“What I don’t get is why he’s doing it,” Jake says, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
Odd bites his lip, probably because he knows exactly how awkward this is.
I sigh. “This might have to do with me.”
“In what way?”
“We would sometimes hook up. You know how it is, always on the go, never in one place long enough for relationships, so hookups were all you had.”
“Yeah, that was kind of the appeal,” Jake says.
Grimacing at Odd, I admit something I haven’t told anyone. “When things were coming to a close with our team, right before everything went to hell with my knee, he wanted to know if we could date when we got back stateside. I said no. He didn’t take it very well.”
Odd grabs my hand and kisses it.
Jake pauses at the gesture, then shakes his head, grimacing. “When I got stateside, I didn’t want to be near anyone who served with me, at least for a while. I just wanted space from the things that happened, you know?”
Insert knife, twist.
“Well, yes, that was a big part of it, but the bigger part was…”
“Oh yeah. Odd,” he says, grinning. Odd blushes.
“Yeah.” I smile at my man but refocus on the issue at hand. “Thing is, we thought it was just a Marshals’ problem because that’s where we kept running into it. But he has access to everything.”
Jake runs his fingers through his wavy black hair, thoughtful. “Exactly, and it goes back to what Ronan was saying. The known bads. It looks like his creative editing started with the East Texas ops and kept going from there.”
Odd speaks up. “If Greg started fucking with us after East Texas, then that squarely points to a connection with the larger organization that Tremaine was a part of.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Yeah, you’re probably right. And it wouldn’t matter the agency. He’d just have to make changes to the known bads all across the board because those are the ones we go after.”
“Yep.” Jake scratches his head, thinking. “Hm.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“Guy like that can’t just be taken off the map. Too high-profile.”
I think through the possibilities, shaking my head at the cluster-fucked proportions of this whole thing.
Odd raises a finger. “Too high-profile for the Guardians, maybe. Not for Wimberley. He represents a huge national security threat and a threat to the anonymity of both teams. Wimberley can make him disappear for good.”
Damn, he’s right.
Tapping my thumb against my thigh, I cycle through the scenarios, all of the areas where he was a big fucking problem, and the solution is simple. “Hang on, I’m dialing in Hedy.”
We wait a few minutes and Hedy joins us on the video call. I love my laptop, but this small screen is making me miss the Portal to Nowhere with its huge flatscreens. We catch her up as succinctly as possible, and while she has a few saucy comments about Odd’s presence, she ultimately agrees with our assessment.
“We’ve got Greg,” she says briskly. “You take care of the shit that’s going on in Bastrop and we’ll reconvene after. Sound good?”
“Yep.”
“Okay then,” she says, hanging up.
25
Odd
“I can’t concentrate if you’re going to do that to my ear,” I grumble as I stretch like a cat and lean into the pressure. He continues the slow, hot lick up the shell of my ear as I log in to the web portal that was set up for this mission. We’re sitting on the bed in our little borrowed efficiency, crowded around my laptop to watch Edison and Arye, my friends from Wimberley, take Greg down.
