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

Twenty-Three

CIA Secure Location, New York, February 6, 2021, 11:58 P.M.

The secured CIA medical centre was located in one of the subfloors of an office building in New Jersey. The offices were a front as well, an elaborate CIA ploy to give their employees an identity they could have without being looked at too closely. Some of them who reported to the office worked in accounting or sales.

At least, that's what it said on paper.

In reality, they attended the building each day to receive new assignments or work on their existing cases. The floor above the hospital was a shooting range.

But the hospital itself was state of the art with competent doctors and fully stocked surgical suites. By the time I arrived at the hospital – alone, since we'd carted Lia off with the rest of those who had been injured in the fighting off to get fixed up – both Cedric and Max had entered surgery.

Max to straighten and repair the damage done to his shattered fingers and to set his nose properly. He was in need stitches to heal many of the cuts he'd sustained but none of the injuries he'd sustained would result in lasting damage. Even his fingers we'd been assured would heal and return to him full mobility.

The same couldn't be said for Cedric.

It had been a relief to arrive and know that he'd made it to the hospital alive. That Daniel had somehow kept Cedric's heart beating in the time that I'd been chasing down monsters.

But upon arrival, they'd only been able to provide a brief update about his condition. That the bullet had lodged in his spine and that there was severe damage. It had been hours since I'd heard news about his status.

In the time since, I was debriefed by the CIA who wanted to know exactly what had happened from the moment we had arrived to the moment that Lia and I had rejoined Dai and the rest of our allies in the ballroom with the news that Izzy and Tasha Savalas were dead. Though I didn't tell the full truth – lying only about who had taken the killing shot at Izzy Savalas. I left Carmichael's name firmly off the record and knew that Lia would do the same when she was debriefed.

I'd then been informed how they were coordinating with Dai to arrange all of the arrests and extraditions that were sure to transpire. Even as I was debriefed, in a different and heavily classified building somewhere else in the city, the CIA was working to begin processing all of the Scorpion leaders we'd apprehended.

It would take days for the mansion to be cleared – months of repairs before the stain of Scorpion was washed away. Even as I was debriefed, there were teams handling the toxin that Tasha and Izzy had been preparing to release into the mansion as a failsafe. Looking back, I realized that they'd probably learned of that secret exit – had likely been planning on using it to escape after releasing that toxin.

Kenneth Riley – the CIA contact we'd been working closely with – had been the one to conduct my debrief session. Perhaps it was because of that working relationship that he'd gone into detail to describe how they would be detained and secured, no chance of ever getting out.

Or maybe it had just been luck he had conducted the session because he hadn't gone through the formality of fingerprints or retinal scans – both of which would have given away my true identity as Melanie Briar, instead of Jessie Collins, GCCO, as he thought me to be.

Though maybe it wasn't luck at all, I surmised as he ushered me out of the debrief room and towards the hospital floors below. Because I was certain that he had looked at me and winked, a knowing smile on his weathered face.