The Phoenix Read online

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  MISSION: DAY ONE

  MISSION: DAY TWO

  MISSION: DAY THREE

  MISSION: DAY FOUR

  MISSION: DAY FIVE

  MISSION: DAY SIX

  MISSION: DAY SEVEN

  MISSION: DAY EIGHT

  MISSION: DAY NINE

  MISSION: DAY TEN

  From USA Today bestselling author Jillian Dodd comes the sixth book in a sizzling series filled with action and adventure. Fans of The Selection and The Hunger Games will discover a heart-pounding thrill ride of espionage and suspense set in glittering high society.

  A single sentence is muttered from the lips of an assassin dangling from a four-story building, “It starts in Montrovia.”

  That sentence led Black X to send a spy to protect Prince Lorenzo.

  And that sentence haunts Huntley as she realizes her time is running out.

  When athletes from around the world descend on Montrovia for the Olympics, another group is coming together, its years of planning a new world order finally coming to fruition.

  A disease is released.

  People start dying.

  And, with rumors of an impending coup, the country falls into chaos.

  Alliances are betrayed.

  Lives are lost.

  Loves are challenged.

  And hearts are turned.

  Can Huntley stop what has started, or will Montrovia and the world fall?

  Copyright © 2019 by Jillian Dodd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Editor: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Jillian Dodd Inc.

  Madeira Beach, FL

  Spy Girl and Jillian Dodd are registered trademarks of Jillian Dodd Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-946793-46-1

  MISSION:DAY ONE

  Even though I figured it out, I’m still shocked as I stand in my uncle Sam’s flat. Not only is my biological father, Ares Von Allister, alive, but his father—my biological grandfather—was my mother’s CIA handler and the dean at Blackwood Academy. Standing with them is Blake Cassleberry, the man who I thought had died in a car bombing. The man who I thought was my father.

  I was raised to be a spy. Then trained to be a spy. And I know that a spy’s greatest asset is their ability to think quickly. To follow their instincts. To take action.

  In my head, I know this should be a poignant moment in my life. I should probably rush into Blake’s arms. I should probably hug my grandfather. I should probably at least shake Ares’s hand.

  But I’m not going to. Not yet. Why? Because I’m mad.

  At all of them. For not being forthright with me. For lying. For killing my friends.

  “Um, I have to go.” I point my thumb toward the door.

  “You can’t,” my grandfather says. “Time is of the essence—”

  “If time were truly of the essence,” I interrupt, “you would have read me in on all of this from the start. You wouldn’t have lied to me—repeatedly. And you wouldn’t have killed everyone at Blackwood Academy. I will be taking whatever time I need to process this and figure out what I’m going to do. I quit, remember? That means, you’re through controlling my life, so why don’t you get some sleep? I’m out.”

  I go down the stairs, out the front door, take a seat on the stoop, and dial Ari’s number.

  “Lorenzo called,” he says. “Told me that you were very upset about a stuffed dog and practically ran out of there. He offered me his plane, so I just landed in DC and am heading to Ares’s house. Are you there? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “I’m fine. I’m at my uncle Sam’s loft.” I recite the address. “Head here. I’ll meet you out front.”

  “You don’t really sound fine.” He gives his driver the address and then says, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “One of us needs to go out there and talk some sense into her,” the Dean says, watching the video feed from the front door.

  “No. Give her a little time to process all of this.” Ares lets out a sigh. “I probably should have told her as soon as I knew.”

  “You were right not to,” Blake counters. “She needed to figure out on her own that her mother had lied to her, before she ever would have believed any of us. It’s too sensational.”

  “She’s making a phone call. Just gave someone the address for the loft. Should we be worried?” the Dean asks, wiping his brow.

  Ares sits down at his computer and taps a few keys. “No, it’s fine. She called Aristotle. Interesting.”

  “Maybe she needs backup,” he counters, which causes Blake to let out a laugh.

  “I’ve seen her in action. She doesn’t need any backup to handle the three of us old guys.”

  “Hey, I’m not that old,” Ares says jokingly, but then his expression changes. “She wants her brother with her. A twin myself, I understand why. When Ceres was killed in action, a part of me died with her. The rest of me died when Kelley was assassinated. I feel alive again. My children will both be here, together, with me. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “After we stop The Echelon,” Blake says seriously.

  “And, now, she’s leaving.”

  “She’ll be back,” Ares states. “With her brother. I can almost guarantee it.”

  I have another phone call to make, but it’s obvious that Ares has the loft rigged with security cameras. I look down the street, notice an open convenience store, and make my way there. This is a conversation I don’t want anyone to overhear.

  “Do you have a phone I could borrow?” I ask the man behind the counter.

  “Don’t you have a cell phone?”

  “Yeah, but it’s dead.”

  He grabs a packet from a peg and hands it to me. “Quick charger. Only twenty dollars.”

  I give him a hundred instead. “Is there an office in the back where I could make a call?”

  “Long distance?” he shrewdly asks.

  “Yes.”

  He holds up two fingers, indicating his price. I place another hundred on the counter, causing him to point to a door behind him.

  “Five minutes only.”

  I quickly call The Priest, hoping he will answer.

  “This is Henri,” he says.

  “I don’t have much time. You know what’s about to start, and I don’t want your son anywhere near it. I’m sending my plane to pick you up and bring you to DC, where you will be reunited at my father’s house. It has a doomsday vault in the basement.” I give him the code.

  “I was told to stay in my current location. That you might need my help here in the near future,” he says cryptically.

  “I get what you’re saying. It’s going to start in Montrovia, and Intrepid has been preparing you for the worst, which is what I’m doing as well, just in a different way. Your son misses you, and he’s afraid you’re never coming home. I can’t bear for him to go through what I did.”

  “Because of me,” he says solemnly. “I’m very sorry.”

  “If it wasn’t you, they would have hired someone else to fulfill the contract. I understand that now.”

  “Are you sure you d
on’t need me?” he asks, his voice full of emotion. I know it pains him not to be with his child.

  “I do need you. I need you with your son. I can’t save the world, Henri—I can’t do any of this—unless I know Chauncey’s safe and with you.”

  “Okay, I’ll go,” he replies. “Although DC is the last place in the world I should be.”

  When I get back to the loft, Ari’s car is just pulling up. I take his bag, put it just inside the door, and make him walk around the block with me.

  “I have a lot to tell you.”

  “I have something I need to tell you, too, Huntley. I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  “Okay,” I say, readying myself for a possible fight. Ever since the video game, I’ve been wondering if he’s on my side. I’ve been questioning if he even is my brother. And I’ve been wondering if I can trust him.

  “I’ve been here before,” he says, glancing behind us.

  “That’s what you’ve been lying about?” I ask, my anger flaring. “You’ve known the truth all this time?”

  “What truth?”

  “About who is inside.”

  “Um, I assume it’s still Ares Von Allister’s attorney, Samuel Vanguard. That’s his office, where I learned of our mission. Of our legend.”

  Well, that’s something I didn’t consider. Ares, dressed as my uncle Sam, must have posed as his own attorney.

  “Is that why you always thought our cover was real?”

  “It was subtler than that. On the doorplate, there is a Von Allister Industries logo.”

  I look into his eyes and know that he’s speaking the truth. He was trained to be a good soldier, but they forgot to teach him how to lie like a spy.

  “I’ve distanced myself from you over the last few weeks—since the shoot-out.”

  “I know,” he says. “I could feel it. I thought—well, hoped—it was because you were upset about Lorenzo.”

  “It’s not that at all. Ari, what you did in London makes no sense. You were shooting at the car I was riding in. A vehicle with four fully armed men. You should have followed them and tried to save me later. Instead, you endangered us both. Not only did you make yourself a target, but you also could have killed me. Did you know that two of your bullets grazed me? Were you trying to kill me?” I tilt my head and gaze defiantly into his eyes. “Was that the plan all along?”

  “I already got this talk from Intrepid,” he says defensively. “I don’t need it from you. I just reacted, desperately trying to save you.”

  “What did you lie about?” I say seriously. “You know what I’m capable of. Don’t even think about lying to me anymore.”

  He runs his hand through his hair, looking more frustrated than nervous. “I didn’t lie. There’s just something I didn’t tell you right away. I’ll just say it. I asked Lorenzo to be my best man. Allie and I are getting married in five days. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but Allie is going to ask you to be her maid of honor.”

  Matron would be more precise, I think, but no one knows that Lorenzo and I are married.

  “I’m worried that might be awkward for you. Especially now that you’re engaged to Daniel.” He studies me. “What’s the deal with that?”

  “It’s part of my mission,” I lie.

  “I thought you quit?” He raises an eyebrow at me, knowing I’m not telling the truth.

  “I did.”

  “Why did you distance yourself from me then? Because you don’t trust me anymore?”

  I tell him about the video game and how I relived my missions. “I know that you told Black X everything that happened.”

  “Well, duh,” he says, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “Of course I told them what happened in my mission reports. I was required to. Were you not?”

  He’s a little worked up about this. It sorta makes me smile.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Well, that’s not fair! They were a lot of freaking work. Why didn’t you have to do them?”

  “I don’t know. Probably because they knew I wouldn’t tell them everything, like you did.”

  “Is that bad?” he asks, looking stricken.

  “That depends. What was your mission?”

  “Same as yours. We’re a team.”

  “Your missions never varied from mine?”

  “Missions, no. After the mission, apparently. I was required to file mission reports. I also had to update them on our findings.”

  “But you didn’t tell them about Chauncey? Or that The Priest is still alive?”

  He bites his lip. “I didn’t. You were pretty adamant about no one knowing.”

  I can’t help but give him a grateful smile. “Thank you, Ari. But here’s the thing. You told me you never knew you were adopted. What if they lied to you? What if you really are a Bradford?”

  “That would mean, we aren’t related,” he says. “It would mean that we aren’t twins and we aren’t Ares von Allister’s children.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I call bullshit,” he states emphatically.

  “On which part?”

  “We share the same birthdate, Huntley. Were born at the same hospital.”

  “Supposedly,” I counter.

  “DNA tests proved it.”

  “Convenient.”

  “You know my secret language.”

  “I know a lot of languages.”

  “And you feel like the half of me that I’ve missed my whole life,” he says, giving my hand a squeeze. “But is that real or what they wanted me to feel?”

  “I’m not sure. You would think, the second we met, we would have known. We would have felt something.”

  “I think I did know,” he says. “I wasn’t attracted to you, yet there was this pull that I didn’t understand. I felt like I knew you from somewhere before. I actually researched past lives, which is something I’d never believed in before. It was the only thing I could come up with as a possible reason for why I was so drawn to you.”

  I let out a little sigh. “During one of our missions, I discovered something, something I thought to be true, something I didn’t tell you—because, I felt it, too. And I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Oh, so you’ve been lying.” He gives me a cocky grin.

  “I did keep something from you that didn’t relate to our missions. When Malcolm and Aleksandr were telling me about The Society and reminiscing about Ares, I discovered that Ares needed permission to get his TerraSphere deal approved. And that it was your father who he needed to convince. Granted, it still had to go through government channels, but because my mother told me you’d died, it led me to believe that Ares Von Allister had told her that you’d died, and then he’d given you to the general as a bribe.”

  “A bribe? Like, my biological father sold me, so he could get approval for some shack in the desert?”

  “That’s what I thought, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? That’s horrible. And my father … I can’t even believe … he was so honest. Like, to a fault.” He looks distraught.

  “Ari, let me finish. It’s what I thought had happened. Ares told Malcolm Prescott that Bradford wasn’t sure about the project. There was talk of a bribe. Ares said Bradford was too honest. That the only thing in life he didn’t have was a baby. That he and his wife had tried for years. Ares had told him that unless he could produce a child, the deal might not go through. I knew the TerraSphere had gotten approved. I knew your father had changed his mind.” We’ve walked back to the loft, so I sit on the steps again. “Add that to the fact that my mother told me she never got to see you. That it was one of her biggest regrets. That they had taken you away while I was being born and that they’d told her you died. I followed the dots and came to that conclusion. But I was wrong.”

  “And what changed your mind?”

  I tell him what the man at the TerraSphere said. How Ares hadn’t found out about me until after my eighteenth birthday. How that meant he couldn’t have
given Ari up for adoption.

  “Our mother was a liar, too,” I finish.

  Motion at the door catches our attention—a hand waving us in.

  “That’s probably the attorney,” Ari says.

  “How old was the attorney?” I sort of assumed that Ares, disguised as Uncle Sam, was the one who’d met with him, but I realize it could have been someone else.

  “He was older. Like a grandfather. Nice guy actually.”

  “Something else I need to tell you before we go inside. This is the place where I went after my dad’s car blew up. It’s where my uncle Sam lived. And there’s more. When I was in Iraq, there was a sniper. At first, I thought he was shooting at me, missed, and killed his own man. But then he stood up and gave me this gesture. An unusual two-fingered salute that my father, Blake Cassleberry, used to give me. And the stuffed dog Lorenzo told you about was mine. A gift from my uncle Sam when I was ten. I had it with me the day the car bomb went off. As soon as I saw the dog, I knew for sure that Blake was alive. And I think the man you met as an attorney was the dean of Blackwood Academy.” I put my hand on his shoulder, hoping it will steady him. “But he’s more than that, Ari. He was my mother’s CIA handler and”—I take a deep breath—“Ares Von Allister’s father.”

  “What? Are you saying that he’s our biological grandfather?”

  “Yes. We’ve been manipulated and lied to. I discovered something else important—it was my uncle Sam who created Blackwood for me.” I pause. “And this is the doozy. That man is really Ares Von Allister. He’s not dead, Ari. He’s Black X. All three of them are inside the loft, waiting for us to go inside.”

  Ari stands there in shock, confusion written all over his face as his brain is trying to assimilate the pieces.

  “The three of them wanted to explain everything to me, but I didn’t want to hear any of it without you present.”