As for Kyla, she was handling this whole situation much better than she was. Part of her wanted to feel badly about that but in the end, she decided she simply wasn’t built for this kind of thing. Thankfully, Lennox was. He led them along like they were on a shopping trip through the mall. It was almost jarring to see how calmly he was behaving.
A little while later, Lennox brought the three of them out onto a larger street. A few seconds after that, Darwin and Katrina were with them. She looked as rattled as Talia felt. Before she could ask if her friend was all right, two minivans slid to a stop on the street beside them.
Talia was so beyond shook up by this point that she couldn’t even manage a scream. Instead, she stood there as theside doors of the vehicles slid open to reveal Wes, Colt, and the other SEALs. Apparently, this is what an extraction looked like.
Thank goodness. Because her heart couldn’t take any more adrenaline.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I can’t believe you have a safe house,” Lennox said, taking in industrial space that had been turned into an ultra-modern multi-bedroom apartment while still looking for all the world like an unoccupied office building from the outside. There was even covered parking in the back so no one driving by would even know there were people there.
Colt, Wes, and Darwin walked into the living room from the kitchen, each carrying a plate of sandwiches they’d put together for a late-night snack. Kirk and Simon had left earlier, still not talking to each other but insistent that they needed to get some sleep before an early training session in the morning.
If Lennox listened carefully, he could just make out the sounds of a shower running in one of the bedrooms at the end of the long, central hallway. Talia and Katrina had disappeared in there about fifteen minutes ago, both saying they needed to clean up and change. He imagined taking a shower would help but mostly he suspected both of them needed some time to decompress from all the excitement. Neither had handled the situation very well.
“This building used to be four separate businesses,” Kyla said as she sat back on a large leather sofa beside Wes, sipping coffee from a mug big enough to swim in. “The area over there,where the kitchen is now, used to be my father’s office. Or his secret lair technically, since I never knew he owned it. It turned out he had this whole secret life as a hacker for the CIA. When I found out he’d left me the office and that the place was slated to be demolished due to lack of occupancy, I ended up buying the entire building. I couldn’t let them tear it down.”
Having been in Wes’s platoon for a while, Lennox had heard a lot of stories about Kyla’s father, his murder, and how she’d tracked down the killer. Lennox didn’t know all the details, but he knew she’d risked her life to do it and fallen in love with Wes at the same time. The one thing he didn’t know was where she’d come up with enough money to buy an entire office building—even one that was slated to be demolished. Then again, Kyla was scary good with a computer and almost certainly could have hacked her way into ownership of the place. It was probably better not knowing since she’d also provided the M4 carbines they’d used tonight.
Plausible deniability and all that.
“How much trouble are you going to get in for losing that surveillance van?” Colt asked as he handed Lennox one of the sandwiches. Peanut butter and jelly wasn’t his normal two in the morning go-to snack but all that running around tonight had made him hungry and he wasn’t going to turn up his nose at whatever Kyla happened to have stockpiled in her safe house.
“It’s not going to be a problem at all.” Smiling, Kyla sipped her coffee. How she expected to sleep tonight after drinking that much caffeine was beyond him, but he was all about letting people do their own thing. “I picked up the surveillance van for chump change at a police auction in Portland. Apparently, the drug dealer it belonged to was using it to spy on his competitors.”
“Won’t the vehicle get tracked back to you through the sales paperwork?” Darwin asked, inhaling half a peanut buttersandwich in a single bite. “Even with the thermite grenade Lennox threw in there, they’ll still find the VIN.”
“As far as the auction house in Portland is concerned, the van was bought by a procurement agent for the Seattle PD,” Kyla said in a nonchalant tone. “There’s nothing that will ever lead back to me.”
Lennox glanced at Wes and then the other two guys. In the end, they couldn’t do anything but shrug in acceptance that Kyla was a truly unique woman. It was a good thing she was working on their side. She’d be scary to have to deal with as an enemy.
“It still sucks to lose an asset like that, even if it can’t be tracked back to you,” Darwin pointed out as he finished his last sandwich and put the plate on the coffee table in front of him.
“No big deal.” She waved one hand while taking another sip of coffee with the other. “It’s not like that was the only surveillance van I have.”
Lennox shook his head. Just when he thought he understood how clever and devious Kyla was, she turned around and said, “You know nothing, Lennox Thompson!”
“Okay, now that we know we don’t have to worry about the SDPD showing up at our door asking about burning van and automatic weapon fire in the middle of the city, maybe we should talk about what we’re going to do about everything we learned tonight?” Lennox said.
“I’d love to talk about what we learned,” Darwin added. “Because truthfully, I didn’t understand almost anything we heard tonight. Especially that part about this Sentinel organization.”
Kyla sighed. “I’m hoping that after listening to all the audio feeds and going through all the video footage, I’ll come up with something to explain everything. All I can say for sure at this point is that Keller and this Sentinel group have somehowextracted a payment or obligation from each of those people in the conference room.”
“A payment or obligation?” Wes echoed. “Seems like a nice way to say they’re blackmailing or threatening them into doing something they want.”
“Probably,” Kyla admitted. “But it’s also entirely possible that some of them could be involved with Keller’s organization willingly. I’m hoping I’ll find out more later after I have a chance to do some digging.”
Darwin frowned. “Regardless of whether they’re involved willingly or not, I’m more concerned about what Keller and Sentinel are up to. What would a bunch of international terrorists want with a manufacturing and bio-tech firm, a politician, and a crime lord? Some kind of new weapon of mass destruction?”
Given the silence that followed the question, Lennox knew that everyone else was as baffled as he was. Even Kyla, which worried the hell out of him.
“It could be a weapon of some kind, but my gut is telling me there’s something else going on,” Lennox said. “I don’t know what, but it feels bigger than a weapon.”
Everyone fell silent again, the other guys finishing their sandwiches while Kyla nursed her big mug of coffee. In the background, Lennox could still hear Talia and Katrina moving around in one of the bedrooms.
“Do we think there’s a chance Keller still has Anna alive somewhere?” Darwin asked. “I know most of us were hoping to hear something at that meeting to clue us in on what might have happened to her. I’m just not sure whether the fact that her name never came up is good or bad.”
“If we’re going to talk about Anna,” Lennox interrupted, “I should go get Talia and Katrina. They’ll want to be involved in the conversation.”
