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“Two,” Jax answered.
Feb jerked her gaze to them, the math not adding up. “There should be three,” she said. “The younger man in the wine-red jacket by the window, the midthirties person at the two-top near the front, and the blond middle-aged guy in a suit at the center round.”
“The last one is with us,” Hawes said.
Jax grimaced. “And Pappas sat right down at his table.”
“Who is he?” Feb asked.
“SFPD. And Pappas’s ex-husband.”
Unlike earlier in the day, this time Feb let her curse slip... “What the ever-loving fuck?”
SIX
Jax should have composed themselves better before barreling into the kitchen, wide-eyed and alarmed. While the rest of the hyperfocused chefs hadn’t noticed them, Feb, standing across the kitchen next to Hawes, had spotted them right away. Too fast for Jax to hide their distress, which only stoked Feb’s higher. Jax hated heaping more on her, both in that instant and in the larger scheme of things, but hiding their own mounting stress wasn’t natural either. They were still getting used to this whole undercover gig. They were a hacker, the one usually behind the computers running comms, all the stress and fear that came with an op channeled into keystrokes and commands. Working undercover, in the very middle of the situation, effectively running point on an op, was new. And boy were they doing a bang-up job of it. First time out and said op was going sideways—and they’d fallen for a civilian bystander.
Though Feb wasn’t just any civilian. She was a leader, like Hawes and Helena, like Mel and Brax. She was worried about her people and the restaurant she’d fought tooth and nail for, the reputation she’d built. She was the kind of person anyone would be lucky to spend more time with; she was the person Jax wanted to get to know better, to maybe build something more with when this was all over.
Which meant they had to pull their shit together, for Feb and for the future Jax wanted the opportunity to explore with her. They took a deep breath like Holt had taught them all those years ago at the shelter, a trick he’d learned from Brax years before in the military, then continued with the game plan the operatives in the dining room were ready to execute. “Mel signaled for evac,” they told Hawes. “I already texted Holt.”
“Yoo-hoo,” Feb said, waving a hand between them. “Did you miss the question mark at the end of my WTF freak-out?” Feb split a glare between them and Hawes. “What the hell’s going on?”
“The fire alarms in the building are about to go off,” Hawes said as he stashed knives in the pockets of his chef’s coat. “I’ll make sure everyone back here is out. Our people will do the same with the couple remaining guests out front, if they haven’t already.”
Stepping closer, Jax gently clasped her wrist and waited for her to focus on them. “We’re gonna end this now, Feb. Trust Hawes to take care of things back here. I’ll make sure everything out front is taken care of too.”
Her wary gaze was still locked on Jax’s when the fire alarm began to wail.
“Get to your position,” Hawes said to Jax, then raised his voice for the suddenly chaotic kitchen to hear. “Everyone out the back door!” he shouted, and all heads turned in his direction. “Let’s go!” Granted, he was the new guy there, but Jax had met few people who questioned Hawes when he broke out the king voice. Feb’s kitchen staff was no exception, all of them flicking off burners, then hustling toward where Hawes was waving them to the back door.
All of them except Feb, who remained frozen in place, her frame practically vibrating, her gaze inching past worry to terrified. Jax shifted their grip, tangling their fingers with Feb’s and giving them a squeeze. “Go, babe. I’ve got this.”
She blinked away a smidge of worry, making room for the ounce of resolve she needed to be UTT’s head chef. Nodding, she returned Jax’s gesture, her fingers briefly squeezing around Jax’s, before she headed Hawes’s direction, ushering folks from behind. “You heard the new guy! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
With Feb out of the line of fire, Jax raced back the opposite direction, pulling up short at the breezeway espresso station, just shy of the dining room entrance. In front of them, a standoff had ensued. Ariel Camino stood in the center of the room, a compact wall of muscle, his biceps bulging where they circled his leaner, taller ex-husband’s shoulders, holding him to his front. Mel stood across the large round table from them, the rest of the hunters and operatives fanned out behind her, all of them at the ready, weapon of choice in hand, none of them guns—standard operating procedure for the Madigans and Redemption Inc.
Versus Ariel’s Sig Sauer pressed against Fletcher’s side.
Jax surveyed the room once more, searching for any guests and finding none. Good; the team had gotten them clear. They moved to step forward, then paused, motion at Helena’s side halting their stride. Five fingers spread, twice in quick succession; Helena’s signal for under control. Jax failed to see how, but in this situation, they were the least experienced of anyone in the room. Following Helena’s order, they stepped into the shadowed coffee nook, grabbed a gasket removal awl, and listened while negotiations continued to play out in front of them.
“I’m sure we can work this out,” Mel said.
“How?” Ariel scoffed. “I just wanted to eat a good meal, get what I came here for, and leave without anyone the wiser. But you screwed with the reservations, so the person I needed came and went already.” He angled his face into Fletcher’s, growling against his cheek. “You always screw up the plan.”
“Let us bring you in,” Fletcher pleaded in a voice far softer, more urgent than Jax had ever heard from the typically measured man. “We can protect you, Leo.”
Whether he noticed it or not, Ariel drew Fletcher closer, grasping at warmth, at hope, in direct contrast to the cold, bitter laugh that fell from his lips. “Do you have any idea how many people are after me, cariño? How many people in your own station will try and slit my throat?” His chin jerked up, attention snapping to the door as Hawes slipped inside, a knife in hand. “Or maybe you’ll beat them to it.”
“You hurt any of my family,” Helena said, “and we just might.”
“Hena,” Hawes cautioned, even as he firmed his grip on the santoku.
“Whose bounty are you collecting?” Ariel asked. “The CIA’s or my family’s?”
“Your family thinks you’re dead,” Mel replied.
“Not all of us,” came a familiar voice from farther down the breezeway.
