EIGHTEEN #2
A grunt sounded from the opposite end of the tunnel, and they all turned to see Rorke hauling the latest shipment inside. Fresh snow coated his shoulders and the brim of the ball cap he wore, in direct opposition to the painting that mimicked a summer’s day.
Cannon took a step forward, raising an arm to point at the enormous box. “What the hell is that?”
Rorke shrugged. “Dunno, but it’s heavy.”
“Jolie? Stina? What have you done now?”
The ladies pushed to the head of the group to stare at the package. “We didn’t order anything that big.” Jolie turned to Stina. “Did we?”
“Definitely not.”
Cannon strode to the box, knife already whipped out of his pocket to slice the tape. Before he even opened it, he glanced at the label. “Who,” he rumbled slowly, staring down at the box, “ordered a fucking treadmill?”
The room went quiet. Rome grinned outright. Rorke suddenly found a fascinating spot to study on the ceiling, his lips curving upward.
Reid stepped forward and cleared his throat. “I did.”
Cannon’s head whipped up. “You?”
“For Ryss.” He looked at her, faint color rising up his neck. “It’s got scenic running trails, mountains, all of it playing on the screen while you work out. I figured it will give you something to stare at besides a concrete wall.”
Her eyes flew wide, and her chest flooded with warmth at his gift that showed her that he expected her to be here to use it, that their future stretched ahead of them.
“Reid! Really?” She grabbed his hand.
He squeezed it, grinning down at her, uncaring that all his fellow SEALs were grinning and elbowing each other at their teammate being so smitten.
Cannon issued a grating noise and swiped a hand down his face. “First the cutesy little desk. Then a painting of a fake window and curtains. Now this.” He gestured at the box as if it offended him. “Are we running a ghost ops base or a Pinterest board?”
He turned, waving a dismissive hand even as Caryssa caught the small twitch of his lips before he walked away.
She was still smiling over it an hour later, alone in the war room reviewing the case, when her phone lit up with Doyle’s name.
She brought the phone to her ear. “Lane.”
“Good to hear your voice. Heard you’re on the mend.”
“I am. What do you have for me?”
Doyle paused for a breath and then dove straight in. “East Coast warehouse came back clean.”
She blinked into space. “What do you mean clean?”
“It’s empty. Not a paperclip to be found. Whoever’s running this operation scrubbed it the second Bill went down.”
She logged that intel to add to her board later. “And the men who shot at us at the warehouse?”
“O traced them to hired muscle. Several dead. They captured one, but he’s not talking. The FBI’s leaning on him hard for names.”
She pressed two fingers to her temple. “So we’ve got nothing.” Frustration was a wave crashing through her.
“We’ve got confirmation that the work you’ve done got close enough that somebody’s willing to burn evidence and put a bullet in a federal analyst.” He let that sink in before going on. “That’s not nothing, Lane.”
She blew out a breath, not really accepting the small nod to her work as important enough.
“That sheds light on how big this actually is. You got those laptops, and from them, O mapped how the theft worked, how the goods were moved. That’s a win for you and O both.
We just don’t have the name at the top yet.
We don’t know how many teams are involved either.
We already suspected more supplies were skimmed off other bases, things nobody’s ever tracked. ”
She was eager to get to work, but exhaustion and frustration tangled in her chest. “I hate this. I’m used to running the intel, not waiting on scraps of it.”
“I know.” He paused. “Cannon and I had a hell of a talk. You and Sierra need to be working this together, not in parallel.”
“He’s right,” came another voice into the room.
She jerked her gaze to the doorway. Cannon stood in her doorway, leaving her absolutely no question about who he’d come looking for.
“I’ll take it from here, Doyle,” he said.
Her boss chuckled. Actually chuckled.
She was still stunned by that development when the line went dead. Cannon stepped into the room.
“Got a minute?”
She stood to face him. “Of course.”
For a moment, neither spoke. Then her brain kicked in.
“Doyle reminded me about the possibility more supplies were skimmed from other Blackout teams. Where can I find supply lists and shipping receipts to see if Sierra’s missing supplies?”
Cannon didn’t answer right away. He folded his arms, bringing one fist to his lips in the kind of pause that told her what came next wasn’t going to be simple.
“It’s not just supplies,” he said finally. “There’s a leak, Lane. In the Blackout secure network. I don’t suppose Rivers told you the order to move the girls came through that line? A fake call got Rivers shot and Jolie and Stina kidnapped.”
Shocked, she shook her head. She’d been so absorbed by the possibility that she could have really lost him that she never questioned how it all went down.
He nodded in response to her silence. “O and Dante from the Charlie team built a secret network. We’ve been moving intel between us through this new channel because whoever’s behind the leak doesn’t only know what Echo had in its armory.
They know how Blackout operates. It could be a partner agency. ”
Like the FBI.
“It could be one of our own ranks.”
She ingested all this, aware most of all that Cannon had handed her Blackout secrets, trusting her not to run to Doyle with it.
“There’s still so much work to be done,” she said.
“You’re stuck here under our protection for a while. You’ve got time to work through it.”
“I’m frustrated that I don’t have that name yet.
But we do know Bill was no longer useful to whoever was in charge.
Someone killed him to cover their tracks.
Someone burned the Portland warehouse to destroy evidence and emptied the East Coast warehouse before the team got there.
They used military personnel lookalikes to cover their moves. ”
As she recapped the things they knew about the case, it only opened up a whole world of what was left to uncover. What she could uncover.
Excitement to get started ran through her.
As if he saw it on her face, he nodded again. “Exactly. We need you here. Whatever pace you can manage while you’re healing is good. But faster’s better.”
The full weight of everything that was still unresolved settled in her.