“I hope you don’t mind that I called everyone in,” John said.
“No, not at all.” I offered my hand, and he shook it. “I brought coffee and pastries. Can we talk in the conference room?”
Jamie, Jack, and Nathan set Emily and Ashley, along with the kids, up in the small downstairs conference room before joining us upstairs.
“First, I want to thank you all for your help,” I said.
I held up a hand when John started speaking.
“And second, I’d like to apologize for underestimating you.”
“Damn, Cuz, what’d Ma put in your coffee this morning?” Jay asked with a laugh.
Other than a friendly grin, I ignored his joke.
“As you know, this case is highly sensitive. Gibson and I are doing most of our research off the record. We’re leaving breadcrumbs along the wrong trail on the record.”
“Hence needing our help and system,” Jamie said.
“Exactly. Please understand, my reluctance to fill you in wasn’t an ego trip; I was following protocol.”
“And now?” Jack asked.
“And now I need your help. To protect Nina, we need to solve the cold case her parents were working on, the mystery surrounding her parents’ death, and the current case that ties them all together.”
“And we have to do it without leaving a trace, because whoever’s behind this has at least one guy on the inside,” Ryan added. “We can’t safely use our CIA access, so I reached out to a buddy to help with that angle.”
“Do you trust him?” John asked.
“I do. We served together in the Army; he’s a Ranger, and he has CIA credentials, despite not being CIA, for his work with a civilian black ops security team.”
“Damn,” Nathan said. “Even I didn’t have CIA creds when I was with Hawken’s.”
“You just offered that secret up?” AJ asked with a laugh.
“It’s not like they don’t know. I’m willing to bet Austin here knows how often we take a shit,” Nathan said.
“Not quite that level of detail, but yes, we have dossiers on all of you.”
“Just us?” Jack asked.
When I hesitated to answer, Gibson said, “On everyone associated with SSI.”
“Meg’s gonna hate that,” Jack whispered.
“I’m not doing anything with the information. Running background checks is standing operating procedure during an investigation or op.”
They didn’t need to know I’d done it long before then to protect my family. And connect with them the only way I knew how.
“You don’t have to tell her,” G offered.
“I won’t lie if she asks.”
I nodded. There was nothing I could say or do to make him lie to his wife. It was a trait I respected, despite how annoying it was that he didn’t give two shits about the NDA I’d made him sign.
“Let’s focus,” John said. “Tell us about your CIA contact.”
I nodded to G, since Rogers was his contact, not mine.
