The Cardinal Bird - Book 1: Reverse Harem Series (The Cardinal Series) Read online

  The Cardinal Bird

  Book 1 of The Cardinal Series

  Mia Smantz

  © 2019 Mia Smantz

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Independently published.

  ISBN: 9781081241209

  For more information visit:

  https://www.miasmantz.com/

  Dedicated To

  My husband of which I hope never actually reads this book. If that happens, then Honey, yes, the men are incredibly unrealistic and have nothing on you.

  Prologue

  Karl Westphal slammed his hands on the conference table. "Dammit! How many more people are going to have to die!"

  He pinched the bridge of his nose before he opened his eyes once more. He glanced around the room meeting the eyes of the Delta teams before him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  "I'm sorry," Karl said. His black hair was stressed and standing up messily, matching his wrinkled outfit. There were purple moons under his bright blue eyes. It was obvious to everyone in the room that he hadn't been home in a few days and probably hadn't slept in that amount of time either.

  A throat cleared. "It's okay," said a man with copper-colored hair dressed smartly in a button-up and tie. He was the only one in the room with enough seniority to speak up, despite there being the better part of three separate teams present. Karl Westphal did work for the CIA after all, so that gave him some extra standing here at Delta. "This is a tough case. We understand."

  Karl let out a humorless chuckle. "Tough case. Yeah, Dr. Harper, you could say it's a tough case." He pointed the clicker at the big screen. What looked like a medium-sized hotel suite popped up. The clothed tables took up most of the space, with enough there to seat probably 100 guests. Chairs were stacked against the far walls though, dark silhouette towers against the ceiling to floor windows that let in the midday sun. The hotel had a distinct baroque-influence to its decor. The walls were obnoxiously designed with gold gilding. Patterns of leaves, ivy, and swirling vines shimmered and writhed where the sunlight hit them.

  "This is Suite C at the Hotel Mecure Paris Centre Tour Eiffel. Two weeks ago, 19:00 hours, Central European Time," Karl said. He clicked again and suddenly pictures were flashing by of the same room. On-screen the shadows through the windows twitching like a bad quality animation as they jumped from frame to frame.

  "CCTV," CJ Tate, the resident computer guru, grumbled. "It's like trying to read a book with a strobe light."

  "The hotel may be opulent, but you'll find that a lot of places in Europe keep minimal security more often than not."

  The people gathered around the table watched as a small brunette figure was thrown into the room. With every new still, she was farther and farther into the room. All of a sudden, she was on the floor, her fitted gown wrinkled and bunching up around her. She must have fallen. It took a few frames for another figure to follow her into the shot. He was dressed formally as well in a uniform with identification on it.

  "Who are those people?" Sabra Jaheem asked. She was a strong African woman with her long hair pulled back severely into a tight ponytail. She was the only one present from her Delta team.

  "The man is a security guard for the hotel. He usually works during the week, but he was asked to work for the event going on there. It was a big deal, lots of the hotel's security workers were on staff that night. As far as the agency could find, he checks out," Karl answered.

  "So, he wasn't a plant," Dr. Harper said slowly with a frown. It was unnerving to watch as the man approached such a small, fragile woman with ill intent. If it weren't for the ballgown dress forming to her shapely figure, she could have passed for a child.

  The scene kept flashing on as the guard grew closer and closer. The shots were grainy and so many details were left out in between the times that were recorded. He was on the girl, the front of her dress fisted in his hand as he was crouched over her. The next shot, she was laid back out on the floor, her face to the side. He picked her up, and then her head was back on the floor. It repeated like that, over and over. Though it wasn't showing the actual punch to the face, little details appeared, like her split lip, bloodied teeth, and swollen cheek.

  "Jesus," someone swore, voicing everyone's thoughts as they all mentally counted out about nine punches to the face.

  "Do we know who the girl is?" Jace Tate, CJ’s identical twin brother asked. His team had been the lead in helping out Karl for a while now with mostly CJ doing all the legwork. For that reason, the entire three-man team was present today. CJ was, even now, trying to reach out to their only contact using a less-than-legal "hacktivist" site. So far, no luck. The third person on their team, Aleksander was reclined back in his chair, large, built arms folded across his chest at the elbows, and a frown on his face as he watched the big screen.

  "Still no luck?" Karl asked CJ, receiving a negative head shake. He ran his hand through his hair again, but it didn't make much of a difference since it was already messy. He looked back at the screen watching what was going on. The guard had risen to his feet over the girl who was just lying there. "We're not sure who the girl is. There wasn't a clear shot of her face before it was so helpfully rearranged by the protection detail. But if we can assume that the security guy is legit and not a plant, then we can probably also infer that she is not supposed to be there."

  "I can try to see if anyone else can clean one of the images up from before she gets hit," CJ said, still waiting on his computer to ding. It was normal for their hacker informant to not respond back right away. Based on the majority of response times and time zones, they had been able to determine that their hacker informant was probably somewhere in Eastern Europe or Western Asia. However, they could get lucky and get a response right away. It was about the right time for the contact to be online.

  "That might be a good idea," Karl said, thinking it over but not committing. They hadn't had to pull anyone in from any Delta or CIA teams yet, and he wanted to keep as few teams on the case as he could. It was becoming more and more obvious that it was a highly dangerous person they were trying to track down, and to become involved at this point just seemed like an unnecessary risk if it could be at all avoided.

  Karl looked back at the screen, noting the time stamp in the corner. "Alright, now this next part is pretty graphic. I apologize in advance."

  "More graphic than a defenseless woman getting her face beat in?" Aleksander snarked. Every person in the room was a defender of the underdog in some way, so idly watching the beating was difficult.

  "Just brace yourself," Karl said, not rising to the bait.

  On-screen, another man stepped into the ballroom. His back was to the camera, but it was easy to tell that he was dressed in an expensive suit.

  "We never see his face," Karl warned. "All we can tell is that he was there as a guest. Our best guess is that he was working with the girl. It makes sense. She was singled out by security and beaten even as she appeared to be one of the guests. And well, we see for sure that the new guy is not one of the guests, but..."

  "But what?" Aleksander asked, shifting his large body in the too-small chair, but before Karl could answer there was action on the screen.

  The new man was in the doorway during the first couple of frames, his back still to the camera as he seemed to take in the situation. Then, he moved so fast, it wasn't even a blip on the feed. He was just behind the guard instantly with the guard none the wiser until the next frame where
his eyes seemed to plead for his life.

  In the next frame, there was the residual flames of a gun as well as an explosion of spatter flying out behind the guard's head. Point blank. Execution style.

  "Shit," someone at the table cursed.

  Before the guard could finish falling to the floor, something had drawn the shooter's attention to the doorway because he was looking that way. At best, there was still only a slight glance of his face.

  Karl paused the feed at that time to point to the man's face. "We were lucky that we got to see the scar over his eye. That should help with facial recognition on him, but so far my guys at the CIA haven't had any luck there."

  Karl resumed the feed. The security guard was down, clomping to the ground as disjointed deadweight. The shooter was already raising his gun. The next few scenes in the feed showed the gun in various stages of being shot, repeatedly.

  "There were five other victims recovered by French Authority from the doorway," Karl said to the unspoken question in the room.

  There was a couple of heads that fell into view as the bodies fell forward from the doorway into the camera's line of sight. Blood spread everywhere, soaking and smothering the highly detailed carpet as the shooter finally turned back to the room, his eyes landing on the still figure of the girl.

  He took several frames to approach her, showing that he was walking much more slowly.

  There was a helpless feeling around the conference room. The only person to have seen this footage already was Karl. Everyone else felt the anxiety, the frustration, the fear. The unknown outcome made the footage feel like present instead of the unchangeable past. As if they could do anything to stop what was about to come.

  The shooter raised their arm and pointed. There was a flare of fire from the gun. And then, another circle of blood started to blink into existence around the girl's stomach as the man stared down at her.

  "My god," Dr. Harper whispered, holding his breath, but the shooter wasn't done.

  He shot one more time into the girl's body, avoiding the stomach this time as a red spot appeared on her leg.

  The last thing he did was scoop the girl up and carry her out, leaving behind carnage and destruction with only two pools of blood to let anyone know that the petite brunette had been there at all.

  Karl paused. "Other cameras in the hotel show them exiting, but not once did we get a clear shot of his face."

  "He is like Russian businessman," Aleksander said with a harsh scowl. "Sneaky bastards, we are."

  Jace frowned and turned to Karl. "Why would he take the girl?"

  "Maybe she's his partner? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me! It's got the agency a mess right now. I've been burning at both ends for nearly a week. Something big is going to happen. I can feel it. I just don't know what!" He threw a furious finger back at the girl cradled in the shooter's arms. "And somehow, she ties into this. I just don't know-how. Why would he shoot her if she's his partner? Why would he save her if she wasn't?"

  Everyone in the room turned to Dr. Harper. He sighed. "It is a conundrum. I don't have enough information to give anything more than my best guess. Even though he shot her, the wounds appeared to be non-fatal locations if treated promptly and properly. I would say from that action alone, most definitely she was there with him, but it does pose the question about why he would shoot her. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to that but instead, have another question. Who is pulling his strings?"

  There was silence around the room, everyone processing the statement in their own ways.

  Ding! Something abruptly punctured the silence, causing a few of the Henley team to jump.

  CJ seemed to come to life, fingers flying away at his keyboard. "I just got a message," he said, his eyes scanning the screen. He grinned, a dimple popping out on his cheeks. "It's from Byte-Syzed."

  "Message him back," Karl said somewhat unnecessarily, leaning forward with his arms on the table.

  CJ typed some short response back as his team gathered over his shoulders to watch his laptop. "I said hello back. What do you want me to a--"

  He was interrupted by another ding. He looked at his screen. Usually, they had to carefully construct their responses to talk to Byte-Syzed, otherwise, he would get skittish of too many questions. He never, ever volunteered information without prompting, and yet that was exactly what was happening right now.

  CJ read it out loud. "He says...he says that he needs help. He has information on a... Nikolai Ivanov? He says that the information needs to get to the authorities. Byte-syzed also wants to know if I can send the police to a location."

  Karl rounded the table rapidly, confidently squeezing in among the team of three to read for himself over CJ's shoulder. This was good. They had been working on this asset for going on two years now. The person finally seemed ready to talk.

  "Sabra,” he said, pointing at the African American woman, “I want everyone available on your team finding info on this Ivanov guy. If you hit a wall, use CJ--but only as a last resort. He’s going to have his hands full." Karl leaned down to look at CJ's screen. "Where's the location?" Karl demanded, his bright blue eyes rapidly taking everything in that he could.

  "He hasn't sent it yet," CJ said. "He wants me to promise that I won't be showing up myself. He wants my promise that I will send the authorities."

  "Well, make the promise," Karl said easily, his eyes glued to the screen as they all waited for a response.

  They got it. It was numbers only, no address.

  "Coordinates," Aleksander said in his gruff voice.

  "Where do they go?" Karl said, not wasting a second. They were finally on a lead.

  CJ's fingers flew. It was a graceful dance. The chat screen was minimized to the side so that they could keep an eye on it while he worked to pull up a map. "It's...nowhere. It's in the middle of the wilderness. The closest town is, um..."

  "Gdov," Aleksander said easily in Russian.

  "Right, Gdov," CJ repeated.

  "They are in Mother Russia," Aleksander said.

  Karl was on his phone already. It was ringing and up to his ear even as he was giving instructions to the Delta people. "I want to know the best way inside to retrieve this man. Get me info on Gdov. I want to know about border control. Locals. Ways in and out. Get me satellite eyes on the exact location." He walked away quickly to the side of the room as someone at the agency picked up. He filled them in rapidly before making his way back to the table at the front of the room. "Alright people, we are going to get this hacker and bring them back here. I’ll have people at the agency focusing on the shooter and the girl for now. I want all Delta members that can speak Russian on the team for retrieval."

  "Da," Aleksander said. "I will go."

  Karl nodded. He looked to Sabra.

  "I am sorry," she said. "But Tasia cannot go back to Russia. Her dad has put a hit out on her. We are unsure if it is for alive or dead at this time. She is too high profile to risk on this."

  Karl's jaw clenched, but he nodded. "That's alright. Just use your contacts to get info on Ivanov. Who else? I have some people from the agency going with us, but I want Delta members to be in charge on this. The CIA will act as a clean-up crew only."

  "Brock Johnson from the Emerson team knows how to speak Russian," Jace said.

  "The New York branch has more. That is all that speak Russian at this branch besides Liev," Aleksander said with a shrug and a gesture to the Henley team where Liev flipped him off with a smile. Aleksander grinned back.

  Karl frowned. "I don't want the New York branch involved." He looked at the Henley team. "Can you guys go on this mission?"

  The three men looked around at each other. They had an odd dynamic, less with team leads and more equally balanced. They had also been working together for about 25 years now, so they didn’t need words. After a moment, they all nodded.