That meant she’d been out for eleven hours straight; she hadn’t managed even six in months.
“Tell me you didn’t just go home and quit. If you did, I’m totally fucked. No way am I ready to take over this damned zoo.”
Actually Trisha was more ready than she thought, but she was right, she wasn’t quite there yet. “No.”
“Thank you, Jesus, Buddha, Ganesha, or whoever drew the on-duty short straw tonight—Bob? Bob Marley was a music god after all. Wouldn’t that make for a cool Heaven; everyone bopping along to a cool reggae beat for all eternity?”
Sounded more like Hell to her but she couldn’t have slipped a word in even if she wanted to.
“So what are you doing in Montana other than catching up on your beauty sleep? Cut that out, by the way. You’re already too damn gorgeous as it is. Not fair. You make it so hard for even a seriously hot redhead like me to stand out with a knockout blonde for a boss and best friend.”
Trisha always produced more words than Emily could ever keep up with. “I’ve got a friend in trouble.”
“Serious enough to drag you away from the exercise you designed in the first place? Damn, must be ugly even by my standards.”
Emily let her silence be the answer because she couldn’t think of what to say.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“No… Maybe? I don’t know.” What had happened in the hours since she’d passed out in Mark’s arms? Was Dilya even still here or had she disappeared in the night despite setting Mark to watch for her?
“Shit, Emily. That’s not like you at all; you’re the queen colonel in command. Gotta be a load o’ seriously bad shit to mess you up. I kept the crew hopping tonight, last night, whatever this is.”
“How did they do?”
“I set them up for failure in eight different ways, and none of them worked. At least not on your dynamic duo.” Her patented evil-goblin laugh said that the rest of the teams hadn’t fared so well. “I gave them a flight of five last night. Rose and Kylie kept all five birds and action squads alive and on the hop. I had them do a five-site roll-up maneuver. Five and five, I liked the symmetry. Even though I set them up to fail with a barren third site, Abby and Derek put their heads together and figured out the location of the fourth. My Billy was referee and he still isn’t sure how they made the jump on so little data. It was so sweet. That’s your new Chinook A-team.”
“That’s good. Keep them there until I figure out what’s going on here.” If she even could. “I’ll let you know what’s happening within twenty-four hours.”
“You better, bitch.” Then Trisha actually paused for a breath. “And Emily?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever dragged you away from here… Just be damned careful. Okay?”
“Yes, Trisha.” But she’d already hung up as if embarrassed by showing her feelings.
It was only as she slid back into bed, hoping to curl up against Mark and pretend that she wasn’t in charge of anything greater than her girls’ homework, that she realized Mark wasn’t there.
Instead, Tessa and Belle had slid into his place. They hadn’t done that much since toddlerhood until she’d taken command of the Night Stalkers. Now it was sort of a tradition that at least one night of the typical week-per-month she managed to get home, they’d have a girl’s night. Except she’d slept through this one. Well, at least they’d seen her. The phone call hadn’t woken either one. Nor did brushing the hair from their faces and tucking the covers more tightly about them.
Which meant that Mark was where?
She dressed quietly and headed downstairs. The big fireplace in the lodge’s main living room was unlit. The one in the kitchen sitting area was still bright with embers, but Mark wasn’t asleep in his favorite chair, nor stretched out on the couch as he often was when the girls ousted him.
Check outside. The blast of frigid night at the back door sent her stumbling away until she’d donned her boots, parka, hat, and mittens. The midnight sky was crystalline. Orion the warrior stood firmly above the western ridge with his faithful dog Canis Major close beside him. The twins of Gemini lay high in the sky, watched over by the mighty bear of Ursa Major who always reminded her of the two girls protected by Mark. But it was Leo the lion who commanded the eastern sky. He’d always felt dangerous to her.
Blown snow scurried around her ankles like worried cats as she rushed to the warm barn. The horses all slept in their stalls, even Chesapeake didn’t rouse at her passing. In the middle of the barn, she climbed the stairs over the tack room, which scented the air with cold leather and fresh saddle soap. In the loft, racks of old-but-not-yet-defunct gear were arrayed to the right. To the left, she swung aside the small wood panel to reveal the Tac Room’s lockout mechanism. Before she could place her thumb or bend down for the retinal scan, the door swung open.
Emily stepped into Mark’s arms and let herself hide there until her heart rate settled. The tactical small room, built on the left side of the loft above the tack room, was the nerve center of their tiny intelligence service. It boasted great masses of bandwidth and connections to a lot of data architecture that would upset their owners greatly if they knew about them. It had all been arranged by President Peter Matthews before he left office—he hadn’t even told his successor, though the operations run from this room had saved the current President’s life several times without his knowledge.
23
Dilya kept her body absolutely still. Despite the crowding of the room, she knew it wouldn’t work but her instincts made her try. She could blend into the background in the Roosevelt Room or the Secret Service’s office in the West Wing’s ground floor. But the Tac Room was built for two people sitting at chairs in front of consoles—Claudia in one and Michael in the other. Though being a two-finger typist at best, Michael didn’t touch a keyboard. But with Mark and now Emily in the room, Zackie had to move under the desk for them all to fit.
When she barely shifted her weight, Emily’s attention snapped to her face, though her cheek still rested on Mark’s shoulder.
“You sure you don’t want me gone?” Dilya didn’t manage more than a whisper.
