Six Dead Men (An F6 Novel) Read online

  Six Dead Men

  An F6 Novel

  Diana X. Dunn

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Also by Diana X. Dunn

  Books Written as Diana Xarissa

  About the Author

  Text Copyright © 2019 DX Dunn, LLC

  Cover Copyright © 2019 Linda Boulanger – Tell Tale Book Covers

  All Rights Reserved

  Created with Vellum

  For everyone who is a parent, however they became one.

  One

  Smiling to herself, Tasha Conner made her way back to her apartment. She’d done everything she could in California, including tweaking her identity to make herself easier to find. If F7 was ready to speak to her, she should be able to find her now.

  When she opened her apartment door, she paused. All of the lights were on and they shouldn’t have been. Sliding a laser pistol out of her pocket, she pushed the door open and quickly scanned the room.

  The woman sitting on the couch shook her head. “That wasn’t the greeting I was hoping for,” she said. “Not after all this time.”

  “Sevs?”

  “My dear Sixy, we have so much to talk about.”

  Tasha dropped into a chair, keeping the pistol in her hand. “So talk.”

  The other woman sighed. “You sound angry.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Can we not fight, please?”

  “Can we not fight? Really?” Tasha stared at her guest, slowly counting backward from ten to one, clearing her head.

  “You’re counting backwards. You’re so well trained,” the other woman said mockingly. “Why not tell me what you’re really thinking.”

  “I’m sure you can imagine what I’m thinking.”

  “You thought I was dead.”

  “I was told you were dead. Obviously, the agency didn’t tell me everything.”

  “The agency? As far as the agency knows, I am dead. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the agency.”

  “Really?”

  “I faked my own death, yes. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “There are always choices.”

  “I should have stayed in touch with you, but I know you too well. You wouldn’t have supported my decision.”

  “You faked you own death so you could start a criminal empire. You’re right. I wouldn’t have supported that.”

  “I’m not Rex.”

  “Maybe not, but you are working with him.”

  The woman shrugged. “It’s a complex situation.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it is.”

  “I wasn’t expecting this much hostility.”

  “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, then.”

  “What happens to agents who want to quit the agency?”

  Tasha frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Exactly. Because the idea of quitting never crossed your mind. You’ve been doing what you were told for thirty years, taking job after job and never questioning it. I couldn’t contact you because you would have told Michael I was alive. Michael would have had me killed.”

  “Had you killed? Why?”

  “Because I wanted out and there isn’t any way out.”

  “I’m out.”

  The other woman laughed. “Because you became a liability. An espionage agent who’s being stalked by a criminal becomes a problem. The agency couldn’t protect you because Rex has people everywhere.”

  “Including you. The woman I thought was my closest friend. Someone I thought believed in doing the right thing.”

  “I should tell you a few things about our beloved agency and your dear friend Michael.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather you left.”

  “You don’t mean that. You’re dying to ask me a million questions.”

  “I thought I’d want to ask you a lot of questions, but now that you’re here, all I can think about is how you’ve been working with Rex. The man is a criminal on a huge scale. He murders people or has them killed. He deals in illegal drugs and human trafficking and everything that we always worked to stop. If that weren’t bad enough, he’s been stalking me. He cost me my job and ruined my life. I don’t care what you have to say. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You don’t want to hear it because you’re afraid of what I’m going to tell you.”

  “Please leave.”

  “I hated what I was doing in San Francisco. It was the worst sort of job and I begged Michael to move me somewhere else, anywhere else. It was the first time I really started to question what I was doing. The whole blind obedience thing was starting to wear a little thin. The assignment didn’t suit me in any way and Michael knew that. He sent me to California as a punishment for some transgression or other and he was going to keep me there until he’d decided I’d learned my lesson.”

  “We all had to do jobs we didn’t like now and again. Goodness knows I’ve done my fair share.”

  “Maybe, but that isn’t the point.”

  “I thought you were leaving.”

  “When Michael wouldn’t reassign me, I told him I was going to quit.”

  “Thus, trying to blackmail him into giving you a different assignment.”

  “Not at all. I didn’t expect him to change his mind. I thought he’d just fire me or let me quit. He refused.”

  “The agency needed you.”

  “The agency doesn’t need anyone. The agency doesn’t care about anyone. We were babies, not even born yet, and they took us and trained us from the earliest opportunity to do their bidding without question. Did you ever question an assignment?”

  “It wasn’t my place to question my assignments.”

  “Why not? You’re a human being. You should have the right to question what you’re being asked to do.”

  “That might be true for ordinary people with ordinary jobs. The things we do, or did, required many layers of secrecy.”

  “Or so you were told. You believed it, and so did I. Until San Francisco.”

  “You were bored. I got that. I’ve been bored on jobs. I never felt the need to become a criminal because of a little bit of boredom.”

  “I tried to quit.”

  “So you said earlier.”

  “Michael wouldn’t let me go. We had an awful fight. He told me that we weren’t ever allowed to leave. The agency had invested a lot of time and money into training us. The only way out was death.”

  “Other agents have left the agency.”

  “What other agents?”

  Tasha thought for a minute. “What about M6?”

  “He moved to a different agency. I believe a great deal of money exchanged hands, as well.”

  “Whatever, he left.”

  “Yes but I didn’t want to get sold to another agency. I wanted out of the lifestyle. I wanted something completely different.”

  “You wanted to become a criminal.”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. I’m still waiting for you to name one agent who left our agency, ever.”

  “F11.”

  “She was no use to the agency after her accident. Espionage is tricky when you’re stuck in a wheelchair, unable to use your arms or your legs. She was sent away to be looked after until she died, which took very little time, really. She died much more quickly than the doctors thought she
would.”

  “Now you’re suggesting that the agency killed her to get rid of her.”

  “Now you’re starting to understand why I faked my own death.”

  “I’m not understanding that, and I’ll never understand why you’d work with a man like Rex, either.”

  “You can’t name any other agent who left our agency, can you?”

  “So what? Maybe the rest of the agents are perfectly happy doing what they were trained to do. Maybe they love their jobs and don’t want to leave.”

  “Maybe, or maybe they were told they couldn’t quit when they asked.”

  Tasha shook her head and then got to her feet. “You need to leave,” she said, waving the pistol.

  “You won’t shoot me. Not after everything we’ve been through together.”

  “That might have been true a year ago, but everything that’s happened in the past year has changed me. I’ve thought you were dead for over a year. Making you dead now will simplify things, really.”

  Sevs raised an eyebrow. “I can tell you how to find Rex. I can tell you how to get him to stop stalking you.”

  “I’m not interested in finding Rex, and he can’t stalk me if he can’t find me. I left you a few breadcrumbs so that you could find me. I thought I wanted to talk to you, but I realize now that I don’t. So you’re going to leave and I’m going to start over yet again. This time you won’t find me and neither will Rex.”

  “He’ll find you. He has crazy skills when it comes to cracking identities.”

  “Does he know where I am now?”

  “No, but only because he isn’t looking. He has a plan and he’ll find you when he’s ready to find you, not before.”

  “He won’t find me.”

  “If you’re determined to disappear completely, you really need to listen to what I have to say before you go.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “The agency isn’t what you think it is.”

  “I’m sure Rex has done his best to convince you of that.”

  Sevs frowned. “I did my own research. Once I’d talked to Michael and he’d told me I couldn’t leave, I started to question everything we’d been taught.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I’d realized that no one ever got out. I’d realized that I was a prisoner to the agency. An agency that treats its people that way, well, I started trying to find out more about who we really worked for and what the agency was actually trying to achieve.”

  Tasha yawned. “We did all of that in school when we were ten,” she said. “We wrote long essays on the agency and its mission.”

  “We wrote long essays on what we were told about the agency and its mission. I do remember it very well, actually. It was all about keeping the world safe and protecting people from events like the Eco-Wars in the future. It was all lies.”

  “How long were you involved with Rex before he started filling you head with this nonsense?”

  “It isn’t nonsense, and Rex wasn’t a factor.”

  “Really?”

  Sevs flushed as Tasha stared at her. “We were together, yes, but as I said earlier, I did my own research. He suggested a few areas where I could look, but I did the actual digging.”

  “Happily researching topics that Rex had put into your head. Did you ever think that maybe he was manipulating the results you found?”

  “No, I never thought that. He isn’t like that.”

  “He kills people. He deals drugs. He sells children into slavery. Surely altering records in order to get you on his side would be the least of his crimes.”

  “He didn’t alter anything. He loves me.”

  “He loves you? And you let him stalk me, anyway.”

  “He’s not stalking you,” Sevs frowned. “You should let me do this my way.”

  Tasha sat back in her chair and waved a hand. “Go ahead then. Tell me what you came to tell me. Just be aware that I won’t believe a word of it as I know you’ll only be spouting whatever Rex wants you to believe.”

  “I expect you to do your own research. I’ve done as much as I can for now. My movements are a bit restricted.”

  “Rex keeps you on a short leash?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just difficult, and more complicated due to my being dead and all.”

  “Surely creating a new identity for yourself would be simple enough. You were Maggie Gilbert for a while.”

  “That was for your benefit. I wanted you to find me.”

  “You wanted me to find you or Rex wanted you to find me?”

  “I told you, Rex isn’t ready for you yet. I wanted to find you.”

  “And then you ran away.”

  “Things got too complicated. I, well, let’s just say I wasn’t ready to twirl with Blake just to find you.”

  Tasha swallowed a dozen replies before she sighed. “Let’s cut through all this chatter. Rex used to be Steve Butler, yes or no?”

  Sevs shrugged. “Yes.”

  “He faked his own death, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw pictures of you at his commitment ceremony. How did that feel, watching him make a legal commitment to another woman?”

  “It didn’t matter. It was just for show, for his cover. He was already planning for our future together, but he needed to stay in character, to be Steve Butler for a few weeks longer.”

  “And then he helped you fake your death and faked his own before starting his criminal empire.”

  “Not everything he does is criminal.”

  “And he started before you died, too, didn’t he? He was behind the paintings being stolen from the warehouse, wasn’t he?”

  “That was our first successful job,” Sevs laughed.

  “A man was killed.”

  “That was unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate? He left behind people who’d loved him. His brother became obsessed with the death and ended up kidnapping everyone involved in the warehouse job in an effort to work out what had really happened that night. I can’t believe how casual you are about a death for which you were partly responsible.”

  “It had nothing to do with me. He was shot from behind by M10. I wasn’t even there.”

  “He was pushed off the truck by one of his colleagues. The shot from M10 didn’t kill him. He broke his neck when he hit the ground.”

  “Whatever. It truly had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t in the plan. It was unfortunate, of course.”

  “Unfortunate,” Tasha echoed flatly. “A man lost his life.”

  “Something went wrong in the getaway transport. Someone decided they wanted more than their fair share and started eliminating the others. As I said, it had nothing to do with me. I was already long gone, on my way to Chicago, before the truck reached the warehouse.”

  “And where was Rex?”

  “Nowhere near the warehouse. He doesn’t get directly involved in jobs.”

  “Of course not. He’d never get his hands dirty, would he?”

  “He’s an expert at organizing things, making plans. He doesn’t need to get his hands dirty.”

  “Yeah, he did a great job having me chase Morris Munroe.”

  Sevs flushed. “He thought I was helping you in some way. He couldn’t understand how you managed to get one step ahead of him on that chase.”

  “He underestimated both me and the agency. He should remember that when he’s making plans in the future.”

  “Except you don’t work for the agency anymore. Or do you? I’ve been watching you and I’m almost prepared to believe that you really did lose your job at that warehouse in California. Almost.”

  “You can believe whatever you’d like. Michael fired me, and he did it in front of a dozen agents from a dozen different agencies. I’m sure it was the talk of the spy community and probably of the criminal community as well.”

  “What was teaching like?”

  “We aren’t making small talk. You have two minutes to explain to me why you faked y
our death and joined forces with Rex. Then you’re leaving.”

  “The agency is just as criminal as Rex.”

  “Nonsense. We spent all of our time tracking down criminals and thwarting crimes.”

  “And stealing things on demand. And eliminating people who are deemed too dangerous to live. Stealing, murder, aren’t those the sorts of things you accused Rex of doing?”

  “Rex murders for his own purposes. The agency eliminates people who are a threat to the safety of the world.”

  Sevs laughed. “What if I told you that the agency is just a front for the largest criminal enterprise on the planet? Why are you so convinced that what the agency does is legal, moral, or ethical?”

  “We worked with government agents from around the world.”

  “Governments can be bought or rented. Mr. Smith has worked hard to make his operations seem legitimate, but if you dig, even a little bit, you’ll start to find out that nothing is as it seems.”

  “If that were true, he’d have been caught and stopped years ago.”

  “Except he’s managed to hide everything he does behind a smokescreen. Everyone thinks he’s working for some agency or another, and no one has the nerve to question exactly whom he does work for. The answer is, of course, that he’s working for himself and no one else.”

  “I don’t believe you. I’m sure Rex was able to show you all sorts of fabricated evidence, but I don’t believe it.”

  “Do your own research. Really dig into the agency and into Mr. Smith’s history. You’ll be shocked at what you’ll find.”

  “Nothing shocks me.”

  “This might. Tell me how the agency recruits its agents.”

  “Now? I believe they hire them through the usual channels.”

  “They might do that now, but how did we come to work for them?”

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “Yeah, I do. And I know what you think is the answer. Amuse me. Tell me what you think happened thirty years ago.”