behind him. Rusty garden tools and lawn equipment lined the walls and hung from the ceiling. On the far back wall was a large chest, four feet long, three feet wide, and four feet tall with a lock over the latch. Mack pressed his thumb against the face of the lock, and it glowed red then green and popped open. He opened the lid and stepped inside. His body was slowly lowered into the ground, and the lid closed then locked after he had disappeared.
The deeper the floor descended, the inside of the box opened up into a larger elevator space, and when it came to a rest, the doors opened to reveal a large floor with a cluster of desks being set up. Mack marched past the support agents unpacking gear and setting up their stations toward the small corner office at the far end of the room. His secretary, Grace, smiled at him, handing him his mug full of piping-hot coffee, and took the box from under his arm.
“Make sure you set it up like Chicago,” Mack said. “It’s bad enough we have to be in this cramped space. I at least want it organized.”
The GSF Milwaukee satellite office had been built as a contingent secondary site in the event the facilities in Chicago were ever compromised. It didn’t have the pomp and circumstance of the original HQ, but Mack had hopes that they wouldn’t have to be there for very long. He sipped the black coffee and let the bitter, caffeine-fueled concoction pump through his veins. Halfway through the mug, he started to feel better.
Once his secretary had set up the office, Mack leaned back in his chair, which squeaked, triggering a frown and bringing him back to the situation that brought them here in the first place: the mole. Grace brought in a large box with a stack of papers toppling out of it and dropped it on his desk with a thump.
“Is this all of it?” Mack asked.
“No,” Grace answered. “There are a LOT more. You want to tell me what all this is for?”
Mack pulled one of the sheets of paper out of the box and answered without looking at her. “Just making sure everything is still secure after the Chicago breach.”
Grace rolled her eyes, which Mack ignored. He started the long process of sifting through GSF’s financials to find out who would have had something to gain with the agency’s demise. With each piece of paper Mack looked over, cross-referenced in the GSF’s database of employees, and crossed off his list, he could feel a piece of himself chipping away. It was a slow crumble, a poison almost. He operated the GSF under the premise of knowing exactly where the money was coming from and that the agents under his management were trained to be the best at what they did while adhering to the GSF’s regulations. Up until a week ago, that had never been called into question, but in the world of espionage, Mack knew things were bound to get uncomfortable sooner or later.
Chapter 3
The church spires were massive pieces of concrete and steel that looked as though they were trying to pierce the sky above them. Bodies dressed in black dresses and suits walked up the steps of the stone cathedral to pay their respects to Ben Hill, and Sarah felt herself frozen at the bottom of the staircase.
“We have to go in sooner or later,” Bryce said, staying close to her side.
Sarah nodded and forced her foot forward, then the other, and the other, until she passed through the old cathedral’s doors. The pews were filled at the very front, and Sarah could see a picture of her brother alongside the casket, which was circled with clusters of flowers. She slid into one of the seats toward the back, and Bryce filed in beside her. She kept her head down, but her eyes scanned the front until she found Becca and the kids in the first pew. Becca was giving something to the children, and Sarah could see the very tops of their heads sway back and forth in a slow cadence. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed them until that moment. She found herself gripping the back of the