Bible leaned back in his leather chair and reached for the cigar smoldering in the crystal ashtray beside him. He brought it to his lips and took a long drag, letting the smoke fill his lungs before exhaling slowly through his nostrils.
The phone on his desk sat in its cradle, the call with Stefon disconnected a while ago. The SAC had pushed back with the kind of confidence that came from years of successfully walking the tightrope between law enforcement and criminal enterprise, but his solution was all political maneuvering—suspensions, transfers, bureaucratic delays.
Half-measures.
Bible chewed on the cigar's end, his fingers drumming together in a slow, deliberate rhythm—a habit from his military days. His mind worked through the variables, calculating outcomes, identifying threats.
Kevin "Angel" Collins. The thorn in his side for months, the former protégé who'd somehow survived Libya and turned crusader. Samedi already had orders to deal with him—a demon summoned specifically for that purpose. That would happen tonight.
But Angel's death would create ripples.
Director Ethan Wilkes had stuck his nose where it didn't belong, canceling the APB on Angel and ordering Amanda Sims to bring him to D.C. for a briefing. When Angel turned up dead, Wilkes would push harder. Sims would investigate. And Stefon—loyal, useful Stefon—knew enough to connect dots if pressure came from above.
Bible scowled at the phone. Angel was the primary threat, but eliminating him would expose two more.
Sims had evidence from the warehouse. She'd seen too much, knew too much, and now had direct orders from the FBI Director himself to make contact with Angel. When she couldn't reach him, she'd dig deeper. And Stefon knew enough about Bible's operations to become a liability the moment an internal investigation began.
No. The solution was elegant in its simplicity.
Angel dies first. Then clean up the loose ends before anyone can react.
Bible set the cigar back in the ashtray and reached for his tablet. His fingers moved across the screen, navigating encrypted channels until he reached Samedi's contact.
The Vodou priest had summoned a demon to eliminate Angel. Good. But the work wouldn't end there.
Bible began typing:
Samedi. Confirm primary target tonight as planned. After Angel is eliminated, send Rygen to secondary location in the morning. Two additional targets: Amanda Sims, FBI Special Agent, currently at hotel (address to follow). SAC Mike Stefon will meet her there. Eliminate both before they can react to primary target's death.
Timeline critical: Angel first. Hotel cleanup at dawn before news breaks. No connection between scenes.
His finger hesitated over the send button—not from doubt, but from appreciation of the sequence. Angel dies tonight in New Orleans. By morning, before anyone realizes he's gone, Stefon and Sims die in their hotel room. By the time the FBI pieces together that Angel is dead, the only two people who could have connected it to Bible's operation would be dead too.
He pressed send.
The message vanished, encrypted and routed through proxy servers before reaching Samedi's device. Somewhere in New Orleans, the Vodou priest would receive the orders and prepare his hellhound for a night of violence.
Bible picked up his cigar again. The beauty of the sequence was its efficiency. Angel's death would look like the demon finally caught up to the crusader who'd been disrupting operations. Tragic, but unsurprising given the dangerous world he'd been operating in.
And when investigators found Stefon and Sims hours later, they'd see carnage that defied explanation—wounds no conventional weapon could inflict, violence that existed outside normal comprehension. With Angel already dead, there'd be no briefing, no D.C. meeting, no investigation that could trace back to Bible.
Director Wilkes would lose all three pieces from his board in less than twelve hours. The briefing would never happen. The evidence would die with Sims. Any investigation would collapse into conspiracy theories and cold case files.
Outside his office window, the sun was setting over the Libyan desert, painting the dunes in shades of blood and fire.
Bible smiled around his cigar.
Angel thought he was hunting monsters. Sims thought she was following orders. Stefon thought he was managing a delicate political situation.
None of them understood they were already dead.
By tomorrow afternoon, three problems would be solved, and Director Ethan Wilkes would be left holding nothing but unexplainable crime scenes and dead ends.
Bible had just moved three pieces off the chessboard, but the game was far from over.