19. Welcome To HAVEN
Welcome To HAVEN
Forest
Jasper looks around the operations room and whistles.
“So this is where you lot have been hiding.”
“Wouldn’t call it hiding,” I tell him.
Col glances at the screens covering one wall. “Pretty sure normal businesses don’t have that many maps.”
Pete points toward one of the workstations. “Or satellite imagery.”
I keep walking.
Bringing the three of them here feels slightly strange after everything that happened in Vegas.
They were supposed to be having a holiday.
Instead, they followed instructions from people they’d never met, stayed exactly where I needed them while I went after Hope, and helped me watch a kidnapping target.
None of them complained. And when I told them I was heading back to HAVEN this afternoon, all three asked the same question.
Can we come?
Victor looks up as we approach. Steve and Janice are beside him, with Adrian sitting at the end of the table.
“Forest.”
“Hope we’re not interrupting.”
Steve glances around the room. “Mate, I reckon we stopped worrying about interruptions about three days ago.”
That gets a laugh from Jasper.
I gesture toward the others. “The boys came with me to see if there’s anything we can help with. If you need extra people, we’re available.”
Victor studies the four of us.
“We?”
“Yeah.” I look at my mates. “All of us.”
Pete nods. “We didn’t come all this way just to watch him have all the fun.”
“Your definition of fun needs work,” Janice says.
“Been telling him that for years,” Col replies.
Victor’s mouth curves slightly before his attention returns to me.
“You understand this wouldn’t be Vegas.”
“I know.”
“You’d be working under HAVEN command. If Steve, Janice or whoever is leading the operation tells you to hold position, you hold. If you’re told to withdraw, you withdraw.”
“That’s what we did in Vegas and in the forces before that.”
“Yes.” Victor pauses. “It is.”
Victor looks toward Adrian. Something passes between them. Adrian gives a small nod.
I glance between them.
“What?”
Victor folds his arms.
“Well, as a matter of fact, we were planning to have this conversation with you.”
“With me?”
“With all four of you.”
Jasper shifts beside me.
Victor looks along the line of us.
“We’d like to offer you places on the HAVEN team.”
For once, none of them have anything clever to say.
I stare at Victor.
“You’re serious?”
“Completely.”
Steve leans back against the table. “You four did well in Vegas. You listened, followed the plan and didn’t decide you knew better when things got complicated.”
“That last one’s surprisingly important,” Janice says.
Adrian smiles.
Victor continues. “We’re expanding. After what we learned on Saint-Pierre, we have to. We need more experienced people we can trust in the field.”
I look at Jasper, Col and Pete.
Three grins are already forming.
I shake my head.
“You could at least pretend to think about it.”
“Nope,” Jasper says.
“Not interested in pretending,” Col adds.
Pete looks at Victor. “When do we start?”
Victor glances toward the main screen.
“We have a possible extraction developing outside Phoenix.”
My attention snaps to it.
“If you’re interested,” Victor adds.
I look at my mates again. Jasper cracks his knuckles. Col grins. Pete gives me a look that says the decision was made before we walked through the door.
I turn back to Victor.
“Tell us what you need.”
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 1430 hours.
Victor doesn’t drag the conversation out.
He pulls four chairs around the table and tells us exactly what joining HAVEN means.
The work. The risk. The expectation that when one of us goes into the field, the rest of the team trusts us to do our job and follow command.
Nobody interrupts.
Jasper leans forward with his forearms on his knees. Col sits back, listening carefully. Pete has lost the grin he walked in with.
This matters to them. It matters to me too.
“You wouldn’t be brought in as trainees,” Victor says. “You’ve all got experience. What we need to know is how that experience fits what HAVEN does.”
Steve looks at Jasper. “Let’s start with you.”
Jasper gives him a brief rundown. Military background. Reconnaissance. Surveillance. Long-range observation. The kind of work that means he can sit somewhere uncomfortable for hours without getting bored and making a stupid decision.
Steve nods. “Useful.”
Col goes next. Communications, field coordination, navigation, emergency planning.
That explains why he was the one in Vegas who kept everyone organized without me asking twice.
Pete’s background is close protection and tactical driving, with enough medical training to keep someone alive until proper help arrives.
Janice looks at him. “How much medical training?”
“Advanced first aid, trauma response, bleeding control.”
She nods. “We can build on that.”
Then everyone looks at me.
I spread my hands. “You already know mine.”
Steve grins. “I think we’ve established all four of you are comfortable jumping out of perfectly functional aircraft.”
Jasper laughs. “Among other things.”
Victor’s expression stays serious.
“Vegas told us more than your resumés ever could.”
The room quiets.
“You were given a supporting role,” he says to Jasper, Col and Pete. “You stayed in it. You maintained surveillance, communicated what you saw and didn’t interfere with Forest’s command.”
Jasper shrugs. “He knew what he was doing.”
“Exactly.”
Victor looks at me.
“And when Hope’s situation changed, you adapted without losing sight of the objective.”
I think about that rooftop. Hope. Matthias finding Thandiwe. Everything that could’ve gone wrong.
“We got lucky in places.”
Steve shakes his head. “Luck helps. Preparation helps more. The five P’s, you know.”
“What’s that?” Col asks.
“Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.”
Victor reaches for four folders on the table and slides them toward us.
“HAVEN is changing. What we uncovered on Saint-Pierre means we can’t keep operating with the same number of people and expect to take on what’s coming.”
I glance at Adrian. He gives nothing away.
Victor continues.
“We need field operatives. Surveillance. Protection. Extraction. People who can deploy quickly and work as part of a larger team. And sometimes there’s boring work too, like guarding our prisoners.”
Jasper blinks. “You have prisoners?”
“Yes,” Victor says. “We do.”
Pete opens his folder.
“You already had these prepared?”
Janice smiles. “We move fast.”
Jasper looks at me.
“So this wasn’t Forest wandering in here at exactly the right time.”
“Seems not.”
Victor leans back.
“There’s no pressure to answer today.”
Three voices answer almost together.
“Yes.”
I turn my head. Jasper looks amused. Col looks completely serious. Pete just shrugs.
“What?”
“You could’ve waited five seconds.”
“No point.”
Steve laughs.
Victor looks at me.
“And you?”
I look down at the folder in front of me.
HAVEN. San Francisco. Hope. A future I wasn’t planning for when I flew to Vegas with three mates and a suitcase. But the decision is easy.
I look back at Victor.
“I’m in.”
His nod is immediate.
“Then welcome to HAVEN.”
Victor stands and shakes my hand before moving around the table to do the same with Jasper, Col and Pete.
Steve follows, grinning as he shakes each of our hands.
“Welcome aboard, boys.”
He pushes away from the table.
“Right. Since you’re all officially ours now, let’s talk about Phoenix.”
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 1500 hours.
The main screen changes from recruitment paperwork to satellite imagery.
Phoenix. Or more accurately, a property outside it.
High walls. Private road. Multiple buildings. Enough distance from the nearest neighbors that nobody would hear much of anything.
Steve takes over the briefing.
“Bear and Jax are heading down this afternoon to put eyes on the place. Surveillance only.”
Jasper leans forward.
“What do we know?”
“Not enough,” Steve says. “That’s the problem.”
G brings up the ownership trail.
The property sits behind layers of companies, but Alexei’s intelligence gave HAVEN the missing link. From there, Faith and Shane followed the money and Mercy found the supporting records.
Medical supplies. Security contracts. Food deliveries. Regular vehicle movements. Matthias adds the pharmaceutical list to the screen. I recognize some of the names from Vegas. Others mean nothing to me.
“They’re using sedatives and memory-suppression drugs,” he says. “Not in quantities consistent with treating one or two people.”
Pete’s expression hardens.
“How many?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“And that’s what Bear and Jax are going to find out,” Steve says.
Victor stands beside him.
“This is different from most of our previous operations. Nobody escaped from that property and came to us. Nobody used the Danger app or triggered Beacon. We found it because we finally know how to follow Legacy’s infrastructure from the top down.”
I look at the screen again. That changes the feel of it. Somebody could be inside those walls right now with no idea anyone even knows they exist.
Col points toward one of the buildings.
“What’s that?”
G enlarges the image.
“Service building, probably. Could be staff accommodation. Could be storage.”
“Could be neither,” Steve says. “Which is why nobody guesses.”
Col nods. No offense taken.
Steve moves to the next image.
“We’ll build the extraction once we have current surveillance. Entry points, numbers, security rotations, vehicles, and possible victim locations. Then we decide who goes.”
Jasper glances at me.
“And us?”
Victor answers.
“You’ll be considered for the team.”
Pete grins. “That was quick.”
“You wanted work.”
“Sure do.”
Steve points at the four of us.
“Don’t start packing yet. You’re staying here until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Jasper sighs dramatically.
“Already getting the boring jobs.”
Victor’s mouth twitches.
“You’ve been with HAVEN for less than an hour.”
“And already oppressed.”
Janice laughs from across the room.
I shake my head. Some things don’t change.