Riding The Edge - Elise Faber Page 0,37
we’d connected to criminal activity—was one of those. He had betrayed us barely a year before, and the memory was fresh enough that it seemed like the most likely scenario.
“Do you think Daniel”—it was a cruel twist that Dan shared a name with the bastard—“was a part of this?” I asked.
Laila had come face-to-face with Daniel on a mission not long ago—just months after the former agent had betrayed KTS and their team for the money and power offered by the Mikhailova clan. That betrayal had been a particular blow because Daniel had been previously fired by the agency, and Laila had vouched for her childhood friend to come back as a member of her team on a probational basis. He’d abused that trust then attempted to steal the drives KTS had recovered, putting two civilians’ lives at risk.
It was a fucked-up move, from a fucked-up person.
A person who—if he was somehow alive—was out there now with information about KTS.
Information he was potentially—and in all likelihood—sharing with their enemies.
We all understood why the Mikhailova—and as a consequence, Daniel—wanted the drives. They had contained information linking the Russians with many powerful people around the world, and the trail of money had given KTS rare insight into the inner workings of the Mikhailova. In fact, a whole team at KTS was currently working on cutting off those monetary channels to make their criminal activities more difficult.
But in the aftermath of that most recent interaction with Laila, Daniel had been presumed dead by her hand. Except . . . KTS trained their people to be strong, to never give up, and gave them numerous techniques to get out of a variety of sticky situations.
I wasn’t at all certain that a knife wound and subsequent explosion could take him down permanently.
I was still kicking.
Though the jury was out for how long.
Adrenaline was getting me through, but I knew that was a limited resource. At some point, my body would either succumb to infection or lose too much blood and be unable to function. Add in the ankle and Dan’s multitude of injuries and . . .
Yeah, I was still kicking.
And the question still was: for how long?
“Frankly,” I said, “this whole situation—our mission being hijacked, my father’s people knowing exactly where to find us and when to take us down, along with the previous meet with our source going FUBAR—suggests that Daniel might very much be alive.”
“Seems likely he survived the incident at the warehouse with Laila and that he’s behind this,” Dan agreed. “He knew how to get to us. And he knew about our old tech, but not the newly issued stuff.”
My ankle and side had both been slowly ratcheting up with pain, a steady throb-throb-throb that was building as time went on.
Adrenaline fading.
Ignoring that, I lay back, trying to pretend the pain wasn’t there. “Right. The first aid kits have only been common in the last few months, and the knife is new even to me.” I closed my eyes, attempted to breathe through the hurt. “But this mission hasn’t been on the books anywhere Daniel could have known about it. We planned it in a week.”
“If he’s alive and working with them,” Dan pointed out, “he could have spotted our setup.”
“That’s true.” I opened my eyes.
“Either way, we’ll have to change tactics in the future,” he said.
“Agreed.” A beat as I tilted my head, staring up at him. “Could he have known about our source in Munich?”
Dan nodded. “That’s possible, especially since he’d been reinstated to Laila’s team for a time. That source had been around for a while.”
The puzzle pieces were fitting together, and I didn’t like one bit where this was leading. But we would have time to talk after we got out of this cell. And step one of that was ensuring our trackers were able to be picked up by KTS’s servers.
I lifted my arm. “Take it out.”
Instead of listening to me, Dan lifted his own arm and sliced the spot just on the inside of his elbow. He hissed in pain, and I glared as blood dripped out of the open wound.
“Why’d you do that?” I exclaimed. “I’m the injured one. It doesn’t make sense to weaken the stronger of us.”
He rolled his eyes, pressing at his skin until he managed to remove the grain-sized implant. “The day I get taken down by a tiny wound is the day I turn in my agent card.”
“It makes no sense—”
Dan tore a strip from his T-shirt and