Damon's Deal (Terkel's Team Book 1) Read online

  “I don’t want to say,” he murmured. “But, in some cases, we’re definitely on low life support.”

  Frowning, Damon stared at the table and the tablet of notes. “Where do we start?”

  “I’d say Iran, in the cell that we shut down, doing the same kind of work as we are doing, but of course for the other side.”

  “And how many other sides are there now?” Damon snapped bitterly. “It seems like we’re up against the Russians and the Chinese all the time. Now you’re saying Iran.”

  “And I can’t say for sure it’s them. It could all be connected.” He took a slow deep breath. “And it could be connected to our bosses.”

  Damon leaned back, dropped the pencil. “I know, and that means that we need to investigate them and Iran, while keeping an eye on China and Russia. And we don’t have anybody to help us do that.”

  “I can bring in some help,” Terk replied. “I don’t think our three admins are doing anything right now. We all went our separate ways that night, with the expectation of the team getting in touch in a few days. Only we never got that chance.” He cast Damon a raised eyebrow.

  Damon realized who he was talking about. “Interesting.” He hated the idea. He didn’t want her in any more danger than she already was. “I’m not so sure that that’s even a wise idea.”

  “But at least they understood what we were doing, and we still need people to run searches and people to do tracking.”

  Damon frowned, still not liking the idea. “You mean Tasha. She was good at that.”

  “I’ll contact her. I think they’re still working for the government though, and, if we don’t want the government to know that we’re alive and well …” Terk raised his eyebrows.

  Damon shook his head. “Tasha was given her walking papers the same day the government shut us down.”

  “Why?” Terk asked in surprise.

  “Mostly I think because of the connection to us.”

  “Has anybody talked to her since? I haven’t.” Terk looked at Damon.

  “Neither have I.” Damon immediately snatched up his phone. “If they killed off our abilities, hoping that they would completely close down the department,” he noted with emphasis, “what are the chances that they did something to permanently injure her?”

  “Well, they sure as hell better not have. We had three great hackers, IT staff. Let’s see if we can find any of them.”

  “I’ll check in with Tasha.”

  Terk nodded. “I’ll contact Wilson, and then we’ll have to look for Mera.”

  “Yes, and, if any or all three of them want to come back and work for us while we sort this out, we need them. That just brings back one other issue.” Damon turned toward Terk. “When we got shut down, they removed our access, I presume?”

  “Yes, access to databases, access to security, access to everything.”

  “What about the bank accounts?”

  Terk gave him a ghost of a smile. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

  “Will they accuse you of stealing?”

  “I highly doubt it because they didn’t know about it in the first place.” He was torn on that because, of course, that was in theory how it was supposed to be. “It was access we had before anyway.”

  “What are the odds that this annihilation was actually done because of that money? How much money are we talking about?” When Terk gave him a ballpark figure, Damon whistled silently. “We could have all been targeted just to get access to the money. Hell, they hide our budget from Congress so nobody without the highest of clearances knows what we’re up to. This money is dark. Someone steals it, and who’d be the wiser? If it would never openly go into the government coffers because they didn’t know about it, because it was hidden money, maybe someone did know and decided to get it for themselves.”

  “It’s possible, but they could have done that without taking us out,” he reminded Damon. “We would never have known once we were ousted.”

  “No, that’s quite true. But still, it makes me suspicious.”

  “Anytime big money’s involved, it makes us all suspicious,” he murmured.

  “Yeah, that is very true.” His fingers were already redialing Tasha’s number. But, so far, no answer. He bolted to his feet. “I don’t like anything about this. I’ll run over to her place.”

  “If she’s still there. Remember. The bosses knew that we had some abilities, but they didn’t really know all of what we did.”

  “No, they knew exactly what we did. They just didn’t always understand the nuances of how we did it.”

  “Okay, good enough,” Terk agreed. “I don’t have a problem with that definition. Use your connection with Tasha to bring her back.”

  Damn it. How did he know? Terk was like that. He knew things—that no one should know. Damon pocketed his phone and shook his head at that. “I just want to make sure that I find her alive.”

  Terk’s smile fell away. “Yeah, I hear you there.” Just then he got a text, and he frowned. “I need to handle this.”

  As Damon went to walk out the door, he turned back to Terk. “Anything I need to know?”

  “Not necessarily. My brother is about to call.”

  “Ah, well, let me know, and don’t forget we could use the additional manpower.”

  Terk eyed him knowingly and then slowly nodded. “It is what they do. So maybe. I’ll talk to my brother and see.”

  “Remember. They’re already involved. She’s there.”

  “You go look for Tasha. I’ll talk to my brother.”

  With that, Damon exited. Outside, he hopped into a black truck—nondescript, beaten up, slightly dirty, with nothing to cause any attention. He drove out of the huge compound of warehouses and headed to the address he had on file for Tasha. He didn’t bother calling again. Besides, this would need to be personal.

  It didn’t mean it was still the current address though, and that was a bit of a concern. They’d never gotten personal on the job, and he had deliberately kept it much less than personal. Mostly because of the heavy attraction. Personal relations on the job never worked out. However, they weren’t on the job anymore, and that was even more dangerous because whatever the hell had happened had affected their whole team.

  Only two days ago this had all come down; Damon had barely even surfaced when he found out that Terk was alive, and so they immediately banded up to try to find the rest of their team. What they’d found had been horrific.

  The phone call to Levi’s team, warning them about Celia’s arrival, had been heartbreaking when all of them had realized what was going on. And even that knowledge came from Terk’s psyche. And, of course, the text message saying that she was carrying something special had Terk sending out a probe and finding out the truth; she was carrying his child.

  When he realized it was his own child, they had just sat here in stunned fury, realizing just how much somebody was playing games of life and death with the next generation. And one of the reasons why Terk’s team had been disbanded was all over the arguments inside the government of how dangerous the group was. It should have been an easy job to shut down their operation, but now it looked way too much like the government had plans to shut them all down in another way too.

  Yet why Celia? Surely that didn’t play into the government’s shut-down orders?

  Damon understood, he really did, because to anybody in black ops oversight, who knew what Terk’s team could and would do was terrifying. But, if they thought they would shut down and injure this entire team, like they had in an attempt to cover the behinds of some bureaucrats, they had another think coming. That would never be something this team agreed to.

  Terk was the most powerful of them all, and yet, at the same time, he was also the most exposed because he had family. It was one thing to have a team like they did, but, with families to intimidate or to use as blackmail threats, it became a whole different ball game.

  Especially now with this woman and Terk’s unborn child.