I don't work for them. Never have. Never will. But I know how they operate, and Reeve doesn't leave loose ends. Whatever you're planning, don't take too long.
I show Micah the second message. He reads it, expression unreadable.
"She's telling us she's not Committee," he says.
"She's telling us what we want to hear." But doubt creeps in. Cross's track record supports her claim—selling intelligence to everyone except the Committee, providing warnings that proved accurate, maintaining independence in a business where most brokers eventually get absorbed by one organization or another.
"Maybe." He looks at me directly. "Or maybe she's exactly what she claims to be, and we're looking at her meeting with Masters wrong."
What if the dead drop went the other direction, and we've been reading the operation backward?
"We need to show Kane," I say again, but this time the urgency is different. It's not emergency crisis response, but strategic concern that requires planning and proper coordination.
Micah checks his watch. "He said to reconvene later. That gives us time to rest, think through the implications, develop options for approaching Masters before Reeve's audit reaches him."
He's right. We're running on adrenaline and stubbornness now. Better to brief Kane with clear heads and tactical options than rush in with incomplete analysis.
"Fine." I pocket my phone. "We rest, we think, we come back with a plan."
"And we figure out what Cross's real game is," Micah adds. "Because whether she's helping us or manipulating us, she knows more about Committee operations than anyone outside their organization should."
We walk in silence toward the residential wing, fatigue pulling at both of us now that immediate crisis isn't driving us forward. My room is a few doors down from Micah's, close enough to be convenient for team coordination but far enough to maintain separation.
The hallway is empty, most of the team either training or deployed on operations. Our footsteps echo against concrete walls, the only sound in the quiet space.
Micah stops outside my door. "Get some sleep. We'll figure this out this afternoon."
"Yeah." But I don't move to unlock the door, don't step away from him. Everything we haven't said, everything that happened over the last two days that we're both pretending is purely operational—it keeps me anchored here.
His eyes find mine, and for a moment the distance dissolves. Just a moment, just enough to remember what it felt like when partnership was simple and trust was absolute.
Then he steps back, and the walls go up again.
"Later," he says.
I nod. He walks to his own door, disappears inside.
Then I unlock my room. Sleep won't come, but that's fine. I'll spend the next few hours replaying how naturally we fell back into working together, and how much that complicates everything I've been trying to protect myself from.
13
MICAH
Sleep doesn't come. I lie in my quarters staring at the ceiling, mind running tactical scenarios and threat assessments on a loop. Reeve auditing Committee intelligence assets means the window for approaching Masters is shrinking. Cross warning us about the timeline means she either wants us to succeed or wants us to rush into a trap.
Hours after Kane dismissed us, I give up on rest and head to the operations center. The base is quiet this time of day, most of the team either sleeping off missions or training in the facility's lower levels. Somewhere in the corridors, Odin's tags would be jingling softly as he made his rounds with whoever had security duty. The Malinois took his job seriously—Kane had joked once that the dog had better operational awareness than half the team.
Emergency lighting casts the corridors in muted blue, turning concrete walls into something that feels more like a bunker than a headquarters.
Sarah is already at her workstation when I arrive. I shake my head. Why did I expect less? She runs on caffeine and stubbornness when operations demand it, sleep becomingoptional until the mission resolves. I've seen it enough since I joined Echo Ridge to recognize the pattern.
She doesn't look up when I enter. Her screens display satellite imagery of northwestern Montana, grid patterns overlaying topographical maps, searching for something specific, analyzing terrain with the methodical precision that made her one of NSA's best signals intelligence analysts before the Committee burned her.
"Couldn't sleep either?" I move to the adjacent workstation, pulling up my own analysis of Reeve's recent movements.
"Too much coffee. Too many variables." She highlights a section of map, expands the resolution. "Thought I'd start mapping Reeve's search pattern. If Cross is right about him running security audits in the Pacific Northwest, we need to know how close he's getting to Echo Base."
I pull up the intelligence file Tommy compiled on Reeve's known movements over the past month. Hotel receipts, rental car records, credit card transactions create a trail through Washington, Idaho, and into Montana. The Committee usually scrubs this kind of digital footprint, but Reeve operates with enough confidence in his operational security that he doesn't bother with complete anonymity.
