Afterward, the operatives gathered in the living room. “What’s the next step, Seth?” Noah wrapped his arm around Violet’s shoulders. “As much as I want to do so, we can’t bolt in the middle of the night. The police need us to stick around. If we disappear, our credibility is blown to smithereens. Not only that, but Dutch still says he trusts us to help with security with the sale.”
Seth tilted his head. “You don’t believe him?”
Noah thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Although he said the correct words, they didn’t ring true.”
“Yeah. Pretty much my feeling too. I want to get out of here as much as you do. But as a former law enforcement officer, I can’t leave the detectives in a lurch. They’d lose their case without so much as a whimper. I can’t live with that.”
Yeah, Iona got it. Didn’t mean she liked the streak of integrity Elias’ team leader had at this moment.
Grant grimaced. “I was afraid you would say that.”
“Have a better idea?”
“Nope. I was depending on your brilliant intellect for a creative solution.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, buddy. The only thing I know to do at the moment is to stay put and make a few discreet inquiries on our own to find the meeting place. If we learn anything useful, we can pass it along anonymously to the detectives and the feds.”
“We need to figure out who’s behind the cameras and listening devices planted in our cabin,” Andre said. “I don’t enjoy having a target on my back, especially when I don’t know who’s aiming a weapon at me.”
“Andre has a good point,” Iona said to Seth. She wanted to run her brainstorm by Elias to see if he thought her idea held water or not.
“What do you suggest?”
“Divide and conquer.” She couldn’t think of a better option at the moment. Two teams were on site after all. Might as well use both teams. The faster they learned the information they needed, the better for all of them. “Artemis will focus on the cameras and bugs in the cabin.” That should take pressure off the men. What could be safer than to have their women at their home base?
“That leaves Echo to figure out the meeting place.”
“Are you open to a suggestion?”
“Sure. What do you have for me?”
“Red Rock has one bar in town, and MC members are known for their drinking. You might learn a few things if you ply Dutch’s men with alcohol.”
“I might have agreed with you last night. Now, though, that tactic won’t work,” Seth said.
“Why not?” Teagan demanded. “It’s a good idea.”
“It is. The problem isn’t the idea. It’s the workout this morning. We didn’t do ourselves any favors by showing those boys up.”
“It was necessary. They were cocky jerks who thought they were better than all of us.”
“We made them look bad in front of their president,” Elias said. “That’s a cardinal crime.”
“They wouldn’t have looked bad in front of Dutch if they weren’t letting themselves go,” Rayne said.
Grant smiled. “She’s not wrong.”
“I’m not arguing with the ladies, just pointing out we didn’t make friends this morning. I doubt the MC members will talk to us even if we ply them with liquor.”
Rayne and Riley exchanged glances, then Riley spoke up. “What if Artemis plied them with liquor?”
The men stared. Seth’s forehead furrowed. “Are you out of your mind? You aren’t going anywhere near a bar, especially one frequented by an MC. No way are any of you putting yourselves at risk to hunt for this information. I’d rather go home empty-handed than risk any of you.”
Iona held up her hands. “Hear us out.”
Elias was already shaking his head no.
“We can do this safely,” she insisted. Why was he being so stubborn? It wasn’t as though she and her team were newbies. They’d been operatives longer than Echo unit. Elias must getused to using Artemis on ops. Otherwise, she and Elias would have a problem because black ops was her life, and she and her team had been trained a certain way that worked for them. He said he could accept her job, but could he?
