Chapter Five #4
“Morgenstern clean. Ulm clean. Driver replacement. Thursday movement. Südweg Transport is clean enough that I’ve already got the corporate registration. We lost the second property reference.”
I looked at Wolf.
“See? Worth it.”
His head turned toward me slowly. I continued because survival had never been my strongest social instinct.
“We got the security company, a vehicle move and Südweg because I stayed.”
Wolf leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“You think that makes you right?”
“I think results matter.”
“So does coming home.”
“I was never in immediate danger.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
His eyes hardened.
“That’s the fucking point.”
The vehicle went silent.
He looked at Raven. “How long dark?”
“Forty-eight seconds without usable audio. Hawk lost visual before that.”
Wolf returned his attention to me.
“Forty-eight seconds with Kade, unknown security and no clean route to you.”
“I knew where I was.”
“I didn’t.”
The answer came so fast that it stopped the next argument before I could form it.
Something about his reaction felt larger than this party. I studied him more carefully and he seemed to realize the same thing, because whatever had almost surfaced disappeared behind the mask again and his posture locked down.
“You were given a boundary,” he said calmly. “You crossed it because you decided your judgment mattered more than the plan.”
“My judgment is why we have the lead.”
“Your judgment is why I had to enter a property we spent three days trying not to touch.”
“Oh, poor you. Had to walk fifty feet through a hedge.”
Raven shut his eyes.
Wolf sat back very slowly.
“Keep talking.”
I recognized the threat in it and kept going anyway.
“You told me I had one job you couldn’t do. I did it. Luca talked, Kade talked and nobody made me. You’re angry because I didn’t do it exactly the way you wanted.”
“I’m angry because you disappeared.”
“For forty-eight seconds.”
“Stop saying that like it helps.”
“It does help. It’s forty-eight seconds, not a hostage crisis.”
Wolf’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“You have no idea what forty-eight seconds can cost.”
He managed to shut me up. Raven looked toward the windshield and Wolf looked away from me first.
“Debrief at the compound.”
I folded my arms and turned toward the window as the rest of the drive lasted in silence.
By the time we pulled through the ARC gate, my anger had settled into something dense and unpleasant beneath my ribs.
The party had given us more than weeks of passive surveillance, and Wolf had still managed to make the entire operation feel like evidence I was incompetent.
Raven went straight to the operations floor.
Within minutes, the main screen filled with the useful parts of the afternoon: Morgenstern Sicherheitslogistik, Südweg Transport, the Ulm reference and Thursday movement.
Viper added vehicle plates from the service road.
Hawk returned with long-lens images from the ridge, including the clearest photograph ARC had ever obtained of Kade.
I stood beside Raven’s station with the cover-up still over my bikini and my hair beginning to tangle from the wind, listening while the team condensed everything for Wolf. Hawk slid the photograph onto the table.
Kade filled the screen.
The image caught him near the cabana, hair tied back and face turned toward the lower garden. Clear enough now that the grainy photographs in his file felt almost dishonest.
Wolf studied it for a long moment before turning to me.
“You got something.”
“Something?”
“Don’t start.”
“No, please. I’d love to hear how the first clean Kade contact you’ve had in months qualifies as something.”
Jackal had come in through the garage during the debrief. He looked between us and quietly moved his water bottle out of the line of fire.
Wolf’s voice stayed flat. “You got intelligence and compromised the plan obtaining it. Both can be true.”
“You cannot stand giving me credit.”
“This isn’t about your feelings.”
“Nothing is with you.”
The room went still.
Wolf took one heavy step away from the table.
“Upstairs.”
I laughed once without humor. “Seriously?”
“Now.”
“I’m not one of your operators.”
“You’re under my operational command and you just ignored me in the field. Upstairs.”
Watching every person in the room suddenly discover something else to look at only fed my anger and embarrassment. I reached beneath the cover-up, unclipped the transmitter from the side of my bikini and set it on Raven’s desk harder than necessary.
“Fine.”
I turned toward the stairs as Wolf followed.
His boots struck the metal steps behind me with the same deliberate rhythm I had learned to identify through walls, except now every sound seemed to count down toward the argument waiting at the top.
I crossed the loft toward my room with Wolf behind me, opened my door and turned toward him.
“If you’re planning to tell me again that I almost destroyed the operation, save it.”
Wolf stepped inside.
His eyes dropped once to the bikini visible beneath my open cover-up, then came back to my face.
He shut the door behind him.
“Take a seat, Mercer.”
I folded my arms.
“Go fuck yourself.”