“I lost patience in waiting on approval for you. I put in the protection orders myself,” Natasha said.
Wyatt side-eyed his wife, smirking. “Daddy’s girl. The admiral will do what she says. He’ll sign off on it. Don’t worry.”
“Like you aren’t also putty in Gwen and Emory’s hands?” Natasha rolled her eyes, fighting a smile before facing us again as if remembering she had an audience.
“Thank you.” Ryder nodded. “That’s one less thing we need to stress about.”
“Echo Team’s on standby to support you when we have more intel to go on as well. And Falcon Falls has your backs if need be, too,” Natasha let us know.
“That include Gwen?” Reed asked. “I assume she’s the one who sent Trevor those files on Mitch. She still on the case?”
Wyatt tipped his head, gaze cutting to Reed as if he might be interested in more than just his daughter’s computer skills. “She is, and she’ll keep us posted if she finds anything of use before we talk to my father-in-law tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Tension beat up my spine, landing firmly at the base of my skull. “He’s not going to brief us tonight?”
“We’ll tell you what we can. But the admiral’s yet to give us his side of the story, so we’re still in the dark ourselves. He promised to brief us as soon as he lands in DC tomorrow. He’s on Air Force One with POTUS right now,” Wyatt shared. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but what’s important right now is that you’re all safe and no one knows where you are. No one outside our circle, at least.”
“Circle of trust,” Audrey murmured. “I once trusted Mitch and now ...” She shook her head and looked up. “Sorry, I wasn’t insinuating you can’t be trusted.”
“We get it, don’t worry.” Natasha waved her hand. “As for what we can share now, we don’t have too much. Unfortunately, the pool ofsuspects whomightbe working from the inside is larger than I’d like it to be. We’ll work on narrowing it down.”
“But we did find something interesting when we ran facial recognition on the photos you sent over,” Wyatt noted. “We got a strange hit on the guy you questioned.”
Natasha clicked a remote, and the face of the man from the lodge—the same man I’d dragged from the woods—filled the screen, only he was in a tropical shirt and not tactical gear.
“He’s a fisherman living in the Maldives,” Natasha explained. “Address and information check out. I even have footage of him there as of a week ago. No red flags aside from bad interior decorating. I hacked his internal security cameras to view the live feed. Nothing is recorded, so I couldn’t rewind and have a look back into the past. But everything looked normal.”
“Please tell us how this innocent fisherman wound up working for Mitch and attacking us today?” Ryder pressed before I could.
“His cover was good. And when I saygood, I mean too good for me to realize it wasn’t real.” Natasha visibly cringed as if mortified by that fact. “Thankfully, Gwen’s better than me and better than whoever created his legend.” She clicked a button, and a younger version of the so-called fisherman popped up. This time in a uniform. “Real name is Rhett Robeson. Was a naval pilot like Mitch. Joined around the same time he did.”
“Wasa pilot?” Ryder’s chin jutted forward. “So he’s no longer active duty and living under an alias in the Maldives, you mean?”
Natasha shook her head. “No, ‘was’ as in is dead. As of 2011.”
“Clearly someone forgot to tell him,” I hissed. “It appears we’re having a real problem with dead men that keep on walking.”
“What about Arlo, that friend of Mitch’s that died two months before Mitch and was rumored to be a traitor? He happen to be one of the men we killed today?” Ryder asked.
“No, he wasn’t,” Wyatt answered, arms tight over his chest. “Whether he’s also among the living and not really dead, though? No bloody idea.”
“Rhett’s our only confirmed former serviceman that hit the lodge.” Natasha turned off the screen behind her. “The rest of the bodies were all guns for hire, from what we can tell. Easily identifiable, too. Long rap sheets. Looks like everyone else out there was disposable to Mitch. Not the brains behind anything. None of them would be able to bypass Trevor’s security. My guess is someone else was hanging back in the woods opting to remain unseen when you went hunting.”
Great.“So we’re either trapped in a ghost story, or someone’s pulling the strings on a whole damn graveyard.” A chill flew up my spine and curved right around to my side. No longer phantom pain from being shot, but real pain from having my flesh peeled open.
Audrey eyed the screen. “Mitch was a pilot like Rhett, not some spymaster. He doesn’t have the background to pull all this off.”
My blood boiled again as the thorn of Beth in my side faded and a new one took hold by the name of Mitchell Fucking Langston.
“Someone’s definitely helping Mitch. Probably whoever must’ve pulled your files is responsible for Rhett’s fisherman persona.” Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “Either Mitch is aligned with someone, or he’s just a pawn like Rhett probably is.”
“Pawn?” Wyatt grimaced for some reason. “Not a word I want to think about after everything we went through with that asshole.” That sidebar conversation was lost on me, and from the looks on my teammates’ faces, them too.
“But why would Mitch send someone to the lodge that we could tie to him? Unless he believed Rhett’s alias would hold up?” Audrey’s soft voice and questions brought our focus back to her. “Also, why out himself as being alive with that text?”
“Mitch wants you to know he’s alive. He doesn’t want you doubting him. He needs you to help him,” Natasha proposed. “He believesyou’ll do anything to protect your son, as most mothers would. And it’s possible he really did try to start this quietly on Friday.”
I couldn’t help but speak up. “I think it’s more than that. I think he’s masterminded everything from the start, right down to the break-in.” I swiped the back of my hand over my stubbled jawline as I continued to work through my thoughts.
