Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (20 page)

“The one with the beard?”

Evan felt his eyebrows lift with surprise. “That one. How did you see him?”

“When you’re intending to leave a bar with more cash than you walked in with, you have to notice everyone.”

Christ, she was brilliant. “Plus security cameras in a safe house aren’t supposed to be turned off.”

She pulled back to meet his gaze. Right then, she was as unreadable as Snow. “Then you’d better go.”

He could’ve been talking to a stranger, or behaving as he and Kat had done for years. After their breakup, Evan had found it easier to think about her on rare occasions—a sweet distraction during his time in a Spec Ops unit. That distraction moved from memory to reality after joining Colonel Stafford’s covert team a year after it launched. The rules had become as staunch as they were unspoken: avoid each other. Be polite when circumstances accidentally threw them together, generally at one of the raucous dinners Nicky hosted at his three-story bow house in the South End. Come, all ye operatives. Kat had done her best to be elsewhere, which had gotten easier after she moved into her own place just before her junior year.

Evan said his goodbyes to Snow and the rest. He only turned to Kat when she asked, “You’re not even going to say hello?”

“You’re his child, not me. You get first dibs.” Jesus on the cross, he hadn’t meant to say that. He couldn’t have sounded any more bitter had he sucked a lime after a shot of tequila. “And I have to go to work. I’ll be by later to pick you up. No one will let you leave without escort, so don’t waste your breath.”

“Is that an order, Sir?” Her voice was just as bitter, hurling his fantasy at him like a poison-tipped spear.

“Forget it.” He angled his head to the colonel’s room. “Go.”

He didn’t wait to see if she complied. He hoped that irked her as badly as it did him.

Thirty minutes later, he stood outside CFA headquarters in Southie on B Street, which surrounded a dry dock. Two blocks south of the long, decrepit-looking warehouse was Black Falcon Avenue, lined with businesses that catered to cruise ships. The running joke was that the intimidating name “Black Falcon Avenue” suited their operation much better than B Street. But lying low was the goal, not sounding like a super-spy war movie.

He parked several blocks away and walked the route that would allow security cameras full view of his approach. Standard procedure. Folks who came calling without the vetting process of a long walk up the front door weren’t allowed access to the various scans and codes required to enter. Mark Fletcher and his people were the gatekeepers, even if Evan had every necessary key.

The whole process was exhausting this afternoon. He was sore in every way a man could be sore. He really didn’t want to have to face the firing squad of Fletch’s questions when it came to proper procedure for the use of a safe house.

Retina, palm, voice, key code—the works. Multiple gates. A very efficient frisking and electronics scan by one of Fletcher’s minions before Evan was allowed past the final doors.

“Where the fuck have you been?” came the very pissed-off voice of Alex Faust. “Off the grid for days at a time is bullshit, Sommers. And you’re the one giving me a hard time about being off comms for only a goddamn six minutes.”

They radiated tension off one another as they climbed lattice metal stairs to the second-floor command area. “I hope they put Fletch and Gemma to work on you after whatever the hell happened in Minsk.”

“Gemma’s not getting into my head,” Alex grunted. The bruise across his broken cheek had reached maximum swelling and spread toward his temple. “I’d rather have a witch poking around.”

“She’s a doctor of psychology, generally considered a step up from witches. I want a full account of where you were and what you were doing when the colonel and Maysenia were shot. If you haven’t submitted a report yet, I’ll consider it suspicious and have Fletcher determine your next forty-eight hours.”

Alex turned and slammed Evan against the nearest wall. His arm pressed firmly against Evan’s windpipe. Alex was two inches less than six foot, which meant he had to work hard to take Evan out. “I was taking out another potential threat. I submitted my report two days ago, you arrogant shit. When you find the time to quit sniffing after the colonel’s little girl, go read it and get the fuck off my case.
I
didn’t get the colonel shot. Have you grilled Snow this hard? Maybe she was the fuckup that day.”

“She wasn’t missing for those critical moments. Besides, she’s on watch at the ICU. I refrained from grilling
you
there. I’m saving her interrogation for when she’s not in a goddamn hospital surrounded by ventilators and Bascombe talking like a priest consoling mourners.” He paused. “And breaking into Laurie’s place on the Mystic doesn’t help your case. His snow globe is missing.”

Alex was stone-faced. His mouth and eyes flattened to reveal absolutely no emotion. “I took it. But it wasn’t for me. Have you even told Gemma about the body?”

“Need-to-know basis.”

“That’s fucking cold.”

Evan twisted, ducked, spun. He backed Alex into the same position against the wall. “This is a warning. Touch me again, Faust, and we’re going to play dirty schoolyard games.”

“You want to play?” His voice rasped behind Evan’s chokehold. “You’ll lose every time.”

“And why’s that?”

“You fight fair.”

Evan gave the shorter, harsher man a shove before letting him loose. They backed away from each other and circled back a step each, like wolves. Was this what the team was without the colonel at its helm?

“Sommers,” Fletcher called, intoning Ricky Ricardo. “You got some ’splainin’ to do.”

His back still up, Evan entered the command center, where an elliptical table of computers had a perfect view of a wall of fourteen flat screens, all tracking different images. Another wall was comprised entirely of security cameras—probably three dozen screens in all. The lights were lowered to look like the ultimate man cave.

Mark Fletcher smiled that amiable
I’m gonna have to kill you now
smile and ushered Evan inside. “Break time, kiddos. Go find caffeine and tasty salty things. Except Jayden. You stay your skinny ass put.”

Jayden Creed looked like he belonged in a boy band, except for the open bag of pretzel rods at his workstation and a T-shirt that said
Hackers do it anonymously
. Blond curls stood upright from his crown. Only the colonel and the team’s other hacker, the Aussie named Evie Kitjana, knew his online handle. “No fair, chief. I do my job the best, but I always get detention.”

“That you’re young enough to make references to detention makes me feel very, very old.” Fletch’s expression remained friendly but had hardened around his eyes. “Shut up and don’t do it again. In fact, you get out too. I’m too pissed for anyone to hear me lose my notorious cool.”

“Your cool?” Jayden did an admirable job of holding back his laughter until Fletch’s expression turned ominous. The kid held up his hands in surrender. “No problemo, boss man. Caffeine and salt it is.”

Evan sprawled in an ergonomic computer chair and affected a casual pose. Fletch might be good enough to spot that it was all pretense, but it was worth a shot to save his own pride. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. “What’s up, chief?”

“You know damn well. Security cameras at the East Fourth Street safe house.”

“I turned them off. And broke two.”

Mark’s feet were slightly spread. He crossed his arms. He’d look like Secret Service had he been wearing black glasses. His habitual black suit was already hard-ass enough. “Care to share your reasons, Captain?”

“I was a captain in the Marines. That doesn’t apply anymore.”

“I was being courteous. Should I try a different tactic? Because I’d be glad to. Why the fuck were those cameras off?”

Their gazes collided, blue on blue. Evan didn’t flinch. “I had a woman with me.”

“You’re supposed to be protecting the colonel’s daughter but you bring a woman…” He trailed off. “You motherfucking idiot. Seriously? Do you value your dick, rich boy? Because the old man will chop it off and feed it to you.”

“Not really your business.”

“It is, actually,” Fletch said, sprawling into a chair with just as much practiced insouciance. “I have to waste man hours cleaning that place and getting rid of whatever the hell you two left behind, which could be considerable. Besides, I need to know where you are at all times.”

“I reported the break-in at Kat’s apartment, and you already knew my suspicions about my place. We legitimately needed a safe house. There’s nothing to clean beyond that. You don’t get to know everything that goes on while I’m there.”

“Ditching a wired car wasn’t my favorite move of yours either. And why did you go to Laurie’s? Are you intentionally trying to earn a spot in my cell block?”

“No, in that case I was being a human being. I took a photograph and a postcard. Call them mementos and leave it at that. Alex got there before me, which, amazingly, means he’s a human too.”

“You’re both pissing me off,” Mark said with a glare.

“If you want to report me to the colonel, save it. Perhaps unfortunately for all of us, I’m head of this place until he’s on his feet. That means we need to set up a sting ASAP. Leave the details to Phan, then have him clear them with me.” Former Marine Corps Captain Travis Phan was head of personnel. He knew where every CFA body was at any given time, from Boston to Amsterdam, and he’d know who could be pulled for a home-based operation.

Evan didn’t feel comfortable with making these decisions, especially because it involved Kat. He was jumpy, full of questions and certainly not in the frame of mind to lead a team as complex and tenuous as Command Force Alpha. That was the role of Colonel Nicky Stafford and no one else. Yet what choice did he have? Days without any new leads left them vulnerable in the long term, not only as individuals like him and Katsu, but as a unit.

He told Fletcher about the man who’d been watching Evan and Katsu a little too intently last night, including giving a detailed description of the man and answering Fletch’s litany of investigative questioning. “I want to rotate out vehicles and I need you to give my current one a fine-tooth going over. I expect to know how he found us within the next two hours.”

Fletcher didn’t make any protests, as he’d always taken the safety of CFA operatives as his prime directive. If a tracker had been planted on Evan’s car, it was likely done at the hospital garage, as that was the only place they’d been regularly enough to set a pattern. Evan couldn’t regret that.

“If you’re the new boss man, you get to make the call on who gets to see this.” With the stony expression that came standard with people who played life-and-death like Katsu played pool, Fletcher handed Evan a sealed manila envelope. “A complete examination of the body from Minsk.”

“You mean Laurie’s body,” Evan said carefully.

“You get to determine who knows what, remember?”

“I get the feeling you already know something I don’t. Why?”

“Because every secret is safe with me. And the dear doctor was in a tizzy to tell somebody.”

“Spit it out.”

Mark leaned in. His mouth was thin and narrow, his eyes jetting to all corners of the room. “The SAS tattoo was tattooed on necrotic tissue. Ink on dead flesh. DNA tests will take another few days, but the doc’s guess is, whoever that poor bastard was, he wasn’t Lawrence Madigan.”

Air sucked out of Evan’s lungs then flooded back in.

There was a chance.

Evan couldn’t think beyond that sentence, repeated over and over. Laurie could still be alive.

But he had to think. Quickly. This was information that needed to stay safe and close, in case Julian was wrong. He wasn’t wrong often, but Evan wouldn’t want to hand out this kernel of hope to everyone, only to see the whole team take a morale hit when the DNA tests came back to the contrary.

“No one,” he said evenly. “You and me only. I’ll report to the colonel at my discretion.”

“Understood.” Mark was a smart ass, and he was a
hard ass
when it came to his role in CFA, but he was a remarkably loyal team player. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” Evan stood. The manila envelope felt burned into his flesh. “I want Breslin on the horn for logistics. We have threats here at home and the colonel in the hospital, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world stops while we chase our tails around Southie.”

“Yes, Sir,” Fletcher said. “And what about safe houses?”

“Expect me to turn the cameras off. End of story.”

Chapter Nineteen

For Kat, the most difficult detail to accept about her father was the thick five o’clock shadow over his jaw and upper lip. It was obvious someone had made an attempt to keep him clean-shaven the way he liked, but her dad was the type of robust guy who preferred to shave twice a day. He was in charge. He was usually immaculate, except for lounging at his home on the rare weekends when school and his leave time coincided. He’d be displeased if he knew, after he got over the happy of being alive. He didn’t like coming across as anything less than put together and on top of the world.

Right now, he was lying flat and looking up at the world.

She perched in the uncomfortable chair next to his bed. The machines flanking her made her feel like it was of the utmost importance to keep her elbows tucked in close at her sides. She wrapped both hands around her father’s, taking special care to avoid the plastic tubing of his taped-in-place IV.