Page 5 of The ARC Unit: Breach

I glanced at Jackal. “You’re enjoying this?”

“Immensely.”

“Jackal,” Wolf said without looking up.

Jackal’s expression became solemn as he walked downstairs. “Boss doesn’t like happiness before noon.”

“It’s almost evening,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Then he’s running behind.”

Wolf didn’t answer.

I was beginning to understand how this worked.

Raven settled into a chair at one of the computers and woke the screen with a tap of the keyboard. I was moving toward him when an open folder near Wolf caught my attention.

ROMANIA

The pages beside it weren’t part of the official report I’d read on the plane. These were handwritten. Someone had reconstructed the operation in much more detail, filling the margins with names and notes. I set my carry-on on an empty chair and leaned closer without touching anything, but Wolf noticed anyway.

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You stopped.”

I glanced back at the page. “Did you make this?”

Wolf leaned back slightly.

“Why?”

“Because I think you started in the wrong place.”

The tapping from Raven’s keyboard stopped behind me. Wolf looked at the page, then slowly back up at me.

“Explain.”

I pulled the reports from my carry-on and opened the Romanian operation. “Your timeline starts when ARC received the order to move on the warehouse. The other reports do the same thing.”

Wolf said nothing, which I was beginning to understand meant he expected whoever was speaking to keep going until he found a reason to stop them. I slid the Romanian report across the table, careful to leave a few inches between it and his notes.

“The warehouse was already being cleared before you got the final order to go there. In Prague, the target started behaving differently before ARC was officially assigned.”

Wolf lowered his eyes to the page.

I continued in a softer voice, “Look, maybe somebody inside ARC is warning Cerberus. I’m not saying they aren’t. But if the people you’re following start reacting before ARC even knows it’s going after them, then your timeline starts too late.”

Raven rolled his chair closer and looked at the report.

“You’re thinking the information leaks before it reaches us.”

“Maybe. Or Cerberus recognizes when somebody is getting close another way. I don’t know yet.”

Wolf glanced from my report to the handwritten page he’d been working from.

“How long did you spend on this?”