Page 82 of Every Last Breath

“It’s pretty darn clear you’re keeping something from me. There were discrepancies in the after-action reports from the auction. Minor things. Enough for me to get the impression something was omitted. Then you asked Willow to go directly to you with any updates. A straightforward by-the-books request, I assured her.”

Of course Harper would’ve gone to him, but on its own, the request wouldn’t have raised a flag.

“Now this unusual insistence to issue the warning order.” Sanborn stood, pressing his knuckles against the table, his face a thundercloud. “Taken as a whole, this reeks.”

In the bloated pause, Maddox refrained from looking at Castle.

“Someone better start talking, or this conversation is about to take an ugly turn you’ll both regret.”

“We need autonomy on this one,” Maddox said.

Narrowing his eyes, Sanborn visibly tensed, his mouth thinned. “Why?”

“This is a tricky situation with the Ghost,” she said. “For us to bring this guy in, this is how we need to do it.”

“Not sufficient for my blessing. Try again.”

“If it wasn’t mission essential,” Castle said, “we’d never leave you out of the loop. Never.”

Sanborn folded his arms, drawing in a deep breath. “If I’m not in the loop on everything and this goes wrong, you two would take the heat, alone. Career-ending heat.”

Their jobs, being members of the Gray Box, were for many of them the only things left in their lives worth fighting for. Sanborn was testing them.

“Roger that, sir.” Castle nodded with a grave expression. “Understood.”

Sanborn eyed Castle, his prize protégé. The air pressure in the room rose, and the stare became frighteningly intense. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Trust was a commodity they couldn’t afford to waste on the wrong person. She wanted to bring him in on this. Sanborn was loyal to his people and his country. But they couldn’t take the chance. Needed to be textbook about how they proceeded.

“Topaz,” Castle said.

The codeword for a prior operation a few years back, where Knox and Castle had gone so dark, Sanborn thought they might’ve gone rogue. Their after-action reports—which were need-to-know, leaving her clueless about the specifics—had explained their reasons.

“This is similar to Topaz,” Castle added.

The silence was deafening as Sanborn weighed everything.

“We’re tip of the spear, and sometimes, we have to operate outside every box to get the mission done. Request granted. But—” Sanborn stabbed the table with a finger. “Do. Not. Fail. And once this is shaked-and-baked, you owe me a debrief with crystal-clear transparency. If I’m not one hundred percent satisfied with your mission-essential explanation, you won’t be fired. You’ll both be disavowed.” He strode out of the room.

A sinking sensation swept through Maddox. If you were disavowed from the CIA, MI6, Mossad—take your intel flavor of the day—a black ops program might scoop you up. To be disavowed from a deep-black off-the-books unit was to virtually cease to exist. No work history. No 401(k). You became nobody with no past. The only thing worse was a whitewash—where you literally ceased to exist.

“Don’t,” Castle said.

She looked up at him. “Don’t what?”

“Second-guess this. The minute you do is the minute we give Novak battleground advantage.”

Novak already had too much working in his favor. Castle was right. Yet again. “Topaz?” To say more, to ask the question burning her tongue, would insult her brother.

“The op had nothing to do with a leak.”

All she needed to hear. “I’ll write up the warning order. You start making the calls.”

Chapter 23

Vienna, Virginia

9:56 p.m. EDT