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  “Why me?” she asked. “And how did you find me?”

  “Because you and I met briefly at the church building. I heard you give your name and your brother’s name to the receptionist.”

  With a will of its own, her hand unsnapped the deadbolt and she yanked the door open.

  They were even cuter close up, and they made absolutely no move to come in.

  She stared at him. “Who the hell are you two?”

  The black-haired guy tugged his mask down. “Last time you saw me, I had blond hair, blue eyes, and wore glasses.”

  Now she placed him. He was suit guy.

  She stepped out of the way and motioned them inside, shutting the door behind them. “That doesn’t answer any of my questions.”

  “We need to ask you some questions first,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He smiled, and somewhere deep inside her, something pleasant sent up a flurry of sensations she wasn’t used to feeling. “Because believe it or not, we have a lot more to lose than you do.”

  * * * *

  Quack was wrong. She wasn’t cute, she was fucking adorable. If he’d gotten this good a look at her the other day, he’d be panting after her, too.

  Hell, he was panting after her. He hoped she didn’t notice how his cock had thickened in his trousers. She had brown hair that fell around her shoulders, and sweet brown eyes. She was around five five, about nine inches shorter than him.

  The perfect height to pull her against him so she could press her face against his chest and…

  He cut off that line of thinking before he ended up with a tent in his pants.

  She wasn’t acting afraid of them, but he could tell she was someone used to keeping herself safe. Someone used to taking care of herself. She wore jeans and sneakers and a faded T-shirt that was clean. The apartment was sparse, but tidy. These were people who didn’t have much, but made do as best they could. Low income didn’t mean low class.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “What do you mean by that?”

  Lima cast a quick glance at him, and he knew they were about to land themselves ass-deep in something he had no clue if they’d ever get out of or not.

  He let Lima do the talking because his brain’s blood supply had currently been diverted to his balls.

  Hell, he wasn’t being shot at. It wasn’t like he needed to be on high alert at that moment. Intense focus had kept him alive this long.

  It had also taught him when he could drop that focus and just be in the moment.

  Despite the purpose of their visit, this was one of those times.

  “We are investigating the clinic,” Lima told her. “We think there’s something illegal going on there.”

  “Illegal like what?”

  “That’s what we don’t know yet. We’re still…analyzing evidence.”

  She studied him. “You hacked in, didn’t you? That’s what that thing was you stuck into the computer?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Did you tell anyone?”

  She snorted. “Hell no, what’s wrong with you? I’m smarter than that, thank you very much.”

  “What is your impression of what they’re doing?”

  “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.” She told them about her brother’s contract, what she’d read of it, and the revelation that they would pay him one hundred grand at the completion of his training, before he was sent on assignment.

  Quack let out a low whistle. “Holy crap, that’s a huge red flag.”

  “Tell me about it. Rather, tell my stupid brother that.”

  “But no idea what the training entails or what the assignment will be?” Lima asked.

  “No. We didn’t talk that long. He’s not religious, either. At least he wasn’t up until a couple of months ago when he started spending a shitload of time at that place. I thought when I saw that woman he was cozied up to, Korey? I thought okay, he’s trying to get laid. But that contract looked legit. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but I graduated high school and took a couple of college classes. You tell me why they’d pay a group of people one hundred thousand each to go do some sort of work for a church, huh? Does that add up to you?”

  “No,” Quack said, his mind now firmly focused on the conversation at hand. “It sounds fishy as hell.”

  She threw up her hands in relief. “Thank you! I’m glad someone agrees with me. I haven’t even told my aunt yet because I don’t know what the hell to tell her. I don’t want her upset, but I don’t know what to do to get Marvin’s stupid ass out of there.”

  She looked like maybe she was close to crying but forced it back. “My brother’s an idiot, okay? And a pain in the ass. Can’t hold a fucking job. Flunked out of high school. Hell, flunked out of the military, for crying out loud. That takes a special kind of idiot. You’d think I’d be happy he hit a windfall like this, right? But I’m not. You know why?”

  “Because you’re afraid he’s going to die,” Quack quietly said.

  She froze, slowly nodding as she locked eyes with him. She looked worried as hell.

  “Yeah,” she softly said. “Exactly. So if you want me to keep my mouth shut, I’ll take it to my grave. But if you really think you can help me get him out of there? Then guys, I’m your new best friend.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Standing this close to Stacia, Lima saw his first impressions of her hadn’t been wrong.

  He wanted her even more now, but business had to come first. “Your brother, he has trouble focusing on stuff, right? Can’t seem to get his shit together? Maybe been like that for a while?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. All his life. Why?”

  “I need to tell you some stuff, but I can’t tell you exactly how I know it yet. It’s not an exaggeration when I say there are lives at stake. Can that be good enough for now?”

  She nodded.

  He told her what he’d found out about PAGSD, and the fact that her brother had been bounced from the military because of it.

  Sadness filled her face. “Sonofabitch,” she softly said. “I knew it. All my life, I knew there was something different about him. He really couldn’t help it, could he?”

  “No,” Lima said, “he couldn’t. It’s genetic.”

  “So what am I supposed to do with that information?”

  “I wanted to lay a foundation here,” Lima said. “To show you we aren’t just blowing smoke up your ass. We have a mission.”

  “You’re military?”

  “Let’s not talk about that yet.” Lima gave her an extremely condensed and sanitized version of how TMFU came to happen, and that there were people trying to fix this shit. And that they were part of that fixing, but he left out detailing their exact roles.

  Understandably, she looked stunned when he finished. “Why do you guys want to waste your time trying to help me with my brother when you’ve got a world that needs you?”

  “What do you mean?” Lima asked.

  “I mean, what’s in it for you?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. We just want to help. Uh, saving the world is kind of our gig, you know.”

  “Figuring out what’s going on with my brother isn’t part of that.”

  Quack wore a grim look he suspected mirrored his own. “Actually,” Quack said, “we think it might be.”

  * * * *

  Stacia felt like she could barely breathe after absorbing what they told her about Marvin and his genetic condition.

  Then they told her about how Kite came to be and it felt like a gut punch.

  But as the two men detailed what little they’d found out about the church’s operation thus far, the enormity of the situation hit her.

  And at least they’d finally told her their names.

  “Unfortunately,” Lima continued, “most of what we know hinges on circumstantial evidence and a few leaps of logic. Small, reasonable leaps, but far from the cold, hard proof that we need to take it to any official government entities and get their asses shut down. And from what our in
side guy is beginning to untangle in his intelligence research, the simple fact is we don’t yet know which government entities are immune to Silo’s reach.”

  It even looked like Silo was buddies with the president.

  How the hell were they supposed to overcome someone with that kind of pull?

  All the men could do was continue their mission as ordered.

  Now Stacia worried about her doofus brother even more. And she felt a little bad that he really couldn’t help being the way he was. He wasn’t a great brother, but he was the only one she had.

  The only family she had, other than Aunt Darla.

  It took her a few moments to digest what they’d told her. When she finally spoke again, her voice trembled. “My dumbass brother might have signed himself up for some sort of kamikaze mission, is that what you’re saying?”

  They nodded.

  Her knees buckled. She’d thought it, but part of her had hoped she was overreacting. To hear these men confirm her worst fears finished her off. Quack grabbed her arm and eased her down onto a chair at the table. “Fuck,” she whispered.

  “We have to find out what their actual plan is and stop it,” Lima said. “Can you talk to your brother again? At least pretend to accept what he’s doing? Any information you can get out of him could be invaluable. We might be able to shut the place down without having to blow it up.”

  She laughed. It trailed off as she stared up at them. “Oh. You’re not kidding about that part, are you?”

  Quack smiled. “A couple of our guys are demolition and munitions experts. When you absolutely, positively have to blow shit up, they’re your men.”

  Lima took over again. “If they are playing with Kite the virus in that clinic, maybe they already have the vaccine and are testing it. Maybe they already have one or more of the scientists from The List under their control. Finding the people from The List and keeping them safe is our mission. It all boils down to we don’t know what they’re doing, and that’s the problem. If Kite is a factor, that probably makes it part of our mission by default. If your brother will talk to you, you might be able to get us the info we need to finally figure out what the fucker’s up to.”

  She looked up at them. “You mean Silo?”

  “Yeah. He’s a slippery fuck. He isn’t doing anything that we can directly tie to him yet. Your brother might be the break we need.”

  “I know a lot of preachers are con artists, especially now, but do you really think he’d have the balls to pull off something like this? Isn’t this, like, the antithesis of what’s in the Bible? I mean, I’m no scholar unless it’s got nuts and bolts and moving parts. But I’ve had Christian friends before and they never wanted to engineer an apocalypse.”

  “Just because a guy says he believes in Christ and God,” Quack said, “doesn’t mean he’s a Christian.”

  “What does the umbrella salesman wish he could do?” Lima asked her.

  Puzzled, she shook her head.

  He looked positively grim. “He wishes he had the power to make it rain at will. Maybe that’s something Reverend Silo’s figured out. A preacher needs an apocalypse to sell his goods to the most dubious of souls. Maybe he’s not content with the shitstorm we’re already stuck with, he feels he needs to drive the message home here in the US.”

  “But he’d have to be totally batcrap crazy.”

  Lima shrugged. “Mighty Leader was that level of batcrap crazy. And that’s why we’re in this mess to start with.”

  * * * *

  Stacia didn’t have to work that night, but she didn’t want the men there when Aunt Darla came home, either. She left her aunt a note and went for a walk with them to talk some more.

  “What is going to be my best approach?” she asked them. “How do I explain my about-face on what he’s doing?”

  “Simple,” Quack said. “You tell him the truth.”

  She stopped and stared at him. “Really? I just go up to him and say, ‘Hey, I think these people at the clinic are dangerous and I need you to spy on them for me?’”

  “No,” Lima said. “You tell him you’re trying to understand why he’s doing this and you’d like to learn more.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s sort of the truth,” Lima said. “Just not exactly the truth.”

  “Don’t try to pull him out of there yet,” Quack said. “Let him try to bring you in.”

  “I’m not going to do whatever it is he’s doing. Besides, he won’t believe that.”

  “No,” Lima said. “Let him sell you on it. Be willing to listen.”

  “You think it might be that easy?”

  “Maybe. You know your brother. We don’t. But maybe something he tells you will prove to be a clue we can use.”

  “Or maybe I’ll be stumbling around like a damn drunk monkey in the dark,” she grumbled.

  Both men burst out laughing.

  She turned. “What’s so funny?”

  “Believe it or not,” Lima said, “that’s our unit’s…nickname.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him.

  “Hey, we didn’t pick it. But it stuck. Even a drunk monkey can manage to fling his poo in the right place every so often.”

  Now Quack stared at his partner. “Dude, you are sooo not helping here.” Inside the apartment with her, he’d removed his mask, too. She wondered how often Quack shaved. He had a five o’clock shadow on his chin, but if anything it made him look more handsome. Now all three of them had their masks back on as they walked outside, and all she wanted to do was stare at the two men.

  They were cute, they were funny, and she didn’t get even a hint of bullshit vibe from them.

  She didn’t have a problem hanging her hat with them…for now.

  Especially if it meant maybe getting Marvin out of that damn place.

  “I’ll try to go talk to him tomorrow morning,” she said. “I take it you guys have vehicles?”

  They nodded.

  “Meet me in front of my building tomorrow night at seven,” she said. “You can drive me to work and I’ll tell you what I found out.”

  Hell, a chance to spend a little time with the men, and a chance to save a couple of bucks on bus fare?

  Absofarkinglutely she’d do that.

  “Deal,” the men said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Early the next morning, Stacia’s first errand after her aunt left for work was to go to the library, even though it meant a bus trip to get there. She wanted to use a public library computer terminal to look something up.

  Typing Drunk Monkeys into the search bar didn’t bring her much, at first.

  Until she clicked on the news results tab.

  That was when she spotted the third entry down.

  She clicked on it.

  The short blog entry titled Drunk Monkeys: Myth or Madness? had been posted two days earlier by a guy who, from the look of his blog, covered a lot of covert military ops information.

  I have it under good authority that the SOTIF (Special Operations and Tactical Infiltration Force) program I’ve written about before not only exist, but one of the teams, with the code name Drunk Monkeys, has been sent out in search of people from The List, and may have even found at least one of the people.

  And that research and resources have been desperately diverted to keeping the scientist safe and working on trying to develop a vaccine for Kite.

  If this is true, and I sincerely hope it is, then godspeed and good luck, Drunk Monkeys. We’re counting on you.

  She quickly closed out the browser screen and left the library, practically sprinting back to the bus stop. She didn’t want to spend too much time there in case her search brought her uncomfortable attention.

  Her next stop was the church. It was a little before ten in the morning when the bus dropped her off at the corner. The building’s shattered front windows had been replaced by sheets of plywood.

  Swallowing back her nerves and reminding herself this was about Marvin, she steeled hersel
f and returned to the belly of the beast.

  A different young woman from her previous visit sat at the desk and seemed to be the only one in the office. “Hi, can I help you?”

  “Um, yeah. My brother is one of your volunteers, and I wondered if I could speak with him for a couple of minutes, please? I have some family stuff I need to talk about with him.”

  “Sure. What’s his name?”

  “Marvin. Marvin Rooney.”

  “I’ll see if he’s available. You can wait for him across the hall in the sanctuary, if you’d like.”

  “Thanks.”

  To Stacia’s immense shock, Marvin actually appeared a couple of minutes later. Stacia had remained standing, halfway expecting some security force would show up to run her off, haul her away…

  Or maybe worse.

  But she knew she had to risk it.

  Marvin smiled when he saw her.

  There was something…different about him. She couldn’t put her finger on just what, but she knew it wasn’t due to her new knowledge about him and his genetic condition.

  “Hey, sis.” When he stepped in for a hug, she embraced him. “Let’s sit down and talk for a few,” he said. “I’ll have to get back to my classes soon, but we were on a break. What’s up?”

  Now that he was sitting in front of her, she didn’t know how to proceed.

  She opted for direct. “Look, I’m sorry I blew up the other day. I’m just…confused.”

  The smile remained on his face and he nodded, but he didn’t interrupt her.

  “I want you to explain this to me,” she said, trying to control her building fear. “Help me understand what’s going on here. I think it’s great that you want to earn money for us, but I’m scared.”

  That was the truth.

  “There’s nothing to be scared of, sis,” he said. “They want to try to find a vaccine for Kite. And they want us to spread the word about their work and the Word of God when we finish the testing rounds.”

  “But why isn’t the news reporting this?” Maybe gentle logic might break through his thick skull.