Dusk (Dangerous Web #1) - Aleatha Romig Page 0,39
cool head if he would suspect we’re dealing with his wife’s captor?”
I wanted to believe this wasn’t the Sovereign Order, the organization that Mason had been involved in while he’d been away from us. However, if we were dealing with a warring outfit—a cartel, bratva, or Cosa Nostra—we would have heard something. The guilty party would claim responsibility and seek to make a profit on their bounty.
Patrick and Sparrow had been in contact with various outfits throughout the country, more accurately, throughout North America. If any organization had the queen of Chicago or the wife of one of Sparrow’s trusted advisors in their hold, it would make sense that the organization would do its best to capitalize upon it. They would brag about their capture, ask for obscene amounts of cash or merchandise, or offer to trade the women to another organization to pay back a deal gone wrong.
Instead, for over forty-eight hours there has been silence.
Instead of answering Mason’s question about Sparrow’s ability to keep a cool head, I shook mine. “Sparrow wants a target.”
That was the truth in a nutshell.
Not having anyone to direct our anger toward was almost worse than having a target. If we knew anything at all, we could plot and plan. Uncertainty continued to mount with each passing minute, hour, and day. Not knowing who we were fighting against left the Sparrows in a suspended state of flux.
“If I’m right,” Mason said loudly, “Sparrow will have a fucking huge target.”
I wished we were on a motorcycle. I’d tell him to pull over and let us converse in private without screaming. “What do you plan to do?”
“I have to go to Washington DC” —the last known location of the man known as Top— “if that’s where Top still is. I did a search last night. Congress is out for summer recess. Edison Walters—Top—has a residence in the city. I found no record of his travel.” Mason shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything. I’m sure he’s capable of incognito. If he’s physically out of DC and with the Order, I’ll need to make an SOS call. I’m hoping I don’t have to go that far.”
“You want to show up at his house?”
“The deal I made, the one for my freedom, was with him. He has that kind of power. If the Order decided to go back on that deal, he would know and by all rights, so should I be informed, not that the Order usually informs its targets.”
“And when you show up, if that deal was rescinded without your knowledge, what will he do?” I asked. “Kill you on sight. Part of your agreement was to forget the Order and everything associated with them.”
“Well, they didn’t give me the fucking drug, so the memories are there. For the last two years I’ve kept them buried, but who the fuck else would take my sister and be after my wife?”
We were all certain that Laurel had been the target. It was the little bit of the puzzle that made sense. I let Mason’s words sink in as I thought about the Sovereign Order.
It was difficult, if not impossible, to describe the power of the Sovereign Order in a few words, paragraphs, or even in numerous lengthy biographical tomes. For lack of a better description, the Order was a government-funded agency outside of the three known branches of government. It didn’t exist in the executive, legislative, or judicial branch. As far as elected officials were concerned, not one knew of its existence.
Patrick was our expert with money. Give him a trail, let him follow a lead, and he’ll see patterns others miss. He determined that the agency was funded by the US government through pork-barrel expenditures enacted by the legislative branch and signed off by the executive branch.
One or two sentences in a thousand-page bill would appropriate funding for what appeared as a benign beneficiary. Perhaps it was a philanthropic organization or perhaps it was an organization centered on the arts—whatever was hot at the time. One hundred thousand here. A million there. Over the years the amount of needed funding has increased as the operational costs increased.
The reality was that in a trillion-dollar bill, a million was easily overlooked. If that million was further divided into smaller sums and the beneficiaries were not connectable, the Sovereign Order remained properly funded for generations.
This wasn’t a new process.
It didn’t begin with the current administration or the one before that. It wasn’t secured by funding proposals from one party or