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“Are you planning a trip up there?”

“I want to. She’s going through a ton of shit with her mother. She has a TRO out on her, it’s a long, bad story. But she has enough good people who love her up there that I’m going to stay down here.”

“Good plan.”

Gideon slipped back into the room and gave everyone a thumbs-up.

Kostya looked around the room and gave each of his men a hard look. “What do you think of the idea of a mission following us home?” he asked slowly.

Nobody spoke up. Ryker knew why he wasn’t speaking. Landon. Was he up for this? He looked over at the kid.

“Why are y’all looking at me?” Landon frowned. “Do I have ketchup on my shirt or something?”

“No reason,” Linc said.

“Nope.” Nolan agreed with Linc.

“Because we’re trying to get a read on you,” Ryker said. “Are you going to be okay if we do something that is a little off the books?”

“As long as it has something to do with going after those motherfucking Kraken assholes, I’m all in.”

Ryker looked over at Kostya who had a smirk on his face. The son-of-a-bitch really knew his team.

24

“Captain Hale is getting into running these meetings,” Mateo chuckled as he caught up with Ryker on the way down the hall to the briefing room.

Ryker smiled. “I bet paperwork and politics get real old after a while, at least listening to our bullshit has to be something new and different.”

“Especially your bullshit.” Mateo laughed.

Ryker felt his phone vibrate and pulled it out of his back pocket, hoping it was good news from Lawrence saying that the locksmith had come through. He pushed open the door to the briefing room with his shoulder and saw Nolan looking down at his phone and frowning.

“Good to see you, Chief Petty Officer McQueen,” Captain Hale said.

Yeah, he had to totally be bored with politics.

Ryker smiled and nodded and looked to see if there was a seat near the back so he could read Lawrence’s text. Before he had a chance to go down the row to a seat, Nolan grabbed his arm and started to propel him to the door.

“Captain, something’s come up. We’ll be right back,” Gideon said as he got behind Nolan and they both started pushing Ryker out the door.

“What the fuck?”

“Nolan, what kind of picture came up on your phone?” Gideon demanded to know.

“Nothing. It was a text from a number with I’m pretty sure a Turkey country code. It just asked me how Maggie and Iris were liking their time in Jasper Creek. That was all it said.” Nolan’s hand showed just the finest tremor.

Gideon shoved his phone out so Ryker and Nolan could see it. It was a picture of Jada with two men that Ryker didn’t recognize, but they looked like her. On the picture, her face was X’ed out.

“What number did yours come from?” Nolan asked.

“Some unknown number in Turkey.”

“What did yours say?” Ryker sucked down air that tasted sour and pulled up his screen and pressed on the incoming text. It was a picture coming from a number in Turkey. When he pressed on the photo, it was Amy’s door with the word CUNT written on it.

“What in the hell does that mean? Why didn’t they mention Amy?” Nolan asked.

“Somebody just spraypainted this on her front door two nights ago,” Ryker said softly.