The B-Team (Benson Security)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The room was closing in on Julia. There were too many people, and everything was in disarray. There was no order. No organization. And worse—no Joe.

She’d been working so hard to hold it together, to stop from panicking, but she was losing the grip on her control. As soon as she’d stopped focusing on research and the room filled with people, it became harder to see the big picture. Now, all she could think about was that there was a memory locked inside her brain that could help, but she couldn’t access it. What if it never came out, and it was a crucial piece of evidence for the defense? What if she was the reason Joe was taken from her for good? He’d miss the birth and miss out on seeing their baby grow up.

She couldn’t breathe.

The windows were open, the sun streaming through them, but still, there wasn’t enough air. She needed to be somewhere… else. Somewhere safe. She needed to think, and she couldn’t do it in here surrounded by everyone, listening to all the noise, watching everyone move around in random patterns that didn’t make any sense.

But she also couldn’t get out of bed unless it was to use the bathroom. The doctor had been very clear about that. She slid her hands under the covers and cradled their child, safe and secure within her. How she envied the baby. If Julia could’ve curled up into a nice, quiet little cocoon, she would have. Her eyes frantically scanned the room as she grew more distressed by the second. The plates were randomly placed. The numbers were wrong. It was all too much.

“Danger! Danger!” a robotic inner voice screeched. “Mission abort! Mission abort!”

Her eyes caught Sarah’s and stayed there, clutching onto her like a lifeline. Sarah would understand, wouldn’t she? Julia wanted to tell her that everything had become too much, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. All she could do was stare at her, panicked and afraid, while her brain screamed Joe’s name on repeat.

Sarah’s face softened with understanding, and she cleared her throat. “Belinda, could you go to the kitchen and get Julia a sealed bottle of water?”

Belinda spun toward Julia and gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, honey. I should have been paying more attention.” Then she hurried from the room.

“Ryan, can you get everything else sorted?” Sarah said as she made her way toward Julia. “Let’s get this place cleaned up and back into some order. Sets of three and five, please.” She climbed onto the bed beside her friend and pulled the blanket over their heads. “Blanket fort.” Sarah smiled. “Just until things are under control out there.”

“You heard her,” Ryan called. “Operation Julia is now in effect. Get a move on.”

Sarah’s hand curled around Julia’s, and she gripped it tight.

“I’m such an idiot,” was all she managed to get out.

“No.” Sarah was vehement. “You’re just you. Like I’m me. We all need different things to help us cope with this big, bad life, and today is way more difficult to deal with than most.”

Julia could hear people moving around in the room, but they were quiet. Nobody complained that their host was acting weird again.

A hand holding a bottle of water appeared under the covers, and then Belinda crawled in beside them. She cracked the bottle open before handing it to Julia.

“Sip it,” she ordered gently.

Julia did as she was told. The snug blanket cave helped ease her jangled nerves, and the icy water cooled her throat. Slowly, the panic subsided, but she still couldn’t voice her fears. Especially when she’d just been crying about Joe a few hours earlier. How much reassurance did one woman need? She was pathetic.

Her sister patted Julia’s leg, a sympathetic look on her face. “It’s Joe, isn’t it?”

So much for keeping it to herself. She nodded once.

“You heard the lawyer,” Belinda said. “There’s a good chance he’ll be home before dark. Plus, he’s American, which means he can ask the embassy to intervene. With his unblemished military record, they’ll have to help. Try not to worry; everything will be okay.”

But there was no way her sister could know that for sure.

Sarah squeezed her hand. “The lawyer said Fitzwater appears to have priorities, and Joe isn’t one of them. So why would he want to keep holding him?”

“Then there are Rachel’s friends in high places,” Belinda added. “They can pull some strings to get him out if needed.”

“And if all else fails,” Sarah said with a wicked grin, “I’m sure the ex-spies among us will help smuggle the two of you out of the country and secure you in an exotic location that doesn’t extradite to Britain.”

Belinda squeezed her leg. “Joe isn’t going to prison.” She sounded absolutely convinced.

“And he definitely won’t be in there when this wee one makes its appearance.” Sarah gestured to Julia’s much bigger baby bump. “Just remember to keep breathing, and everything will be okay.”

The nasty tension coiled around Julia’s heart eased somewhat. “I’m so wimpy, carrying on like this. I feel like such a fool.” Her cheeks heated as she voiced her confession.

“I just saw Ryan try to take a bite out of one of those fake apples in your kitchen,” Belinda said. “At least you’re not as bad as that.”

“It looked so real,” Ryan protested. “Who has fake apples these days?”

Julia giggled.

“Are you ready to try this brainstorm?” Sarah asked with a smile.

“Yes,” Julia whispered to the two of them. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.” Sarah squeezed her hand before tossing back the blanket to reveal the room.

The space was back in order. Not only that, but every single thing in the room was now arranged in sets of three or five, including the chairs and the people who sat on them. The chaos was gone.

Julia took a deep breath. “Sorry,” she said, unable to look anyone in the eye.

“Don’t sweat it,” Isobel said. “We all cope differently. You’re no stranger than the rest of us.”

“In fact,” Claire added, “you’re a whole lot more normal than some of us.”

“Amen, sister,” Isobel agreed.

Julia was laughing when she looked up at her friends and family. There was only understanding in their expressions.

Sarah stood beside the whiteboard, pen in hand. “Ready?”

Someone had divided the board into three equal columns. “Ready,” Julia said, feeling so much better.

“Okay.” Sarah turned to the board. “Let’s put down what we know this commander guy is definitely interested in.” She titled the left column “people” and listed Elle, Evan, Callum, and Lake under the heading. Then she moved to the right column and wrote “terrorism and hacking” above that space. When she was done, she tapped the words at the top of the board: fourteen days. “Right. What do all these things have in common?”

“Apart from the commander?” Isobel was working her way through a bag of prawn cocktail crisps as she spoke.

“Actually, that’s a good place to start.” Sarah wrote the commander’s name in the middle column.

“Don’t forget his grudge with Lake,” Ryan called. He stood by the windows, and for once, he wasn’t eating.

Sarah added the grudge to the terrorism column.

Beast sat on one of the three dining chairs to Julia’s left. “I don’t get the timing on this. Why now? This guy’s had a grudge against Lake for years, so why try to take him down now?”

Isobel nodded. “He only just got the commander’s job. Maybe he needed to be in that position to make this happen.”

Sarah added “new job” to the board.

“What was his job before this?” Isobel asked.

Julia pulled her laptop closer and did a quick search. “It says here that he was a local policing commander before moving to his current post. Isn’t that a lateral move rather than a promotion?”

“Maybe going into the special crimes unit is a kind of promotion,” Claire said.

“Who transferred him?” Ryan asked.

Julia typed some more. “The assistant commissioner of Frontline Policing. A Davina Agnew.” She speed-read the commissioner’s profile. “Very well-respected officer, lots of commendations, no scandals.”

“So, what you’re saying,” Sarah said, “is that this move looks legitimate and probably happened solely because there was a vacancy in the special crimes division?”

“Wait a minute,” Ryan said. “They fired Tessa almost two years ago. Why wait this long to replace her?”

“As far as I can tell,” Julia said, “they had an interim commander until Tessa was sentenced, and then they filled the role permanently with Fitzwater. He’s only been in it a few months.”

“That sounds normal to me,” Sarah said. “It also explains why this is happening now. It would have taken Fitzwater at least a couple of months to gather enough evidence to justify questioning the team.”

There was a disconcerting tingle at the back of Julia’s brain. It was the same sensation she had when things around her weren’t organized properly. “No… there’s something else going on here. Ms. Patel said that the commander doesn’t appear to have much of a case at all. So why pick everyone up now?”

Sarah stilled. “Are you saying that the timing is deliberate? That it had to be today?”

“Yes.” Julia sank back into the mountain of pillows behind her. “I am. I just don’t know why.” She rubbed her temples, hoping it would bring the memory lingering at the edge of her mind just a little closer.

“So.” Ryan stepped forward, a look of excitement on his face. “There has to be something else happening right now that makes the arrests time sensitive.” He glanced around the room. “Think. Has there been anything in the news? Has anyone heard any rumors?”

A thought rushed to the foreground of Julia’s brain. “Elle!” She grinned, delight bubbling inside her as she typed on her keyboard.

“What about Elle?” Ryan focused in on her in a way that he hadn’t done before his brain injury. Like she was the sole person in the room.

“She’s the one who sent me the article. She said we had to talk about it because it was time sensitive.” She scrolled through her emails from Elle. Unfortunately, the problems with her pregnancy meant she was behind in filing her emails. Usually, she categorized and flagged everything as it came in to make it easier to find. But there were hundreds of emails from Elle that she still hadn’t gotten around to reading. Then there were the messages and texts Elle had sent her too. The reference to the article could be in any one of them—and that was assuming she’d even remembered correctly who mentioned it to her.

“Come on, Elle,” she muttered, wishing her email subject lines were a little less cryptic and a whole lot more descriptive. For a computer whiz, Elle was one of the most creative people she knew. Unfortunately, that applied to her emails too. So far, Julia had read subject lines such as “Darth would want this” and “Only a T-Rex would understand.” It wasn’t helpful. “Come on, Elle, what was it you sent me?”

“Can we help?” Claire said. “Divide things up and go through them together?”

Julia shook her head. “I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it, so only I can do this.”

The room fell into silence as Julia began to read. There was nothing anyone could do but wait.