Chapter Eleven #2
Gage gave a faint, crooked smile, his thumb tracing her jawline in a way that made her shiver. “Not a mistake,” he assured her. “Just lousy timing.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but both of their phones chimed at once, the sharp double ping of a group alert. The moment shattered.
Rena pulled her phone from her pocket, scanning the message. It was from Noah. Briefing room. Now.
Gage huffed out a dry laugh and stepped back, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Guess the universe agrees with you.”
“Yeah,” Rena muttered, forcing her voice steady. “Apparently, fate’s our chaperone.”
They didn’t say anything else as they headed down the hall, the echo of their footsteps filling the silence. The kiss still burned in her mind, the taste of it lingering even as she tried to push it away.
By the time they reached the briefing room, she’d pulled her walls back up, every muscle coiled tight. She took one last breath, squared her shoulders and followed Gage through the door, hoping like hell that this time, they were finally going to get some answers.
Noah stood near the main display wall, Isla beside him, fingers flying over a keyboard while lines of data scrolled past. Cal was there too, looking as wrung out as Rena felt, a cup of black coffee clutched in his hand.
A couple of other techs hunched over their stations, the air thick with fatigue and focus.
Noah glanced up as they entered. “Good. You’re here. We’ve got an ID on the guy who set off that grenade.”
Rena stepped closer, eyes narrowing on the image that filled the screen. A mugshot, mid-thirties, with a face that had seen too many fights and too little peace.
“Name’s Curtis Blane,” Noah said. “Ex–private security, dishonorable discharge from the Army for weapons trafficking. He’s been running small jobs ever since, mostly muscle-for-hire work, nothing clean.”
“Was he on the big list of suspects?” Gage asked.
Noah nodded. “Yeah. Isla found him in the original database of people with grudges against, Maverick Ops, Strike Force, and Crossfire Ops. We dismissed him early on since he has no money, no contacts, no resources to put together an operation like this.”
“So he wasn’t the mastermind,” Rena concluded.
“No,” Noah agreed. “He’s a pawn. Someone paid him, equipped him, sent him in knowing he likely wouldn’t walk out.”
The words hit like a dull weight in Rena’s chest. Another expendable soldier in somebody else’s war.
Gage blew out a breath. “Then whoever’s behind this just burned another trail.”
Noah lifted his shoulder. “Maybe. But even pawns leave tracks. And this time, we’ll find where they lead.”
Rena looked back at the image of Curtis Blane—the hard stare, the hollow eyes—and felt the anger tighten in her gut. Whoever had used this man had done it so he could try to kill them. And until they found that puppet master, none of them was safe.
Isla spun in her chair, her neon-green sneakers squeaking against the tile, a grin twitching at the corner of her mouth as if she knew she was about to drop a bombshell.
“Okay,” she said, waggling a tablet in the air.
“So, in my relentless quest to find the worst-kept secrets on planet Earth, I dug a little deeper into our charming trio of suspects. And guess what I found?” She didn’t wait for them to guess.
“Rhett Danner and Dr. Corrine Astor had a fling. Short. Messy. Ended ugly.”
“Details,” Noah was quick to say.
“It was before his wife’s death, barely. From what I can tell, the affair crashed and burned, and a couple days later, his wife volunteered for that mission where she was killed. My guess?” Isla went on. “She did it to spite him. Maybe even to get away from him.”
Rena frowned, the pieces slotting together in her mind. “And when she didn’t come back…”
“Guilt,” Isla concluded. “Guilt’s the rocket fuel for vengeance. I’d say Rhett’s been living off it ever since. And between hating Crossfire Ops for authorizing the mission and hating Corrine for… well, being the ex-lover who likely played into all of this, that man’s a walking vendetta sandwich.”
Gage made a low whistling. “Hell of a combo.”
Noah’s expression didn’t change much, but there was a flicker of thought behind his eyes, that quiet, strategic processing that he did when he was working through angles.
“If there’s bad blood between Rhett and Corrine,” he said slowly, “we might be able to use it. Push Rhett hard enough, maybe he turns on Corrine. Gives us something, anything, concrete to tie her to the siege.”
“Assuming there’s anything to find,” Rena murmured.
Noah nodded. “Yeah. But it’s a lead. And right now, we take what we can get.”
Isla leaned back, spinning her chair lazily, her grin still in place. “Guess it’s true what they say. Hell hath no fury like a tech genius and a psychologist with unresolved sexual tension.”
Despite the grim subject, Rena couldn’t help it. She huffed out a quiet laugh. “You have a twisted way of looking at things, Isla.”
“Occupational hazard,” Isla said with a wink, turning back to her monitors.
The sharp ping of an alert cut through the room, and everyone’s attention jerked to the monitors. One of the camera feeds shifted to show the front gate of the compound, the sheriff’s cruiser pulling up in a swirl of dust and heat.
“She’s early,” Isla said, leaning closer to the screen.
Noah moved to the control panel and keyed in a code, granting clearance. “Open the gate.” The command went through with a low electronic hum.
While they waited for Sheriff Chase to make her way up to headquarters, Noah turned back to Rena and Gage. “I want to hear your take,” he said. “Anything in Brady’s behavior out there that suggested he might have been behind the attack here at the compound and at the training facility?”
“Nothing obvious,” Gage admitted, and Rena had to agree.
“He played it calm, maybe too calm. Said he just came out there to check the site and make sure Rhett wasn’t setting him up.
But I kept thinking if he was the one pulling strings, showing up might’ve been his way to get ahead of the evidence.
If any of his DNA’s found there, he’s already got an explanation. ”
Noah nodded slowly, that muscle in his cheek ticking. “That’s a possibility. The CSIs pulled several trace samples off the hangar floor. Looks like someone did a full power wash with a bleach solution.”
“Covering their tracks,” Rena muttered.
“Yeah,” Noah said. “But not perfectly. There were a few spots they missed. Lab’s already running those samples now.”
Sheriff Chase strode into the briefing room, and her gaze immediately swept over the room before landing on Rena and Gage. “Heard you two had another close call,” she said, her voice steady but edged with concern. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” Rena said automatically. Beside her, Gage echoed it with the same even tone.
It was a lie, of course. The kind all of them told after a fight.
Rena’s body ached, her skin tender where new bruises had bloomed.
Her ears still throbbed from the blast, and there was a line of fire running down her right side from the debris that had scraped her skin raw.
But she wasn’t about to admit that, not when they were maybe this close to finding whoever was behind the attacks.
“All right, let’s get your statements down while it’s all still fresh,” the sheriff added to Gage and Rena when another sharp ping split the air.
Every head turned toward the wall of monitors. One of the feeds flicked over to the front gate.
And there she was, Dr. Corrine Astor, leaning out the window of a sleek black sedan, oversized sunglasses perched on her face as if she were visiting a movie set instead of the front of a high-security compound.
She tilted her chin up toward the camera, lips curling in a faint smile, and said something into the intercom.
A second later, her voice filled the room through the speakers. “Noah, I need a word.” Smooth, cool, with that same undercurrent of condescension she’d used at the sheriff’s office.
Rena scowled. The last time they’d seen Corrine, she’d been smug, controlled, and too composed for someone under suspicion of orchestrating an attack. Now she looked every bit as deliberate. Calculated.
Noah stepped closer to the console and pressed the comm button, his tone even but clipped. “Crossfire Ops is closed to visitors, Dr. Astor. Especially those without an official reason to be here.”
Corrine didn’t flinch. Her voice came through again, silk wrapped in ice. “Then consider this official. There are things you need to know.”
Noah’s jaw tightened, and for a heartbeat, Rena thought he might answer her again, but instead, he reached forward and silenced the comm. The feed muted instantly, leaving only the low hum of the equipment filling the tension that had thickened in the room.
He turned toward Rena and Gage. “She doesn’t step foot on these grounds.”
“You think she’s here to finish what she started?” Isla asked.
“I think she’s desperate,” Noah said. “And desperation makes people dangerous. For all we know, this is some kind of last-ditch play to get close, plant something, take another shot at us.”
The sheriff’s eyes narrowed at the screen where Corrine still waited at the gate. “She’s got nerve, I’ll give her that.”
“Yeah,” Gage muttered, gaze fixed on the monitor. “Let’s just make sure that nerve doesn’t come with a trigger.”
On the still-silenced monitor, Corrine’s smooth, slick demeanor changed.
Obviously, she was annoyed with the wait.
She got out of her car, slamming the door hard enough to make the security feed vibrate, and she stalked toward the gate.
Her sunglasses were gone now, eyes sharp and gleaming with indignation.
“She won’t get past the guards,” Isla pointed out.