Chapter 3
Loudoun County, Virginia
There must be some unwritten rule that covert ops had to be planned under cover of darkness, because they didn’t meet at the airstrip until well after sundown the next day.
Owen strode behind Dad and Navas across the tarmac to the waiting jet. Somehow, bringing up the rear felt a lot like being six years old when he’d followed Dad into work. Feeling like the afterthought, the spectator. Not the one responsible for carrying out the mission.
Took everything he had to shake that thought as they climbed the metal stairs up into the cabin of the plane.
This wasn’t a standard private jet—it had a long open center with an anchored table and walls covered in screens.
Chairs hugged the table. The chemical smell of the A/C rankled his sinuses.
Beyond the central Command area lurked a seating group and a long gangway with several doors.
Impressive.
Someone rose from a chair and turned.
A sense of rightness hit him as he recognized the guy. “Dante!” Owen squeezed past Dad and Navas to greet his Scion brother.
“Bro.” Dante gave him a shoulder hug and patted his back. “You good?”
Question of the year apparently. “Yeah.”
Dante sniffed. “Liar.”
With a shrug, Owen eyed the cabin. “You know how it is.”
“Living in our dads’ shadows?” Dante nodded with a wry grin. “Yeah, know all about it.”
Change the topic. “How’s the wedding coming?”
A slow, content smile spread across Dante’s face. “Not soon enough.”
“You do know you’re violating the Prime Directive.” The unwritten rule that Scions didn’t date each other.
“So sue me,” Dante said with a smirk.
Owen laughed. “Nah, I’m glad for y’all. Mickey’s carried a torch for you long enough. About time you shouldered that burden.” He checked for Legend but didn’t see the tall mountain of a man. “What’re you doing here?”
Dante gave him a strange look.
“Your dad’s not—” Like lightning, it struck Owen. “Aw man…” Cold chugged through his veins as he remembered Dad saying he knew someone who could handle coordinating the effort to save Navas’s daughter. “Omen.” He exhaled heavily. “This is Omen’s op.”
“See?” Dante backhanded Owen’s gut. “Knew you had more than air behind that pretty face.”
“You find me pretty?” Owen couldn’t help the comeback but focused on his frustration. “I told Pike I wasn’t interested.”
As if on cue, the cabin interior darkened beneath more shapes moving through the hatch. A half dozen men crowded the table. Including one Master Chief Pike Auberon. The man he’d told to take a hike.
“Oh man. I’m dead.”
“No, it’s O-men.” Brandishing a wry grin, Dante clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to the afterlife, bro.” With that, he headed toward the chief.
Swallowing his pride—what else could he do?—Owen hung back, letting the meet-and-greet happen without him. Avoided Pike’s gaze. Just had to lie low and pretend—
“Y’all know my son, Owen,” Dad announced, motioning to him.
Yep. Thanks, Dad.
In a blink, Pike was up in his personal space, challenge glinting in his steely eyes. “Owen Metcalfe.”
“Present and accounted for, sir.” Holding the man’s gray gaze took every ounce of feeble strength Owen could muster.
Noticed the guy stood a couple inches taller and had a similar build to his own—athletic, bordering on muscular.
But there was no doubt that this operator could kill him before Owen even knew what hit him.
“How’s that mistake working for you?” Three lines at the edge of Pike’s eyes crinkled as he studied him, unflinching. The man knew who was in control, and it sure wasn’t Owen.
But it’d be a cold day in—
“Welcome to the team, Apollo. Quick intros,” Pike said, then gave a laundry list of names—Brick with the red beard, easy enough. Luther who reminded him of an actor that played a character by the same name. Crow looked Native American or Latino, and the medic…whose name he’d already forgotten.
Unbelievable. He resented that Auberon basically owned him now. Had a preternatural ability to make people feel two inches tall.
“Heard you volunteered to go after this girl.”
Owen tried to read the former master chief. Was he impressed? Ticked? “It’s the right thing to do.”
“In other words, you thought it was better than coming on with OTG.”
Acutely aware of his dad watching the whole encounter, Owen was not going to cower. Never had been one to yield easily. “Your words…”
Eyes locked on him, Pike angled his head to the side. “Midas, your boy has a mouth on him.”
“Metcalfes call it like they see it,” Dad said without a hint of embarrassment or disappointment. “Fortunately, he also has his mom’s common sense to balance it.”
Pike’s gaze bored down into Owen. “Look forward to seeing some sense.”
Oof. Dude didn’t pull any punches—that comment implied he hadn’t yet seen any sense. The dig was intended to fray Owen’s nerves, but he had known walking into this that he’d be closely monitored to ensure he had what it took. Maybe he’d already messed up by rejecting Omen.
The speaker overhead crackled with the captain’s announcement that it was time to get underway.
“Nonactive personnel need to vacate the plane now.” Pike shook Dad’s hand and said something to him, then moved on.
Dad reached over and patted Owen’s shoulder. “Stay true.”
Owen nodded, aware of too many gazes assessing him as a cabin steward secured the door.
“Grab a seat.” Pike indicated everyone to the table.
“Fourteen hours to put a working plan in place. First things first—Tariq.” He nodded to the Middle Eastern man, who drew something from a kit.
“Apollo, Tariq is going to embed an intermittent transmitter in your neck. It’ll put off a signal only when active, which we’ll do at random intervals to reduce the likelihood of detection.
With this, you can communicate with us. You won’t be able to activate it on your own, to lessen the chance of a blow bringing it online. ”
A bug in his neck…? Impressed with the advanced tech, Owen nodded. “Shelf life?”
“About ten days.”
Nodding, he understood the implication. “So, I have ten days to get her out.”
“You have ten days to communicate with us,” Pike corrected. “If your situation needs more time, communicate that to us. We’ll work it out.”
Owen tensed as the guy aimed a device that looked like a gun at his throat.
“You’ll feel a sting,” Tariq said, doing the work as he described it, “then tugging, followed by another sting to seal it.”
Owen winced through the sensations, hoped this thing wasn’t connected to a T-1000. “Scarring?”
“A scratch.” Tariq turned back to his kit, putting away the gear.
Resisting the urge to touch the spot, Owen adjusted in his chair.
“Bueno,” Navas said, glancing around the table. “Now can we work on saving my daughter?”
“Light it up, Luther,” Pike ordered.
The OTG logo filled the screens as Luther’s system synced with the plane’s.
“Let’s show Apollo what he’s gotten himself into.” The chief indicated to a face that splashed onto the wall screen. “This is your objective: Nouri Al-Shaheen.”
A jackhammer hitting Owen’s heart wouldn’t have shocked as much as the face staring back at him. His mind threw him back to Soph’s graduation party. To her—RCG.
“Here in the States, she’s known as Leighton Kingslake.” Pike paused, studying him. “You know her.”
Trying to smother his reaction, Owen knew he’d failed. “Yeah, sort of.”
Navas’s gaze whipped across the table to him. “How?”
“I…” Dumbfounded still, Owen struggled for a clean breath.
How was this possible? “Met her at a party.” When that earned a glower from Navas, he clarified.
“Not like that—it was the graduation party for Sophia Neeley. Leighton was there with a…sister? Friend?” He angled to the mercenary and frowned, trying to sort the facts hitting his stunned brain.
“How is Leighton your daughter? How would she live in Virginia, go to Liberty Academy…?” The night the merc had talked to Dad assailed him.
“You said your daughter’s name was Nouri. ”
Jaw tight, lips pressed into a line, Navas furrowed his brow. “Did you talk to her? At this party?”
Owen scowled, feeling the jet barreling down the runway. “You didn’t answer—”
“Did. You. Talk?”
Owen had never been one to fall in line just because someone said to, but he also had to pick his battles. Wouldn’t look good to be oppositional with men who’d be covering his six. “No.”
As the jet left the ground, Navas stared at him hard, unconvinced.
“She bailed almost as soon as I saw her.” That’s when he noticed everyone studying him with strange looks. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” Pike intoned solemnly, “is if you know her and she recognizes you when you insert, she could blow your cover and this op fails before it can get traction.” He narrowed his eyes, pressed his fingertips to the table, and leaned in.
“Tell us exactly what happened at that party. Every detail. Don’t leave out anything. ”
Not liking that they made him feel as if he’d done something wrong, he exhaled slowly before launching into a play-by-play about RCG. Now known as Leighton Kingslake…Nouri Al-Shaheen…the daughter of Navas, the guy who’d saved his dad from prison. “And…that’s it.”
“You were attracted to this girl?” Pike asked, his tone flat.
Son of a… Owen had an inkling Pike was a human lie detector. “Yeah. She was pretty, but that’s not why I remember her.” Every word mattered here, and he had to be sure he didn’t make himself sound lovestruck. “I saw something in her face, her expression. Like she was…scared.”
The barrel-chested guy with a red beard barked a laugh. “Yeah, had nothing do with her pretty face or blue eyes.”
“They aren’t blue.”
The big guy busted out laughing and high-fived another operator, who was also laughing.
Realizing how easily he’d fallen into that trap, Owen scowled.
“I think we’re clear to proceed,” said Luther, Pike’s apparent right hand. “They didn’t talk. It was relatively dark.”