screen back toward himself, “according to this thesis, that kind of wet work has severe psychological effects on the person doing it. Basically taking a nice, normal, mentally sound person and, over time, turning them into a sociopath at best, a psychopath at worst. This thesis proposes that splitting up the work, never letting the guy who does all the investigating actually meet the target, never letting the guy who interrogates the target ever bear witness to the consequences, and never letting the guy doing the executing see the target as anything other than a monster, is a way to protect the psyches of all those involved. Sort of an intellectual and emotional checks-and-balances solution, if you will.”