Page 123 of Jonas

I said nothing to help myself.

The sooner I was out of the restaurant, the sooner Jonas would be safe.

Then he’d find me. And when he did, I was kicking Natalie’s ass.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“We hit the motherlode with Ryan Clarkson,” Easton told me as I sat in the Escalade, waiting for Dee Dee. “Penny was able to get the feed. There’s no sound, but the angle was perfect for KK to run through some program that reads lips. Ryan is the NSA leak. He knew the Type 1 encryption was being stripped and a lesser system was being put in place. Penny filled in some gaps and explained, an encryption was added so the documents wouldn’t be flagged. Ryan’s getting greedy, he wants more money from Rutte. The Senator didn’t take kindly to the shake down but agreed.”

Thank fuck, some good news.

“Any mention of the Secretary of Defense or the Pentagon?”

“Nope. But Delcon was discussed. Part of why Ryan was getting fidgety and wants what he calls ‘hazardous pay’ is because he heard about Anson and the Petersons. Ryan’s not happy people are dying. Rutte was cagey about this and told Ryan he was safe as long as he kept his mouth shut.”

The front door to the pub opened. A girl with a stack of books in her arms pushed out. My stomach clenched tighter.

I checked the time for what felt like the fiftieth time.

Twenty minutes.

Any time now, Derrika would be walking out.

“Who’s picking up Ryan?”

“Zane called it in to POTUS, offered to send the Gemini Group guys since we’re spread thin. POTUS said he was sending in military police. Apparently against Zane’s wishes, Trent made some calls to people he trusts and had an emergency meeting. Zane’s breathing fire. POTUS is ready to scorch the earth. As soon as we have Rutte, shit’s gonna hit the fan.”

A couple walking a dog stopped in front of the pub. The man was pointing to something inside. The woman got closer to the window. I held my breath and prepared to jump out of the car until the woman tipped her head back and laughed.

Jesus fuck, I was going to have a heart attack if Derrika didn’t hurry up.

“Where are we with Rutte? Have Theo and Smith checked in?”

“Yeah, they’re sitting on the house. No movement and all the curtains are drawn. Cash and Lore are still searching for Rutte. He was supposed to be at a committee meeting at the Capitol this afternoon but he didn’t show. He has a row home in Georgetown. They’re headed there now.”

“Hey, Nebraska didn’t get a chance to tell us; did she get ahold of Dutch?”

Easton blew out a haggard breath.

“Yeah, that’s one of the reasons Zane’s over here doing his best impression of a dragon. Dutch has Bolin Chen. He’s not giving up his brother. But since they have Bolin they have his phone and the dumbfuck wasn’t careful with deleting messages. And his ME Chat app was protected with face ID, not a password.”

Dumbfuck didn’t cover what kind of idiot Bolin was. Biometric protection wasn’t actually protection; it was practically begging for someone to get into your phone. A password took time. Face ID meant all Dutch had to do was hold the phone in front of Bolin’s face and it was wide open.

“What’d they find?”

“Jun De Chen is in the US and has been for the last three months.”

“How the fuck didn’t we know that?”

“Best guess is he came in using an MSS legend and disguise. Every spy agency knows about Patheon now so Chen would’ve been careful to be fully covered. And masking isn’t out of the ordinary so no one would bat an eye at him walking through the airport with a mask.”

Patheon was Kira’s baby. Facial recognition with a twist—it didn’t just measure the normal facial features, it could detect vein patterns, and her latest version had advanced iris recognition and retinal scanning.

The problem was, now that Patheon was well known, our enemies knew how to guard against it.

I checked the clock again. Another five minutes had gone by. I picked up my phone, scrolled to her name, opened a blank text thread, and shot off a message:

Good?