Page 125 of Every Last Breath

“Immunity. For me and my son.”

She folded her arms. “You don’t strike me as a snitch. Why are you willing to give up your source?”

“Boils down to survival. I want immunity. My son’s freedom.”

“Let me hear what you have to bargain with.”

“From time to time, I use an information broker. Powerful. Well-connected. Fast. Always reliable. He’s provided me with the intelligence I’ve needed to pull off several jobs. He notified me about the auction for the smallpox weapon. I paid him a considerable sum for information on all the buyers. His person on the inside here told him you’d attend the auction and warned me not to attend, since it was a trap.”

Acid grated the back of her throat. “Tell me about the mole in our agency.”

“I don’t know who it is, only their code name. But it’s someone close enough to you, Maddox Kinkade, to send my broker detailed information about you, at my request, in under eight hours.”

Her nape prickled. He could be lying. “Exactly what detailed information was provided?”

“Besides your home address? Marital status. Habits, like a predictable morning jog, rain or shine. Vices. Such as frequenting Rocky’s Bar with your coworkers. I could delve a little further.” His voice dipped to a whisper and that creepy grin swept over his face. “But I don’t know if Scarface is listening. Hearing how you pick up men at the bar might upset him.”

A chill turned her heart to ice. She wanted to look away—hell, she wanted to crawl under the damn table and shrivel into nothing—but she held his entertained gaze.

The unsettling details he knew didn’t narrow down the suspects. The ITM section had access to personnel records and could’ve easily looked up her address. Her marital status and predilection for jogging, sometimes doing so on the grounds here, were common knowledge. Everyone went to Rocky’s, including Sybil Parker’s minions and topside security.

The Gray Box employees got a discount because Rocky was the sister-in-law of one of the guys deployed and the team looked out for her.

Maddox never hid the fact that she left the bar with men on occasion any more than the others did when they picked up women. They never boasted, but they did share tidbits during typical office banter in the gym, break room, never thinking it was a weakness an eavesdropper might exploit. The only one who didn’t screw and tell was Gideon.

“I can’t give you the mole, but I can give you the broker. Not only how to make contact, but how to lure him out into the open. If you have him, you’ll have your mole.” His grin spread, and he even dared to chuckle. “And I say that knowing whoever is selling your secrets is worth far more than me and my son. In the immunity deal, there can be a stipulation that if I don’t hold up my end, the deal is null and void. But once I’ve given you proof, we must be freed at once.”

Cocky bastard.

“It’ll take time to verify any evidence you give us.”

He lifted a finger and wagged it back and forth, rattling the chains attached to his cuffs. “This is nonnegotiable. I can have a microchip delivered with information you can act on immediately. Then my son and I are to be released, not handed off to another agency.” His smile slipped, and his eyes flickered for the first time with a hint of genuine fear. “Not the FBI, not the U.S. Marshals, not local police. The broker has people everywhere. I doubt we’d survive the transfer, and if we did, it wouldn’t be for long.”

“You expect me to believe this broker has a vast network of spies embedded throughout the intelligence community?”

With a snort, Novak shook his head. “He turned someone in here. An agency that isn’t supposed to exist.” His tone all but screamed you idiot, doubt me at your own peril. “You’ve no clue what you’re dealing with. The magnitude of it. How far the broker will go to protect his empire.”

Her cautious skepticism evaporated. This was bad, as bad as it got in their line of work.

“Why so glum, Agent Kinkade? You should be preparing to celebrate with the information I’m going to give. Instead, you look like you’re going to a funeral.”

This catastrophe could very well bury the Gray Box, ruin the U.S. intelligence community as a whole, and destroy careers. Glum was an understatement.

“What’s the code name of our mole?” Maddox asked.

He pursed his lips, eyes gleaming like they were playing a game.

“Tell me as a show of good faith and we’ll see about getting you some coffee and food.”

“Your mole is code-named Cobalt. To learn more, Val and I need immunity.”

Cobalt didn’t ring any bells.

“The name of the broker?” she pressed.

He flashed that taunting, superior smile she hated and made a show of zipping his lips.

Maddox stood, squaring her shoulders. “Let me speak with my boss.”