The champagne was starting to kick in now. I should have come up with the drinking idea sooner.
The second we returned to the cabin, Alejandro caught my eye. We hadn’t had a private moment alone since I basically told him I returned his feelings in a very big way with my “pink bag” proclamation. Well, I hoped he’d read between the lines there, at least.
“You okay?” he mouthed.
“Trying to be,” I mouthed back, giving him the best reassuring smile I could manage.
“Jason,” I overheard Hollis say, and she flicked her wrist for him to scooch over.
He moved over three seats. “I go by Reed,” he grunted.
Something told me she knew that and enjoyed pushing his buttons.
“Here’s what Gwen sent us,” Reed said while syncing his laptop to the large screen at the front of the cabin closest to the cockpit. “Every operative is on here with their aliases provided when they were forced into retirement.” He began flipping through images.
“Wait, go back. No beard and younger.” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Is that who I think it is?”
Ryder stood, phone to his ear. “Gwen, we’ve ID’d one of the men. Alert Echo Team they’re about to walk into an ambush.”
“Beau.” I couldn’t believe this. He’d been right in front of us this whole time—and oh God, Eden. “He’s a ghost operative from Stratos ... and Mitch is going to use Eden as leverage to get to me.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Alejandro
We’d been ten minutes short of finding out the truth, that Beau had been a plant in Audrey’s life.
Ten. Fucking. Minutes.
Echo Team would have arrived and stopped Beau and Rhett, taking them down. Kept Eden safe.
As Audrey talked to Trevor over the phone, I stared out the oval window at the clouds beneath us, searching for answers. Trying to find thereasonwritten in the sky as to why we were ten minutes too late to protect Trevor’s sister. It didn’t make sense. I tried to rationalize it, to find a path forward, but I was coming up empty.
I lifted my eyes to the ceiling of the plane, keeping my hand on the wall by the window.
Silence. Why’d I expect to easily hear God answer me just because we were over thirty thousand feet in the sky?
I continued listening to Audrey talking, her soft voice competing with the hum of the engines and the broken chaos in my mind.
“We’ll get her back, you have my word.” Audrey’s promise had me slipping my gaze over to locate her in the cabin.
At least Trevor and Chase had made it to the base safely. And the friends Trevor had asked to watch over the sheriff station hadn’t been hurt.
Now I was really damn glad Ryder had made the decision not to give Eden any of our locations, even though we had hers.
Audrey ended the call a minute later and turned toward her brother as he asked her, “How’s he holding up?”
“He’s keeping it together for Chase.” She clutched the phone beneath her chin. Her skin was pale but her eyes dry.
I’d caught a faint whiff of alcohol on her when I’d hugged her a few minutes ago, so I had to guess that was steeling her nerves to get her through this.
“Why didn’t Beau attack us when the lodge was hit?” Audrey looked around the cabin, searching for answers the way I’d checked the sky. “He had two deputies with him. They could’ve used the element of surprise. We’d never have seen it coming.”
Ryder stood and braced his hand on one of the seats, his gaze drifting to Reed and Hollis, who were working on laptops nearby with three seats of distance between them, which was probably still not enough for Reed. “He might have dropped one of us, but he’d have been a dead man after that. Dead for real, I mean.”
“And the deputies were more than likely unaware of who he really was,” Reed said, looking up at her from over his laptop.
“You think it was him and Rhett who broke into my place Friday? Beau was the first to arrive on scene. I bet they’d planned to ask me where the rings were, so they got ahold of them then.”
