Great. Whatever pep talk McCabe needs now is apparently up to me.
“What was that all about?” I ask.
“Sampson has the most interrogation training.” Ryker keeps his voice low and casts a quick glance back at Ripper. “Most of what we—they—do is retrieval. Hell, half of the time it’s non-lethals only. Tranq darts, rubber bullets, flash bangs. Get in, get the target, get out. But when it’s one of our own…”
He grips the edge of the counter hard enough, his knuckles crack.
“I thought I’d seen it all. Didn’t think there was anything worse than all the shit they did to us in Hell. And then, I foundRip at the bottom of a goddamned well in Afghanistan sixyearsafter we blew Hell Mountain off the map.”
“Fuck.”
“He barely knew his own name, Doc. Thought I was a hallucination. I didn’t understand how he could lose himself like that. Until West and Trevor explained it to me. How to break a man. They both know. They’ve both done it. And every time West has to extract information like he did tonight…it costs him a little more. One day, he’s not going to be able to do it anymore.”
“You’re worried that day isn’t too far off.”
Ryker shakes his head. “He’s got a few more years. Maybe even a decade. The man fucking loves running this team. But that’s partly why I…’retired.’ Once Harlow’s a little older, Dax and I are going to start recruiting. Not for the team here. That’s West’s job now. But for new Hidden Agenda locations around the world.”
I stare at the man, not quite sure what I’m hearing. “You’re…franchising?”
His laugh isn’t as forced this time. One corner of his mouth tips up, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “I guess we are.”
“Huddle up,”West says. His hair is still damp, but he’s changed into a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt. He has that look so many elite operators get after years in the field. Cold. Hard. Detached. McCabe—Ryker—is right. In five or ten years, the former SEAL might not have anything else to give. I hope to God this team has some sort of therapist on speed dial.
We all take seats, filling the couches, loveseats, and recliners surrounding several large monitors on the north wall. West taps his tablet a few times, and a man’s face appears on the center screen.
“This asshole is Michael Lyden. He and his brother, Parrish Lyden, broke into Doc’s house a little after 2:00 a.m. this morning. They were both wearing body armor, which is the only reason they lived long enough to shoot Wyatt in the leg. Inara slit Parrish’s throat and put a bullet in Michael’s knee cap before he could finish Wyatt off.”
I sit up a little straighter. “The guy on Blakely—Parker—was wearing body armor. Either that or I’ve forgotten how to shoot a gun in the past fifteen years.” It suddenly occurs to me that’s a real possibility. I can’t remember the last time I went to the range.
“He was,” Wyatt says. His eyes are half closed, and from the odd thickness to his words, the morphine is still doing its job. But he’s with us enough to pay attention.
“Michael,” West continues, “cracked after less than an hour. He gave us eleven names. Six, we already knew. Rip?”
With a few keystrokes, Ripper sends half a dozen photos to the center screen. “Bastian and the rest of the Ranger squad Natasha testified against. Wren and I have been hoping they’d pop up on facial rec, but they’re doing a damn good job hiding. Or they have help.”
“Like your kind of help?” I ask.
“Yup.” He scowls, the annoyance on his face obvious. “If there’s someone better than us out there, I don’t want to be around when Wren finds out.”
“No one’s better than the two of you,” Ryker says, pride lending a tone to his voice I’ve never heard before.
Five more faces appear on screen. “These are the new players,” West says. “Two Army captains, the Ambassador toEast Timor, and a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel. This is the kind of power we’re dealing with. And why, if we have any hope of keeping Natasha and Doc safe, we need Pritchard’s help.”
“Who’s Pritchard?” I ask.
West arches a brow, then quickly shakes his head. “Sorry, Doc. You’ve been around so long, I forget you always stayed on the outside. Major General Austin J. Pritchard. Former head of the Joint Special Operations Command. He was shit-canned a few years ago for going rogue to save Trevor and Dani down in Venezuela. So he started his own black ops team.”
“With the world’s worst name,” Ryker mutters. “Rescue Operations Group? The man has no creativity. At the very least, he could have called it Rescue Operations Group and Underground Experts.”
Everyone turns to stare at him. “The hell?” West asks.
“R.O.G.U.E.?” Ryker shakes his head. “No one here appreciates my sense of humor.”
“Because until recently, you didn’t have one,” Inara says and elbows the man in the side.
I’m losing patience. “So, where is this guy? Will he help you? Me? Us?” My words trip over one another. I’m too tired. Drained of all my energy and running on pure adrenaline and caffeine. But I don’t get the sense anyone at Hidden Agenda has a problem with dragging someone they need out of bed at all hours of the night.
West rubs the back of his neck, something I can’t quite read in his eyes. “Oh, he’ll help. But he scheduled a fucking colonoscopy for this morning. So until he comes out of sedation in an hour, we wait.”
