* * *
The entire crew showed up too early for work the next morning. Angus Force tapped his fingers against his desk, his concentration splintered. The Jack Daniels in his bottom drawer beckoned to him. A soft knock on the door had him looking gratefully up. “Come in.” He lost his eagerness when Nari clip-clopped her way inside and shut the door. Today the shrink had dressed in a black pencil skirt with a soft purple blouse that made her skin almost translucent. Her black hair hung naturally around her slim shoulders, and concern glowed in her midnight dark eyes. “I don’t want to talk, Nari.”
She lifted a perfectly painted pink nail. “I’m not here to talk you into therapy.”
He gestured toward one of the two rickety chairs on the other side of his dented desk. “Have a seat.” He might as well make use of her since she was there. “How is the team doing?”
“Not well.” She crossed her legs, and he fought a groan at the graceful movement. “Malcolm is staring at his phone, Brigid is yelling at her computers, Raider is silent in case room two, Dana looks like she was hit by a bus, and Roscoe keeps trying to filch whipped cream from everyone.”
Sounded like a normal day to him. “I assume Pippa is at home working?” The woman did some sort of online accounting and seemed to keep busy.
“Yeah, with Kat.” Nari’s small nostrils flared as she breathed deep and slowly let the air out. “Shouldn’t we have heard something from Wolfe and Jethro by now?”
Yes. Angus schooled his face to show no emotion. “No, maybe not. Keep in mind that anything might’ve altered their plan.”
“Like getting shot?” Nari asked.
“Don’t borrow trouble.” That was his job. There was an edge in his voice that crept in any time he talked with the shrink. She worked for HDD and not him. “I’m sure you’ve been in contact with our HDD handlers, and I know they want to interview us. What have you told them?”
She flushed. “I’ve been avoiding their calls, too. We need to pull the entire team together and come up with a reason you two were at Frank Spanek’s apartment right when it blew up.”
Wait a second. She’d been avoiding them, too? He never could judge her allegiances easily, but now wasn’t the time to try to figure her out. He reached for the plain coffee he’d bought on the way in to work, not having to hide it since Wolfe was out of the office. “We received an anonymous tip that Frank Spanek was trafficking heroin, which, incidentally, was actually true.”
Nari bounced her shiny black high heel on the leg that was crossed. “How did we receive this tip?”
Good question. Phone records could be tracked. “Letter sent here. Wolfe took it to the apartment.”
Her pink lips pursed. “Ah. So it was blown up in the explosion?”
“Exactly.” It didn’t matter if the HDD handlers believed the Deep Ops team had been out of line; it mattered that they couldn’t prove it. That bobbing foot and slender ankle were going to drive him crazy.
“All right. I don’t suppose we took a copy of the letter, as protocol would more than likely dictate?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Oops. Guess we missed that one.” Why the hell hadn’t Wolfe or Jethro called in? He didn’t have a way to reach them through official channels, and he didn’t want to get them in trouble by trying. But if they didn’t make contact by that night, he would have to do something.
A sharp rap echoed on the door and Brigid yanked it open, her red hair wild around her face. “Satellite imagery confirms an explosion in the hills outside of Culiacán last night. It took me all day to hack into the—”
Angus held up a hand. “Don’t want to know and really don’t want the shrink to know.”
Both women shot him a look that made his head ache.
Angus ignored their irritation. “Did you see anything else?”
Brigid shook her head. “The satellite I accessed recorded the explosion because it was so bright in the night sky, but I couldn’t get much more detail than that. There is some chatter across governmental lines, but so far, nobody is claiming responsibility.”
Somebody would. Didn’t matter who.
Brigid hesitated in the doorway. “Shouldn’t we have heard something directly by now?”
“Not necessarily,” Angus said. The team had to remain calm and focused, so he hid his own concern. “If they didn’t get out by daylight, they probably went underground until they could execute their exit strategy.” He didn’t like this, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do right now. Except keep Dana Mulberry safe until Wolfe returned. “Check on Dana, would you? She looked a little pale this morning.” The woman was probably terrified for Wolfe. It didn’t take a profiler to see that something was going on between those two.
Brigid nodded and tossed the mail his way. “Just came in.” Then she turned to head toward the hub of desks.
Nari wetted her lips. “Are you adding new members to the team? If so, we need to do it officially.”
That prim and proper voice kept Angus up at night, so he glowered. “No. Serena, Millicent, and Jethro are acting as consultants to the team. We don’t need to deal with the red tape of HDD personnel policies.”
Nari’s eyebrows rose. “They might want to get paid at some point.”
