Free Jackson 07 - Where All the Dead Lie by J.T. Ellison Page A

had sent word that he needed Baldwin, immediately.
    His contact was currently eight hours ahead of him, and an early riser. He got into his address book and started dialing numbers. Getting in touch with his handler was a process—phone calls, codes, paging services, emails—all designed to bounce off multiple servers and systems and be nigh on impossible to track.
    Atlantic wasn’t CIA, or MI-6, or Mossad, or any other official agency. Atlantic ran people from them all from behind the scenes, an agent here, an agent there. Covert missions that were performed by operatives from all branches of the intelligence services across the world on a need-to-know basis. Missions that were so top secret that they simply didn’t exist.
    Baldwin finished dialing, then sat back and listened to the bells and beeps and whirrs that told him he was being routed through a secure line. The computer screen came to life, and Atlantic popped up like the Wizard of Oz, his disembodied bald head pixilated into submission.
    “Good evening, M,” Baldwin said.
    “Being a smart-ass will get you nowhere, my boy.”
    Atlantic’s gaze was as cold and frigid as the ocean, a genetic anomaly that made his blue eyes abnormally light, like a Siberian Husky. Baldwin had finally figured out Atlantic’s heritage: he’d thought the man Belgian for a time, but moving farther east into Eurasia gave him what he was looking for. Baldwin was convinced Atlantic was a full-blood Ainu, the indigenous Japanese, who are often mistaken for Caucasians. The blue eyes were the giveaway; they couldn’t belong to any creature that wasn’t half-tied to the beginnings of the earth. Atlantic was a big man, broad through the shoulders and torso. His fingers were like sausages, with precisely trimmed and buffed square nails. Baldwin had no doubt that Atlantic could choke the life from a man with one hand while examining the other for hangnails. He was ice.
    “We have a problem. One of our specialists has gone off the grid. Julius. I need you to look into it, let us know where he may be headed.”
    Baldwin was a reluctant member of one of Atlantic’s more covert groups, known as Operation Angelmaker. He profiled the men and women Atlantic had on call to do wet work, the assassins tasked with keeping the world a safer place. Atlantic’s world, at least. Baldwin was responsible for determining their mental status using thorough psychological examinations and his own special talent for profiling. When one started acting up, Baldwin’s job was to predict just how bad the situation might get.
    The problem was he had to immerse himself in the case, and he wasn’t sure that taking on a job of this proportion, with Taylor so strung out, was such a good idea.
    “I assume you’ve already cleared this through Garrett?”
    Garrett Woods was Baldwin’s boss at Quantico. He was the one who’d gotten Baldwin wrapped up with Atlantic in the first place.
    “Yes. You’re teaching at a private enterprise for the week. Substituting for another profiler who got sick at the last minute. The cover is secure.”
    “Fine. I’ll do it. But Taylor…if I have to travel, I’m worried about leaving her alone.”
    “You have to stop worrying about that girl. She’s tough as nails. Now get to work. The files have been sent to you. I expect a briefing Wednesday morning.”
    The screen went black. Atlantic was gone.
    Well. Dinner was certainly going to be interesting.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Taylor went around to the back of the house, through the gate, so she could steal one last moment of peace before she went inside. She stopped midway through the yard and stood looking out over the woods. She’d seen a deer the other night, and the damn owl that had taken up residence in their river birch had hooted in alarm. The doe, soft-footed and sweet, seemed utterly unconcerned with the frantic owl and nibbled delicately at a dried corncob Taylor had thrown out for her.
    To have that calm confidence