I’d have to control it at some point.
“How come you spent a lot of time in London?”
“BDSec is based there.”
“Really? I thought it was Berlin.”
“Nah. They have it routed from there as a double-blind.” She chomped on the sandwich. “You heard of the Four Horsemen?”
I riffled through my memory banks. “Four cousins who pretty much run London, correct?
“Yeah, all thirty-two boroughs of the city are under their control.” She reached for her coffee. “I came across their ‘Head of IT,’ and we became friendly. That was CIA-related.”
Snorting, I started to pick at the toast I’d buttered a few moments ago. “Head of IT as a job title for a criminal enterprise?”
“Right? Talk about understating someone’s role in the business. Anyway, she was… I don’t even know why, but after I escaped my owner, she was who I ran to.”
“Why do you think you did?”
“I was in Cologne at the time and I wanted to get across the English Channel. Putting an ocean between—” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, distance felt like a good idea.
“When I arrived in Dover, I had nowhere to go, and though I had cash, I knew I needed help. Because of her ties to the Four Horsemen, she was the first person I could think of.
“She and her partner, Minerva, took me under their wings and helped me get myself together. I was a wreck back then. The autonomy he’d stolen from me, Conor, was insane. It took me a month to stop asking to use the restroom and another couple of months to stop asking for permission to eat.”
Defiantly, she took a large bite of her sandwich and closed her eyes as if remembering the times when she didn’t have the freedom to do that.
Her words robbed me of speech, mostly because I couldn’t imagine anyone doing that to her. She was Star Sullivan. A force to be reckoned with. A powerhouse that would make the earth quake beneath her feet by the time she was done with her mission.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice raw.
“We started working together to bring down the Sparrows.” She tipped her head to the side as she studied me. “What happened with Temper, Conor?”
My nose crinkled at the obvious change of subject. “She only fucking tasered Director Reinier in this massive boardroom at Langley.”
“And you managed to leave the building without handcuffs?”
“She called in Brothers who helped us get out. She said they were going to kill me.”
“What were you even there for?”
My brow puckered as a thought occurred to me. “I can’t believe I didn’t put two and two together, to be honest. I’m not a part of this Jorgmundgander BS, but the US clearly has its own program.I’min it. That’s why I didn’t go to jail for all the shit I did as a kid.
“And, when I got to Langley, I met a bunch of coders who were working on this top-secret messaging platform for the Secret Service.”
“Under the same restrictions as you?”
“Indentured servants for the state, yeah,” I grumbled.
“I don’t know how you kept any of this from your family,” she muttered.
“I never left the US anyway. It isn’t like we get to vacation often, Star. Plus, the government facilitated the secrecy of it all. I don’t think they wanted my family to know either.”
“Why?”
“Because I could have been viewed as a traitor and everyone knew what Da’s reaction would have been to that. So, it was either protect me and keep me alive or throw me to the wolves and let me be eaten.”
Her brow puckered. “I hate that you were in danger.”