She stopped inches away, peered up at him. “What happened? You look angry.”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s a shadow over your eyes for one. Your cheek muscles are flexing and your hands are fists. You need to do some boxing?”
“There was a bodycam on the terrorist you took out in Tucker Town.”
Her eyes grew large, her eyebrows crowding her forehead. “And?”
He brought her into the conference room, showed her the photos and the captions. Unlike Carrera, her lips curved up. “They’re good, but we’re better. Mistake made, never repeated. Must’ve been a micro cam on his chest.”
She unearthed her laptop and opened it, then shifted toward him. “It’s your mission, but this isn’t your fault. It’s a lesson learned, but you can’t own this.”
Her smile lifted his spirits, but didn’t relieve the responsibility. Itwashis mission and his fault, but it was pointless to argue the point. They were on the same team.
She turned her attention back to her laptop. “I’ve gotta hunt me down a sex trafficker.”
They worked in silence, each determined to flush out their target.
BING!
One of several programs Teddy had running in the background alerted him that he had a match. Excitement had him minimizing screens until he found the one he needed.
Years back, he’d downloaded Stryker Truman’s IDware—a proprietary software package that performed image searches on the Internet, the Dark Web, and all social media. When Teddy had been brought into BLACK OPS and assigned to work with Greystone on The Day of Destruction, he’d uploaded the photos of the terrorists from the Haqazzii network.
When they changed up their identities, it made it challenging for the computer to find a match. Even with the odds stacked against them, the software had found one. Whether it was reliable had yet to be determined.
He opened the file. The software had found a photo of Muhammed Haqazzii it deemed “current within the past week”.
Three men had posed for a selfie. Smiling big, they were toasting with champagne flutes filled with bubbly. Streaks of energy thundered through him. This was the break he needed.
“This is good. Damn good.”
“Whatcha got there?” Sydney asked.
“Muhammad Haqazzii and two of his lieutenants.”
After eyeing the photo, she leaned close. He loved how her scent wafted over him, loved that they were working together on such intense cases.
“From when?” she asked.
“It’s current.”
She shot him a smile. “Nice. The pic is kinda dark. Can you lighten it?”
He played with the settings while she stayed close. As the photo lightened, she said, “There’s someone in the background, on the left— a profile shot.”
“He’s opening a bottle of champagne.”
“Hmm,” she said. “He looks like someone I know.”
Teddy enlarged the picture, then enhanced it to make it less grainy.
“What the fuck,” he said. “I’ve played poker with him.”
“You must be a badass poker player.”
“I’m okay. Why?”
