Lit Fuse: A Combined Mission

By Shirley J. Miller

Over the past few months, Kari and Jade of Boston’s Madison Investigations Agency had handled several local investigations that just happened to overlap with FBI and CIA operations. Still, they were surprised when they were approached by the U.S. government trying to acquire them as new agents for the CIA.
The Madison twin sisters had spent almost ten years with the Boston DEA Police Department before they decided to strike out on their own and opened Madison Investigations Agency at 35 Beacon Street. After the grueling Boston Serial Killer case, in which they had worked side by side with the FBI, they were surprised to be approached by the US government. The CIA had somehow gotten involved in their case when some of the leads took them to Mexico where Kari and Jade met CIA Agents Stan Chambers and Ronnie Statin for the first time. A few weeks later, they were approached with job offers.
Thinking about the offers, the sister PI’s decided they could use a new challenge and the prospect of working to help their country versus following cheating spouses and chasing down missing person cases would be rewarding. They reluctantly convinced the CIA Brass to let them keep their Private Investigation Firm open while they had two other investigators run it for them and act as a CIA informants. Promising, of course, to keep all of their CIA undercover assignments strictly confidential.
Their first assignment was a joint venture with the Russian FSB and SVR Agencies to investigate and stop multiple terrorist threats in Moscow. Being their first foreign assignment, they were assigned to work in two teams with CIA Agents Stan and Ronnie, along with Russian Agents Boris Petrov and Ivan Smirnoff. They were in for a very bumpy ride!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shirley J. Miller
• Release date: Jun 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463813058

Shirley J. Miller

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~About Shirley J MillerAs a child, aptitude tests always suggested that Shirley Miller should go into writing. In actuality, she spent her career years in advertising and marketing for Fortune 500 companies, where most of her writing revolved around describing product attributes and persuading sales.She always dreamed of writing fiction books but never had the time. Upon early retirement, she decided to follow her dreams. You will love her simple and direct style while maintaining the mystique and action among characters from start to finish.Her work is mostly fiction, so be sure you check out The Chicago Series and the Maxine Hart Series. Ring of Deception is a book Shirley and her sister Betty dreamed up - while hiking, no less - follow-ups being considered.Shirley has also written how-to books on some of her favorite hobbies. Be sure to check out Beginning Golf for Ladies, Golf Tips Up & Over - For Intermediate Players, Freelance Writing, Owning a Silky Terrier which resulted from her love for the breed. Having owned eight Silky Terriers over her lifetime, she even hired a special dog trainer to come to her home twice a week to teach her how to train the dogs.Though she never wrote about it, she wants to Thank You for reading her books and following her writing adventures. Without you, none of this would be possible, So Thank You very much. And keep on reading. Find some of her other books on Amazon or Smashwords by checking the links below.Any reviews will certainly be appreciated. It always helps to understand more of what readers want to see, so she can speak more directly to you. To follow Shirley Miller, and be the first to learn of new releases, please check the ‘Follow Me’ Button on Amazon. For a full list of all her current works, check out these links:https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LastFlightOut1

Book preview

Chapter 1

After their lunch meeting, Jade and Kari went to Cheers for a glass of wine so they could talk about their options regarding the CIA before heading back to their office. The idea to keep Madison Investigations up and running began to seem more like an obstacle that they might not be able to handle.

My guess is that we’ll be out in the field more than we will be in the Boston area to handle local cases. I think we can count on Jack with all his past police experience. But do you think Karen is ready to promote to a full-time investigator? Jade pondered. Because we would not be able to handle the full case load without two full-time detectives on staff.

What I believe is that although Karen doesn’t have the usual police background, she’ll be in good hands with Jack to teach her. She’s more than proven her worth repeatedly. I think she’s ready and with Jack’s help, I’m sure she’ll turn out to be a first-rate detective. Let’s be honest, we can’t do both jobs with any degree of accuracy full time. Besides, I think we’re going to have our own learning curve to tackle if we join the CIA Agency, Kari advised.

You’re right. We’re okay on meeting the firearms requirements, Jade suggested. But we would both need at least two weeks of tough physical training to meet the normal agent standards. I got tired just watching Agents Paul and Bob scale up walls and over fences while running after criminals. Let’s face it, we may work out and run a little here and there, but we certainly aren’t up to the CIA’s high physical requirements!

You’re right about that, Jade, Kari readily admitted. But we did have some pretty tough training when we were with the Boston DEA crime force. Maybe getting back up to speed might not be a tough as you think.

And the fact is that at this particular time, neither of us have any other relationships to worry about, Jade admitted. It might be a good time to play spies. It will be hard work, and more dangerous. But we both love a challenge and opportunities like this don’t come our way every day. It would be a real chance for us to do something good for our country versus just chasing all those cheating spouses around.

Granted, some of our cases are tedious. But just think how good we’ve become with taking covert pictures, Kari laughed.

"Okay. It looks to me like whether we are doing this or not has already been decided by both of us. It’s just a matter of if, and how we can keep Madison Investigations active," Jade responded.

I still think keeping our detective agency open would be a good cover for us. And I am not sure why we shouldn’t trust Karen and Jack with our secret. They are not only good assets for us, but we can trust that they will both do whatever they have to do to protect us. Every other CIA agent out there has assets. Why shouldn’t we? Especially since we already have two who we can trust with our lives, Kari justified.

I’m okay with that, Jade agreed. We’ll just have to wait and see what the CIA Brass has to say about it," Jade said as they left Cheers and began walking back to their office at 35 Beacon Street.

They hadn’t been at the office long when they got the call from Agent Ronnie Statin that the U.S. government had agreed to their terms to keep Madison Investigations active.

Well that didn’t take long, Kari admitted. We didn’t expect to hear from you until tomorrow.

Things move pretty fast with the CIA, Stan laughed. While the government themselves may have a reputation of being slow to react because of all the politics and bureaucracy, out in the field it’s a whole new ball game. The clock is always ticking for us!

But Stan advised, they want to do some background checks on both Karen and Jack, and anyone else you might hire. They know that you are going to have to trust them to cover for you as you’ll be gone a lot. If their backgrounds are clean, we can proceed with our offer. We have already started the appropriate security checks, so if everything pans out, you can tell them both the news.

Stan continued, In the meantime, can you both come into Langley on Monday so we can get started?

Sounds good to us, Kari agreed. "When can we tell Karen and Jack what’s going