Page 32 of One Last Stand
“You said you were a missionary when I hired you. Was that a lie?” Moose gave her a hard look.
She swallowed. “After the avalanche, I had a bit of a . . . let’s say a spiritual awakening. I joined the missionary group and wanted to leave the Swans behind. So no. But. . .” She sighed. “But the Swans tracked me down and asked me to keep an eye on some groups associated with the Boko Haram?—”
Axel’s eyebrow went up.
“Wasn’t Colt kidnapped in Nigeria?” Moose said, glancing up from the map.
“Yes. And when he was, I told Ziggy, my mentor slash handler. She told a guy she worked with named Roy, who told a friend of his, Pete Sutton, who called his boss, Logan Thorne. He somehow got word to Colt’s family and—anyway, Logan thought I was made, so he asked Colt to get me out of Nigeria. And that’s when Colt called Shep. And Shep called you.”
“How does Colt know Shep?” Moose said, now standing with his arms crossed, as if trying to dissect her story for lies.
No lies. Just misguided hope that she’d escaped her past.
“The military, I think. You’ll have to ask him.”After he’s safe. “You figured out where they are yet, Axel?”
He motioned Flynn over. “Working on it.”
“Why did Colt call Shep?” Moose asked.
Oh, shoot. She’d sort of wanted to leave out the bit where Shep had been spying on her—not spying, protecting her—for the past year, per Colt’s request. “I don’t know. I guess he knew we were friends, but . . . huh. Anyway, that’s how I ended up here.”
“Small world,” Moose said, running his finger along a ridgeline on the map.
She didn’t want to tell him how small—at least, not now. “I don’t know how Tomas found me, but he wants the bio card to the crypto wallet where I stashed the money.”
“If you have a crypto wallet, why can’t you simply access it over the internet and transfer the money?” said Axel.
“It’s a high-security cold storage wallet, and it can only be accessed through a bio card created from my DNA and eye scan. The bio card holds my data, so technically, if someone has that and the seed code, they can access my wallet.”
“What’s a seed code?” asked Axel.
“It’s twenty-two random words in a specific order that unlocks the wallet.”
“Is that why someone tried to kill you?” Flynn said.
“I don’t know. But right now, I don’t care. Tomas took Shep and asked for the bio card, and I’m going to give it to him.” Her hand went to her necklace, her thumb running along the pendant, a habit she should probably break. It only made her look weak.
“And then he gets the money?” Axel said, shaking his head.
“No. Of course not. He still needs the seed code. And that brings us to . . .”
“Here,” Moose said, and put his finger on the map, a point between Eagle River and Wasilla, in an enclave of mountains. “It’s an old hunting cabin near the Rabbit Lake trailhead. Looks like there’s a service road that runs back to it.”
She looked at the terrain map. “Lots of mountains.”
“Lots of cover. Tomas know how to shoot?”
“Tomas is clearly not just the accountant I thought he was, so I’m going to say yes to that. I’ll go in expecting the worst because, honestly, I’m not sure what I’m walking into.”
“Whatwe’rewalking into,” Moose said quietly.
She looked at him, and right then, it hit her.
They were with her.
She didn’t know why that sank in, found her bones, fortified her. “Are you sure?”
“You should have told us from the beginning, but yes,” Moose said.