Chapter 1674

[ 591 words ]

Just as he thought he was about to be assaulted, she pulled his handgun free.

“With hardware like this, I doubt you were just looking to score a few extra bucks.”

Despite his smooth talking, the man was hauled off to the station.

Getting out wasn’t going to be easy.

The assassin turned out to be a wanted fugitive with a string of aliases.

His body count was extensive.

It was a mystery why someone of his caliber was taking orders from anyone else.

Weren’t mercenaries like him just in it for the paycheck?

During the interrogation, his answer confirmed exactly that: his employer paid phenomenally well.

Claire couldn’t get the cops to disclose who had hired the hitman.

But she suspected Ulysses and his team knew the truth.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have dispatched two elite operatives on the exact same night the assassin struck.

The two new agents were a study in contrasts: one was a towering wall of muscle, and the other looked like a refined scholar.

“Hello, I’m Finnian White.”

The scholarly-looking man introduced himself.

“And I’m Steele Sterling,” the massive man rumbled with a gruff voice.

Claire raised an eyebrow. “Those don’t sound like real names.”

They had to be using aliases for their missions, she thought.

“They’re our actual names.”

Finnian and Steele exchanged a look.

Both saw the exasperation in the other’s eyes, proving this wasn’t the first time they had been questioned about it.

“Are you guys partners? You seem to have a good dynamic.”

Claire asked curiously as she welcomed them inside.

The two were indeed a team, having successfully executed numerous high-stakes operations together.

Their skills perfectly complemented each other, a fact Claire would come to appreciate in due time.

After a brief chat, they were set up in the apartment next door.

Claire was still entirely in the dark about the true identity of the informant she had saved, or which powerful shadow figure was trying to silence her.

Regardless, her life was constantly in danger, but her formidable security detail ensured her enemies couldn’t lay a finger on her.

Once the syndicate realized that no matter who they sent, Claire’s guards would neutralize them, the attacks abruptly ceased.

Claire discretely gathered intel, learning that the FIB headquarters had initiated a counter-operation.

Her enemies were likely too busy saving their own skin to bother hunting her anymore.

However, Ulysses confided in her that arresting the mastermind without causing massive public fallout was proving incredibly difficult.

“Why is that?”

Even though the attacks had paused, Claire refused to live with the constant threat

of assassins popping up out of nowhere.

It would completely ruin her future.

“The flash drive we recovered contains evidence of their illegal transactions, but our tech team hasn’t been able to crack the encryption.”

“We can’t just brute-force it, either. There’s an active self-destruct protocol.”

Why was Ulysses telling Claire all this?

He had dug into the archives and discovered that Claire was the mastermind who bypassed security system during the raid on the illegallab in The Aila Highlands

She was the one who disabled their self-destruct sequence.

Clearly, her mathematical genius translated flawlessly into decryption.

Ulysses had wanted to bring her in for days, but upper management had vetoed the idea.

To be precise, they were terrified she might leak classified intel.

Claire’s extensive dossier had been reviewed by top brass, and most agreed she posed no threat to national security.

But protocol was protocol. Every possible risk had to be neutralized before they could authorize her involvement.

If a breach compromised their operatives, every single decision-maker would be held accountable.

When Claire finally heard Ulysses’s pitch, she didn’t agree right away.

“I’m not official personnel. Giving me access to highly classified intel is crossing a massive line.”

Was she turning him down?

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