Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Seth took Callie to the range so he could pick up cameras for her house. Ghost had texted that they’d had a new shipment and Seth wanted to get it done ASAP. He’d decided to go with door sensors and cameras, plus cameras in the main living areas. He’d pick up some window sensors too.
No use putting a state of the art system in when the cops were so far away. The most important thing was the ability to call for help and he’d make sure the system could do that. Whether or not they could zoom in and count the hairs on some dude’s chin didn’t matter as much.
Besides, he’d told her he was going to find the person who’d threatened her while pretending to be Volkov. Whether or not it was the same person who’d murdered Volkov and thrown him into the Potomac was irrelevant. Outcome was the same.
He intended to find the motherfucker and stop whatever the asshole had planned.
Find the mastermind behind Volkov and then Ghost Ops could fulfill their mission. Athena would launch on time, the bad guys wouldn’t get the technology, and the nation would be safe from nuclear attack.
Then what? Back to DC to rejoin HOT? Or keep the early retirement and do something else for a change?
But what?
He didn’t know anymore. He still leaned toward active duty, but it was too soon to think about anything permanent. Too many variables still in play.
Seth parked around the side of the building and led Callie inside through the staff areas. The guys were all there today. Kane and Blaze were on range duty, but Ethan, Chance, and Ghost were in the stock room, going through inventory. Daphne stood in the door with a clipboard and a pen.
Everyone turned when Seth arrived with Callie bringing up the rear.
“Did we get a lot of fun stuff?” he asked.
Ethan grinned. “You know it. New ammo, new guns, and new security systems. Hey, Callie. How are you today? This guy being a dickhead or is he behaving?”
Seth frowned. “Why would I be a dickhead?”
Callie laughed as she came up to stand beside him. “I’m okay, thanks. Seth is Seth. But I have no complaints,” she added.
He thought that last sentence might be an afterthought. He was going to have to ask about that later. Yeah, he’d come on a bit strong when he’d told her he was basically going to kill the assholes who’d manipulated and hurt her, but that’s what he was going to do. Why pretty it up?
“No complaints is good,” Ethan said.
“Why would she complain?” Seth asked. “I’ve done a thorough security check, put up trail cameras, mucked a stall, and listened to a teenager talk about fairies. I think I deserve a friggin’ medal here.”
Callie snorted softly. Ethan blinked. “Fairies?”
Daphne was biting her lip while Ghost looked as if he was trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. Chance was shaking his head like the rest of them were ill-informed. “Dude, it’s Fae, not fairies.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
Chance looked a bit put upon at the moment. “Rory reads all kinds of romance books. I know more than I want to, and I’m guessing a sixteen year-old is reading about Fae romance, not fairies. Wild guess, but I think I’m right.”
“You’re right,” Callie said.
“Way to back me up, Callie,” Seth grumbled.
She elbowed him in the side. What the fuck? But she wasn’t looking at him, and everybody else was wearing some variation of a smile. Even she was grinning.
Which meant she was comfortable enough with him to joke around. He liked that. Nobody ever did that kind of thing with him. Women didn’t, anyway. His guys ribbed the shit out of him, but he ribbed right back. It’s what they did.
He didn’t usually get that casual with a woman, though. Not enough time to reach that stage. The initial stage was about flirtation. The next stage was the down and dirty sex. After he’d had his fill, he moved on.
Funny thing was, he’d known Callie for all of twenty-four hours and she was already playing around like they’d been a couple for ages. Coulda knocked his ass over with a feather, but he liked it. It was something different than he was used to.
“We should get Rory and your sister together,” Chance said. “They can talk all day about that shit. Unless you read it too? In which case I guess the three of you could talk about it.”
“I read a little of those books, but not as much as Nikki.”
“What about you, Daphne?” Chance said. “You in on this Fae stuff too?”
She held up a hand. “No, I am not. But I’m thinking I need to try it.”
“What are you trying to do, Chance? Start a book club?” Seth asked.
Chance arched an eyebrow. “So long as you don’t have to read it, what do you care?”
“Guess I don’t.”
“Rory’s a bundle of hormones and she’s also dealing with her diabetes. If I can do anything to take her mind off it and let her have a good time, I’m doing it.” He shrugged. “Call me whipped if you want, but that woman owns me body and soul.”
Seth actually heard Callie and Daphne sigh. It was that loud.
“Nikki would love it,” Callie said.
“I’m in,” Daphne said. “Somebody tell me where to start and I’ll head over to the library and see if they have it.”
“I’ll text you some titles later,” Chance said. “After I ask Rory. I’ll send them to you, too, Callie. Then you can see if your sister has read them or not.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“If Rory’s up to it, we’ll have a cookout at the house and y’all can talk. Hell, guess I’d better text Emma the list too.”
Daphne cleared her throat. “You realize that a book club is usually a thing where women get together, eat snacks and drink, and talk about the book, right? It’s not typically held in conjunction with a cookout where a bunch of men are going to sit around a grill and cook—and make a colossal mess, I might add. There’s already a club that meets at the library, by the way. They mostly read mysteries and thrillers, though. But they have a potluck lunch in one of the meeting rooms and sometimes they even have guest authors. In case anyone’s interested.”
“What are you saying, Daph?” Seth asked. “You aren’t raining on Chance’s parade, are you?”
Daphne’s mouth twisted. “Not at all. But I’ve seen the dirty dishes that result from One Shot Tactical cookouts. Even if y’all promise to do them all, it’s a distraction.”
Chance waved a hand. “Fine, point taken. Drinks and snacks at our house. The men will purchase barbecue from the Gas-n-Go and eat it outside beneath the oak tree.”
“If you guys are done planning book clubs and shit,” Seth said, “I want to see what we’ve got in that shipment. Need to put together a system for Callie.”
“Wait. You didn’t tell me that,” Callie burst out. “You were supposed to give me a price first.”
“How about you give me a price.”
“Wh-what?” Her eyes were adorably confused.
Adorably?
Odd thought to have. “Tell me what you want to spend, and I’ll go from there.”
Callie darted a look at the others, who suddenly seemed absorbed in what they were doing. “I don’t know,” she said, her eyes on his again.
“Tell him no more than a thousand,” Ghost said. “And he’ll do it for half that.”
“That doesn’t sound like enough.”
“It’s enough,” Seth said. “We aren’t running wires through walls, and you don’t need sophisticated equipment. I can still customize it for you, though.”
Callie’s eyes remained big. “Okay. I can’t argue with that.”
“Not only can’t,” Seth replied. “But shouldn’t.”
He thought she wanted to argue with him, but her trembling lip firmed after a second and she nodded.
While Seth started digging through the new equipment with the guys, Daphne took Callie to her desk in the front office. He heard something about coffee and a chat as they walked away. He had a moment where he panicked about Callie mentioning what’d happened last night when he’d confessed about his daughter, but he’d told her it was private and he knew she’d honor that.
Though it was odd to think this woman he barely knew had personal information about him that none of his guys did. He hadn’t told her the full truth, though. He wouldn’t be able to avoid that if he started talking about Mia with his teammates. Then what?
“Y’all seem cozy,” Chance said when the click of Daphne’s heels had faded into the distance.
Seth stopped moving equipment to stare at his teammate with what he hoped was a cool stare. “We are not cozy. She’s a client, and I’m her protector.”
“Sad and pretty. Wasn’t that what you said?” Ethan chimed in.
“You too? Yes, I said that. And she is. Sad and pretty. Doesn’t mean I can’t be professional about this.”
“If anybody can be professional with a pretty lady, it’s you.”
“Meaning?”
Ethan and Chance exchanged a look. Ghost cut in. “Stop annoying Seth. He’s not a robot, and that cool-headed ability to ignore his client’s emotional state is an asset, not a detractor. Why do you think I sent him? The last two of my operators to get it into their thick skulls to protect a woman have ended up declaring their undying love while spouting poetry and shit.”
Chance looked offended. “I haven’t spouted one lick of poetry.”
“‘That woman owns me body and soul,’” Ghost repeated. “You think that’s not poetry to a woman’s ears? Hell, you practically had two of them melt into puddles on the floor when you said that. You’d cut off your right arm for Rory. Worse, you’d tell everyone who’d listen that you’re willing. Poetry, dude.”
Chance looked like a dog hearing a strange noise. “Huh. Didn’t think of it that way.”
“Blaze is just as bad,” Ghost added. “But Seth—I can fucking count on him not to make a mushy ass of himself with this girl.”
Seth wanted to rewind and ask if anybody really thought he was a robot when it came to emotions, but the conversation had moved way beyond that now. “Not getting mushy, boss,” he said because it seemed like the thing Ghost wanted to hear. Telling Callie about Mia wasn’t mushy. Not typical, but not mushy either.
“See? No mush, all business. That’s what I like to hear. She tell you anything else about what’s going on?”
“Only that her boss asked her to stay that night. But she often asks people to stay on a rotating basis, so it might be nothing.”
“You’d think if the boss was involved she could do the dirty work herself.”
Seth hesitated. “There’s something else though.” Three pairs of eyes looked at him with interest. “I asked her if there was anything she was doing that nobody else could. She said no. But I think she’s lying.”
“Why?”
Leave it to Ghost to cut right to the chase. “Body language. Refusing to look at me when I asked. Fidgeting before she answered me.”
“What do you think it is?” Ethan said.
“Don’t know. She says she’s only a junior programmer, that she proofs the code and searches for mistakes. But her college transcripts indicate she’s not your average graduate. Top of the class, wrote a program that saved the university millions for her senior project. I can’t imagine the lab is limiting her to proofing code if she’s got the talent to do more.”
Ghost looked thoughtful. “We really need that cable to come back online.”
“We’ve got everything that was there before we lost communication. It’ll take hours—days maybe—but I can isolate her input based on her logins. See what I can learn. I’ll set up a secure channel and login remotely. I won’t transfer any information, but I can run scripts to analyze the info.”
“Didn’t we already send the information we downloaded to Washington?” Chance asked, his gaze darting between Seth and Ghost.
“We didn’t, in fact,” Ghost said, studying a fingernail. “Yet. Network interference or something. I can’t quite recall.”
“That’s right,” Seth said. “Not safe.”
Which they all knew was bullshit. They were to the point that none of them completely trusted those in power to deal with them straight. So long as Ghost Ops did their mission and kept the Athena Project from being stolen or scuttled before it was launched, then it didn’t matter how they did it. Keeping information to themselves was the safe bet at the moment. What they were doing—downloading proprietary and top-secret information from a secure server belonging to a defense contractor—was already illegal as fuck. Didn’t need more people knowing about it.
Trust no one but each other. That was their unspoken motto.
“Make it happen,” Ghost said. “If we get caught, our asses are grass. But that’s true anyway, so why the fuck not? I’m tired of tiptoeing around politicians and wondering whose side they’re on. Besides their own.”
“Amen,” Ethan muttered.
Seth placed the things he’d selected into a One Shot Tactical shopping bag. “I’ll get started on it today. After I take Callie to see a dog.”
Chance grinned. “Man, I tried to get a dog for Rory, but she shut me down.”
“Oh, Callie doesn’t want one, but it’s happening anyway. Volkov’s death shook her up enough that she won’t refuse.”
Ghost looked troubled. “Yeah, still don’t have anything on potentials yet. The man was found with half his head blown off and nobody in Washington’s got any ideas.”
“So long as it wasn’t one of the alphabet agencies,” Seth muttered. Because that created a whole new level of fun for everyone.
“Could be,” Ghost said. “If we’re lucky it’s nothing more than an internal squabble with whoever employed him to steal information. If we aren’t lucky, then the alphabet agencies are hot on the trail of something that could impact us here.”
“Well, fuck,” Chance said. “And here I was thinking we might be ready to put an end to this mess now that we’ve got Callie and access.”
“Hardly,” Seth replied. “Too many unknowns.”
“Yeah, yeah, my parade is officially rained on,” Chance said.
“There’s one more thing,” Seth added. “Callie’s parents. Their deaths, her having to return home to take custody of her sister—that’s how she ended up at Griffin Research Labs. She said she hadn’t planned on leaving Poland until that happened. They were killed on a ski slope when they ignored signs and got caught in an avalanche. Callie made the leap this morning to wondering if their deaths were somehow deliberate.”
“Jesus,” Ghost said, shoving a hand through his dark hair.
“Yeah. I told her it was possible but not the most likely scenario.”
“I’m beginning to believe there is nothing about this mission and the people involved that’s the least bit ordinary,” Ghost replied with a grim expression.
Seth didn’t say what was in his head, but he knew the rest of them were thinking it as well by the way they looked at each other. Were they meant to succeed… Or was somebody hoping they’d fail?