“Always the ones you need, though.”

He nods, more to himself. “Yes, that too.” Spinning the dial with deft accuracy, he pops open the door and pulls out a silver briefcase. It’s the kind of case I normally open at the start of an assignment, locked by a combination and waiting for me in a secure location, left by one of a few highly trusted Alliance employees who won’t ask questions and have no information to share. “We have a situation in San Francisco that needs sorting out. A search and recovery, and potential target elimination.”

It has always been so easy to talk to Bentley. We speak the same language.

He sets the case on the coffee table in front of me and pops the latches. I don’t even need to look to know that there’s a Beretta Px4 inside. It’s my model of choice, what I’m most comfortable with, and Bentley always ensures I have one. Next to it is a suppressor, a Gerber multi-tool, a fixed-blade knife, and a new burner phone. Beneath is a folded copy of the San Francisco Chronicle and an unmarked tan folder.

I don’t make a move for the folder just yet.

“There was a . . . complication recently,” Bentley begins, choosing his words carefully. I never get all the details, but I always get enough to do my job proficiently. “It involves an ex-employee of Alliance, giving explicit details about an assignment in Afghanistan.”

“What kind of assignment exactly?”

“Intelligence collection. Marine Corps captured an insurgent and allowed my guys to question him. It was highly successful, leading us to the capture of Adeeb Al-Naseer.”

A terrorist on the most-wanted list who bombed an office building in Seattle, killing almost a thousand people.

There’s only one reason that I could understand the U.S. forces handing him over, and it’s that they wanted to keep their hands clean of what needed to be done to make him talk. “But the general public doesn’t need to know the details behind the interrogation,” I surmise.

“I’m sure you’ve been following the news. You know how much heat Alliance has been under lately. The media has cost me millions in contacts, which are smaller and harder to get as it is. The war glory days are over. And if these lies that Royce was spewing get out . . . the Pentagon will hang someone for this, just to appease voters. It’ll be Alliance, and that isn’t good for anyone.”

I nod. Average Americans, driving along in their Chevrolets, filling their stomachs with burgers and their heads with Hollywood’s latest heist or action movie, have no fucking clue what it’s like to be in enemy territory, fighting a war to make sure it’s never brought to American soil again. Half of them are even arguing the need for the war over there to begin with.

So when a journalist latches onto bullshit propaganda about U.S. military and guys like Alliance’s contract workers doing unsavory things and blasts it out into the media, all those lefty liberals start screaming. While they enjoy their breakfast coffee under the blanket of safety we’ve given them. And then our government responds, because it has to. In the end, Bentley will suffer.

Just the thought of that makes me grit my teeth with anger.

“His name was Dylan Royce. He was let go four months ago for performance-related and drug dependency issues. Basically, he was a shit disturber, with a developing taste for violent behavior. We gave him a heavy severance package in exchange for a signed confidentiality agreement. Turns out he didn’t think that gag order applied in a tattoo shop. He ran his mouth off to a fucking tattoo artist and the entire conversation was recorded on the store’s surveillance system.”

“What kinds of things were said?”

“Bullshit. All of it. All kinds of false accusations. But it won’t matter if the media gets hold of it,” Bentley mutters. “The tattoo shop owner actually called Alliance’s 800 number—pulled it off our website, I assume—and told the operator that he had damaging information on Alliance that I would want to know about. She didn’t know what to do so she put him through to my operatives director’s voice mail, where he then left a message threatening to send the video to a journalist.”

I see where this is going. “How much was he asking for in exchange?”

“Six hundred and fifty-five thousand.”

“That’s . . . specific. Why not an even million?”

Bentley snorts. “Who knows. My operatives director called him back and asked for proof, so the guy texted him a short clip of a video, taken by a phone, of a monitor—some crappy little security monitor, it looks like. My guy bought us four days by agreeing to an exchange. Told the shop owner that we needed that time to round up that much cash.”

I snort. I doubt Bentley would have an issue filling a duffel bag in an afternoon.

“That’s when my operatives director briefed me. I couldn’t risk that video floating around for four days so I briefed and dispatched a team within two hours to recover the video from the shop owner and eliminate both of them from future risk of talking. Quietly. Royce sure as hell couldn’t be trusted anymore, gag order or not.”

Eliminate.

Kill.

I trust Bentley’s decision making, so if he thinks the guys had to go, then they had to go. “What happened?”

“That major clusterfuck happened.” He nods toward the newspaper. “Two dead bodies, surrounded by a media and police circus and a missing videotape. Had they used their heads and followed orders explicitly . . .” Bentley shakes his head. “My guys were supposed to take out Royce somewhere quiet first and then get to the shop at closing to seize the tape. But they decided to improvise, seeing as Royce was at the shop getting work done. A ‘two birds with one stone’ robbery cover-up.”

I reach for the newspaper, unfolding it to scan the front page: a double homicide at a dive tattoo shop in Mission District called Black Rabbit. The inset shows two faces—one, a Caucasian ex-Marine named Dylan Royce, whom you could easily identify on the street as such with his bulky size and brush cut; the other, a Willie Nelson wannabe named Ned nearing his sixties, who doesn’t look like he’d be capable of serious risk to anyone. Then again, I’ve watched hundred-pound women produce bombs from beneath their burkas as they charge a U.S. Humvee, ready to blow everyone up. I don’t underestimate anyone anymore.

But this Royce guy . . . “It says he had a Medal of Honor?”

“Yup. An outstanding soldier, which is why we hired him. He went downhill, though. It started with Vicodin. He turned into a real troublemaker after that.” Bentley shakes his head.

What a waste. “And this Ned guy. Why not just pay him off?” While I don’t ever question Bentley, I’m curious about this. Blackmail is shitty, but it’s not an automatic death sentence. At least, not in my book.

“For the same reason we don’t negotiate with terrorists, son.” Bentley’s tone is sharper. He’s always supported a strong stance on that. “Guys like that, who jump on the chance to make money off of horrible things they’re not supposed to know about anyways—they can’t be trusted, even after you pay them off. He’d probably pocket the money and then turn around and bury me by sending a copy of the video in. Or he’d come back for more. The guy had all kinds of unsavory connections. We can’t risk that shit. I’m not having my entire life brought down by some fucking tattoo artist looking to cash in.” He sighs. “So now you know why you’re here. I need you to find that recording.”

“I would definitely have handled this differently.” Namely, I would have had the video in hand before I pulled the trigger. But I also wouldn’t have pulled the trigger without Bentley’s say-so. “Who are these guys you sent in?”

“They’re two guys who worked closely with Royce in Afghanistan. I didn’t want to get anyone else outside this issue involved, and I figured they have a vested interest. One of them, though, is a bit of a loose cannon. Effective as hell at his job overseas, but . . .” He shakes his head, his lips pursed with regret. “I should have waited for you.”