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“Dammit, Bond, where are you?” TJ asked immediately.
“No idea,” I said. “But I’m safe, I think.”
“I’m working on tracking your location,” said Jensen, our tech guru and IT lead. “It’ll take a little time because there’s some serious security on that computer.” He squinted as he glanced to the right of his computer camera. That would be the large screen in the IT room. “What happened to your head?”
“Mild concussion.” I angled my head so they could get a good look at the bandage surrounded by bruising. “Nothing to worry about. But I don’t know how much time I have, so while Jensen tries to find me, can Alder start running a background check on my rescuer? Name is Evan Prescott.”
Kate Alder leaned over Jensen’s shoulder and looked into the camera. “On it,” she said, then disappeared from my view.
“While she does that, tell us what the hell happened to you,” TJ said. “When my friend showed up at the hotel, he couldn’t get past Chicago PD. We’ve been monitoring police channels since last night but haven’t gotten any chatter about a woman matching your description being in their custody or in a hospital.”
“I think I was set up, maybe by my friend, the M.E., or maybe someone else,” I said, finally admitting what I’d begun to suspect when Evan had brought up the fact that I’d been left unprotected last night. I quickly recapped everything I could remember about the past 11 hours, from the moment I’d taken Chad’s call, to contacting TJ for an emergency extraction, to being surrounded by Carbonados thugs who smashed my phone, to now hiding in Evan’s office.
“We knew the phone was toast when Jensen lost tracking on you,” TJ said. “Did you try to call our unclassified number from this Prescott’s phone?”
“Not exactly. Like I said, I need a background check on him.” I wouldn’t bring up Evan’s refusal to hand me a phone, not unless it became absolutely necessary. No need to poke at the bear TJ could be by repeating Evan’s insults to HEAT leadership.
“Got a preliminary,” Alder said as I finished. “Evan Prescott. Thirty-two years old. Graduate of Widener University, outside Philly. ROTC. Five-year stint in—oh, your boy was a Green Beret. Didn’t re-up.”
“Why not?” TJ asked. He’d had his own reasons not to become a lifer, but was still deeply suspicious of other special ops guys who made the jump to civilian life.
“Honorable discharge. No other information.” Alder said. “Then he worked on the Philadelphia police force for the next three years.”
“Wait, he’s a cop?” That sent my mind reeling. What an odd thing not to mention.
“Was a cop,” Alder corrected. “Left the force two years ago, three months unaccounted for in his work record. But he wasn’t off-grid.” Translation: he probably wasn’t pulled into an undercover ops mission. “Bought an apartment in Chicago, normal bills charged to that address, started with Sentinel Security three months later.”
“Is the company on the up-and-up?” I asked. I literally sat on the edge of my seat, waiting to learn whether Evan might somehow be tied to Carbonados.
“Looks clean as a whistle,” Alder reported. “Government and private contracts. They provide security for politicians, random rich dudes. Oh, even a few celebrities. And there’s an affiliated non-profit that staffs a hotline to help vets in crisis.”
I leaned back in the chair and breathed a sigh of relief. “He’s one of the good guys.”
“Now that you feel comfortable about that, you can ask him for the address and tell him we’ll be right there to get you,” TJ said.
“About that... He’s being a bit less than cooperative in helping me contact you.”
“We got that from the fact that you used my secret weapon,” Jensen said. “But since we’re the good guys and he seems to be a good guy, it’d be great if he could give us a bead on you, because the location scrambling on his computer is a royal pain in my ass.”
“Sorry,” I said. “He doesn’t trust anyone outside his own team. Until his boss gives him the all-clear, he’s keeping me under wraps. Not a prisoner. He made it clear that I can leave, but he also can’t guarantee Carbonados isn’t around here somewhere. I think he has his team working on that, too.”
“Goddammit.” TJ started pacing. “I hate it when civilians—even if they are former military—start playing at being us.”
“To be fair, he doesn’t actually know about us, other than our name, which I apparently mentioned when I was concussed and still thought he was the friend you’d sent to help me.”
I winced as I waited for TJ’s reaction to that little data dump.
“We’ll deal with that situation later,” he said. “I’ll make some calls, get permission to reach out to Prescott’s boss at Sentinel. But if Jensen locates you first, we’re coming in hot.”
“I’ll be happy to take him out,” offered Mai Li, HEAT’s only sharpshooter. “With a tranq dart,” she clarified.
I startled, surprised that other team members were at the HQ near Chicago. “When did you get in?” I asked.
“A couple of hours after TJ called to tell us you were missing,” Li said.
“To clarify,” Cynthia Kessler, Li’s partner on the tactical crew, added, “we’ll only tranq him if it’s necessary.”
“You don’t need to tranq him,” I said. “And I want to be sure we bring him in safe. He did rescue me last night.”
