Page 62 of Dichotomy

“Agent Hayes.” Alexander greeted him with a firm handshake.

“Call me Dominic, Mr. Stone,” Dominic replied.

“Alexander,” Alexander replied. “We’re right this way.”

He led Dominic into the living room. “You remember my brothers, Marcus and Sebastian, and our head of security, Adrian?”

Dominic nodded at each of them. Sebastian let out a little wave from the small kitchen table, while Marcus and Adrian just nodded from their places, leaning up against the living room wall like they were holding it up.

Izzy stood from the couch. “I’m Izzy.”

“Do you also work for SDS?” Dominic asked, shaking her extended hand.

“No, I work for Evelyn,” Izzy said.

Dominic looked at me, and I smiled. Moment of truth. “We’ve met before, but I’m Evelyn, and I lead an organization called the Archers.”

Dominic’s eyes were sharp and searching, and this time the slight widening wasn’t surprise so much as confirmation. A quietconfirmation of what he already knew. It felt strange to say it out loud, but it also felt right.

“It’s nice to be formally introduced,” he said, a twinkle in his brown eyes. He reached into the messenger bag slung over his shoulder and set it on the coffee table. The sound landed heavier than it should have.

“I brought everything I could pull without setting off alarms,” he continued, pulling out files as he spoke. “CI lists. Financial irregularities. And the FIA’s working file on Kingfisher. The person, not the organization.”

“The person?” Alexander frowned.

Dominic nodded and handed the file to me. “It’s not a lot, but from what I can deduce from the file, the Kingfisher is a moniker for a person, not an organization. Although there are people who work for the Kingfisher, they are not his people, if that makes sense. He hires them to do a job, and that’s it. Like your old friend Luke Jones.”

“Hold on,” Marcus said. “Go back. Why do you think it’s a person, not an organization?”

Dominic gestured towards the file. “The file is thin, but there’s a structure and a pattern to each of his suspected operations. Every operation is clearly defined. He doesn’t build teams. There’s no chatter that we can ever pick up. He hires talent, pays them once, and disappears.”

He paused and held up another file. “The money moves in a pattern, too. Same timing, even if the subsidiaries are different. Same response pattern when something goes wrong. That’s not an organization of multiple people; that’s one person with very specific habits.”

His gaze flicked to me. “Organizations create loyalty. This creates fear. And fear only works when there’s a single person everyone’s afraid of disappointing.”

“He’s right,” I said, skimming through the folder.

The file was thin. There wasn’t concrete proof of the Kingfisher’s identity, but there was a pattern there. One Dominic had found.

“And Luke Jones? He’s not a CI with the FIA?” Izzy asked.

“No,” Dominic said. “He’s not on any of our CI lists. I checked pictures, not just names, in case he was using an alias, but nothing. I pulled in a favor with a friend in Interpol and got a hit on his mugshot.”

He handed me another folder, and I passed the Kingfisher folder to Alexander so he could read it too. I opened the new folder, and a grainy photo of Luke Jones was clipped on the front page. I recognized him instantly from the gala.

“Who is he?” Adrian asked.

“No one knows his actual name,” Dominic said. “But one of his aliases is Luke Jones. He’s a mercenary of sorts, a concierge known for completing any crime if the price is right. He’s a fix-it man and has no loyalties beyond whoever pays him the most.”

Sebastian came up behind me and hooked his chin on my shoulder so he could read the file as well. He whistled low as we got to the page that listed Luke Jones’s suspected crimes.

“From his rap sheet, I would guess that Kingfisher hired him to manage Citadel.”

“He was going to kidnap Evelyn and take her with him,” Marcus pointed out.

“Kidnapping is in his repertoire,” I said dryly.

I closed the file and offered it to Marcus. He pushed off the wall and accepted the file, leaning back against Adrian as they both read it.