Chapter 15
DOC
I was aware of all of them as they stared at me when they came into the room.
I sat in my chair in the corner, my leg crossed over my knee as I sipped on my third coffee of the evening.
I stayed up most of the night last night just watching Miss Elizabeth sleep.
I worried she’d wake up in pain. That I was too hard on her healing body last night.
No such thing happened, though.
“Well, well, well,” Wrecker said as he came up and clapped me on the shoulder. “Look who’s still sucking down caffeine this morning.”
Cap chuckled as he came into the room with Scout. “She wore you out last night?”
I flickered my gaze to our president. “You don’t get to talk about her being in such a vulnerable space.”
The room froze as Cap crooked an eyebrow. “Oh?”
I just nodded. “You stick to the sounds of your woman, and I’ll stick to the sounds of—”
Mine.
I wanted to say ‘mine’ more than anything, but the word got lodged in my throat. Cap crossed his arms over his chest, a cheeky little smirk on his face.
“Uh huh,” he said before he took his place in front of the room.
I hated that they heard us. Hated that they knew what Miss Elizabeth sounded like. I’d have to find a way to keep us quiet next time. Because there would be a next time.
I decided last night the instant I sank between those legs of hers.
The guys gathered in the room one by one, including King’s crew. I could tell that word had gotten around, because their reactions were pretty much the same. They came up and clapped me on the shoulder. Made some sort of cheeky comment that had me swallowing back a growl.
Yeah.
Way too loud.
Maybe she’d like a gag.
Or a nice choke.
I’d have to speak with her about it later.
“All right, everyone,” Cap said as he raised his hand, commanding our attention while King stood at his side, “time to get this over with. It’s time for us to solidify a plan for our efforts going forward. King?”
Anna’s brother nodded. “My crew and I still believe that doubling down on our informative efforts is the best way to go. My crew and I have drones at our disposal. Maverick is our drone expert. Say hi, Maverick.”
“Yep,” the burly man in the corner said.
King motioned with his hand. “That’s Mav. My crew and I think that if information gathering is what we’re gunning for, then we need to use everything we’ve got at our disposal. I don’t think it would be an issue to take some of our drones and fly them over the state park.”
“That’s… actually not a bad idea,” Ranger said as he pointed to King and stepped out of the mire of men in the room.
“I could work with Mav to either encrypt its broadcasting signal, or I could outfit them with more than enough storage to take footage that we could scour through after the drones get back.”
Cap tilted his head. “I’d prefer a live stream. If someone catches the drones, at least we’d still have some sort of footage to go through.”
Mave just nodded. “We can make that happen.”
“Good,” King said as he pointed at his guy. “You work with Ranger on getting that up and running. How long do you think it’ll take?”
Mave shrugged. “Couple days? Just gotta configure some things. Map out a flight path.”
Ranger grinned. “I could have my encryption software up and running before nightfall.”
“We could use the map Marla drew us to help things along,” Ghost said as he stepped out of the corner, yanking his mask back into place.
Wrecker pointed at him. “She’s got a couple of landmarks on there that I’d love to know the location of, so I definitely second handing over Marla’s map.”
Cap nodded. “We’ll make sure Ranger and Maverick get that, just so Mav’s got some sort of starting point with creating his flight plan.”
“I have a theory on the buildings that are burning down,” I said as I raised my hand into the air.
All eyes were on me as Cap nodded. “Speak, Doc.”
I shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose.
“I think the burnings are two-fold. I think they’re getting rid of some of the older structures they’ve operated out of.
The buildings that were being burned? They were rickety to begin with according to the police and fire departments who responded to things. ”
“How do you know that?” Wrecker asked. “You’ve been here this entire time.”
I blinked. “Doesn’t take much to hack into files, according to Ranger.”
Ranger shrugged. “I’ve been getting him files to keep him updated. So what?”
The guys just kind of shrugged it off in a, ‘I should have thought about that’, sort of motion, before I cleared my throat.
“I’ve been thinking about the discrepancy between the two buildings that you and Wrecker found yourselves in, Cap.
One of them being very technologically efficient, and the other one, not so much.
It almost seems weird for a ring like this that’s clearly more ingrained than we would like, to have buildings that aren’t outfitted with the tech they’d need to communicate back and forth. ”
“So what are you thinking?” Brutus asked from his dark corner.
“I think,” I said before I heaved a heavy sigh, “they’re burning down to rebuild.
Taking the older buildings that they can sacrifice, torching them to draw just enough attention away from where they want to establish, and essentially creating a scenario that buys them enough time to do what they need to do while everyone else is distracted. ”
“And you’re sure that’s what they’re doing?” King asked.
I shrugged. “It’s what I would do.”
King and Cap looked at one another before Scout spoke up. “I’m with Doc. It makes sense. You burn something down, you take a twofold problem and cure it with one action. They cover up their steps and they get the distraction they need to set up elsewhere.”
“Which is why I believe we should double down on the drones,” Maverick said.
King drew in a deep breath through his nose. “You know what I think?”
“Nope, but you can tell us,” Cap said as he turned toward the man.
King flashed him a smirk before he turned to face us.
“If they’re setting up somewhere else and they’re using the fires as a distraction, then that means they’re most likely rushing.
Working through the night. Walking to and from.
It’ll be easy to spot those patterns with some drones.
But I think when we find the place they’ve built up, or even other places they’ve got out there in the state park, we should use their rushing around to our advantage. ”
One of his guys, a guy they simply called Croc, chuckled raspily. “I like where your head is.”
I blinked. “Care to clarify for the rest of us?”
King turned his attention to me. “If they’re rushing, then they’re most likely cutting corners. Think about when you rush to do things.”
“I never rush to do things.”
King rolled his eyes. “Then use that big ass brain of yours and imagine.”
I blinked. “All right, I’m with you.”
“If you rushed around trying to get something done in a short amount of time, would you be focused on your other surroundings? What you hear? What you see? If someone opened a door, would you even know who came through it before you knew they were there?”
I felt a grin tug at my cheeks. “Oh, I see where you’re going with it.”
“All right, that’s great,” Ghost said, “now spit it out.”
King chuckled. “We’ve got a drone guy. You’ve got a tech guy. Why don’t we drop surveillance equipment onto this new place of theirs while they’re scrambling to use as much distraction time as they can?”
The room fell eerily silent before Brutus’s voice boomed. “We could drop microphones, too.”
Ranger nodded. “Long range, to pick up audio whenever they’re in the building.”
“I could put some drones in the trees, so that we’ve always got a source of transmission,” Maverick said as he stepped forward. “That way, the only reason we’d have to fly them and risk being seen is to change out batteries.”
“Could we port them with some sort of solar power?” Ranger asked.
“I could help with that,” King said. “Tinkering is sort of my deal.”
Cap nodded as he crossed his arms over his chest. “How does everyone feel about that plan? Using the drones to search for things in the state park with the idea going forward that we plant as much surveillance shit as we can?”
Hands shot into the air so quickly that I was almost embarrassed to be one of the last ones to raise my own.
Cap and King’s heads bobbed as they counted the hands, then looked at one another. King nodded, then he whistled through his lips, and his men fell in line behind him as they left our little church area.
Which left only us.
“All right,” Cap said as he motioned for us to squeeze closer. “Bring it in.”
I stood from my chair and approached our president as we all gathered around him.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
Wrecker cleared his throat, his face set into stone. My stomach bottomed out into my toes. What could be so important that we couldn’t clue in King and his crew?
Wrecker turned to me with that shit-eating grin of his. “So. How them jets treat you last night, Doc?”
I groaned as I rolled my eyes while the guys just fell apart in laughter. They clapped me on the back as I pushed through the crowd, heading back up the stairs.
“Assholes! All of you! I thought something was wrong!” I called down to them.
Their laughter erupted into roars.
“Fuckheads,” I muttered.
Though I felt a soft smile tug at my cheeks anyway.
It didn’t shock me when I got to the top of the steps and saw the girls waiting for all of us.
Ariel stood there with her arm linked with her sister.
Amanda’s eyes were locked over my shoulder, watching the door with an intensity that balanced Wrecker out well.
I'd been around enough trauma to know what that watchfulness cost. She was scanning.
The way Wrecker told me she'd been doing since the elevator.
Since the man she couldn't stop seeing in her head, the one Wrecker had taken to calling the Watcher, because they still didn't have a real name for him.
Still couldn't find a face in any of the footage Ranger had pulled.
Jasmine shuffled on her feet, flashing me a kind-enough smile, though I knew she was anxious to get her hands on Ghost. And then there was Marla.
All smiles like she was for a while now.
I was proud of all of the work she did to help herself recuperate.
I didn’t see Miss Elizabeth, though.
“Excuse me, ladies,” I said as I scooted through them.
“She’s upstairs in her room,” Jasmine said.
“Wanted to take a shower,” Amanda said.
“Cap!” Ariel squealed.
I whipped around and watched as my men were tackled one by one. There were hugs and kisses to go around, with Brutus scooting by everyone just to get away from the assaults. He grumbled to himself and rolled his eyes whenever he got caught behind a kissing couple.
“Hey, Bee!” Anna chimed in as she stepped out from around the corner with a glass of pickle juice she was sipping on. “How was the meeting?”
Brutus took one look at her and pivoted so quickly on his feet that I almost laughed.
“Hey! Bee!” Anna chirped as she followed after him, sipping on the green liquid. “Where you going!? Tell me all about the meeting! Was my brother a dick!?”
I crooked an eyebrow as I watched that five-foot-nothing woman trail after the behemoth that was Brutus. But all too soon, I heard the softest, faintest sound of water running above our heads.
I pulled away from the crowd and made my way to Miss Elizabeth’s room.
I wasn’t sure what I expected when I slipped into her room. I wasn’t even sure what I expected when I approached the bathroom door. What I didn’t expect, however, was to hear the sounds of crying.
Sniffling.
Whimpering.
Something was wrong.
“Miss Elizabeth,” I said as I knocked on the bathroom door softly. I ignored the way it eased open, like she couldn’t be bothered to latch the door. “Can I come in?”
I did my best to wait for permission before I stormed into the bathroom to figure out what in the hell had made her cry.
Because if there was something I could do about it, I would.