Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
“Hey, earth to Seth. You hear me?”
Seth jerked his head toward the sound of Kane’s voice. “Yeah, I heard you.”
Kane snorted. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“Doubt all you want. I’m working here. Bother somebody else.”
“Work away, stud.”
Seth ignored the comment. It was mid-afternoon and they were at the range. As much as he’d wanted to stay in bed with Callie, he had a job to do. They’d slept for a couple hours, partly to make up for the lack of sleep the night before and partly because they were spent after the morning’s activities.
Not that he could complain. Sex with Callie was a revelation. She was at turns shy and bold, and both those iterations turned him on and made him crazy for her.
He’d wakened her with a hand on her tit and his dick hard between her legs. She’d purred and turned in his arms before reaching between them to guide him inside her. They’d both gasped at the rightness of it as he slid home. It’d started slow and sweet and ended hot and dirty with her pinned beneath him, legs in the air, taking all of him as he rode her hard and fast.
She was vocal when she came, telling him to keep fucking her just like that in that sweet voice of hers. That had been all it took for him to bust a nut inside her, gasping and groaning like he’d just rucked through a jungle in full gear. His heart had been hammering like a drum as he’d claimed her mouth for a hot kiss.
When their breathing had slowed and Luna came in to paw at the side of the bed for somebody to let her out, they’d gotten up and dressed.
Now they were here. Callie and Luna were with Daphne in the front reception area, and Seth was inside the SCIF waiting for the rest of the team to join him. They had a couple of part-time hires who were working as range officers for the shooters, and the counters with weapons and ammo would be watched by Daphne. She could handle most things, but if someone came in looking to buy a gun, she’d have to call one of them to help.
Daph was great, but she didn’t know shit about guns. They didn’t scare her like they did some people, which was good.
Seth tapped the keys on his computer, checking Callie’s inputs that he’d isolated from the coding done by her team. He felt a little weird after everything that had happened between them, but it was the job. The cables that Chance had deployed in her lab were toast. No signal from either of them, which wasn’t surprising. The entire lab had probably been gutted so someone could deal with the smoke damage.
But he had everything that had been done in there over the last couple of weeks. That’s what he was analyzing.
“Damn,” he said, staring at the lines of code.
“What?” Ghost asked, his tone sharp as he walked into the SCIF.
Seth glanced up at the boss. “There’s a lot of complicated code here. I can’t understand everything because I’m not a programmer, not like this. My skills are hacker based. I can write scripts and perform deep dives for information, but I can’t parse this out. And I can’t upload it to an AI client for analysis for obvious reasons.”
“Obviously,” Ghost said. He popped his fists on his hips and looked like a man who’d give up everything he owned if he could be anywhere but where he was. “Seems to me we’ve got the person who can read it sitting about twenty feet away in this very building.”
Seth frowned. “You want to ask her what she’s written here?”
The other guys were shifting in their seats. Nobody said anything.
Ghost huffed a breath and threw himself in his chair. “You know, I’m about sick of the restrictions we’re operating under. Every fucking move has to be analyzed by the president’s staff six ways to Sunday. We’ve got the programmer in another room, and we’re playing with our dicks in here, trying to figure out what the fuck’s happening at GRL. Let’s just ask her.”
“Uh, sir…” Blaze began, reverting to ingrained military protocol when dealing with a superior officer. Especially a pissed-off one.
Ghost fixed them all with a look. “We’re HOT operators, boys. When John Mendez was declared a traitor to the unit he’d built, when he was on the run for his life and his reputation while some Pentagon general who knew squat about the Hostile Operations Team was sent to stand us down and dismantle us, I didn’t take it lying down. If I had, who the fuck knows what would’ve happened? I ran ops from the basement of a residential house, and I made decisions that could have gotten everyone involved stripped of our ranks and thrown in a hole somewhere. But we got our commander back and we stopped a traitor. Now the six of us are stranded in Alabama while we get drip fed information from Washington, and we’ve got at least two women who already know we’re more than we seem. What’s one more?”
“When you put it that way,” Ethan said.
“She doesn’t know what Athena is really for,” Seth said. “And we’re talking about telling her a whole level of things that neither Rory or Emma know.”
Ghost shrugged. “Yeah, well maybe she should understand what she’s working on. Then she’ll know what the stakes are. Not only that, but we’re already watching her closely. If she is on the wrong side, we’ll find that out, too. And we’ll be able to stop her from doing more damage if she is. Might just speed up the process of protecting Athena and bringing this mission to a close.”
Seth could only stare, his mind racing with possibilities. He couldn’t believe Ghost wanted to bring Callie in. He tried to think of all the ways it might impact her. It was dangerous to involve her. Not to Ghost Ops, because he knew she wasn’t a traitor, but to her. The more she knew about Athena, the more vulnerable she was while somebody still wanted information from her.
Ghost waved a hand. “We’ve got other things to talk about. We can come back to this. Any further information on our Russians and who they worked for?”
Seth shook his head. “Smirnov and Fedorov are former Russian intelligence operatives, but it’s possible that’s a lie and they’re still active. I can’t find that either man knew Callie in Poland or had any contact with her here.”
And for that he was grateful.
“We could ask her. Show her photos,” Chance said, clearly jumping on the bandwagon of involving Callie.
And why not? From a purely rational perspective, it wasn’t a bad idea. Seth wasn’t sure how she’d react at hearing that he knew what her secret government work really was, but one thing she seemed to understand was not talking about sensitive information to people who weren’t cleared for it. Involving her could benefit their mission.
But the danger… He didn’t like anything that put her in harm’s way.
“I’ve got info on the Dashevsky Group,” Ghost said, clicking his mouse and bringing up a file to the overhead screen. “They seem legit, but there’ve been rumors about Viktor Dashevsky, the group’s founder. They’ve only started working in the humanitarian space within the past five years. Viktor is a Russian oligarch whose money comes from gas and oil, but he donates to humanitarian causes and funded the group that bears his name five years ago when he wanted to field teams of aid workers to disaster zones. On the surface, it’s legit. But the rumors are that Viktor is power hungry, that he’d like to challenge Putin and take his place as the head of the Russian state. He doesn’t because nobody survives that kind of open rebellion, but some say that’s his ultimate goal. On the other hand, Putin is his kid’s godfather, so there’s that. Could just be propaganda from people who want to come between Putin and his pals.”
Ghost eyed them. “The president’s team can be cooperative when it suits their agenda. Also, while we’re at it, I’ve been told there was a phone found on Volkov’s body after all. It’s the same number Callie’s been getting texts from.”
“Aw shit,” Kane said. “Somebody’s spoofed the number.”
“That’s right,” Ghost replied. “They killed him and left his phone, but spoofed the number so she’d think it was him.”
“Means they know what they’re doing,” Seth said, a knot forming in his gut. He already knew Callie was in danger, but the more they knew about the depth of the operation, the more complicated everything got. Not to mention the emotional involvement. She tangled him up inside, made him question everything from a different perspective.
And this was why you didn’t cross that line and start fucking the protectee. Because it skewed your judgment.
Yet he didn’t regret it.
“Right.” Ghost slapped two hands on the table. “So, we bringing her in here and getting her to look at that code or what?”