Lexi Blake - Dungeon Royale

They had been a little gang, the three of them. No one else could understand what it meant to have lost their parents. Others could sympathize, but they couldn’t understand the uniqueness of her grief.

She’d been strong for years and never quite realized what it had cost her. No smiles. No tears. No anything.

Grief hit her like a wave, rolling across her and bringing an odd sense of peace.

She let the umbrella fall away and stepped into her brother’s arms.

For the first time in years, she allowed herself to truly feel.

MI6 Headquarters

Seven months later

“What are you trying to say, Nigel?” Damon Knight looked across the wide, solid desk at the man who had been his handler for the last ten years. The very air seemed to have stilled around him.

Nigel sat forward, his graying hair perfectly coiffed and his eyes serious. They had come up through the ranks together, but Nigel had taken the analyst route while Damon liked to be in the field. He was rather afraid his wishes weren’t going to be taken into account now.

“Have you looked at the reports from the medical team?” Nigel asked.

Fuck. A hole was opening up in front of him and he wasn’t even close to being ready. He didn’t need to read the medical reports to know what was in them. “I’m perfectly fit.”

It had been seven months since his partner, his best friend, had walked into his office at The Garden and put a bullet in his chest. He’d sat there, bleeding out at his desk, visions of murder and revenge running through his dying brain.

And a deep regret that no one would miss him.

It had only been luck that one of the Doms at his club had dropped by to set up a scene for the evening. Otherwise, he would be dead.

“Not according to these reports you aren’t.” Nigel set the folder between them. “According to this, you’re permanently incapacitated. You lost an enormous amount of blood. There was some question about how long you were technically dead.”

He couldn’t help but answer through clenched teeth. “I’m not brain damaged.”

“Of course not, but it had to have affected you.”

“I’m not suffering from bloody PTSD.” He’d gone through every counseling session they’d forced on him. When the bloody hell had the Secret Intelligence Service become a bunch of psychobabbling, talk-about-their-feelings wankers?

He might have spent too much time with Ian Taggart, but the man had a point. Spies should have nerves of steel. If they didn’t, if they required weekly hour-long sessions to discuss their feelings, they bloody well shouldn’t be spies.

Nigel frowned. “Fine, let’s talk about the physical damage then. That bullet tore apart your left lung. The doctors were forced to remove a portion of it.”

“The good news is, I have a spare.” They had only been forced to remove a small portion of his left lung. Unfortunately, MI6 preferred its agents to have full lung capacity. No matter how hard he worked out, he always hit a wall.

He didn’t mention the other problems he was having, the problems the doctors in Dallas had discovered with his heart. If Nigel knew about those, he wouldn’t be sitting here talking about assignments.

Nigel sat back. “Damon, you know how much we all want this to work. No one on the team wants to see you out of the field. You’ve been our most effective agent since the moment you walked through the doors.”

Ah, there was a “but” coming. Damon could feel it. He just didn’t want to hear it. “Excellent. I’m very glad to hear it because I am ready to get back in the field. I have some thoughts about information building on The Collective.”

Seven bloody months. He’d spent seven months recovering, waiting, thinking. And plotting his revenge. He was ready to start again, ready to do just about anything that brought him one step closer to getting his hands around Basil Champion’s throat.

“Yes, I found your file on them very interesting.” Nigel’s fingers drummed along the thick file folder he’d turned over.

Damon had spent his recovery time in Dallas with Adam Miles and Charlotte and Chelsea Dennis, using their brilliant computer skills to find absolutely everything he could about the shadowy organization known only as The Collective. As far as he could tell, they were a secret organization run by some of the world’s largest corporations and richest men. They used secret agents culled from intelligence agencies across the globe to manipulate the world economies to suit their companies.

He’d put together everything they’d been able to find, and none of it was completely solid. It was all conjecture, and he was pretty sure Nigel was starting to think he was a conspiracy nut.

“Perhaps it’s not concrete, but you know that an operative has to listen to his gut. This is me. I’m listening to my gut and my gut says this is real and Baz is involved.”

“You know the chief is fairly certain that Champion was a double.”

It took everything Knight had not to groan. “He wasn’t working for MSS.”

The theory was that Basil Champion had turned and started to work with Chinese intelligence.

“It would explain the influx of cash you found.”

“But it does nothing to explain why he left when he did. He chose to blow up his career because he realized that Ian Taggart had found out about The Collective. Hell, the man practically told me he was offered Nelson’s job.” Eli Nelson had been a CIA operative recruited by The Collective. He’d run guns where it suited the corporations involved to keep civil wars going in order to spike prices on oil and other resources. He’d stolen technology plans from non-Collective companies. As far as Damon could tell, Nelson had planned and carried out a couple of terrorist plots that had aided the corporate bottom line. After the Taggarts had sent Nelson to his just rewards, Baz had become their go-to guy.

“The CIA believes Nelson was also working for MSS,” Nigel explained.

Damon slapped a frustrated hand against the desk. “Tennessee Smith wants you to believe that. He’s hiding something. Damn it. You don’t have to believe me now. You just have to give me some tech staff so I can prove it. I’ll find him, Nigel. I’ll find that bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”

“How do you feel about moving into training?”

“I feel rabidly, violently opposed to it.” He wasn’t going to be relegated to the training gym. No. He didn’t want to spend his time training recruits for the life that should have been his. He damn straight wasn’t going to invest in a bunch of idiots who would likely get themselves killed. “I’m not a trainer. I’m never going to be a trainer, Nigel.” He stood, his head swimming just a tad because it really was rather hard to breathe in this building. He couldn’t imagine being chained to a desk day after day. It would be a living purgatory. “You’ll have my resignation on your desk by noon.”

He had absolutely no idea what he would do. The decision he needed to make about his future was here, and despite having seven months to think about it, he wasn’t close to being ready for the outcome. Somehow he’d always thought he wouldn’t be forced to face it.

He’d been sure he would die in the field like a good double 0 should, not get retired like a useless object.

He was thirty-nine years old and he had absolutely no idea what to do with the rest of his bloody life.

“Damon, please sit down. I might have a solution.”

“What? I grow a new lung? Has tech managed to do that yet?” He could hear the bitterness dripping from his voice. Maybe he’d end up being one of those old men in a pub, barking at the world around him.

“We’ve had a situation come up, and you might be the only one who can take over.”

He stopped, pulling his hand back off the door handle. “Is it an operation?”

Nigel gestured to the seat in front of him. “Yes, though it’s not as dangerous as you’re used to. It’s fairly simple. We have intelligence that a known terrorist will be attempting to come into England using a cruise ship.”

He snorted a little, settling back in his seat. “Even cruise ships require passports.”

“Not in every port they don’t.”

He hadn’t thought about it like that. A cruise ship required proper documentation to get on the boat. It depended on the port of call from there. Damon wasn’t knowledgeable about their security protocols. He’d never been a holiday-type chap. If he went to a country, he wasn’t sight-seeing. He was hunting. If Damon had been running a cruise ship, he would have required proper identification, including thumbprint scans, facial recognition, and routine pat downs for everyone getting on board.

There was a reason he didn’t get invited to a lot of parties.

“What exactly do you mean? You think he’s going to wander up from the beach on some island and make his way to London?”

“We believe he’s targeted a very specific cruise. Cruises are usually full of children. This particular cruise is going to be all adult. It gives the target more of a chance to find someone he can change places with. We believe he intends to target someone with a legitimate passport, wait until he gets off the boat, and then kill the man and take his place. All he needs in most ports is a card the ship requires to get back on the boat.”

It could work. “He would have to have someone on the inside.”

“Yes. We believe he’s got an English woman working for him, but we haven’t figured out a name yet. Our source isn’t particularly close to the heart of this group.”

“What’s the group?”

“It’s a bit odd. We think this agent is working with Nature’s Core.”

He groaned. Nature’s Core was an all-encompassing lefty group who thought the world would be a better place if the banking system was shut down. They fought against everything from new technology to CEO pay scales. They were normally quite peaceful, just obnoxious. “Then it’s not a terrorist group. What are they going to do? Protest us to death? I will admit the smell they get after a month camping out in Hyde Park can be rather noxious.”

“They’re using Nature’s Core as a screen to throw us off. Our source is absolutely certain that this operative is going to attempt to enter England with biological weapons.”

Nigel was trying to send him on a wild goose chase. “How is he going to do that? Surely they have some security.”

“They do, but if he got small amounts in every port, he might be able to either sneak them on board or claim that they’re medicinal. Security won’t know the difference between a biological agent and a vial of insulin if it is done properly. And no one will check his bags as he gets off the ship in Dover.”

“If you know which ship it would come in on, why don’t we just lock it down and search the place?”

“It’s a two thousand passenger ship, Knight. And all he has to do is toss the package overboard. We need to catch him in the act. I want you to go on board, identify the target and his assistant, get control of the package, and bring everyone in for questioning.”

It didn’t sound too difficult. “Fine. Why does it have to be me?”

“Because the cruise ship is the Royale. It’s the top of the line ship in the VIP Cruise Line. They’re known for their specialty cruises.”

“Like a GLBT cruise?” He’d heard of the company. They were a party line, very adult-experience oriented.

“Yes. Or their new alternate lifestyle cruise.”

Damon sat forward, arching his brow. Seriously? “Are you telling me there’s a bloody BDSM cruise running out of Dover?”

“Yes. I know you keep your lifestyle private, but I think you can see why you’re perfect for this job. We have very little time to prepare. No more than a week and a half before you need to have a team on board.” Nigel glanced out his window and then refocused on Damon. “If you can prove yourself here, perhaps I can convince the higher-ups to disregard the medical reports. The truth is you wouldn’t be considered for this job except the two agents we had working it were involved in an auto accident. Harris broke both legs and Keller’s face looks like one big bloody bruise. I obviously can’t send her in as a submissive.”

Nigel knew about his lifestyle, but they hadn’t talked much about it besides Damon being forced to prove it didn’t impact his security clearance. Other than that, Nigel hadn’t wanted to know much.

“Why wasn’t I brought in on this operation? I can’t imagine you have anyone who understands the lifestyle better than I do.” He reached for the folder Nigel was pushing across the desk. He ran through the particulars including the fact that the cruise was a twelve-day Baltic tour that went across Northern Europe.