“Natasha? We’re here.” Graham touches my arm lightly, concern in his eyes. “Are you okay?”
I sweep my gaze over a large parking lot with half a dozen vehicles. Three identical SUVs, a white coupe, and a vintage blue pickup truck.
“Sorry.” I grab my new purse—an impulse buy from yesterday’s shopping trip—with my passports and a thousand dollars tucked away in various pockets. “It’s been a long few days.”
He doesn’t look convinced. But I’m out of the SUV before he can say another word.
The warehouse isn’t much to look at from the outside. Gray. Industrial. Like every other warehouse in every other major city. Some of the windows close to the roof are cracked. Others have clearly been replaced at one time or another. The walls haven’t been cleaned in years. But as soon as we step through the door, we’re in another world.
Everything is so clean, it’s practically sparkling. A climbing wall with multi-colored handholds rises all the way to the ceiling. I stop short, staring at the boxing ring and full set of free weights. I’ve seen gyms that aren’t this nice. On the opposite side of the space, Ryker and West stand next to a coffee pot, watching me. A few feet away, Raelynn and Inara face off at a foosball table, and in the far corner, there’s a living space, complete with couches and a thick carpet. Ripper sits on one, and another man—almost as big as Ryker—sprawls on another.
Doc strides across the warehouse, his sole focus on me. The power of his stare almost knocks me off my feet. We’ve been apart less than four hours, but it feels like a lifetime. He wraps me in his embrace, and I press my nose to his neck.
“Graham said…there was news?” I ask.
“Names.” Doc smooths his hand over my hair. It’s such a tender gesture, my eyes burn for a moment until I blink the sensation away. “West interrogated one of the men who brokeinto my place. Bastian and his crew—the ones you testified against—weren’t working alone.”
My stomach flips, threatening the coffee I managed on the drive here. “How many more?”
Doc’s expression shutters. “We don’t know yet, baby. But Ryker’s—West’s team won’t give up until they figure it out.”
“Pritchard’s calling,” West shouts across the massive space.
“Who’s Pritchard?” I ask. “Is he the guy from JSOC?”
Doc nods, tucks me against his side, and leads me over to the couches. He doesn’t let go as we take our seats. West taps his phone, and the center monitor lights up.
“Austin,” he says. “About damn time, old man.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Austin’s East Coast accent is more pronounced than Doc’s. “Colonoscopies aren’t just for the elderly, frogman.”
“Yeah, well, which one of us still has all his hair? That widow’s peak of yours is looking a little sharp.”
“Uh…West?” Austin’s brows arch, confusion in his tone. “Speaking of AARP… Did you do some recruiting without telling me? From the local senior center?”
“Fucking hell. I’m only fifty-six,” Doc mutters. “Seventeen years as a PJ gave me all this gray.”
West chuckles. “This is our doc. Doc Reynolds, meet Austin Pritchard.”
“Got a first name, Doc?”
“Yeah. Doc.” His shoulders are so stiff, they might as well be granite. “I changed it more than thirty years ago. This is?—”
“Natasha Winters,” Austin says with a hint of a smile. “Your disappearance made waves in my world. Well, when it was still my world.”
“Austin was the head of JSOC until eighteen months ago,” West explains. “Now he runs a group a lot like ours. But they tend to go after some of the dregs of humanity.”
“As opposed to the unicorns and rainbows and Nobel Peace Prize winners we—you—take down?” Ryker snorts into his coffee.
“It’s still ‘we.’ You and Wren are just…backup now,” Ripper says and nods at the screens. “Can we get to it? Cara’s shift at the restaurant will be over in a couple of hours, and I want to be home when she gets there.”
I look at the five photos on the monitor next to Austin’s face. “Oh, my God. That’s…Ambassador Norton. He’s the one whoinsistedI go through Ranger school.”
“Louis Francis Norton,” Austin says. “Formerly Senator Louis Norton of the great state of Louisiana. All around garbage pile of a human being. He’s been accused of sexual harassment six times. Rumor has it, that’s why the President sent him to East Timor.”
“Is he going to be a problem for us?” West asks.
Austin shakes his head. “I know people who can put pressure on him. He’s a coward. The other fucks on this list, however… They’ve got a good thing going—they’vehada good thing going for fifteen years. Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…”
