Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(22)
George kept one eye on the group while using the other to peruse the menu the bartender plopped in front of him. “Considering the trouble you had finding out anything specific about the other three, it surprises me you know so much about this woman,” he admitted, pointing to the menu and indicating he’d take an order of the bean salad with tomato and onions. Since he was here and it was the dinner hour, he may as well enjoy some of the local flavor. “I’ll take the check too, please,” he told the bartender, dropping the mobile away from his mouth. “I might need to duck out in a bit.”
Another thing he’d learned since coming to work for Spider was eat when you can. He never knew when a mission might force him to go out on the hunt or else go into hiding. And neither occupation generally lent itself to readily available food.
“Sorry,” he apologized to Benton after lifting the phone. “So…the information on the woman?”
“The Secret Service is more of a policing body than an Intelligence body. So their employees’ records don’t receive the same brand of whitewashing by the government,” Benton said. George could hear the lad’s fingers flying over a keyboard, and he wondered what Spider had over on Benton. It had to be something pretty good to keep the kid on his payroll instead of going to work for some high-paying high-tech firm.
“And you’re sure about the other three?” he asked. The thought that he might have made the wrong decision in Lima had a cold sweat popping out on his forehead.
“Look,” Benton insisted, “the only people who enjoy paperwork and documentation more than we Brits are the Yanks. The lack of readily available information on the other three when they were or are all supposed government employees? I don’t buy it. If Daniel Currington was simply a Navy man before going on to build motorcycles in that shop in Chicago, I will eat my shorts. And that other bloke? Dagan Zoelner? Does he really look like the type of guy who would choose to be a bean counter for the Federal Reserve? And then if he was a bean counter for the Federal Reserve, why would he leave that cushy job to become a mechanic?
“And don’t get me started on Chelsea Duvall. There is nothing other than her employment record to suggest she actually works for the Department of Land Management. The projects she’s worked on have come to naught. There’s no record of her being involved in any protests or government lobbying. Everything I find on her is superficial at best. So, yes. I’m sure the three of them are more than they seem. But I could hack into the Pentagon’s main computers if you want proof of—”
“No, no.” George was quick to cut him off. “No need to go skulking about and risk raising red flags.”
From the corner of his eye, George studied Daniel’s face. The man was handsome in a young Paul Newman kind of way. But where Newman had once had a soft, boyish charm, Daniel Currington looked hard, as if he’d seen and done too much in his life. And that…hardness, paired with Benton’s certainty that Daniel was some sort of government agent, gave George hope that he was indeed tailing the correct men.
“So you think I wasn’t wrong to follow them here from Lima?” And though he would not have wished it so, his voice betrayed his need for validation.
“I don’t,” Benton insisted. “In fact, I’d go so far as to lay down a bet that your instincts have proven correct once again, Georgie Boy.”
George winced just as he did every time Benton used the ridiculous nickname. George was no boy. Quite the opposite. He was a man. A cold, hard man who’d carried out more than his fair share of cold, hard deeds. And when Spider had sent him to find and kill Winterfield before the United States had the opportunity to apprehend and interrogate the man, he had assumed the task would be easy enough. After all, he’d done similar things before. Stalked and killed those foolish enough to leave Spider’s organization or, worse, betray Spider directly. But as the weeks turned into months, and the CIA agents he ghosted continued to come up empty-handed, he’d begun to worry he might fail at his task.
Spider did not abide defeat. Of any kind. And the man was a mad genius when it came to meting out punishment for such. George had learned that the hard way…
An image of his beloved daughter, Bella, her arm in a cast because it had been broken in three places, flashed behind his lids when he squeezed his eyes shut. The story her boarding school teachers told was that she took a tumble off her mount when the horse startled at something. But George knew better. Whatever had surprised Bella’s pony had Spider’s fingerprints all over it. And Bella’s pain and suffering had been George’s penalty for not living up to Spider’s standards.
So when one of the CIA agents he’d been trailing met with Daniel Currington—though George hadn’t known Daniel’s name at the time—at an outdoor cafe across from the Parque Central in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima and an argument immediately broke out between the two men, George’s interest had been piqued. He’d wondered just who and what this newcomer was, and had desperately hoped that whoever he was, he could help lead the CIA to Winterfield, thereby leading George to Winterfield.
When the newcomer pulled his mobile from his pocket, quickly dialing a number and briefly speaking to whoever was on the other end before handing the phone to the CIA agent, George had moved in. Pulling out the chair of a little bistro table a few feet from the men, he’d signaled the waiter, ordered a coffee, and shaken out the local newspaper just in time to hear the CIA agent say into the phone, “Yes, sir. But if we were just allowed a little more time to— No. No, sir. I understand, sir. Okay. I will.”