Not the transition I expected.
His blue eyes landed back on me. “I’d have totally fucked it up all on my own had Mitch not gotten involved,” he said before I could respond. “Unfortunately.”
“Don’t say that.” I rested my free hand on his chest. “And who knows, it could’ve been me messing things up.”
“You?” he scoffed. “Never. You’re perfect.” He smirked, only a mild flash of sarcasm there. “We’re just, uh, not perfect for each other.”
And he was right about that.
“Back to what I was asking: Does Alex know the news changes nothing for us?”
“Why are you asking about him?”
“I think you know.” He angled his head. “He’s the first guy that’s come into your life I don’t want to kill. Actually like. And I want tosee you happy—so call me optimistic, but I was hoping maybe there’s something between you two.”
I closed my eyes. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation after everything.”
“Maybe it takes losing those you love to figure out what’s right in front of you.”
“And what’s right in front of you?” I whispered, eyes opening.
“That just because I don’t think marriage will ever be in the cards for me again doesn’t mean I don’t want the mother of my child to be happy. And you have me worried with your comment back in my office. Just making sure if anything happens to me this week that you—”
“Oh no. No, no, nooooo.” I pulled away from him. “Don’t you dare start with me on that.” I made a zero with my hand. “No chance of anything happening to you. Zilch. Youwillbe fine. Youwillraise your son.” I folded my arms, standing my ground. “And I don’t want to hear this BS about you not ever finding love again.”
“How do you think it made me feel when you said as much to me?”
He had me there.
I puffed out my cheeks, then let the breath go. “I better hear you say you’ll be fine, or you lose my okay on operating.”
“So damn bossy.” He winked, then flicked his wrist. “Come here. You win. I’ll make the promise.”
I lifted my arms and held his cheeks like old times. His hands found my waist, and he slowly leaned in, meeting me halfway to rest his forehead against mine. Then he said what I needed to hear, promising he’d return safely.
“Happy?” he grumbled.
“Hardly. We still have hell to get through. Literally.” Mitch’s brand name had me shivering. Talk about giving new meaning to that word. “But wewillget through it. All of us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded, voice thicker with emotion that time.
“Hey, am I interrupting?” Hollis asked, and Trevor cleared his throat and backed away.
I sniffled, swiping at a stray tear while turning around to face her. “No, we’re good. What’s up?”
“My brother found our hacker. Something to do with reading the numbers inside the numbers inside the digital footprint of her signature?” she said as if this was Greek to her.
She wasn’t alone on that.
“No clue what he actually meant, but he knows who’s been helping Mitch. Her hacker name is Cipheria. She’s been active for over two decades. She’s also someone who could hack the Joint Special Operations Command. I mean, shehasbreached JSOC’s servers before. She did it five years ago as a game just to let them know she could.”
Trevor stroked his jaw, shaking his head. “That means she could have found the transport vehicle bringing Mitch to the safe house, assuming Mitch didn’t even know where Chandler was taking him. And she could’ve sent an unmanned drone to take out the vehicles to help fake his death. Probably had another team on standby in a nearby vehicle for his new ride out.”
“Which means JSOC didn’t do a great job at fixing their systems to protect her from getting back in again,” Hollis said. “I have even better news, though. Gwen got a fix on the location for another former ghost operative from that Will Hobbs file. New alias for the guy, courtesy of Cipheria, and we caught him on CCTV footage here in New Zealand. We think this guy will lead us to your sister. Echo Team’s already gearing up now to roll out.”
“You’re serious?” Trevor rested his hands on his hips, relief filling up his chest as he inhaled.
“Yup. Once we locate him, if we can confirm he’s with Mitch and the others, then Secretary Chandler wants us to go ahead and end this now. Converge on their location, and we’ll be done before sunrise. No need for the auction.” She revealed what sounded like a possible end to this nightmare.
