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Evan made a tiny noise like a laugh, but it was hard to tell because the tranquilizer was impairing his jaw muscles. “My girlfriend had me shot,” he said, his words slurred.
But those words nearly stopped my heart. It was probably the sedative talking. We both knew what this night had been. Yet I liked the sound of the word on his lips.
“Girlfriend?” Jensen stood a few feet away from me, clutching his own laptop—probably the one he used to locate us—in his hands.
“Back off, Jensen,” I said.
Jensen grinned and winked at me, then moved away.
“Such a shame,” Evan whispered, sounding drunk. “I was looking forward to that thing at dawn.”
He wasn’t as quiet as he may have thought he was. Li stood and cleared her throat, and she and Kessler gave Evan and me privacy by joining the team chatter as IT did a more thorough sweep of the cabin, and logistics readied the gurney for Evan’s transport.
“A damn shame,” I whispered back.
Another moment of connection, a meeting of our minds. And once again, it short-circuited logic and made me wish I hadn’t agreed to just one night. But I had. We both had. Although that had been before the mind-blowing sex. Before my peaceful sleep in his arms. Before my team’s ill-timed invasion. Things felt different for me now. Maybe they did for Evan, too. But he closed his eyes and went blank before I could ask him.
Penn and Sparks knelt beside Evan and hoisted him onto the gurney.
“I’ll go put on sweats,” I told them. “Then I’ll join you. I’ll ride in the medical van to monitor his vitals.”
Penn shook his head. “TJ wants you to ride with him to give him a debrief.”
I stood and stared at my boss across the room. I raised my voice to ensure TJ would hear me. “TJ’s debrief can wait. If that’s a problem for him, he can kiss my ass.”
* * *
The teambarely spoke on the three-hour drive back to the HEAT building outside of Chicago. That wasn’t surprising, after my outburst at our boss. It wasn’t just the fact that TJ was the team lead. It was also that together, TJ and I made up the command crew of our HEAT unit. He had the final say in team decisions, just barely edging me out, except for those involving medical matters. And now that TJ had Evan tranquilized, all things pertaining to Evan would fall under my purview until the drugs cleared his system. Which was why I was in the van equipped with emergency medical equipment, along with Penn and Sparks, our logisticians, while the other five team members rode together in the SUV in front of us.
I’d told Evan the effects of the tranquilizer wouldn’t last long, but that was relative, and he’d just begun to stir as we pulled into the parking lot behind the building. His vitals were good, so I nodded to Penn and Sparks when they opened the back doors of the van. They lifted the gurney out of the van and rolled Evan into the facility with me following behind them. This HEAT building, like all of them, had a big, open gym in the center of the first floor with offices, a conference room, and an IT room to the left and right, and a kitchenette and lounge along the back wall.
Penn and Sparks took Evan to the back right corner and the elevator to the higher floors, which held suites where we stayed while we were in town. Their destination was the second floor. The two things on that floor were the sensitive compartmentalized information facility—SCIF for short—which was the secure conference room where we had classified briefings, and my domain, the medical suite.
I was a few yards behind them and midway across the gym when Jensen intercepted me. “Good to have you back, Bond. I know I promised you a special drink, but since it’s 5 a.m., I think maybe we should wait.”
“My stomach thanks you,” I said. “And I want to keep an eye on Evan.”
“You know he’ll be fine,” Jensen said. “But...” He glanced in the direction of TJ’s office.
I understood his implication. It was time to talk with my boss to clear the air and give him my required debrief. There was a chain of command, there were protocols we had to follow, and—despite my recent realization that my future might not be with HEAT—I was still subject to both. Not to mention, TJ was more than my team leader. He was my longtime friend and he had a job to do, too, which included keeping me safe.
When I entered TJ’s office, he was sitting behind his desk and talking on the phone. If I had to guess who was on the other end of the call, I would say Ms. X, real name unknown, even by the operatives in the agency. X worked closely with all the teams in HEAT, but none more so than ours, the Alpha Team. She and TJ had handpicked the Alpha agents to focus on the Carbonados Group after it became apparent they were becoming a dangerous player in the world of mercenary counter-intelligence agencies.
TJ glanced up at me and spoke into the phone. “She looks like she could use some rest, but otherwise she’s safe and sound. Yes, I’ll be sure to tell her. Okay. We look forward to seeing you.”
He hung up and motioned for me to have a seat. “X sends her regards.” He leaned back in his chair and sighed. “And she’ll be here tomorrow to review safety protocols with the entire team.”
I dropped into the chair across from him and sighed. It was officially shit-hitting-the-fan time. “Is that a nice way of saying she’s going to punish the entire team for my transgressions?”
“Yep.” TJ propped his hands behind his head and stared at me.
“And I assume they all know I went into a potentially dangerous situation without backup.”
TJ’s face darkened. He leaned forward and pressed his hands flat on the desk. “It wasn’t potentially dangerous, it was a full-on ambush. I want to know everything that happened the other night, beginning with why you made an uncharacteristically terrible decision that put you in the crosshairs of Carbonados.”
“We went over this on the video call yesterday.” And I was in no mood to repeat it.
“Go over it again.” It wasn’t a request, it was a command.
