“Devlin, you need to listen very carefully,” I said as gentlyas I could. “Savannah sent me to help you. Remember the note you slipped her last night?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“You asked for her to send help. That’s why she sent me.”
I watched the emotions play across his face as he wrestled with the cognitive dissonance of it.
“But Howard said…”
I thought about Lisa, about our conversation. She’d been so willing to believe there was someone evil in the organization, as long as it wasn’t the exalted leader.
“Howard’s been tricked,” I whispered. “It’s not his fault. There are powerful forces out to get him. Devlin, they sent a mole. You know who it is, don’t you?”
His eyes were wide, but at least they were focused. He was considering it.
“Someone who showed up recently and claimed he could protect Howard,” I continued. “That’s how they work.” I could plant the seed, but Devlin’s mind needed to let it take root, or I wasn’t getting out of here alive.
“Is it Taylor?” he whispered.
Hallelujah and amen.
I nodded. “He’s dangerous. He wants to ruin everything. Savannah doesn’t want that. She wants to help you save it. We can call her right now. She’ll tell you herself. But you’ll have to free my hands and give me your phone.”
“We can? You have her number? She really wants to help?”
I nodded again. “She wants to stop Taylor. We can only do that if we disarm that bomb. And here’s the best part: Savannah’s with the people who can help us. They all want to protect Howard.”Long enough to put his ass in jail, but I didn’t say the quiet part out loud.
Devlin cut the zip tie off my wrists, then pulled out his phone and handed it to me.
I took it casually, as if our lives didn’t depend on it.
38
SAVANNAH
The logistics and tactical operatives, including Mai, dressed in field gear. Kat instructed several agents, led by Bloom, to arrange transport and be on standby.
I and the two agents Lang had assigned to help me sifted through pages and pages of blackmail material. With the three of us speed reading, we first found a page using the first initial D that had details I could tie to Devlin. That gave us Devlin’s tracking number that WCI had assigned him, so we were able to pull every page of kompromat Anson had on him.
By the time Bloom returned to report that all units were ready and on standby, I’d read through approximately 20 percent of Devlin’s confessions. They were all about me. How he watched me, tracked my phone, followed me while I ran errands. Monitored my business email account and text messages. Even spied on me with dates. On one page, he’d scribbled out a signed confession that he sometimes knocked on my condo door, claiming he was just in the neighborhood when he suspected I was having sex. And it started years before we ever dated.
I dropped the papers and pushed back from the table.
Then I stood and paced as the minutes ticked past whileLang, Pasco, Jensen, and Bloom, now that he had returned, led small teams sifting through grainy traffic cam footage. After nearly an hour, they’d identified the vehicle that we now believed had taken him and had tracked it along two different highways, but the gray sedan exited onto a side road, and they lost it in a coverage gap.
They were regrouping when Pasco’s phone rang. The room fell silent. My heart lodged in my throat. Mai grabbed my hand. Pasco was mission control for the operatives on his team, so if they were in distress, he was the man they would call.
“It’s a video call,” Pasco announced. “I’ll leave my camera off.”
So we’d get to see him, know if he was all right. Or maybe his captors wanted him on camera for something awful. I was terrified to look at the screen, but more terrified to look away.
Agents shifted into position, some to trace the call, others to decode any hidden messages. Kat gave the thumbs-up, and Pasco answered.
Ben’s image popped onto the screen. Everyone in the room let out a sigh of relief. I fell against Mai’s shoulder and choked back a sob. But all was not well. There was a gash on his head and so much blood, dripping into his eye, running down his cheek, pooling in the base of his throat.
“Head wounds bleed a lot,” Mai whispered.
I nodded and stood up straighter, trying to be brave. If Mai was calm, I should be calm.
