Game of Dust and Ashes (Book Two in the Covert Operations series)

Two

Cedric had been finishing the upload when the team had been met with open fire and a bullet had grazed his temple. While it was hardly a life-threatening injury, he'd been benched for a week in order to make sure he was healing properly. Since it had happened he'd been going stir-crazy cooped up and I knew that he was more than eager to get back to work. In the meantime, he was cooking—or rather burning—and living vicariously through me.

"Fine, I guess," I said as he stared at me insistently. "Helena's got me heading out to Italy tomorrow morning."

"How long will you be gone?"

I shrugged and took another sip from my glass. "Not long, I expect. I'm only securing an asset. Two maybe three days' tops, I'd wager."

Cedric hummed low under his breath. "Who's covering you?"

"No idea. Helena didn't tell me anything. I'm assuming that I'll be briefed in the morning."

"Has the asset been validated?"

"I don't know. I'm assuming so. Helena really gave me no information at all. All she did was walk by my desk and tell me that if I fuck up I'll never be allowed out in the field again." I rolled my eyes and placed my empty cup in the sink.

When I turned back around, Cedric was frowning. "Maybe I'll talk to her. See if I can get assigned to the case as well. We don't have any big ops running right now anyways and tomorrow's my first day back. She should be able to spare me for that."

It wasn't necessarily a secret that Helena didn't like me very much. Practically everyone in our department was aware of her continual dislike of me. For months Cedric, and others, had tried to change her mind, to get her to see that I was an asset to the agency and not a hindrance but it had only made our boss more irate and eventually they'd left the matter alone.

What Cedric didn't know was how much Helena was covering for me. Within the breadth of the entire GCCO, not just our department, she was the only one to know my real identity. I knew that it was knowledge she could share at any moment in time but we were both aware that Scorpion had eyes and ears everywhere, including our own agency. For safety, she'd stayed quiet but her disdain of me was widely known.

"Well, it would make my life easier," I admitted with a smile. "You're the best analyst we've got so you generally cut my work in half whenever we end up on the same assignment. I don't know if she'll let you though. Helena's really been riding my ass lately."

Cedric sighed. "I'll make her see sense. It's not like I have anything else going on anyways. She might as well put me to good use."

Unlike me, he was completely trusted by Helena and most of the higher up directors and assistant directors of the agency. His parents had worked at the GCCO for a number of years and he'd joined fresh out of the military where'd he'd spent a couple of years after high school. He was naturally gifted with computers and could write a hack in the same amount of time it took me to empty a round at a gun range.

Helena also favored Cedric immensely and it wasn't hard to understand why. During his second week of work ever at the agency, he'd managed to find a way to extract a handful of agents who'd been pinned down in enemy territory after their first handler had mistakenly led them into a trap. He was young and untested at the time, but his quick-thinking and upbeat attitude had spoken to Helena and as time had gone on he'd been subjected to more important cases pertaining to global security and protection of certain heads of state.

The only issue our boss ever had with Cedric was his interest in me. If Cedric was the perfect analyst, I was the misbehaving rebel operative. It was clear that she thought our time spent together would ruin him, that my bad influence and rough past would cause a resulting impact that would cause her to lose one of her best agents. She kept me around only for security, so that she could watch my every move and it was no secret to her or I that if I took off with Cedric by my side, she would never be able to find me.