EIGHT
Rome was discovering there were drawbacks to having an excellent memory.
The Sierra meeting was in five minutes. He had files to review on the investigation involving Jolie and Stina.
He forced his attention to the laptop, scanning the first page for the third time. None of the words stuck.
Instead, his brain supplied entirely different images.
Curly hair spread across his pillow.
Green-gold eyes flashing at him.
The way Stina shook apart in his arms.
He dragged a hand down his face and snapped the laptop shut. Grabbing it, he shoved away from the desk.
It was an old piece of furniture that had been stored in the tunnels below the ski resort, like so many other pieces. But at some point, one of his teammates had moved it out of the way.
For a couple years, it sat in a dark niche set into the wall, something they walked past every day and didn’t bother to notice.
Then suddenly Jolie came to Sierra base and a chair had been pushed up to it.
And a small can filled with pencils got placed on top, even though none of them used paper.
Occasionally, she and Monk visited the greenhouse above and she brought back small sprigs of herbs or leaves to place in a glass vase, also scavenged from the resort.
Rome paused, then reached out and rubbed a leaf between his fingers.
When the thump of boots echoed down the hall, he snapped his hand to his side.
What made him touch the leaf?
He headed for the war room, forcing his attention to the scraps of information he’d uncovered from the security footage at Antonio’s Ristorante instead of the woman who worked there.
By the time he reached the space, several guys were filling in the seats around the table. Monk took up his usual post with a cup of coffee in front of him. Younger and Townie were in one corner, talking among themselves.
Rome pulled out his chair and dropped into it.
Monk turned his head, brow arched. “You look worn out.”
Rome grunted.
Across the table, Townie’s eyes narrowed. Townsend, aka Townie, could walk into almost any room and convince people he was supposed to be there. Years of undercover work, disguises and reading people made him one of Sierra’s most valuable operators.
Unfortunately for Rome, Townie was currently a little too focused on studying him.
The last thing he needed his brother-in-arms to guess was where he spent his free time this morning.
Before anyone could question him, the monitors mounted on the wall began flickering to life one after another. Dante appeared on his screen first. Con sat beside him at Charlie’s base, looking like he carried the weight of the universe on his shoulders.
O patched in Sierra’s feed, and an image of their team appeared in one corner of the monitor.
More screens appeared, showing every Blackout team, leader and technical specialist. Gunnison, known as Gunny, from Alpha. Kensington from Delta. Oakley from Rogue.
Oakley.
The whole Sierra team looked at O.
He felt their stares and glanced up, a brow cocked in question.
“Oakley?” Rivers asked him.
Shaking his head, he chuckled. “My name’s not Oakley. Give it up already.”
“All right.” Dante rubbed his hands together, kicking off the meeting. “Here’s the hardware package for our Blackout network. Add it. Use it. Delete the email. This never happened.”
Con pointed toward the camera. “We mean that. Especially the delete part.”
Several guys in the massive group chuckled.
Suddenly, a new screen activated and an operator appeared against a tropical backdrop wearing a Hawaiian shirt bright enough to be visible from space.
Rome chuckled. “Nice o’ you to join us, Gryf.”
“Technical difficulties.” The SEAL flashed a grin.
“Technical difficulties from a tech specialist.” O shook his head like the world had more problems than any of them knew.
Rome and Gryf went to bootcamp and served two tours in Iraq together before Blackout recruited them.
Rome took one long look at Gryf’s loud shirt and gulped back a laugh. “That doesn’t look like regulation attire.”
Gryf glanced down. “This is tactical.”
“Against who? Colorblind people?”
The Blackout Nova operator grinned. “Don’t be a hater, Romey. You could do with a bit of sun. Oh wait—you don’t get any up there in the mountains.”
Cannon took control of the meeting, and conversation died.
He tapped the screen in his hand and the display changed. A map filled the wall and every other Blackout screen. Red pins covered the country from north to south.
“What you’re looking at are every location where Echo weapons were seized, used in crimes, or confirmed through credible sightings. Every place Echo munitions have surfaced.”
Echo. The one team that wasn’t joining them today because only one man was left standing—Julian Chase—and he was now on Charlie. He aided in the capture of the man who killed his whole team, but they all felt the weight of the loss.
Rome studied the screen, trying to make out a pattern, but so far it only looked like the weapons hadn’t crossed the Mississippi and remained in the West.
Cannon replaced the map with a list of names. “Here’s where we start. These names all surfaced during the investigation into the Echo theft—arms dealers, traffickers and brokers with ties to the missing weapons. We split the names between the teams and question them.”
Rome and Rorke traded a look. “Question” was a loose term, especially in Cannon’s vocabulary. Their commanding officer was known for his borderline outlaw ways.
The teams broke off then, one by one, leaving the screens black and Sierra sitting alone in their war room.
Across the table, Rorke held Cannon’s gaze, his expression unreadable. For one taut second, it felt as though he were daring Cannon to say more.
Cannon pointed to the list. “This is where we find the answers.”
No one spoke for a moment. But it wasn’t the first time they picked up some undercurrent running between Rorke and Cannon.
There was never an argument. Never raised voices. Just the occasional look that hinted at a conversation no one else had been part of.
Finally, Cannon turned to Rome. “You’re up. Any traction on your research?”
Rome set his palms flat on the table. “Located the guy who sent the photo of Stina and Jolie.”
Several heads lifted.
“He’s been arrested and is being held by the FBI. So far, we only know he took the job through a local courier service in Chicago. He says he had no idea what he was delivering or who paid him.”
“Do we believe him?” Younger asked.
Rome shrugged. “We believe the guys who rammed our escort were hired online. I think the more interesting part is how the courier got paid.”
“Which was?” Monk asked.
“Crypto.”
O leaned back in his chair. “No trace.”
“Nope.” Rome closed that file and pulled up another. “Next, we have a shot of the guy who killed the agent guarding Stina.”
There was a rustle as the team planted their arms on the table or straightened in their seats.
He transferred an image to the large screen. Unfortunately, it was too blurry to give them much.
“We ran it through facial recognition this morning,” Rome said. “Came back with no hit.”
“I ran it through commercial OSINT software too.” Dante referred to the private system that could scrape publicly available images from social media, company websites and metadata. “Again, no match.”
Rome had been studying the man who attacked Stina’s protection detail behind the restaurant. “Even though the photo’s blurry, someone here might recognize him.”
Cannon gave the nod.
Rome turned to Monk. “Bring in Jolie and Stina.”
He tried not to watch the doorway for the moment Stina entered. If he so much as blinked at her wrong, the guys would be all over it.
He fixed his stare on the laptop screen and tried to keep his face blank.
But the moment they entered, Rome’s head swung up automatically.
What they’d done hours ago—and he wanted to do again, dammit—wasn’t romance. It was pure, white-hot lust. Nothing more.
But the instant their gazes locked, he knew he couldn’t be more wrong.
For one brief heartbeat, neither of them looked away.
Then both of them found something far more interesting on the opposite side of the room.
Cannon motioned toward the screen. “Ladies, we need you to take a look at this image.”
Jolie and Stina stepped farther into the room, and Rome’s body swung toward her on its own.
Both women studied the image.
“Do you recognize the subject?” Cannon asked.
Jolie shook her head. “No.”
Stina studied the image longer. Finally, she turned to look at Cannon. “It’s too blurry to make out his face clearly, and there are a million men in the world with that build. I don’t recognize him.”
“You’ve never seen him in the restaurant?” Rome asked.
She didn’t look his way, as if she was trying not to. “I don’t think it’s the man in the restaurant, the one I dumped pizza on.”
“The image isn’t entirely clear, but I don’t believe it’s him,” Jolie agreed. “I remember his face.”
“Look again. It’s been a while,” Rome coaxed.
Stina gave that tip of her chin. “The man stood up and yelled at me in the middle of the restaurant. I remember everything about what he looked like. But I can’t tell from that image.”
Rome held her gaze for another beat, then nodded. He believed her. But believing her didn’t get them any closer to finding the man who killed the agent protecting her.
“I’ll work on the image,” O said. “Make it clearer.”
Cannon nodded. “You ladies can go. Thank you.”
Stina avoided glancing at Rome on her way out, and it took his mind a second to quit following her.
Cannon brought their focus back to the meeting. “All right. Then we move on.”
The image disappeared and O put the list of names they shared with all the Blackout teams onto the screen again, and they shifted from one op to another.
Cannon handed out jobs, splitting them into teams and assigning them targets to question. By the time he finished, everyone had a directive.
Cannon scanned the table. “Work your contacts. Follow the money. One of these people knows something.”
They fell quiet, because they all understood what he wasn’t saying.