Sarah finally turns around, and for a moment our eyes meet across the command center. I see frozen fury in her expression, carefully controlled features, walls so high I can practically see them radiating off her like physical force.
"Hawthorne," she says, voice clipped and precise. "We need to debrief you on the intercept. Get every detail you can remember about the contact's appearance, behavior, any identifying characteristics that might help Tommy's facial recognition."
"Copy that."
"Conference room. Soon. Bring your field notes and any physical evidence you collected." She turns back to her console, dismissing me as effectively as if I'd ceased to exist.
Kane catches my shoulder as I head for the door. "She's been running on caffeine and anger for hours," he says quietly. "This investigation is personal for her. The Committee targeting our external network means they're targeting the connections she's built since joining Echo Ridge. People she trusts. People who helped her when she was burned and alone."
Willa had been one of those people—the vet turned medic who'd patched Sarah up when she'd first arrived in Echo Ridge, who'd sat with her through the worst of the nightmares. Reagan, Dylan's wife and the team's logistics coordinator, who quietly restocks Sarah's quarters with supplies while she works. Small kindnesses that matter when everything else is falling apart.
"Roger."
"And Hawthorne?" Kane's grip tightens slightly. "Personal history stays separate from this investigation. We need both of you at full capacity to find this leak before it gets someone killed. Can you handle that?"
"Yes."
He studies me for a moment, reading subtext the way he reads tactical situations. Then he nods once and releases my shoulder. "Conference room. Minutes. I'll be there to facilitate if things get personal."
I gather the field notes and equipment. Not much time to prepare myself for working directly with Sarah for the first time since I walked back into her life. Not much time to figure out how to maintain distance while investigating a threat that specifically targets her as a vulnerability.
Not enough time to accept that I'm about to spend hours in close proximity with a woman who has every right to hate me and no reason to trust anything I say.
The conference room is small by design. Soundproofed. There's a table, chairs, and a wall-mounted display for tactical briefings. I arrive first, set up my equipment, and pull up the enhanced images Tommy sent to my tablet.
The contact's face is clearer now. He's middle-aged with unremarkable features—someone who blends into crowds and registers as forgettable. But there's something familiar about the bone structure, the way he holds himself. I've seen this man before, somewhere in the extensive files I reviewed when I was tracking Committee networks.
Kane arrives next, settling into the chair at the head of the table. He commands the room without saying a word, watches me set up the equipment with an expression that says he's already calculated a dozen scenarios for how this briefing could go wrong.
Then Sarah walks in and every molecule of oxygen leaves the space.
She takes the chair farthest from mine, positioning herself so she can see the display without having to look at me directly. Her tablet is open, stylus ready, body language broadcasting thatthis is strictly business and I shouldn't mistake her presence for anything approaching forgiveness.
"Let's start with the timeline," Kane says, breaking the silence. "Hawthorne, walk us through the surveillance from initial contact to final departure."
I pull up the first image on the display. The cabin where Reeve established his base. "Confirmed Reeve's location yesterday morning. He's been using this abandoned hunting cabin as a center point, varying his schedule to avoid patterns but maintaining this location as his primary base."
Sarah makes a notation on her tablet. She keeps her eyes down, acknowledges the information only through the clinical recording of facts.
I continue through the timeline. The surveillance. The meeting. The exchange of intelligence. The details are cataloged with precision that comes from years of field work where missing one small fact can mean the difference between mission success and catastrophic failure.
When I reach the part about the Committee's specific interest in our team composition and Sarah being identified as a vulnerability, her jaw tightens by a fraction. It's enough to tell me the information hit harder than she's willing to show.
"They've been watching us," she says, still refusing to look at me. "Tracking patterns. Building profiles. This isn't opportunistic intelligence gathering. This is systematic analysis with specific goals."
"Agreed," Kane says. "Someone in our external network has been providing regular intelligence updates. This isn't a one-time leak. This is ongoing compromise."
"I've identified several potential sources." Sarah pulls up her own analysis on the display, replacing my surveillance images with communication logs and pattern analysis. "Victoria Cross is the most concerning. She's our primary intelligence broker, hasextensive knowledge of our operations, and despite her hatred of the Committee, she's pragmatic enough to sell information if the price is right."
The analysis is thorough and detailed. Exactly what Sarah excels at—finding patterns in data that other analysts miss and building cases that hold up under the most aggressive scrutiny. She's traced communication timing, cross-referenced with Committee activity, identified suspicious requests for information that seemed routine at the time but look like intelligence gathering in retrospect.
"Federal contacts are next," she continues, pulling up another set of files. "We've cultivated relationships with burned operators who have their own grudges against the system. Any one of them could have been flipped. The Committee has resources for blackmail, threats, promises of reinstatement."
Kane studies the data with the intensity he applies to mission planning. "Tommy's running deep forensic analysis on the communication logs. We should have preliminary results within hours."
He pauses, considering the implications. "But if this is ongoing compromise, we need to restructure how we interface with external assets. New compartmentalization protocols. Different communication channels."
"Sarah and I can implement that together," I say, finally acknowledging what we've all been carefully not stating directly. "The leak is in signals intelligence. It requires someone with Sarah's NSA background and my knowledge of Committee networks to trace the flow without alerting whoever's feeding them information."
