“That’s always a risk, but I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeves.”
“Jesus, Sloane, you gave yourself a backdoor, didn’t you.”
Sloane laughed. “I love how you think I only made one.”
She placed the phone down, put it on speaker as she started tapping on her keyboard, compiling a list of missions and joint task forces they’d been on where Hill had been even remotely connected. Her computer hummed, mission codenames scrolling down her screen before it stopped, cursor blinking, endless lines glaring back at her.
Avery breathed across the line. “Well?”
Sloane read over the names. “There’re pages worth.”
“Any way you can narrow it down?”
“I’ll begin by grouping them by how successful the mission was. Start with the ones that didn’t provide a favorable outcome, then work my way forward. Though, Nick’s last mission was two months ago. Mine, too, technically. Makes me wonder why anything’s coming back on him, or us, now.”
“Maybe Hill’s pissed Nick went private?”
“Maybe.” Sloane glanced over at him. “Or maybe he’s scared for the same reason.”
Sloane punched through a few firewalls, gained remote access through one of her remote ports, then started copying over files to her server — had her algorithms combing through the data, dividing the mission notes according to her parameters.
Avery waited in silence on the other end, hushed typing implying her friend was conducting her own reconnaissance.
Avery lost patience first, clearing her throat over their line. “I can’t take the not knowing. Anything damning, yet?”
Sloane huffed. “It’s gonna take time to go through everything. Even with the computer rating the missions on a series of key phrases, since I’m not sure what I’m actually looking for, I’ll still have to go through each one line-by-line. But I’ll find what Hill’s hiding — what the bastard wants buried besides us. In the meantime, I’ll keep digging into the origin of the burn notice because there’s no way this is everything.”
“You’ll keep me posted, right? No ‘need-to-know’ bullshit?”
“Pretty sure any reservations I had about breaking national security vanished when my boss stabbed me in the back. Just, let me go hunting. I’ll tell you what I find later.”
“I’m calling back at eight o’clock. Sharp. Don’t even think about ghosting me.” Her voice faded, then surged back. “And get some damn sleep. You sound exhausted.”
Avery hung up, the eerie void only fueling Sloane to dig deeper, something to justify the attempts on her and Nick’s lives. Proof that the burn notice was just a smokescreen — Hill’s way of handcuffing them before sending in the reapers.
The night dragged on, rain tapping the window as she dove into the dark web’s financial ledgers— the marketplaces where assassins and wet-work teams got paid — using a number of black-hat exploits she’d developed over the past decade with the CIA. Failsafes she’d never thought she’d have to use.
Nearly an hour had passed when she found a payment marker using Hill’s known shell corporation — Synergenics. The one she’d created for the bastard during a sting operation partnered with Homeland Security. A couple clicks and a few encrypted firewalls later, and she found it. Not a burn notice.
Directive seven.
A seven-figure kill order issued on “Raven-alpha”, aka Nick Colter, and Raven-auxiliary, her. The rules were simple — termination with proof. And by pushing a burn notice through a proxy — making it look as if it had originated inside the CIA — Hill had practically served them up on a platter. Guaranteed they were isolated from any exterior help.
All of which meant, the hunt had just begun.