Chapter 12
TWELVE
The door to Con’s office was heavier than it looked. Or maybe that was just Ash’s imagination, the secret he carried pressing down on his shoulders as he pushed into the room.
Con stood at the window, legs braced and hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the expansive yard.
Ash stepped into the room. “A word, commanding officer?”
He didn’t turn. “If this is about building a playset for any future kids on base, I already have a plan.”
Ash let out a surprised huff of laughter. “I wish it were.”
When Con swung away from the window, his shoulders were tense. “I’m listening.”
Ash closed the door and drifted to the desk. “I need to tell you something about Ellory. Her brother. He’s an undercover who went in to hunt Cipher—now he’s missing. It’s been thirteen months since she heard from him.”
Con made stillness look like strategy and gave nothing away in his expression. Not even a twitch of an eyelid.
“I know.”
All that stress, and Con answered it like he was confirming a lunch order.
He squared himself with Con. “You knew. When you ordered me to bring her in. It’s how you made the decision so quick.”
He gave a single nod of confirmation. “Yes.”
The air felt like it thinned. Ash measured his next breath carefully. Con could shut him down, refuse to say more.
“You knew about Ellory the same way you knew Sinner was in Project Lazarus. Opal too.”
Up until a couple months ago, Ash and the others had never heard about Project Lazarus. They soon learned it was a government program full of ghosts. The kind of people who’d been erased so thoroughly from databases and records that they ceased to exist in any official sense.
Not men who’d chosen to disappear the way Blackout special operatives did, walking away from their old lives with their eyes open. Lazarus ran deeper than that. These were people swallowed by a system that chewed through human beings and called the wreckage classified.
“So you knew about Ellory’s brother and still allowed her to be part of this op. You aren’t worried that her judgment might be clouded and she could go solo to get her brother back?”
Con met his gaze. “She’s The Accountant.”
Ash’s chest inflated with emotion. To him, she was so much more. She was…becoming his everything.
He kept his voice level. “I trust your call when it comes to Ellory. But I need in the loop. Whatever intelligence you’re sitting on about Lazarus, about what Ellory’s brother is doing—I need access.”
Con’s eyes sharpened.
“I’m not making a play for rank. This isn’t about me.
You’ve been going out into the field more lately.
The closer we get, the higher the risk. Shit happens, Con.
You know better than anyone. Hell, look what happened to Denver.
No one expected him to be released for medical reasons.
If something takes you out of the equation—temporarily or permanently—and the only person who knows the full picture is gone, then the team is blind. There has to be a chain.”
The silence stretched as Con studied him the way he studied everything, like he was looking for the place where a man would fracture if enough pressure was applied.
Ash didn’t flinch from it.
At last, Con gave a single nod. “You’re right. I’ll start training you.” Con reached for his phone laying on the desk and glanced at it. “Soon.”
Ash exhaled through his nose. A renewed sense of purpose filled him. He didn’t ever want to make the calls the way he had on that task force, and he never wanted to lead like Con. But he could do more for this team.
He wanted to do more.
“Call the guys. Sophie has new intel.”
“Just the team? Anyone else?”
“Just the team.” Their gazes met for a beat, then Ash strode out.
When they filtered into the war room, they all felt the sword about to drop. After everyone was seated, Sophie moved to the head of the room.
Without preamble, she said, “I’ve cracked a code that Ellory pulled from the financials of one of Cipher’s shell corporations. I’ve been running the decrypted output through every filter we have and I finally got a clean readout.”
The room was silent as a jumble of letters and other characters appeared on the big screen. Judging by the team’s reaction, the strings didn’t make sense to any of them.
Sophie scrolled. Numbers replaced the code.
Ash pushed out a breath. “Some of them look like addresses.”
Sophie nodded. “I’ve run them through the databases as addresses.
Some you can pull a physical location from.
Problem is, each number could be tied to over a million possible locations.
For instance, there’s a 301 in almost every city and town in the country.
While a possibility that these are addresses, not all are in standard format of street numbers.
” She used a pointer under one longer string.
“Some are portions of a bigger number—I believe they’re coordinates. ”
The room seemed to hold its breath.
She talked faster as her excitement took hold. “After more research, I was able to create coordinates from these.” She pointed again.
The room absorbed that for a single beat.
Ash went still as his instincts prickled. “They’re definitely coordinates.”
“If I’m right, the pins drop on two single-family houses. One of them is near Washington, DC.” Her voice didn’t change register, but the words sent a disturbance through the room, a ripple they all felt.
“Alpha team.” Con’s tone came out flat.
Sophie looked at him. “There’s another one.” A map appeared on the big screen. “Utah.”
Ash felt this one. “I heard that Sierra team’s in Utah right now.”
He’d recruited every man. He’d read their files until he knew their histories better than they probably wanted. He’d given the final word. He’d put them in the field.
His jaw set.
Every day, he carried the knowledge he was responsible for sending good men into danger. But this time it struck harder.
His jaw set.
“Get me Sierra’s CO on the line.”
Dante was already reaching for the secure phone.
The room shifted, sparked like an engine turning over. These men were his brothers. The only family he had, and the only one he wanted.
And Ellory. God help him, she was his too.
* * * * *
The computer lab was quiet at this hour.
Ellory was used to working late and under whatever conditions presented themselves.
Right now, those conditions involved one cold cup of coffee, three open data windows and a case of tunnel vision that always set in when she was chasing something just out of reach.
She didn’t hear the door. Didn’t hear Angelo enter—she felt him.
His voice carried through the space that hummed with equipment, low and deep. “It’s me.”
The sound of his voice unknotted every muscle in her body in one second flat.
She turned in her seat to find him in the doorway, watching her with that intensity that made her stomach flutter and her senses go haywire.
He pulled out a chair from the neighboring station. He sat—close.
Then he braced his elbows on his knees and looked at her directly.
What she saw in his eyes made her close the data window.
“I talked to Con. About your brother.”
The cold rushed in so fast she felt it in her fingertips. She’d known this was coming—but she’d been dreading it.
Her throat tightened.
“Okay.” The word sounded steadier than she felt.
“I told him everything you shared with me. About your brother going undercover. The thirteen months of silence.”
She blanched.
He didn’t look away from her pain. He stared it in the eye and made her realize it was okay, not because it really was…but because she could lean on him.
He drew a breath. “I needed him to have the full picture.”
She nodded. She didn’t fault him. She even respected it—he’d done exactly what the chain of command required.
But the fear that was coiled, just waiting to strike, and it felt like a cold fist closed around her sternum.
If she was pulled from the op, she lost her only real tie to her brother.
She lost the team. She lost Opal and the other ladies she was beginning to feel were the first friends she’d had in a long time.
She lost Angelo.
The thought of not seeing him again was jagged, a pain that told her exactly how far gone her heart already was.
“Con already knew.”
Her whisper was a hot rasp. “What?”
“He already knew.” He pitched his voice into a tone that soothed her. “About your brother. He knew when he ordered me to bring you to base.”
The relief hit her so hard her eyes stung. She pressed her lips together and looked at the ceiling for a moment, blinking back her emotion. “That must mean…”
“He didn’t say it to me, but I think he knew we needed your skills to find Cipher…and that at the same time, we might find something on your brother.”
Even though she felt miles from finding Archer, a breath, held for too long, trickled out. Her hand found the edge of the desk and she gripped it.
He watched her work through it. He didn’t rush her or fill the space with reassurances or false hope. Only let her know they were here for her.
He was here for her.
“Thank god.” Her whisper rasped with emotion.
“There’s something else.” He shifted slightly. “I asked Con to bring me in on the full intelligence. Everything he knows—the deep-level stuff, the things he carries alone and shares with no one.”
She searched his face for a sign of how he felt to be carrying more responsibility on the team, something he had walked away from after Melina.
“The team needs backup in the chain of command. If something happens to Con—even temporarily—and the only person who knew the full picture is gone, everyone’s blind.”
“And you volunteered for that?”
“Seemed like the right call.”
Angelo wasn’t just stepping up. He was stepping back into the middle of something that had nearly broken him—fighting against every instinct the years of grief had built.
“Angelo.” Her tone was soft.
The corner of his lips pressed in. “Don’t make it a thing.”
“I’m not making it a thing. I’m just—” She stopped. Tried again. “That says something about your honor, Angelo.”
He held her gaze for a moment and then his lips moved again—not quite a smile but close. “You hungry?”
She almost laughed. “That’s how you end that conversation?”
“We work hard, we play hard. And we eat.”
“I’m not really hungry.”
He stood and pulled her up from the chair in one easy motion. Suddenly, she was standing close enough to feel the warmth coming off him. He gazed down at her.
Her stomach was fluttery…and so was her heart.
She was falling in love with him.
“Come on. I have an idea for tonight.”
“What kind of idea?” She could barely catch her breath as the realization struck.
The flash of heat in his expression went straight to her knees. “Since you’re gun adjacent…” The almost-grin widened. “There’s a knife-throwing range in the basement.”
She stared at him. “You want to teach me to throw knives?”
He brought her up against him, flush to his body so she felt every…hard…inch. His voice dropping enough to make her feel the words to her core.
“You made me fall for you. The least you can do is learn how to protect yourself when I’m not around.”
Her breath caught, and her knees went weak at his words.
Sagging against him, she let them sink in. He had fallen for her too.
Her heart squeezed, and she knew she’d never forget this moment—the dim lab, the quiet, the feeling that the ground was shifting beneath her feet. “Okay,” she managed.
His mouth curved up. “Okay.”
He kept hold of her hand as they left the room.
The basement range smelled like cold concrete and metal. A long table ran along one wall, and Angelo laid out a neat row of balanced throwing knives without ceremony, like this was simply a thing people did on a Tuesday night. Maybe for him it was.
Targets stood at the far end. Painted rings, worn in the center from consistent use.
“Here.” He positioned her in front of the throwing line, clasping her shoulders from behind. “Weight forward. Not a lot. Just shift your center.”
She shifted. He slipped his hand to her hip to correct the angle and she forgot what weight forward meant when all she wanted to do was rub against him.
“Relax your grip.” His mouth was close to her ear, his chest solid at her back. “You’re strangling it.”
She wanted to be clenching her hand around something other than the hilt of a knife.
“I don’t know how loose is right.” She nuzzled his cheek that was close to hers, and he let out a groan.
“You’ll feel it.” His thumb moved along the inside of her wrist. “There. Less than that.”
She adjusted her stance. He made a low sound of approval that did nothing for her concentration and everything for her heart rate.
Her first throw went wide and skittered across the floor. She wasn’t surprised.
“Too much wrist.” He stepped around to face her and demonstrated—a clean, unhurried extension of his forearm that looked effortless and was probably infuriating to anyone trying to learn. “The blade does the work. You’re just the delivery system.”
She lined up the second throw. The blade bounced off the outer ring and though it was a miss too, at least her aim improved.
“Better. Again.”
She threw again and again. After he collected all the knives and spread them out on the table, he swaggered back, steps rolling in a way that had her thighs clenching.
She was reaching for the next blade when he stepped in, turned her face up to his and kissed her. A hard crush of his lips, the kind of kiss that took its time and didn’t apologize for it.
When he pulled back, she was trembling again.
“You did that on purpose,” she breathed.
His expression was perfectly neutral. “Did what?”
“You kissed me right before my throw so I lost my focus.”
His eyes hooded. “I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you.”
“Your timing is terrible.”
“My timing…is excellent.” He leaned so close she thought he’d kiss her again. Instead, he nodded at the target. “Throw.”
She threw. Wide. She turned to stare at him and found him watching her with zero remorse and that almost-smile she was starting to think of as deadly to her senses.
“Angelo.”
“Ellory.” He raised one eyebrow, entirely unbothered and heart-stopping, standing there in the low light of a basement knife range like this was his true home.
She turned back to the target. Breathed. And threw.
The blade struck the paper, the blade singing as it buried in the wood. Though it was inches away from any of the rings, she let out a whoop of victory.
The sound he made—low and warm and proud—landed in the middle of her chest and stayed there. His arms came around her from behind, his mouth dropping to the curve of her neck.
“I knew you’d do it,” he murmured.
She leaned back into him. “I still say you kissed me to throw me off.”
“I kissed you,” he rumbled against her neck, “because you’re mine.”