Not A Stakeout
Rowan
“Oh my goddess!” Milo exclaims from the back seat, his face pressed up against the tinted window as we drive through the Robeson County neighbourhood he directed us to.
My wolf responds immediately. “What?”
The streets here are crowded; children of all ages run circles around mothers who gather in huddles.
Scattered in between is the odd dad, preoccupied with his phone, and even rarer still are the grandparents who’ve evidently been roped into doing the school run.
All of them are so caught up in their own lives that they barely spare us a glance as we drive steadily by, but I see them.
All of them. Because while Time Guy isn’t using a Bluetooth or RF tracker, he is monitoring Milo somehow—and what if, as some kind of god, he can use people like we use technology?
I know what I saw through the kitchen window, and yet…
he left no scent, no trail, nothing that my wolf could latch on to.
However he’s tracking Milo, Time Guy is able to simply drop in and then vanish again the same way.
Which means he could show at any time—even now, hours away from the Nest, while we’re strapped inside a moving truck.
I clench my back teeth and check the time… 15:11.
“These homes are only a little more each month than what I pay for my single room back in the city.” Milo’s chatter is grounding and stops me from dwelling further on the scope of the threat we face.
With a grunt of relief that his exclamation doesn’t necessitate immediate action, my body sags into the support of the leather seat.
“This is wild,” he continues. “If I sold fifty more boxes of…”
He pulls his face away from the window, and scoots across the back seat so he can lean through to the front. “What shampoo do you use?”
“What?” Briefly, I turn to take in his profile before resuming my search for the house number he’s identified as our new Target.
“Shampoo?” Milo’s slender fingers ghost over the tips of my hair. “You have it cut quite short—a military thing, I guess—but it looks like it might have a curl to it. Did you know that most shampoos—”
“Magpie…” I interrupt, purposefully using his codename to remind him that we’re on a mission. “One-two-nine-eight-seven Glenn Bridge Road, right?”
Deliberately, I crane my neck as if straining to see the tiny house numbers posted by the front doors.
“Oh, mhm. Yeah.” Milo, all long legs encased in ripped jeans and still with that exposed lean torso, climbs through the small gap between the front seats and drops into place beside me.
I adjust the mirror now that he’s closer, and catch sight of the state of the rear portion of the cabin. For someone whose only job on the drive here was to use a laptop for research, there’s quite the collection of things now strewn about.
My laptop—still on—occupies the seat directly behind me. Discarded beside it is my jacket that Milo once again used as a blanket when the cold leather of the seats didn’t agree with the ridiculously short-cropped hoodie he has on. Both of Milo’s zip-up boots…
I glance at his feet—odd socks. A small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. Did I expect anything different?
“Oh, there!” Milo points so enthusiastically that his fingertip presses against the inside of the windscreen.
He’s going to need some training in how to minimise his DNA trail. I cough to clear my throat, and shuffle in my seat. Thoughts like that are a distraction, at best.
Following the line of Milo’s arm, I maintain a steady but slow speed as we drive past a faded double-wide surrounded by a moderately overgrown box hedge.
“Wait. You’re going too far.”
Shaking my head, I explain, “Tactical observation one-oh-one, Magpie. Maintain secrecy through use of concealed positions.”
I pull the truck in further up the road, and adjust all the mirrors to keep our Target in full view. Milo slides down in his seat and offers up another one of his Boy Scout salutes—three fingers digging hard into his temple. Does he even know his country’s military salute?
Unable to suppress it, I chuckle lowly and shake my head. “At ease, soldier.”
Milo’s returning smile is blinding. The deepening glow of the afternoon sun’s rays cast him in bronze and transmute his usually silver hair to more of a champagne-gold.
With every little move of his head, the longer strands shimmer in their newfound warmth.
Not for the first time, his ethereal features conjure images of some fictional fae prince.
I hold my own hazel eyes captive in the cabin’s internal mirror and give a small shake of my head—no. Focus.
“This is our Observation Post,” I make a circular motion with my index finger to indicate the truck.
Milo’s expression is heavy with concentration, and I know I have his full attention. Something inside me eases.
Back on the familiar ground of issuing mission orders, I continue. “We are the Patrol, that house is our Target, and what we’re doing right now is called a Close Target Recce, or a CTR.”
“So, not a stakeout?”
The muscle in my left eye twitches, just a little. “Not a stakeout.”
Milo nods solemnly, facial features as equally as severe as mine. “Because no snacks. Got it. So, now what do we do? Sit here until it’s dark?”
He changes position to sit cross-legged in his seat.
I wait for him to settle. “We might. We don’t have the intel to make that decision yet.”
His jaw drops, and he stage whispers, “We might do this in broad daylight?”
I smirk. “Time of day has nothing to do with it, Magpie. We move when we have the greatest chance of the mission being a success. Besides, people don’t expect a burglar to strike during the day.”
Diverting his shock into action, I lock my gaze on the Target in the mirror, and ask, “Did ye find any intel on the occupants?”
His answering nod is a little slow while he processes. “Yeah… Yup. Mhm. Two registered adults, and one birth certificate recorded fifteen months ago.”
“Good. Given the time of day, what might that tell ye about who could be home and what they might be doing?”
Milo gives an excited wiggle in his seat, rubs his hands together, and takes a deep breath.
“Likely, there’s only one adult and the baby home.
On the drive here, I learned there’s a manufacturing plant a couple of miles away that makes modular homes—a lot of the locals work there.
So, I think the dad’s home. And because factories generally run early shifts, I think he clocked off maybe an hour or two ago and is now relaxing.
“The mom probably works the evening shift somewhere—because you know how you need two incomes to get anywhere in this economy, and childcare is expensive. Probably, she’s home when he’s out, then vice versa.
“If they’re organised, they’ll have trained the infant to nap around this time, so she can get ready for work in peace, and when he comes home, he has at least an hour to shower and chill out before having to take on parenting.”
I’m… impressed. That was almost Delilah-level strategising. Milo’s eager face as he awaits my assessment is almost too much. “Very good, Magpie. Very good. The pup might actually make a Dog yet.”
I scan all the mirrors again. “What we do now is called the hard routine.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because we have to sit still and quiet while we keep up a constant observation of the Target to note any comings and goings. And we do that until we’re confident we have an accurate pattern of behaviour on the Target.”
Milo scoffs, fishes his phone out, opens the notes app, and titles a new page Not A Stakeout. “Pah. Easy.”
We sit in silence for a short while, each monitoring the mirrors in turn, until Milo very suddenly lifts himself up in his chair, unfolds his legs, then climbs through to the back seat.
“Eight minutes, Magpie.”
“Huh?” he mutters as he pulls my laptop onto his knees.
“Ye lasted eight minutes. We’ll have to work on that.”
“Okay, you do that.” His tongue pokes out a little from between full lips as he taps and clicks away.
“While you do, I’ll just use all this fancy software you’ve got to discover that our mom gets paid weekly from a diner called Harper’s… and that Harper’s is open until eleven p.m. So, if my earlier theory is right and she’s on the closing shift, then she probably starts at four p.m.”
Milo stares at the screen for a moment longer, then nods to himself before he closes it with a decisive click. “She’s already left, and we’ve got until the baby wakes up.”
As impressed as I am with both his logic and the application of it, when he starts shoving his feet into his boots, I point out, “I like yer thinking, Magpie, but we can’t approach breaking into someone’s home on a hunch.”
“It’s not a hunch,” he says, his head lowered almost between his knees while he fights with a zip. “Her name’s on the payroll.”
Bracing my hand on the passenger seat beside me, I twist further round to face Milo in the back. “Ye don’t know if they have a friend or family member over, ye don’t know if the kid’s even home—asleep or otherwise—and ye don’t know if one of them has an off today, or might be sick and in bed.”
Milo wins the fight with his boots and looks up at me. Everything about him is still except for the lip that he chews on, which I’ve come to learn means he’s thinking.
“All valid points,” he concedes.
I relax, again.
“But we’re not going to learn the answers to any of those things by sitting here either.”
“Milo. No. It’s too risky. And neither of us exactly blends in.”
“But I need that hairbrush to do the spell.” He pouts.
I almost give in. Almost. “Maybe this mission would be safer if we went to the diner where the Target works? See if we can’t get a hair sample that way. Besides, our lunch was interrupted.”
Milo snorts a laugh. “When are you going to tell me?”
I tilt my head as I try to follow the new track his thoughts are now running along. Usually, I can keep up with the rapid leaps and abrupt switches he makes in conversation, but this one has lost me.
“You hate tuna, don’t you?”
Instantly, my face becomes a mask of impassivity while I work out the pitfalls of answering that truthfully.
“It’s okay, you know? I hate asparagus. We all have our thing.” Milo shrugs.
I narrow my eyes in deep suspicion. “This is an Ethel move, isn’t it?”
He sits up a little, and with his best, and sweetest, and most demure expression, asks, “What is?”
“Ye get me to agree to one thing, then pull a bait-and-switch, and next ye know… I’m agreeing to another thing entirely.”
A smile spreads over Milo’s lips. “Is it working?”
“No.”
His smile drops. “But am I right? You don’t like tuna?”
“Aye. I don’t like tuna.”
Lowering his head, he picks at the threads on his jeans. “You could have said; there was cooked chicken in the fridge.”
Inside my chest, my heart clenches painfully. No, not my heart. My stomach—it’s all this talk of tuna.
Milo blows out a long breath, then looks up at me with impossibly wide eyes in a soft and wet shade of grey.
“Don’t…” I warn.
Milo holds it for a two-count. Then he sits fully upright and changes his whole posture to one that’s more alert.
“Fine. But it doesn’t change that I need that hairbrush.
Or that you need me to have that hairbrush.
Without it, I can’t get back in touch with Sarah, and if I don’t do that, then I can’t ask her what she knows about the Luna del Lupo, or how to defeat Time Guy, or how to get the Colonists out of there. ”
My one-handed grip on the steering wheel tightens. I hate that this makes the most sense. That it’s our only lead. Even when the rest of the Dogs come through on Operation Tempo, even when we have Time Guy’s ID, we’ll still need a way to defend the General—and the Romulan Bloodline—against him.
And all of that doesn’t even touch the fact that regardless, Milo won’t let this go.
He won’t stop until he’s seen through rescuing Sarah and the Lost Colony—it’s personal to him now.
I’ve seen this happen with other soldiers too many times before to not see the same signs in him.
But the difference is, Milo is mine to protect.
If he’s going to go anyway… then he’ll be significantly safer if he has my support. Besides, what had I expected by framing this like a mission in the first place? I made it seem exciting—gave it an appeal. Then I drove him out here. Shit.
I scrub my hand over my face. This is all my fuckin’ fault… “Okay.”
“Okay? You really mean it? I get to do Operation Hairbrush? Now?”
“I mean it. But yer not calling it that.”
“What are we calling it, then?”
I untwist to face forward, and mutter under my breath. “I need to get my fuckin’ head checked.”
“That seems like an unnecessarily complicated mission name,” Milo comments from the back as he tugs pointlessly on the hem of his hoodie. “Do you have one I can borrow? I didn’t exactly dress for covert ops this morning.”
I collect my phone from the dash and type a check-in to Guardian.
Magpie ate all the breadcrumbs but one.
To Milo, I answer, “Yeah, I always keep a spare set of clothes in that case. My hoodie will be too big on ye, though—impractical on an active mission. Use the long-sleeved T-shirt, and tie it at the waist.”
There’s a brief flash of white-blond hair in the mirror when he nods, then his hoodie is whipped clear over his head. I’m unable to look away as Milo—half naked on the back seat—rifles through my folded and precision-packed bag like he has no idea what he’s looking for.
Lean muscles flex under smooth skin.
The undiluted scent of apples fills the cab.
I swallow. Then blink. Then stare harder.
It’s not just Milo’s ears and face that are pierced, his nipples are too. And like everything else on this alluring witch, they reflect his unique brand of chaos. Not one of the little plastic balls that close the bars matches in colour: red, blue, purple, and black.
Before I can malfunction, I force my gaze to the side-view mirrors.
Milo emits a soft groan as he pulls my shirt over his head, then gets subsequently drowned in material.
Smartly, I step out of the vehicle, slam the door, brace both hands on the roof of the truck, and inhale the non-apple-scented air deep into my lungs.