“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She raised her hand, squeezing the stress ball, taking aim. “You’re going to waltz in here, hint at something, and then slink out like a damn coward?”
“Hey, I learned it from you.” He tried for humor, even thought his chest tightened with the memory. “When you snuckout of my bed in the middle of the night and took off. No goodbye. No note. And you never returned a single text or message.”
“Oh, don’t you dare.” She cocked her arm and released the ball, narrowly missing his head by two inches.
He hadn’t moved a muscle because he knew she wouldn’t dare hit him with anything. Wasn’t her style. Verbal tongue lashings, however, were commonplace. And he enjoyed them way too much.
Kawan grinned. “Hit a nerve?”
“I’m not the needy one who tosses around the L word when we’re nothing to each other.” The corner of her eye twitched. “And this isn’t the time or place to discuss this. Hell, we’re never discussing this. We’re not a thing. We had a good time. That’s it.”
A long beat passed. The weight of everything said and unsaid stretched taut like a cable between them. The room buzzed with old tension—some of it professional, most of it not.
“I’ll drop the personal for another day, because we do need to focus on this mission, and everyting else is a distraction.”
Lark leaned over, snagged her damn stress ball, and worked it through her fingers. “Glad we’re on the same page with that one. Now, tell me what you’re thinking or next time I will hit you with this thing.”
“I have two thoughts. Let’s start with the worst-case.” Kawan leaned against the door. “Maybe us being here has nothing to do with you. Perhaps Lorre or Grady believes something else is going on. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been left in the dark.” He let his mind go back to that day so many years ago. The memories haunted him, but it was also where he’d fallen for her. “Operation Maddog.”
Lark froze. The ball in her hand dropped to the floor and rolled between her legs. She didn’t lean over to snag it. She just let it go, which wasn’t like her. “That’s the first time we everworked together. First time we met. I honestly thought we were gonna die, and for what? Some asshole decided he wanted a bigger payday, so he sold out his teammates and his country?” She glanced at her feet and kicked the ball. It went flying. Bouncing off the wall, it hit the corner of the desk, and landed back at her feet like a damn boomerang. “I hand-picked this fucking team. There’s no mole. That’s not what’s going on. My team is as loyal to me as you are to Thor.”
He’d seen Lark in almost every situation imaginable—except maybe shock.
Not even when he’d told her he loved her, and that had certainly thrown her for a loop. She’d been tongue-tied for all of three seconds, and then she tied up his tongue. They had wild sex—his mistake had been thinking it meant she loved him back. Only, when he woke… Lark was gone… never to be heard from again. That was two years ago.
“I’m just trying to make sense of why Grady—or Lorre—made a decision that ultimately doesn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things.” Kawan shuffled closer.
“I appreciate that, but be honest. You’ve worked with my team. Can you seen any of them turning?”
“No. They’re a solid crew. But I’ve learned to never say never.”
She stumbled backward, reaching for the desk, her ass landing on the corner with a thud. “I just don’t understand why Major General Grady would be involved.” She lowered her gaze, clasping her hands, intertwining her fingers. “Him giving orders without us knowing if he went over Lorre’s head, or with his blessing, it kind of makes it hard to decipher what’s really happening.”
“We have to do what we always do and focus on the mission.” Kawan took a risk and rested his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently. “And that brings me to option two. You gotthe approval to risk an AI prototype in the field. I’m sure the brass is getting antsy and wants assurances that nothing is going to happen to it. Grady’s just putting more boots on the ground to ensure success. And let's not forget, he’s your biggest cheerleader.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.” Lark held his gaze. “And I’ve got a bad feeling about this op. I have for the last few days. Specs and I have been double-checking everything. Going over every detail. But I can’t stop this gnawing feeling in my gut.”
“Tell me why.”
“We’ve had a guy on the inside for nearly three months. He’s the one who let us know about which prospective buyers the company was speaking with and how to get a meeting. That’s how we were able to ensure it was the buyer that Torin was already undercover with.”
“So far, I don’t see a problem.”
“Communicating with Torin has been difficult for the last week,” she said. “I expected that. Anticipated it. But I didn’t expect that Bretton Halstead, our plant inside Senatrix Global, would be so difficult. Specs set up that line of communication, and she’s the best. There shouldn’t have been a problem.”
“How well do you know Halstead?”
“I haven’t worked with him personally, but Mina has. He’s good undercover. Doesn’t crack under pressure. Thinks quick on his feet. Comes highly recommended by other JSOC teams.” She raced to the other side of the desk and tapped on the keyboard of her laptop. “Bretton didn’t get us the intel about the change in location and time for the buy until an hour ago. He said the seller has been squirrelly lately. It also wasn’t confirmed with Torin until shortly after.”
“Again, I’m not really seeing the issue because these men are undercover. They might not have been able to transmit the intel safely.”
“I understand that.” She spun the laptop around and pointed at a map. “But all this created a bigger problem, which Specs and now Jupiter are having to navigate. Half the cameras are still being rerouted. The shift in timing burned most of our surveillance. We’re half-blind. Now, I have to put my entire team, except Specs, in the field.”
Kawan studied the screen. “Yeah, I see how that would be a problem if my team hadn’t been deployed.” He shifted his gaze, arching a brow. “But we’re here. More bodies means more coverage of potential blindspots.”
Kawan turned his attention back to the surveillance screen. “We can’t leave Specs totally unsupported. Jupiter would stay, anyway. I’ll talk to Thor. I’m guessing he’d leave either Lief, Sloan, or maybe both. Can one of your men stay?”
“No. As it is, I lost a man a week ago. Even with you joining and giving us more bodies, this new meeting spot is in a dark zone for surveillance equipment. I doubt even Specs and Jupiter can get a visual on it in time.” She tapped the screen. “It’s over here.”
