6. Rhett
6
RHETT
B oone is right. Sloane knows how to grind. She scores through page after page of inventory, checking every label and barcode number for every single item on the shelves. And she doesn’t complain once.
Dedicated. Smart. Pretty.
Too pretty.
Like my ex-wife.
But Sloane downplays it with her silent frown. I’m not so sure she smiles, and I’m not one of the guys who think a woman should have to smile, but she looks so unhappy.
What about her has Boone kept to himself? Whatever she’s been through, it weighs on her, clings to her hunched shoulders like she’s trying to hide—from it or herself, I can’t be sure.
The ill-fitting shirt accentuates her protective posture, masking what she can’t really cover up. The messy ponytail tries to distract from her beauty, too.
It doesn’t work, but I can understand her wanting to do so, can think of far too many reasons for her to put in that kind of effort.
Unless we’re all reading her wrong.
Shepard said she’s angry, but that’s covering some kind of hurt. She won’t be sharing why with us anytime soon.
Not with the looks she gives me when she notices me noticing her. It’s the mother look. The assessing and weighing judgment look.
Sloane’s asking herself if I’m going to cause her any trouble.
I might, but it won’t be anything I do on purpose. Or with the purpose of getting in her way.
It’s obvious now why Boone called us in. If we do find something, she’ll sink her teeth into it and not let go. She’s already got too solid of a grip on it.
I peer over her shoulder as she nears the bottom of her first page and catch the scent of honeysuckle. It takes restraint not to close my eyes and lean in for a better whiff. There’s something so tempting about her aroma.
Her shoulders stiffen, but she doesn’t turn to engage with me. Sloane waits for me to retreat before she shoots me a glare and continues on with her investigation.
We go around like this for another hour, most of which I struggle not to watch her, and I slip in to check over two more completed pages before she climbs down the ladder and looks at me with this gleam in her eyes to tell me that she found something.
The serial numbers aren’t the only thing that’s wrong. The weight is off by more than a couple of pounds, too. How did no one catch that before? Sloane certainly would have. She did. And she’s not just covering for her own lack of attention.
I grab a forklift and bring the crate down.
When I lift the first layer of hand radios and satellite phone kits for overseas deployments, we find six precision barrels nestled between the boxes. They’re not weapons, directly, but they’re pointing toward more than just a little mismanaged inventory.
This points to a serious operation.
And then, Sloane smiles at me when I compliment her on her find. It’s a sucker punch right to my gut. Air almost puffs out of me from the blow.
She pulls her lip between her teeth, pink creeping into her cheeks, and I want to kiss her. It’s not a temptation that hits me often. And not in a long while since my wife left me.
Her slow blinks have me turning back to the work. This isn’t enough of a win for her.
I can’t help but watch her for another minute before I grab my own inventory list, checking over the marks I’ve made—the small weight differences, the mislabeled supplies, the double barcodes. It seems like more than Sloane would allow. So, who’s being sloppy, and why?
Are they simply being sloppy?
Sloane mentioned a coworker who’s not in today, someone we will look into after hours—if Shepard or Cole aren’t already digging into his life. Is this his lack of care, or has he been compromised?
I tap the pages and look around at the potential this place holds specifically. Every military base has its weaknesses. Every building has its exploit points, its personnel, blind spots, and routines to maneuver around.
The variables create some unwelcome scenarios, like a network that wouldn’t hesitate to plug a squeaky wheel. I wipe a hand down my chin and hope that it’s just sloppy work, but my instincts are telling me otherwise.
Sloane’s are, too.
She appears again, hovering as I check through the last couple of notes I’ve made that coincide with Sloane’s. When I look up at her, she holds her clipboard out to me.
“I finished another page.”
I take the clipboard as she presents it to me. This time, I smile at her, and I see her own reflecting back in her eyes more than on her mouth.
I bask in it for a few too many seconds. Her list has more mismarked inventory, and that instinct rings again of something being at play here.
Cole appears opposite the open crate of comms. He leans over them, brow twitching at the uncovered precision barrels. Assessing. Approving. He aims it at Sloane, knowing full well who found this. She’s the linchpin in uncovering this.
Cole nods and crosses his arms over his chest. “I found scopes inside a delayed cargo labeled Office Chairs .”
I share a look with Cole. He’s stone-faced, but the worry is there. As much as Boone didn’t want anything to come of this, it’s more serious than we anticipated. The call from SECNAV should have been a tip-off, but what does he know and isn’t sharing with us?
Why get involved at all? Is there a pattern?
I’ll dig into the reasons when I get back to the computers.
Sloane must be reading our faces—she’s far more adept at it than she should be at her age—because her frown has transformed into something darker.
Sloane shakes her head, rubbing her temples in agitation. “We process two to three hundred delivered items a day. How much stuff like this has gotten through? And how have I not noticed?”
She looks sick to her stomach. Guilty for not noticing it sooner. But she is the one who found it.
I have the uncharacteristic urge to physically reach out and soothe her. Not that she’d be receptive to it. Sloane seems like a very hands-off kind of woman.
Again, the potential of what’s happened to her to make her this way spins in my mind. My protective instincts flare.
But it’s Cole who reassures her. “We’ll figure it out.”
Sloane bristles, like she doesn’t believe she’ll be included in that process. It’s clear in the narrowing of her eyes and the pulse in her jaw. We’re still intruders on her territory.
Does she know we’re not here to merely audit the deliveries? She has to. Sloane is too smart not to. Passing off the three of us as an audit team is a bit far-fetched.
As much as I don’t want to perpetuate the lie, is she safer not knowing our real purpose in being here?
Cole shakes his head at me.
Right. It’s not my call. Not that I wouldn’t gain forgiveness after the fact if I spilled the secret to her, but I stuff that desire down and wait.
Shepard appears in the entrance to the office, waving Cole back to where he came from. “Hey. I found something.”