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The system worked like a circle. He wanted the information Lindsey possessed, and now someone at New Foundations would want to know what he knew. Either that or eliminate him, and Holt had no intention of letting that option happen.
Shane’s frown deepened with each question. “How can the impromptu plan you’re using now be better than the one we worked out for a week, taking all contingencies into account?”
All contingencies except Lindsey. Nothing prepared Holt for her, but he didn’t volunteer that piece of information.
“Because under his new plan he gets to sleep at Lindsey’s house.” Cam twisted the top off the water bottle in his hand. “She is the prize here.”
“It’s not like that.” And Holt would work very hard to keep it that way. He was not a dating guy and he never fooled around on a job.
Cam saluted him with the water bottle. “Yet.”
The man-to-man look from Cam made Holt worry they’d never stay on task, so he looked to Shane for help. “I need you on this.”
“What’s the ‘this’ you’re talking about?”
“Watching over Lindsey when I can’t.” Holt had to keep up the job at the camp. That meant leaving her without protection. Enter Hank Fletcher’s old friend in town for a few weeks.
The cover gave Shane an excuse to hang around. Cam could continue to fly tourists around on the helicopter while really conducting aerial searches of the campground and surrounding areas.
“Does she know she’s about to get a second roommate?” Shane asked.
Since she barely wanted one man in the house, Holt hadn’t exactly jumped at offering details between coffee and cereal at the kitchen sink this morning. “No.”
“Can I be there when she finds out you plan to spring me on her?” Shane’s smile could only be described as annoying.
Holt hid a wince. “Go away.”
“Make up your mind.” Shane dragged out the sing-songy voice. “You want me to stay. You want me to go.”
“To the public we were in the military together. Met there, served and remained friends through everything.” Connor and Joel had set up the cover. “Now you’re out and looking for a place to land, but you were there when I shot the locals in Afghanistan. You think I got a raw deal.”
New Foundations sought out disgruntled men with skills. That meant Holt had needed a story that fit the type. And since he had a horror story of his own in his past, it wasn’t all that hard to call up those feelings of frustration.
The difference was he didn’t blame the army for what had happened to him. In real life, he’d been the one left to die by someone he trusted. In his cover story, he did the killing. He hated both end results, but he’d lived with the realities of one of them for years now.
“You said that’s the story to the public. Interesting word choice.” Cam and Shane started talking at the same time, but Cam rushed to finish first. “Are you saying you’re going to tell Lindsey who I really am?”
Didn’t matter who spoke up, because the answer didn’t change. “She already knows my real name and about Corcoran.”
“How did that happen again?” Cam asked.
And that brought them right back to where the conversation had started. Instead of staying on the ride, Holt jumped off and started doing what he did best—issuing orders.
He looked at Cam. “You keep up the flights. Take photos. Send them back to Joel and Connor and see if they can make sense of what you’re seeing.”
Joel Kidd took the lead on Corcoran’s tech needs. He could make sense out of nonsense better than anyone Holt knew. And Connor was just about the most competent man on the planet. Holt trusted them to help all the way from Maryland.
“And what about Lindsey?”
“What are you talking about?” But Holt got Cam’s point. Connor led Corcoran by a few simple rules to get the job done—collect all the information you can before going in, trust your team and know that Connor would come behind you and clean up the mess.
“The Maryland office, Joel in particular, needs to rip her life apart. Investigate her.” Shane slipped into protocol-speak. When no one said anything, he looked around the closed-in room. “What, am I wrong?”
Cam shook his head. “He isn’t.”
Not in the mood for an argument, Holt conceded. He’d planned to conduct some research into Lindsey and her past. He’d just hoped to do it on a limited basis, without the entire Corcoran Team watching. Apparently that was not going to happen. “Fine.”
“She’s going to love it when she finds out we’re digging into her past,” Shane said.
