Reckless

“Not demand,” Greg Walton corrected, shooting Buck a dirty look. “Request. We’re here to request—to ask you to help us. The long and the short of it is, Tracy, we need your help.”

Tracy studied Walton’s face distrustfully. She looked at her watch.

“I’m picking up my son at five thirty. You have my attention for the next hour, but after that you must leave.”

Milton Buck looked outraged. He opened his mouth to speak but Greg Walton glared at him. “That’s a deal, Miss Whitney,” Walton said. “Now, let me tell you why we’re here.”

For the next forty minutes, Greg Walton didn’t draw breath. Tracy sat listening to him, leaning forwards over the kitchen table, her coffee growing lukewarm, then cold. Like most people in America, Tracy had seen the story of Captain Daley’s gruesome execution at the hands of Group 99 online. She knew about the controversial raid in Bratislava; how for all the government’s spin it had clearly been a failed attempt to rescue American journalist Hunter Drexel.

What she didn’t know, was that rather than still being in Group 99’s hands, as President Havers had explicitly told the nation in a televised statement, Hunter Drexel was actually on the run, for reasons unknown. Or that a woman, codenamed Althea but believed to be a wealthy U.S. citizen, was not only masterminding and funding Group 99 but had directly ordered Daley’s death.

“Wow,” Tracy said, once Walton was finished. “Havers must be out of his mind. To flat-out lie like that? What happens if Drexel suddenly pops up somewhere, Edward Snowden–style, and holds a press conference?”

“That would be extremely unfortunate,” Greg Walton admitted. “More unfortunate, however, would be a global escalation of violence and murder such as we witnessed with Captain Daley. Kidnappings, executions, bombings. Anything’s possible now that they’ve crossed this red line. We don’t know exactly how large Group 99’s network is. But we do know that it’s massive, and growing, especially in places where the economic divide is acutely pronounced. Like South America, for example.”

“On our doorstep,” Tracy mused.

“Precisely.”

Tracy processed all this for a moment before turning to Walton.

“This is all very interesting. But I still don’t see where I fit in.”

Greg Walton leaned forward. “This woman, Althea, sent an encrypted message to us at Langley a little over a week ago. In it, she mentioned you by name, Tracy.”

“Me?” Tracy looked suitably dumbfounded.

Walton nodded.

“What did she say?”

“That she’d outsmarted us just like you did. That only you could unmask her. That Agent Buck here should pay you a visit. She almost made it sound like a game. A competition between the two of you.”

If Greg Walton’s expression hadn’t been so serious, Tracy would have burst out laughing. This had to be a joke, right?

“Have you any idea who this woman might be, Tracy? Any idea at all?”

Tracy shook her head. “No. I wish I did but, no. This makes no sense to me.”

“Listen to this.”

Greg Walton played her the same recording of Althea ordering Bob Daley’s execution that he’d played for MI6 a few days earlier.

“Have you ever heard that voice before?”

“I’m sorry,” Tracy said. “I haven’t. Not that I remember.”

“Think hard. It may be someone from your distant past. From your childhood, even. Or the Louisiana Penitentiary?”

Tracy allowed herself a small smile. The voice on the tape was educated, sophisticated. Nobody from the penitentiary had sounded remotely like that.

“Could she have been a colleague at the Philadelphia Bank?” Walton pressed. “Or perhaps someone you and Jeff knew in London?”

From my days as a thief, you mean? Tracy finished for him

. No. I don’t think so.

Hearing Greg Walton, a man she’d never met before, reel off places and people in her life as if he knew her intimately was disconcerting to say the least. But she kept her composure.