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  Jerald nudged his glasses up on his nose with one finger. “He did not use his ticket for the scheduled return flight back to the US. There is no record of him using any of his credit cards, traveling to other countries following Mexico, or being in contact with anyone else once our person lost contact with him. His sat-phone was either turned off or destroyed in Mexico City, and has not been used since then. So far, there have been no official inquiries into his disappearance, because he has three more days of leave scheduled and technically is not missing in the conventional sense of the term. To raise further alarm or push other inquiries could possibly alert General Arliss to our…relationship with our contact. If you wish, I could send others to Mexico City to look into the situation, but I feel other than that we would be better off sitting back and waiting for further news from our person.”

  “And we have no idea who he was going to meet?”

  “No, sir. I did have one of my in-house hackers look into it, but it appears his sat-link connection went dead.”

  “Or someone changed it?”

  Jerald nodded. “Unless we physically locate his laptop, it would be impossible to backtrack any other information.”

  “But when the sat-link connection went dead, someone probably had his laptop to know what to change. Or to destroy it.”

  “That is a valid assumption, yes, sir.”

  Silo wanted to let out a howl of anger. They were special ops, yes, but they were merely men. Not very bright men, either, and yet twice now they’d managed to overturn his carefully laid plans. He’d seen their dossiers, wanted to know who he was up against. None of them were geniuses.

  He couldn’t even use the information he had on them to his advantage. To leverage that meant risking exposing the depths of his own contacts, and possibly putting himself in the public eye in a way he couldn’t afford. It frustrated him, but he could only seek out their families as a last resort. Even then, the men on the team wouldn’t even know it, wouldn’t be in contact with their own families while they were out on their mission.

  If they’d been dubbed the Smart Squirrels or Brainiac Bunnies, anything but the Drunk Monkeys.

  “I’m guessing that we need to discontinue contact with our man for a while, at least?” Silo asked.

  “That would be wise, yes. Our contact cannot risk there being any trace of this leading back to him. He has already scrubbed his online accounts, including the one we used to communicate with him. We will have to wait for him to get in touch with us again when he feels it’s safe.”

  “How is the LA operation coming along?” Silo finally asked, wanting to take his mind off the current clusterfuck.

  “On schedule, sir. The volunteers are responding well to the training. We estimate that in no later than two weeks we’ll be ready to start the final process. It has been suggested that the volunteers undergo a final…mental evaluation to confirm their dedication to the project.”

  Just listening to Jerald, his calm voice, how he sanitized every detail when recounting things, helped Silo calm himself and regain control.

  This was why the man was his right-hand assistant and had been for years.

  This reason right here.

  You do make wise decisions when you try, Hannibal.

  “Excellent,” Silo said. “Keep me posted.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jerald quickly left.

  Silo stood there for several more minutes, focused on his breathing, until he was sure he wouldn’t let out a scream of frustrated rage that would no doubt bring people running. Slowly, he lowered himself into his chair behind his desk, then swiveled it around so he could look at the Sandias again. Only the upper peaks were still glowing a faint orange, the rest of them cloaked in ever-deepening shades of purple.

  I will not be denied. Especially not by a group of Drunk Monkeys.

  He was too close to his goal. Things were coming together well. Even if they couldn’t develop a vaccine for Kite, all he had to do was wait out the infection in his strongholds, along with his faithful, until the unfortunate ones died off.

  If the President is the only one who can pry the location of those monkeys out of General Arliss, perhaps it’s time I called upon the President herself.

  A slow grin split his face. He hadn’t seen her in a while. The last time being at her election party two years earlier. He’d campaigned for her extensively, and promised not to reveal to anyone that her daughter had gotten knocked up and had an abortion several years earlier in college, while the president was still a Senator.

  He’d left out the little detail that the frat boy who’d done the knocking up of the girl had been paid handsomely from one of Silo’s secret accounts kept for just that purpose a few weeks before the fact.

  It would have ruined President Kennedy’s standing with her conservative Republican base. And considering she was preparing for a run-up to an already shaky reelection, and was dealing with a worldwide crisis, she probably wouldn’t want one more distraction to take her mind off her job.

  Maybe it’s time I remind her of where her true loyalties should lie.

  THE END

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tymber Dalton lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. Active in the BDSM lifestyle, the two-time EPIC winner is also the bestselling author of over fifty-five books, including The Reluctant Dom, The Denim Dom, Cardinal’s Rule, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, and many more.

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