"Kane needs to see this," Micah says quietly.
"Yeah." I close the files and look up at him. "He does."
Micah's hand brushes mine in the corridor as we head toward Kane and Willa's quarters. Brief. Deliberate. Then we're at their door, and the threat we're about to wake them with wipes away everything else.
16
MICAH
Kane answers his door in tactical pants and a t-shirt, his weapon already in hand. Behind him, Willa appears from the bedroom, alert despite being pulled from sleep. Neither asks questions. The priority flag on Sarah's tablet and our expressions after midnight tell them everything they need to know.
Down the hall, I can hear the faint sound of a child's laughter—Lucas, probably being convinced by Stryker to go back to bed with promises of training drills tomorrow. The boy has no idea his quasi-stepfather is about to walk into a firefight, and Rachel will want to keep it that way until Stryker comes home safe.
"Operations center," Kane says, already moving. "Give us a few minutes."
Willa disappears back into the bedroom, emerging seconds later in her own tactical gear. She follows Kane without a word while Sarah and I head back toward the operations center.
Sarah's hand finds mine in the empty corridor. Brief contact, fingers threading through mine for maybe three steps before she pulls away. The touch grounds me, steadies the restlessness churning since I walked in and saw her ice-cold professional mask hiding everything we used to be.
Tonight shattered that mask. What we did in the analysis room changed the equation between us, and neither of us is pretending otherwise.
The operations center hums with low-level activity. Tommy's already there, running security protocols on the latefeeds. Odin lays at his feet, the Malinois's ears pricked and alert despite the late hour. The dog has become part of Echo Base's security infrastructure, his presence adds an extra deterrent to anyone who might think about breaching the facility's perimeter. Tommy glances up when we enter, takes one look at our faces, and straightens in his chair.
"Problem?"
"Cross sent priority intel," Sarah says, moving to her workstation. "Loading it now."
Kane and Willa arrive as Sarah projects Cross's encrypted files onto the main display—surveillance intercepts, signal analysis, communications metadata. Months of Committee intelligence operations spread across the screens.
"The Committee's running a SIGINT operation," Sarah says, her analyst voice crisp and controlled. "They've been intercepting our external communications for months. Not penetrating Echo Base directly, but monitoring our network of contacts."
Kane's jaw tightens. "How comprehensive?"
"Very." Sarah displays a network diagram showing Echo Ridge's external connections—dozens of nodes representing contacts, informants, suppliers. Red lines indicating compromised communications snake through the network. "They're not reading our internal comms, but every time we coordinate with external assets, they're listening."
"Which means they know our operational tempo," I say, processing the implications. "Mission parameters. Target selection. Team composition."
"Everything except our location." Sarah highlights a separate analysis. "Reeve's been using the intercepted intelligence to narrow his search grid. Cross's data shows his current search pattern."
She overlays Reeve's movements on a map of Montana. The search area has contracted significantly—a circle spanning dozens of miles, centered disturbingly close to our actual position.
"We're inside that radius," Kane says. It's not a question.
"Yes." Tension radiates from her shoulders. "He hasn't identified Echo Base specifically, but he's close enough that visual reconnaissance could compromise us."
"How did Cross get this intelligence?" Willa asks, studying the intercept data.
"Reeve's team uses encrypted communications, but Cross has contacts inside Committee logistics networks." Sarah accesses supporting documentation. "She's been tracking their supply movements, personnel deployments. The SIGINT operation requires specialized equipment and technical expertise. That left a trail she could follow."
"Can we trust her intel?" Tommy asks.
I answer before Sarah can. "We know Cross hates the Committee. Webb killed her brother during a failed extraction. She's been bleeding them dry with intelligence leaks for years. If she says Reeve is running SIGINT intercepts, he is."
Kane nods, accepting my assessment. "What's our exposure?"
Sarah switches to a different analysis. "Committee has fragments from multiple sources. Individually, each piece of information seems innocuous. But assembled together, they create a pattern. Our external contacts don't know they're compromising us because they think their communications are secure."
"Compartmentalization failure," I say.
