Whistleblower (PALADIN Book 1)

I thought Agent Jeffrey Callen simply wanted to talk in the car. The FBI agents used to check in on me often before the trial against Empress was over. After the case closed, they disappeared. Unfortunately, the threats and harassment did not. They abandoned me when I needed them the most.

Therefore, I was surprised to find Callen popping in on me in the parking garage. I was even more surprised by his request to take me to a late breakfast. He insisted we drive to a quaint little diner about forty-five minutes outside of city limits.

Leaning back in the red-tufted booth of the sixties-styled diner, I stare at Callen— bewildered—as he inhales a tall stack of syrup-drenched pancakes. His aggressive chewing is making my stomach churn. I have to remind myself it’s probably a felony to reach across this booth and smack a federal agent.

“You’ve barely touched your food.” He eyes my plate, his obvious remark sounding more like a question.

Here’s what I’ve learned about agents over the past year: they turn simple statements into questions, and the questions they ask are never what they’re actually asking. At this point, I’m good at reading between the lines.

“I haven’t been doing well after the trial. I can’t find a job. I can’t even leave this city because I have no money, and my reputation would follow me across state lines anyway. I’m in severe debt from legal fees. I’m about to lose my home. I hoped the interview this morning might turn things around, but not even my old friends are able to help me. I’m stuck, and honestly, if it means I can get out of this purgatory, I’m ready to drop right down to hell.”

Slowing his chewing, Callen lifts his eyes to meet my stare.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Too much honesty?” I ask with sass before fake-coughing into my fist. “I meant I’m just not that hungry.”

He drops his fork which bounces off his plate, causing a couple of sticky droplets to land on the glass tabletop. “I can’t imagine any of this has been easy.”

“You were—”

I’m interrupted when the waitress, dressed in full costume—a pale pink zip-up dress, with a white apron—stops at our booth to refill our mugs of coffee. She flashes a sweet smile and I thank her. Even at the peak of my frustration, I make room for manners. It’s not this waitress’s fault my life is in shambles. Winking, she nods once and then retreats from the table. The minute she’s out of earshot, I continue my verbal assault.

“The FBI was supposed to see me through every step of the way. Isn’t that what you all told me?” It’s not exactly fair, Callen is a new-to-me agent. I think it was Fisher and Marks that I communicated with the most. “You guys said no matter what, you’d make sure I was taken care of. You guys called me a…” I trail off, cringing at how pathetic I sound at the moment. Taking a deep breath, I let the urge to cry calm down. “You called me a hero. You told me I did the right thing. You said I stopped a civil war, even. And now look at me. Everyone else got consequences or was able to move on, but not me. Look. At. Me. I can’t go forward, I can’t go back.”

Callen holds both palms up in surrender, and even I’m surprised by my accusing tone. “I understand, Dr. Abbott. That’s why I’m here.”

“Eden, please,” I remind him. “Why are you here?”

He pulls a pen out of his pocket, then lifts his mug and retrieves the cardboard coaster it was resting on. After scribbling something down on the outside margin of the diner’s logo, he slides the coaster over to me.

“I’m here to offer you a job. This is your starting salary. In addition, we’ll take care of corporate housing, allowance for meals, a company car”—he rolls his wrist—“etcetera.”

I balk at the number scribbled in black ink. At the moment it looks like a get-out-of-jail-free card, but I force myself to keep my composure. “What’s the job?”

Something in his expression changes. His cool demeanor slowly dissolves as he mentally scrambles for what no doubt will be a lie. “It’s something along the lines of your expertise.”

Okay, here we go.

“And what exactly do you think my expertise is?” Explaining what I do is about thirty percent of my job.

“You help keep people in line—compliant. Human resources, right?” Callen squints at me, his bushy dark eyebrows furrowing.

I shut my eyes and rub against my closed lids as I prepare myself to deliver the speech I have hundreds of times before. “I’m a consultant. I work with companies for a few months at a time. I take organizations in their adolescent phases and help them scale by focusing on human capital. My job is to study companies from the inside out and create a strategy to incentivize employees for maximum productivity. Happy employees mean minimal turnover. Turnover is expensive.”

“I agree with you there,” Callen huffs out.

“The bottom line is I work hand-in-hand with Human Resources—I train HR employees—but I’m not technically HR.”

“Potato, po-tah-to. In my opinion, you have a doctorate in goddamn common sense, and you’ve proven yourself to be upright and trustworthy.”

According to you. The founders at Empress would strongly disagree.

“Well, I don’t think organizational leadership and compliance is exactly a new concept to the FBI. What could you possibly need my help with?”

Let’s just get to the point. I have no room to be picky or choosy, plus Callen just offered me a salary that is comparable to what I was making at the peak of my career. I didn’t realize federal agencies even had that kind of budget. It’s more than enough to save my home from the bank.

“I need help with a division we call PALADIN, or what’s left of it anyway.”

Callen scans the diner with his peripherals. We’re tucked into the corner, out of earshot and almost out of eyeshot. When he’s satisfied that we’re attracting no attention, he pulls his wallet from the inside of his suit jacket.

“Let’s talk about developing leadership.” He throws a couple of pocket-sized laminated pictures on the center of the table. “These are the most talented operatives in the business.” Callen proceeds to line them up neatly like he’s excited for me to check out his baseball card collection.

“What business?” I ask.

He dodges my question and taps the picture furthest to the left.

“This is Vesper,” he mumbles, pointing to a striking woman with dark hair. She has a regal elegance to her. Her jet-black hair barely touches her shoulders and is neatly tucked behind her ears. “She’s what you’d probably refer to as ‘management.’ She’s collected a group of off-the-record operatives who help with the FBI’s…uh…let’s call them ‘side projects.’”

“Side projects?” I ask, picking up the picture and examining it more thoroughly. Judging by her all-black attire and the gun holster around her thigh, I suddenly understand what Callen means by “side projects.” My stomach twists in discomfort.

Vesper’s lips in the picture are unnaturally red—ruby red. I have lipstick in exactly that shade in my makeup drawer, but I never use it. It’s far too bold for my taste.

“Cricket. Lance.” Callen names the others as I pick up the remaining photos.

I squint at him. “Is Cricket a name?”

“Hell if I know,” he says. “I’m not sure if these fuckers ever had real names. If they did, they’ve long since forgotten them. Lance is short for Lancelot. I have no clue why they call her Cricket.”

I stare at the jaw-droppingly stunning blonde in the picture who’s looking over her shoulder at the camera with a cheeky smile. She makes a terrible undercover agent. There’s nothing subtle about her. Every man with a pulse would notice a woman who looks like that.

Lance is much the same—clean-shaven, flirty smile, and looks like a frat boy. The kind of frat boy who misses a lot of class because he’s spending all day on his back with one of his classmates straddled across his hips.

“I don’t understand. Doesn’t the FBI do thorough investigations of their recruits? If they are field operatives, they must at least have a top-secret clearance, meaning you should know, not only their birth names, but the color of their piss this morning.”

Callen cocks his head to the side. He smiles at me in a way that tells me he’s surprised, and impressed. “What do you know about TS clearances?”

“I know that top-secret is barely scratching the surface.” Callen blinks at me, wordlessly, a silent command to explain myself. “My dad was Delta Force,” I continue, “he never told me a damn thing, but I could see it in his eyes. He took a lot of secrets to his grave.”

“Delta Force,” he repeats. “Nice. Killed in combat?”

I reel from his frankness. “No. It was his heart,” I respond curtly, trying to cover up my wounded reaction. I get it, it’s the obvious assumption. Dad was part of an elite military force that did very dangerous things behind the scenes, but his life was tame toward the end. He smiled a lot…but he felt weak. I soften my tone and elaborate. “He was on the transplant list for a while, but we ran out of time. He went peacefully, in his sleep.”

I scoop up my mug with both hands just to have something to do. The steam is still dancing on top of the dark liquid from when the waitress refreshed our mugs.

“Shit,” Callen says, looking ashamed. “My job desensitizes me too much sometimes. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Giving him a small shrug, and an even smaller smile, I let him off the hook and say, “It’s okay. Me too.”

“And I’m no stranger to the difficulties of military life. I was a Navy SEAL. I don’t have kids, but some of my buddies did. I’m assuming you guys moved a lot?”

“Not really. Delta Force stays put at Fort Bragg. My dad would have to leave a lot, but we didn’t move much.”

“If you had roots in North Carolina, how’d you end up in California?”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Agents and their questions—everything is an interrogation, even a simple conversation.

“My mom was from San Francisco. My dad met her on vacation.”

My parents had a whirlwind military romance. They met, two weeks later they were married. Two years later I came along. “They bought a nice house on the outskirts of the city when they were really young, long before the market blew up. Their plan was to rent it out so when my Dad retired, it’d basically be paid off.”

We almost made it. I took over the mortgage when Dad got sick. I only have four more years to pay it off… But I fell short, right before the finish line.

“And where’s your mom?” he asks.

I take a small sip of my coffee, tasting the scorched brew. It’s not good coffee by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s something comforting about shitty diner coffee. It reminds me of old Saturdays when I’d actually leave the house to eat. For the past year, all I do is cook at home. All I do is hide at home.

“She passed away while I was still in diapers. Ovarian cancer.”

“Shit, Eden, I’m sorry.” Running his hands through his hair he grumbles, “Do you have any family left?”

“I have one aunt who is still alive. But her Alzheimer’s is so severe, she doesn’t recognize me anymore. I used to visit her at the care facility, but it started to scare her, so I stopped.”

“Friends? A pet?”

My cheeks puff before I blow out a big breath. I’m reluctant to admit, out loud, what’s extremely apparent. Sure, I’ve prioritized my education and my career, but I’m only twenty-nine. I thought I had plenty of time for everything else. My dad taught me to work hard and I never imagined that could be a bad thing…until now.

I’m at the most difficult point of my life, and there’s no one here standing beside me.

“I’m missing one photo,” Callen says, changing the subject. Perhaps my depressing origin story is making him uncomfortable. Well, Callen, be careful what you ask then.

“Pardon?”

He taps an empty space on the table with his pointer finger. “There’s one more. Vesper’s guard dog—Lincoln.”

There’s something in the way Callen says his name that causes goosebumps to rise on the back of my neck. “Why don’t you have a picture?”

“Because he nearly broke my hand when I tried to take one for his file. Vesper, Lance, and Cricket all act like normal human beings for the most part. But Linc is a ghost on his best day, and on his worst—a cold-blooded killer.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat. “A cold-blooded killer that you employ?”

“Sort of. But that’s the problem. That’s why I need you.”

Nodding, I finally meet Callen’s eyes. Good. Let’s get to it. “Help me make sense of this. You want me to help you do what with these people? Do performance reviews? Formulate a team mission statement?” I ask sarcastically.

“Operation PALADIN was originally commissioned by…” He trails off, trying to strategically hold back information. “Let’s just say there are probably secret files in the Oval Office that explain everything. Get what I’m saying?” He cocks one eyebrow.

“Sure.” So clearly PALADIN can’t get in trouble with the authorities if they were created by the authorities.

“Vesper has recruited, developed, and managed this team for over a decade. She’s incredible—far wiser than she should be at her age, but she’s struggling right now. It’s hard to find good recruits, and some of her operatives have been going rogue. They’re accepting jobs that aren’t approved, or just using their skills and resources to exact personal revenge—”

“Are you saying that you have a bunch of armed agents on the loose?” I screw up my face in confusion. Why are you telling me this?

“I have agents. Vesper has what we like to call…operatives.”

“Why?”

He levels a stare. “Because we don’t like using words like assassins, hitmen, or killers in everyday conversation. It draws too much attention.”

I’m frozen as I blink at him, absorbing the blunt truth.

“Over the past year PALADIN has gone from eighteen operatives to four.”

“What? How?”

“They went rogue, got cocky, pissed off the wrong people and made easy targets of themselves. Most of them are dead. Even more concerning, a few of them are unaccounted for. There was one misbehaving in our own backyard. Vesper had to put him down. Or more accurately, had Linc put him down.”

“Put him down as in—”

“A bullet in his brain,” Callen says matter-of-factly.

I push my plate aside and begin to scoot out of the booth. “End of discussion, Callen. I don’t do guns. I don’t do bullets in brains. I don’t do killers. I’m desperate, but not this desperate. I don’t want to peek behind any more curtains. Been there, done that, and it ruined my life—”

“Eden. Eden, wait.” Callen shuffles on his side of the booth, intent on intercepting my retreat. “Hear me out. They aren’t just killers,” he pleads, looking around the diner to reconfirm we haven’t drawn attention to ourselves. “They’re the good guys, I promise you. They are just a little rough around the edges. Please sit back down.”

I settle back into the booth but keep one knee pointed out, prepared for a quick exit.

“Thank you,” Callen says.

“So, what do you want from me?”

“The past three companies you consulted for are now business powerhouses. You took startups and turned them into corporations, fast. How? Recruiting? Funding? How did you get these companies in fighting shape?”

“It’s simple. Happy people do good work. All I do is spend time with a company, see what they’re lacking by listening to the employees, finding like-minded individuals to recruit, giving leadership tangible short-term and long-term goals, and incentivizing everyone with something other than money. People spend most of their waking hours at work, it shouldn’t be spent in hell. Growth, success, ROI…it’s all about human capital.”

“How long does that usually take?” Callen picks his fork back up, cutting into his stack of pancakes with the side of his fork.

“Most companies—six months. Empress took longer. I was with them for a little over a year and a half in a consultant role before I was brought on board full-time”

“Okay, so split the difference. Give me a year.”

“To do what?”

“The world needs PALADIN. The FBI needs PALADIN. Luckily, for the first time since they were established, they need us. We have an opportunity to replenish their ranks and—”

“Close some cases?” I ask with an accusing look on my face.

“Exactly.” Stabbing his fork into the stack of pancakes, he continues, “The people they go after can hardly be considered human beings. Believe me when I say PALADIN operates for the greater good.”

I hate that phrase: the greater good. It’s usually how things like genocide and slavery are justified in an evil man’s mind. I’ve studied societal norms and group behavior for years at one of the most prestigious schools on the West Coast, and what I’ve learned about leadership is that you don’t always need a worthy cause to raise hell… You just need a convincing mouthpiece.

“What exactly is the problem you’re trying to solve?”

“I’ve got FBI agents who are afraid of the operatives, thinking they are loose cannons. And I’ve got the operatives who think the FBI is a joke. Nobody wants to work together. My only saving grace is that Vesper’s on my side. Without her cooperation, this whole thing falls apart. I have a lot of higher-ups with their eyes on me, making sure I see this project through, and I can’t afford for everything to fall apart. I secured a giant compound for everyone to come together and start acting like a team, but how do I mix oil and water?”

I study Callen’s pleading eyes and actually feel bad for him. “You need everyone to play nice in the sandbox together?”

“Exactly. Isn’t that what you’re great at?”

“Yes,” I say honestly. “But I work with tech geniuses, customer service representatives, and business managers. Not kill—” I stop myself. “Operatives.”

“They’re still people, Eden. They have jobs and responsibilities like everyone else. Ignoring what they do in the field, how would you approach this if it was a normal organization?”

Callen sticks his fork back into his mouth, now managing to chew slowly. His determined eyes are fixed on me, and I’m starting to wonder if I actually have a choice in taking this job.

“Research is the first phase. I need to understand the state of the company, but not from you. From the employee’s perspective. I’d set up interviews with every single agent and operative and would encourage them to speak freely about the issues at hand.”

“Okay, that sounds good. What then?”

“Part of research is understanding the group dynamic. You’d call a meeting and I’d come in and force everyone to do a little get-to-know-you icebreaker activity.”

Callen laughs, his eyes crinkling at the sides. “You think a bunch of operatives are going to tell you what their favorite movie and color is? Who cares?”

“I do. Never underestimate the power of building a good rapport, Callen. Taking an interest in your employees is a smart way to earn their trust. But truthfully, the icebreaker activity has nothing to do with the actual information, it’s to identify leadership. Employees who participate with enthusiasm, and are honest and vulnerable, have the most potential. Identify your potential quickly—promote them, reward them, get them on your side and aligned with your vision. Lead from the middle of the pack, not from the front.”

Callen stares at me, jaw dropped. “You should be a motherfucking TED talk.”

“I’ve done a few, actually.” Except they’ve probably been removed seeing as the comment sections on my seminars are now filled with hate speech and threats on my life.

“So, is that a yes?”

I can’t tell if the intrigue is coming from the excitement of a little controlled danger, or just actual hope that maybe the match isn’t over. Maybe I have one more round in me and can still bounce back from the disaster that is my life.

“Just a year?”

“One year. Help me build this team to its full potential and I guarantee you can retire after one year. You’ll never worry about money again.”

“Where’s the job?”

“D.C.”

Of course. “I don’t want to sell my home…my parent’s home,” I admit.

“Don’t. We’ll get you set up with housing in D.C. No problem.”

“Would you be willing to discuss an advance on my salary?” I duck my head, embarrassed to taste the words. “I’m delinquent on my mortgage. I need to get caught up on a few payments or I’m facing foreclosure.”

“Eden, you agree to help me with PALADIN, and the FBI will pay off the rest of your mortgage…today.”

Glancing down at the coaster, I tug on my bottom lip with my top teeth. Even the military needs leadership strategy consultations. Is this really any different than working with the armed forces?

“Would I be a federal employee?” I ask.

Callen teeters his head. “Contractor. But if benefits are an issue—”

“They are,” I say. I haven’t had medical or dental insurance in over a year. I’ve had no company to provide it and couldn’t afford the cost on my own.

“I can make those arrangements too,” Callen says in a smooth baritone. “We will take care of absolutely everything you need.”

“And I wouldn’t be expected to…” I eye his holster, trying to convey my question without actually asking.

“What?” Callen asks, looking at me like I’m stupid.

I don’t want to sound as squeamish as I feel. This all still sounds like a movie. Agents, operatives, assassins… It’s like something from a very cliché action movie. I prefer to picture this as fiction, the reality is too off-putting. When I was little, I used to pretend Dad was a construction worker. The cuts and bruises he’d return home with after his jobs were simply run-of-the-mill construction hazards.

“Carry a gun. I don’t… I don’t do guns. They have always made me uncomfortable.” Not to mention, after the death threats I received when Empress went under, discomfort turned into unbridled fear.

“It’s a desk job, Eden. What would you need a gun for?” he asks with a tone full of sarcasm

My chest expands as I inhale until it hurts. “Okay.” I breathe out dramatically. “I’ll take it.”

“Really?” Callen’s face pulls in surprise.

“You thought I’d turn down my only job option?”

“No.” He lets out a cocky laugh. “I just figured you’d be a tougher negotiator.” He taps the coaster in front of me. “I would’ve paid off your mortgage and offered you double that,” Callen says with a smirk.

Fuck.

What the hell did I just get into with PALADIN if Callen would’ve been willing to offer me a literal fortune for a desk job?