Chapter 2 – Evelyn
EVELYN
“Ican walk, you know.”
Sebastian’s arms tightened around me as he carried me up the manor pathway. “I know you can. But why would you want to when you have all of us?” he teased, but his eyes were dark. I had scared him more than he wanted to admit.
I relaxed against his chest, feeling guilty I had caused him to worry. That was the only reason. Not that I enjoyed his arms around me. “That’s a good point.”
He grinned, looking more like his normal cheery self. “You’ll find I’m full of good points.”
“And modest too,” Alexander said dryly as he held the door open for us. “I’m going to call the doctor now.”
“No need,” I said, catching sight of Grace, Danny, and Izzy in the dining room. I patted Sebastian’s chest, indicating he should set me down. “Grace is a trained medic.”
Sebastian put me down but kept an arm around my waist as he guided me to a chair. Grace already had our medical bag out on the table. Her brow furrowed as she observed my tentative movements.
“You definitely have a concussion,” she said bluntly.
I cracked a grin, wincing when my split lip ached. “I could have told you that.”
She pressed gentle fingers along my cheek, feeling for any cracks in the bone.
I already knew it wasn’t broken. Ryan’s hit had been hard but not the hardest I’d ever received.
If I had seen it coming, I could have braced for it and made it look like he’d hit harder than he actually had, but since I hadn’t seen it coming, I was stuck with the concussion.
“Nothing’s broken,” Grace said, shining a light in my eyes as she checked my pupils. “Definitely a mild concussion, though. Danny, open an ice pack.”
Danny handed her an ice pack, and she pressed it gently to my cheek and lip. I hissed but took over holding it as she wiped away the blood from my face and neck.
“One of your boyfriends is going to have to wake you every couple of hours and ask you who the president is or something, but you’ll be fine,” Grace said, her eyes scanning my face.
I winced. “Can they ask me something else? I would rather forget who the president is, to be honest.”
She laughed but nodded. “Dealer’s choice on the question then.”
“That’s it?” Alexander asked, his arms folded across his chest. “She needs to go to the hospital and get checked out.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital. It’s just a concussion,” I protested before Grace could get prickly that he was questioning her judgment. “All they’re going to do is monitor me anyway. This isn’t my first concussion.”
“And just how many concussions have you had?” Alexander asked, staring down at me with his stern “boardroom” face that made people cower. Not me, but I had seen it happen before.
“Enough that I know what they feel like. This is just a minor one.”
“Multiple concussions can have long-term effects,” Adrian said quietly, his gray eyes boring into the side of my head.
“It’s fine. I get a full workup of scans every year. We have more important things to deal with right now.” Like what the ever-loving-fuck we were going to do now that the FIA was in town trying to take us down.
Alexander frowned but relented. I had a feeling I was going to be spending time in a hospital getting scanned in the near future, but for now, we had other problems.
“What do we know?” I directed to Izzy.
She stood at the head of the table, her ever-present tablet in her hands as she connected to the TV screen behind her. Liam appeared in the box in the corner of the screen. From the background, I could tell he was back at HQ.
“Maya is still at the convention center with Detective Patel. The feds showed up and are trying to take over the case, but Detective Patel has negotiated working together. That means whatever files we submitted to the police, the FIA has access too.”
“There’s nothing incriminating on them,” Liam jumped in. “We made sure of it before we sent them.”
“Just how we got them,” Adrian murmured.
“It’s an anonymous source that reached out to us from Citadel with the proof,” Izzy informed him primly.
Sebastian grinned at me, and I couldn’t help but grin back, even as my lip twinged. We’d had fun during the B&E the other week, getting stuck in the closet together.
“I looked up the FIA agents based on the facial recognition that came back from the cameras at the convention center,” Liam continued.
“Special Agent Mike Holden and Special Agent Dominic Hayes. I’m digging into their backgrounds now, but it’ll take me a second to hack the FIA without leaving a trace. ”
Marcus leaned over, his vetiver scent tingling my nostrils. “How good is Liam exactly?” His smoky voice had no business inciting the tingling in my lower half.
“Very,” I said back, choosing the simple answer.
Liam had been a good hacker when he came to the Archers, courtesy of Detective Patel flagging his case.
But he had been a cocky shit at nineteen.
He was still a cocky shit at twenty-three, but over the last four years, I had encouraged him to learn as much as he wanted, even paying for computer science classes at the local university so he could have a semi-normal education.
“Do we know more about who tipped the feds off?” Alexander asked Liam.
Liam shook his head. “Not that I can find. Keys sent me the memo, and I tried to trace it, but until I crack the FIA’s servers, I have no idea. Just that it originated inside the FIA.”
The FIA had thousands of agents. Finding out who had ordered the investigation into us could take weeks. Weeks we didn’t have with two FIA agents in town now.
“Eve, what happened in the room with Ryan and Julian?” Izzy asked. “If the feds come knocking, we need to have our stories straight.”
I nodded. “There was a third guy in the room. From what I can gather, he’s with an organization called Kingfisher.
That’s who Citadel’s mysterious client is.
Or was.” I shook my head, cursing silently when the room spun.
I ignored the guys’ concerned looks as I continued recounting the events of the night, starting from when Ryan had surprised me in the hallway outside the bathroom and everything the stranger said.
“We need to find out more about this stranger.” I drummed my fingers on the table as I thought. “He said he was employed by the Kingfisher organization. But maybe he runs it? I don’t know. I can’t remember his exact wording.”
“He was booked under the name Luke Jones,” Liam said, accompanied by the clacking of his fingers on the keyboard.
“What do we want to bet that’s an alias?” Sebastian snorted.
“It’s likely,” Izzy admitted. “But we’ll dig into it. What are we going to do about the feds? They’re clearly in town for the Archers, so we don’t want to give them any ammunition.”
“We’ll just have to appear as uninteresting as possible,” Alexander said. “Act like it’s business like normal. No changes to routines, just normal, boring interactions.”
He was right. The less appealing we seemed to the FIA, the better. But the Archers had operations all around the city. We would have to shut down all of them to avoid the risk of getting caught.
I rubbed my face, careful to avoid my sore cheek and lip. “The Archers will have to go to ground. We’ll have to pull back on active missions where we can and not take on anything new. Let everyone know there’s going to be heat and to be careful.”
Danny groaned but nodded. “I agree. We can’t risk keeping up active operations.
” He exchanged a long look with Izzy and Grace, then turned to me.
His gaze lingered on my swollen lip and bruised cheek, then shifted to my eyes, like he was weighing the cost of what he was about to say against the fact that I’d do it anyway.
“What?” I asked when he didn’t say anything.
Grace rolled her eyes when Danny still didn’t speak.
“He doesn’t want to tell you because you’re not going to like it.
The FIA is likely going to be focused on you from what we know of this memo.
Which means you should take several steps back while we go to ground.
We don’t need to raise the FIA’s suspicions by having you within ten miles of an Archers mission or HQ for the next few weeks at least. Or until they clear out. ”
I frowned. They were right, but the Archers were my responsibility. I didn’t want to run and hide while my team took on my responsibilities. “I’ll think about it.”
Grace nodded like she’d expected that answer. Danny opened his mouth, probably to argue with me, but shut it quickly when Grace moved her foot under the table, likely kicking him.
“We’ll initiate Ostrich Protocol.” Izzy said.
“Ostrich Protocol?” Sebastian laughed.
“Last time we let Danny name anything,” I grumbled, but it was good-natured. I hated naming things, while Danny loved it.
“Just how large is the Archers organization?” Adrian asked.
Izzy looked at me, and I shrugged. They kept saying they were all in, and I was trying to believe them. Besides, if they wanted to bury us, they would have done it already.
“We have about fifty active members at any given time,” Izzy said.
“Fifty?” Adrian’s eyes widened.
Izzy nodded. “Fifty. They’re split up into several teams: patrols, extractions, relocations, intel or computers, and messaging.”
Alexander nodded, looking impressed. “And you all lead different teams?”
When I nodded, Izzy continued. “Yes. Danny leads patrols, Eve and Grace lead extractions and relocations, Liam leads intel, and Maya leads messaging.”
“And what are you in charge of?” Sebastian asked, his tone curious.
“Izzy manages operations,” I answered for her. “Without her, we would be totally lost.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “I think you mean, without you, we would be totally lost.”
I shrugged. Izzy had taken over more and more of the operations responsibilities in the last few years as I was busy with SDS.
“What about the Ghosts?” Marcus asked. “How do they fit in? Are they going to be around to help at all?”
I shook my head. “They’re separate from the Archers.
They’re more like…I don’t actually know how to describe them.
We have a working relationship, and they call us if they run into anyone who needs our help, but we don’t usually work together.
Honestly, I’m surprised they stuck around this long. They take jobs all over the world.”
“Keys messaged me and told me they were headed out of the country,” Liam confirmed.
I nodded. “We’re on our own for this one.”
“Not entirely, my darling Evie.” Sebastian grinned. “You have us now.”
Danny groaned, but I just smiled back at Sebastian. “Together,” I said.
His eyes softened. “Together,” he repeated.
“On the subject of having us”—Alexander stood—“unless there’s anything else, Evelyn needs to go to bed.”
I wrinkled my nose. Great, a whole night of being woken up every few hours.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s pick back up in the morning. We need to gather more information on the FIA agents, who at the FIA kicked off the memo, this Luke Jones guy, and the Kingfisher organization.”
“Easy peasy, Boss Lady.” Liam grinned. “I—”
Izzy pressed a button on the tablet, and the screen went black. “Oops.”
“You know he’s going to get you back for that,” Danny said.
Izzy grinned. “He wouldn’t dare.”
I smiled while everyone at the table laughed. Liam was like Izzy’s annoying younger brother, but she had something over him that had kept him in line the last few months, and honestly, I was enjoying the peace.
“Come on.” Alexander appeared before me, holding out his hand. “Let’s get you to bed.”
I groaned but accepted his help. When the room spun and I put my hands on his chest to steady myself, he swept me into his arms. Tomorrow, I would turn back into a badass. But tonight, I was going to accept the babying.