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“Poor job?” he snapped, glaring at me. “Thousands of people died in those bridge explosions. They tried to attack a football stadium—”
“A stadium that was closed to fans,” I reminded him. “They wanted to take out some football players and their coaches?” I shook my head. “They killed the vice president inside a super max federal prison. They wanted to make it look like someone was funding terrorist groups, all of whom would have fallen over themselves to take credit for any of this if they could. Who benefits from all the things that have happened so far?”
“No one,” Zane insisted.
“Well, that can’t be true,” I argued. “People don’t just do things for the hell of it. Not things like this.”
“What are you thinking?” Raptor asked.
“Hell, I don’t know,” I admitted. “Like I said…new guy.”
The truth was, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the cyber security contractor was involved. But I hadn’t been given a lot of details about the situation, so for the moment it was a hunch. And the squad had obviously already cleared that company. Hell, if Scout was working with them, he’d certainly know better than anyone, so I needed to let it go.
“Hey, Pony, why don’t we head over to your hotel and grab your stuff?” Cookie suggested, already getting to his feet.
“Sure.” That was abrupt, but if he wanted to get out of there, I wasn’t going to argue.
I followed him back out of the Situation Room and up the stairs, through the West Wing and into the lobby. He didn’t speak the entire time, so I stayed silent as well.
“You got a car here?” he asked once we exited the building.
“No, they sent a driver,” I admitted.
“Okay, we’ll take mine,” he said. He motioned for me to follow him, and I fell into step, automatically placing myself at his back flank in a defensive position. “Are you armed?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“Just wondered why you’re playing Kevin Costner right now.”
“I’m sorry…” I chuckled softly as I caught up to walk next to him. “Would that make you Whitney Houston?”
“I suppose so,” he agreed. “I could pull it off.”
“Yes, you could.” We walked the rest of the way to the lot in silence and I slid into the passenger seat as Seamus got behind the wheel. “So, what’s up?”
“Am I that obvious?” he asked as he pulled out of the lot and headed toward my hotel.
“A little,” I admitted. “It was just a sudden decision, so I assume I said or did something I shouldn’t have.”
“No,” he said, turning to glance at me for a moment before turning back to the road. “I want to know what you saw.”
“What do you mean?” I felt my brow furrow as I stared at his profile. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Bullshit,” he argued, taking a right turn a little faster than necessary and making me rock in my seat. “Something is nagging at you and Phoenix don’t keep secrets.”
“It’s nothing.” But as the silence stretched between us, I decided to just tell him. Hell, he already thought I was stupid, so it wasn’t like I could make the situation worse. “Fine. What do you know about Blake Holdings?”
“Personally? Not much,” he said. “But Scout knows the owner, Richard Blake, pretty well.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I guess they were in the same foster home for a while. Richard is a few years older, but they were close.” Seamus huffed out a humorless laugh. “As close as any of us could be to our foster siblings, anyway.”
I knew most of the ops guys had grown up in the system. The government liked to recruit guys with no families. It made it easier to treat us as expendable.
“So he trusts Blake?” I pressed.
“He does,” Seamus agreed.
