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He was an elite tracker, although in a different way than Moe. Trace had been trained to hunt his target, whereas Moe seemed to possess some innate instinct to simply find it. He might be better than Moe on paper, but there was no one like her wild, Brit renegade—she would rather have Moe on her trail than Trace if she ever was taken, but certainly wouldn’t tell either of them that. However, if her super soldier declared there was no activity pointing to a second group waiting to nab Emit, she was at square one again.
“Flynn was sure they wanted me for my brain, right?” Emit asked.
“A hundred percent.” She mentally shuffled through dozens of possibilities, a new and even worse thought entering her head. “It will only take one man with a high-powered rifle and long-range scope to assassinate you if you step from your vehicle.”
“Assassinate?” Emit sounded as if someone had squeezed him. “I thought they wanted to kidnap me, not kill me.”
No one liked hearing this type of news. She’d been there once and was glad Rory now worked for her, instead of performing wet jobs for the CIA. “If you get on a four-wheeler, you’re a sitting duck. If you stay behind while the others leave, you’ll be just as vulnerable.”
“Shit,” Cal said. Understanding dawned and he issued orders to whoever was driving. “Stop the car.”
Emit, always a voice of reason, was once more calm. “Why would they kill me, B? That makes no sense.”
She had no idea, but not knowing a threat’s motivation didn’t mean there wasn’t one. “We play this safe. Cal and Trace take the ATVs and find Moe and Parker. Emit, you and Jeb return to the ranch.”
Connor had been so quiet she’d nearly forgotten he was nearby. “What if that’s what they want? What if the real trap is at the ranch? We researched the other Ghost Fox members, right?”
“They’re squeaky clean,” Rory said.
Vivi looked up from her screen, another member of the team that had remained quiet but mulling it over in her mind. “They’re all a little too clean if you ask me.”
Beatrice motioned her over so those on the other end could hear her. “Explain.”
Vivi removed her reading glasses and tossed them on the plastic table. “All of them are upstanding citizens of their corresponding countries, and none have so much as a parking ticket or overdue bill. That strikes me as odd, and yet it’s possible. They stay under the radar because of the potential threats to their lives. Except for Lydia. She’s the only one with actual undercover experience who has remained in the limelight after retiring. Then she alerts the CIA about RING coming after Emit and generously offers to run an op for them, but suddenly, the mission is set into motion early.”
The pieces fell into place and Beatrice smacked the table in frustration. This wasn’t about Emit at all. Lydia Charmaine had triggered the op and she was the one controlling it.Talk about a goatfudge.
“What are you suggesting?” Emit asked.
Beatrice nodded her thanks at Vivi, who looked pleased that she’d figured it out. “Cal, get our people out of that mine as safely as possible. Emit, while your elite team is working on that, you get to a safe house. Flynn won’t believe our theory, so we do this on the down-low, got it?”
“Copy that,” Cal said.
Rory was already typing. “The closest temporary safe house is sixteen miles southwest of the quarry. Sending you the coordinates now. It’s nothing fancy, but until we join you, stay put, Petit.”
“Did I miss something?” Emit asked.
Every one of them had. “Your friend and colleague,” Beatrice told him, “is a double agent.”
NINETEEN
“Put me down,” Parker whispered.
Faced with a bear twice his size, Moe was frozen for the first time in his life. He needed to get the M4 off his back and aim it forward, but couldn’t while he was holding her.
Moving her, however, could provoke the beast. “If I step back, one foot at a time,” he murmured softly, “we might make the tree line without upsetting it.”
“And dowhat? Climb a tree? He’ll follow us, or shake it until we fall out.”
“We have guns.”
He felt her gaze swing to his face. “We’re not killing it.”
If it came down to them or the bear, he was squarely in the kill-the-bear-and-live column. Luckily, the bugger was more interested in finding something to eat. Considering that ripping apart the backpacks was easier than tackling a human for his snack, Moe silently cheered him on.
How good was a bear’s tracking ability? He knew plenty about horses, but wild animals were a completely different, well,animal.
The bear glanced their way but began trying to open one of the MREs that had fallen from the pack. Slowly, Moe allowed Parker’s lower body to slide down his until her feet touched the ground.
