Chapter Twelve #2
Angela perched on the edge of her seat, hands still tightly grasping the chair’s arms, but now, it was as if she held on to keep from springing into the air. Sawyer was the polar opposite. Trepidation pooled in the pit of his stomach. “What do you mean? Both of us dig?”
“You dig. You find out what’s out there to learn.”
“Field work? In the U.S.?” Sawyer did a double take.
He understood Angela had asked to be involved, but this assignment didn’t make sense.
Angela didn’t leave the office for work.
She didn’t go anywhere dangerous. That was the point of Angela’s job, far, far away from her home base, where she was safe from Pham’s network.
“Yeah,” Jared said. “Get in the field. Dig around. Learn what there’s to learn.” He focused on her. “You can do it.”
“I can do it. Absolutely,” she replied.
“I’ll get you everything we have,” Parker said.
“Mylene Hathaway’s full history. Army. National Intelligence Office.
The files from the murder investigation.
Anything I can find.” Parker turned from their screen to work on his computer.
“And I’ll dig on this end. We’ll see if we can find anything that points to Pham’s involvement in the murders. ”
Sawyer’s jaw jutted. “What? Now we’re cold-case investigators? I don’t think so.”
“We’re not trying to exonerate Mylene,” Jared said. “We’re researching, trying to confirm Pham’s involvement.”
“We can do that from here.”
Angela glared. “I don’t think so.”
“Parker is in the U.S. We’re here with NSA-level technology—”
“What happens when we prove he’s involved?” Angela asked.
Jared pursed his lips and shrugged as if he hadn’t just suggested the most ludicrous assignment Sawyer had ever heard. “Once we do that, if we’re right, one thing begets the next.”
“Begets? What the fuck, Boss Man? We’re not—”
“There will likely be one of two outcomes,” Parker said, finally sounding the slightest bit data driven. “She’s dead or held against her will.”
“Parker, man, this doesn’t sound like anything we—Angela, especially—need to get near. Right?”
Parker ignored him. “Killing his targets hasn’t been Pham’s typical M.O.”
Were they really having a conversation about Angela working in the U.S. when someone had just attempted to kill her? How was he the only one who didn’t see sky-high red flags?
Jared nodded. “That leaves us with the option of finding her alive.”
“So she’s out there.” Angela released the chair from her death grip, letting hope infiltrate her words. “We can find her.”
Possibility lit her sweet, innocent face in a way that gutted Sawyer.
He didn’t want to tell her no. Hell, the two other people in their conversation should be putting their feet down with absolute hell-nos.
Sawyer’s heart galloped. There was no way he would gallivant around the world with Angela to find Mylene Hathaway, and there was no way he would endanger Angela to find another of Pham’s victims.
His molars ground again. Jared needed to shut down this half-cocked idea, but he didn’t. “Wait.” Sawyer glanced from Parker to Angela and then to Jared. “We can’t—are you all serious?”
Jared nodded.
Sawyer did another double take. “In what world is this a good idea?”
“In the world we’re living in,” Angela snapped.
“Look, Ange, I didn’t mean—” Honestly, though, he did.
He couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through.
If he had been in her position? Yeah, he’d want to do what he could to help someone living in that same hell.
But this wasn’t how they needed to handle the situation with Angela.
“Neither of us is the right person for this job.”
“It’s the job I need.”
Sawyer waited for Boss Man to back him up, but silence loomed. “I’m not an investigator—”
“Sure you are. I know what you do, Sawyer.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. Titan specialized in getting the job done.
What the job might be? Every time, it was different.
He’d worked hostage recovery situations as many times as he had infiltrated behind enemy lines.
That was Titan’s bread and butter. If it involved helicopters, ammo, and need-to-know intel, Sawyer was your guy.
But cold case… research? Intel gathering? He didn’t even know what to call it.
Sawyer shook his head. Angela knew what they did, and she knew enough to understand that out of everyone on the ACES team, he was the least qualified.
Hagan liked to figure out puzzles. Liam specialized in surveillance.
Sawyer just wanted to get in and get out.
He’d walk into hellfire so long as it was on his to-do list.
He rubbed his hands over his face as though he could scrub away the mental contradictions.
If his job meant he was supposed to smoke out a missing woman, that shouldn’t have been a problem.
But doing so with Angela when they knew precisely nothing?
That idea didn’t sit well with him. His eyes pinched shut. “This is a bad idea, boss.”
“You want someone else to go with her?”
Sawyer’s eyes flew open. “I didn’t say that.” He tried to ignore Angela’s glare boring a hole in the side of his head and failed spectacularly. “If we find her, then what?”
“Focus. Bull’s-eye on the problem first.” Jared’s forehead furrowed. “We don’t know what we don’t know. I can’t tell you what we’ll do with it once we know.”
Sawyer scowled. “If she exists.”
“She exists,” Angela hissed.
“If she’s still alive,” Sawyer corrected.
“She is.” Angela’s confidence scared the hell out of him. It was almost enough to quell the anxiety thudding in his chest. “Pham wouldn’t be trying to negotiate—”
“We don’t know that is who he was going to offer up in exchange—”
“Then we find them all,” Angela roared. “Like we should have done before.”