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Grabbing plates and cutlery, Hunter and Waldo take the newly vacant seats at the table and begin serving themselves.
As Dana returns to finish her dinner, Logan drops his fork onto his cleared plate beside me and reaches for his water.
“We should discuss a couple of things.” Both ladies look up from the meal hesitantly as Logan continues, “Just housekeeping items. We’re short on manpower until late tomorrow morning at the earliest, so some of our normal routines need to change.” He nods in my direction, looking for backup, and I step in.
“What he’s trying to say is, we won’t be able to always have one man on you, but you will be locked in your room for most of the night. Grizz and Grey are out on duty until early morning, then Hunter and Waldo will relieve them. We need them sleeping when they aren’t on duty. Logan and I will be working with Link across both their shifts as well, and we have some tactical simulations we’re running tonight with our teams in the field. You two will stay together until the morning. Someone will drop by to escort you both to the bathrooms at lights out.”
Hunter quickly swallows his bite. “I’ll do it, boss.”
I nod to confirm, then split my attention between the women. “We’d like both of you to sleep in Dana’s room tonight. We—I would feel better if I knew you were together and safe.”
I won’t be able to watch Jessa, and the four men left on base with us haven’t been cleared yet, so I don’t want anyone making contact with her in the night while I’m busy.
“That’s fine, Jack.” Jessa smiles and nods at Dana. “We appreciate you all thinking about our safety.”
Logan relaxes beside me. I realize that Hunter and Waldo are close to finishing their meals, and we’re ready for dessert.
“Great. Thanks for your understanding. Now, let’s see what’s so great about this dessert.” Logan stands to clear his plate, and Jessa stops him.
“I’ll take that for you.” Then, looking around the table, she continues, “I’ll clear all your plates, and Dana will help serve the cake.”
She reaches out to grab Hunter’s first. Then she continues around the table as Dana sets the cake in the middle. The strong scent of cocoa wafts on the air, and I’m momentarily distracted by the icing. As my piece is served, I look up as Jessa heads into the kitchen with our plates stacked in her hands.
Deciding to help, I slide my seat back to stand, but Hunter catches my attention. “Excuse my manners, but holy shit, this is amazing. Boss, you need to try this cake. Who made this?” he asks me.
Looking back at my piece, then around to see the satisfied smiles, I decide to sit back down and clear my plate. “This was all Dana.”
“Delicious, ma’am.” Waldo speaks for the first time since entering the room, and everyone murmurs their agreement.
Thoughts of assisting Jessa in the kitchen fade with my first bite into the pure chocolate delight. Hunter is right: it is amazing.
As I take my last bite, Jessa is back out and sitting down to eat her dessert. “I just put on some decaf. I know you guys need to sleep tonight.”
CHAPTER34
JESSA
Moving through the halls at five o’clock in the morning is more sobering than any other time I’ve walked down them—though I think my feelings of foreboding have more to do with the situation than the time.
Scenarios and outcomes race through my mind as I make my way to the comms room. Butterflies are angrily fluttering around in my gut, grating against my nerves.
According to the paper Hunter slipped me as I cleared the plates last night, the only ones awake on base now are Hunter and Waldo. Jack and Logan finished running their tests with Link and their away team an hour ago, and they are taking advantage of the downtime to sleep before morning.
I took a chance that Link’s attention would be elsewhere and the cameras would not be closely monitored with everything else going on. I also know that Link runs system reports and diagnostics at five because it’s their most quiet time. Security goes down around the same time, to clear its data and reboot, so the cameras will be off for the next fifteen minutes. This will make it easy to gain access to a computer that’s already running and not actively guarded.
As I enter the hallway outside the comms room, my nerve endings tingle in anxious anticipation.
I had half a day to organize this.
My final move.
All of my information came in at once last night when Hunter slipped me his note, and I had minutes to forge my plan and put the pieces in motion. The planning and execution of ops has always been a process of weighing risk and reward, but this was different.
I pulled out a pen and a piece of paper and quickly scrawled out some instructions for Hunter. I told him to leave our door unlocked after he returned us from the bathrooms just before lights out and I would meet him outside of the comms area at five. The good thing about locking doors with keys instead of cards is that when the door opens, it doesn’t alert anyone.
I only have one shot. Then this game turns into a whole new one, and I’m not prepared for any other version to play out.
It has to end like this.
