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CHAPTER 20
Samantha
I didn’t knowhow Jensen had convinced Evan to join us back at HQ, but sometimes I could kiss our resident semi-evil genius. He saved me the trouble of showing up at Evan’s door begging to be let in, and a night of worrying that maybe Evan wanted to cut and run for good, despite telling me he wanted me enough to join my roster of lovers. The roster I no longer wanted or needed or planned to keep.
We took our seats in the SCIF for TJ’s debrief. It felt too large and quiet without Kessler and Li there, but that would be temporary. Jensen dialed in X on the secure line and TJ started speaking without the benefit of the HEAT-standard slide deck projected on a screen. That and his hoarse voice were a testament to how difficult this day had been for him. After TJ thanked us all for our hard work and success and called out Evan and me specifically, he invited X to share her thoughts.
When she started with, “I’m sorry,” I wasn’t sure I’d really heard it. I’d never known her to apologize before. I wasn’t aware that she’d done anything in the course of time I’d known her that would cause regret.
“Sloane wasn’t really one of us,” X continued, “but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he endangered the mission and your lives. I should have kept him on a tighter leash, but I’ve been walking a fine line myself, lately.”
I arched an eyebrow and looked at TJ, who shrugged his shoulder, apparently not knowing any more about X’s trials and tribulations that I did.
“Alder, if you would,” X said.
“Thank you.” Alder tapped on the laptop. She did have slides for show and tell. “Jensen and I are still digging, but our preliminary research shows Sloane sold us out for the money. That greed was a lucky break for us because he refused to hand over a whole list of HEAT operatives. He decided he could make more by doling out the names one at a time. He started with the Alpha Team.” She glanced at me. “Specifically, with Doc.”
The weak link. Evan laid his hand over mine and shook his head as if he could hear my thoughts.
“Let’s be honest, Bond,” TJ said, “the man hated you. You’re smarter than he is, more respected, and a damn sight better doctor than he could ever hope to be.”
My friend and boss was exaggerating. Sloane had been an accomplished physician. But I would take the compliments of smarter and better respected.
“What about O’Dell, though?” I asked. “And why were they looking at the other docs from my former army unit? If they knew who I was, why not just snatch me?”
“That’s exactly what they were doing,” Jensen said. “Everything else was a smokescreen, making it seem like the leak came from somewhere else, maybe a database where your field surgery credentials are listed without any further personally identifiable details.”
“Has anyone interviewed Chad Waters?” I was pretty sure my old friend and former friends-with-benefits partner had been a patsy, too. “I rubbed my temples, blaming my past concussion for my lapse in asking the obvious question days ago.
The team hesitated. After a few seconds of silence, it was X who chimed in. “He received an anonymous tip that there might be something incriminating you at the scene.”
“It is possible O’Dell was just bait to lure me there?” My stomach lurched at the thought of it. I looked at Alder.
“It’s likely that O’Dell’s death and the anonymous tip were a setup to lure you to the hotel,” she said. She didn’t give me her probability prediction, which probably meant it was quite high.
“We have to stop them,” I said. Not just for ourselves or our missions, but for the body count they were racking up on our watch. “And you’re confident they don’t know anyone else’s identity, other than Li and me?”
“To a 94.7 percent probability,” Alder said. “While HEAT appears to have run up against Carbonados a few times in the past year and we had some indications of such a group’s existence, it appears they were unaware of us until Li’s former colleague tried to recruit her as a sharpshooter for their organization.”
That colleague, in trying to impress Carbonados, had kidnapped Chase and two reporters and held them on a harbor cruise ship. One of the journalists hadn’t made it out alive. HEAT had made a valiant rescue, but not a particularly subtle one. We’d involved Li’s father who was a naval vice admiral and a group of Navy SEALs to do it. And now that Carbonados knew of HEAT’s existence, they would try to destroy us without regard to whether innocents got caught in the crossfire. Or worse, they would place innocents there intentionally.
“The good news is that Sloane was never allowed in the SCIF and TJ never allows Carbonados-specific information discussed outside of it,” Sparks said. “We have Kessler’s suspicions of him to thank for that.”
Penn grinned. “Her and her built-in psychopath detection system.”
“We don’t know enough to diagnose him as a psychopath,” I felt compelled to say. “But he is an asshat.”
I glanced at Evan, who smiled at me. He looked as tired as I felt, and he’d barely said a word since we’d left the hospital. Maybe he was still considering the “run” strategy after all.
“Everyone has the weekend off, with the usual caveats,” TJ said. “We’ll convene Monday morning. Oh, and I’ve been asked to remind everyone that there will be a team toast in the lounge in twenty minutes.”
As everyone stood to leave, I touched Evan’s arm. “I have to talk to TJ, but I’d also like to talk to you before the team toast.” I needed to talk to him, about HEAT and my future, about him and my future, about us and our future.
“Would you mind if I took a raincheck? It’s been a long day and I’m not sure I’m up for a toast or...”
Or talking to me, he didn’t need to say. But if he was going to run like a coward, he would do it after hearing what I had to tell him. I shook my head. “Sorry, but you were deployed on a mission today. Since you didn’t have a check-up pre-mission, I must insist you have one post. It’s a liability issue.”
That wasn’t a complete fabrication, but the protocol was pretty vague and left a lot to the physician’s discretion. Since the mission was now several hours behind us and he was still walking and talking, I could have sent him home. But he was forcing my hand.
