Read Moonrise for Free Online Page A

He’d gone rogue, playing games, setting up his own little army of black hats that kept the Cold War hopping, even in its waning days. He’d been responsible for the deaths of dozens of unsanctioned people, not to mention their own operatives. He’d done it out of malice, and he’d done it for money. He deserved to die, no question about it.
    There were strict rules about their tiny, nameless subbranch dedicated to what they liked to call wet work. None of the operatives knew how many were involved, nor did they usually even know one another. For all James knew there could have been a small army of people trained to kill, as he was. Or there could have been a mere handful.
    He’d met a few of his associates over the years. Most of them were dead now. But he was left alive. For now. It made a cruel kind of sense. Of all of them, he was the one who most deserved to die. Who most wanted to die.
    And fate had dealt him a crushing blow. Instead of expiating his sins, he’d compounded them. After the first few jobs he hadn’t askedquestions, and Win hadn’t offered information. There’d been assassins, pedophiles, dictators, and torturers, all of them falling beneath his talented hands. He’d gone on assuming they’d all deserved their fate.
    But Win had lied to him. And he hadn’t been alone in his little enterprise. The anonymous, powerful beings who ordered the execution might have thought killing Win had solved the problem, but James knew that it hadn’t. There were others who’d taken up the slack. Others, who’d set Win up to be discovered.
    He wanted those others. He couldn’t remember wanting to kill before, but he wanted to kill them. If Win had to die, those others did too. And if he did what Annie wanted, went after the truth, he meant to make sure they did.
    “General?” The secretary with the tight ass and the unlikely tits approached him. He’d hired her for that tight ass. Not that he ever expected to partake of it, or even wanted to. But it kept the men around him mesmerized, distracted, and he was a man who took every advantage he could. “Mr. Carew wants a meeting.”
    The General gave her his avuncular smile, one that fooled almost everyone. “You knowmy schedule better than I do, honey. Set something up. Tomorrow, maybe.”
    “He said it was urgent, sir.”
    “Everything’s urgent to that little weasel,” he said amiably. “I’m not in the mood to listen to his rantings. That’s the problem with this government nowadays, sugar. Too many civilians trying to run the army.”
    He never called her by her name. He knew it, just as he knew everything about her, including her teenage shoplifting, her experimentation with cocaine, her sexual leanings, and the way she took her coffee. He knew far more about her than she would ever know about him, and it provided him with an endless source of amusement.
    “Yes, sir,” she said, hiding the grimace that always greeted one of his endearments. She thought he didn’t notice. She didn’t realize that if she failed to react, he’d stop calling her things like sweetheart.
    “Tell him tomorrow afternoon,” the General said, heading down the corridor. By tomorrow afternoon his own particular ass would be covered, McKinley and Sutherland’s daughter would be dog meat, and Carew could fuss all he wanted. The General paused at the end of the hallway and glanced back at his long-suffering secretary. “Find out what he wants in the meantime, will you, sugar?”
    Her eyes narrowed in faint dislike. “He said it had something to do with Winston Sutherland.”
    The General indulged himself with a faint chuckle. “I imagine it does. Tomorrow. Late.”
    Carew would shit a brick when he found out McKinley had been taken out. He wouldn’t much like it that Sutherland’s daughter had bought it as well, but with any luck the team would see to it that that particular piece of business was covered up. As long as the press didn’t catch wind of it. They