I decided last night the instant I sank between those legs of hers.
The guys gathered in the room one by one, including King’s crew. I could tell that word had gotten around, because their reactions were pretty much the same. They came up and clapped me on the shoulder. Made some sort of cheeky comment that had me swallowing back a growl.
Yeah.
Way too loud.
Maybe she’d like a gag.
Or a nice choke.
I’d have to speak with her about it later.
“All right, everyone,” Cap said as he raised his hand, commanding our attention while King stood at his side, “time to get this over with. It’s time for us to solidify a plan for our efforts going forward. King?”
Anna’s brother nodded. “My crew and I still believe that doubling down on our informative efforts is the best way to go. My crew and I have drones at our disposal. Maverick is our drone expert. Say hi, Maverick.”
“Yep,” the burly man in the corner said.
King motioned with his hand. “That’s Mav. My crew and I think that if information gathering is what we’re gunning for, then we need to use everything we’ve got at our disposal. I don’t think it would be an issue to take some of our drones and fly them over the state park.”
“That’s… actually not a bad idea,” Ranger said as he pointed to King and stepped out of the mire of men in the room. “I couldwork with Mav to either encrypt its broadcasting signal, or I could outfit them with more than enough storage to take footage that we could scour through after the drones get back.”
Cap tilted his head. “I’d prefer a live stream. If someone catches the drones, at least we’d still have some sort of footage to go through.”
Mave just nodded. “We can make that happen.”
“Good,” King said as he pointed at his guy. “You work with Ranger on getting that up and running. How long do you think it’ll take?”
Mave shrugged. “Couple days? Just gotta configure some things. Map out a flight path.”
Ranger grinned. “I could have my encryption software up and running before nightfall.”
“We could use the map Marla drew us to help things along,” Ghost said as he stepped out of the corner, yanking his mask back into place.
Wrecker pointed at him. “She’s got a couple of landmarks on there that I’d love to know the location of, so I definitely second handing over Marla’s map.”
Cap nodded. “We’ll make sure Ranger and Maverick get that, just so Mav’s got some sort of starting point with creating his flight plan.”
“I have a theory on the buildings that are burning down,” I said as I raised my hand into the air.
All eyes were on me as Cap nodded. “Speak, Doc.”
I shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “I think the burnings are two-fold. I think they’re getting rid of some of the older structures they’ve operated out of. The buildings that were being burned? They were rickety to begin with according to the police and fire departments who responded to things.”
“How do you know that?” Wrecker asked. “You’ve been here this entire time.”
I blinked. “Doesn’t take much to hack into files, according to Ranger.”
Ranger shrugged. “I’ve been getting him files to keep him updated. So what?”
The guys just kind of shrugged it off in a, ‘I should have thought about that’, sort of motion, before I cleared my throat. “I’ve been thinking about the discrepancy between the two buildings that you and Wrecker found yourselves in, Cap. One of them being very technologically efficient, and the other one, not so much. It almost seems weird for a ring like this that’s clearly more ingrained than we would like, to have buildings that aren’t outfitted with the tech they’d need to communicate back and forth.”
“So what are you thinking?” Brutus asked from his dark corner.
“I think,” I said before I heaved a heavy sigh, “they’re burning down to rebuild. Taking the older buildings that they can sacrifice, torching them to draw just enough attention away from where they want to establish, and essentially creating a scenario that buys them enough time to do what they need to do while everyone else is distracted.”
“And you’re sure that’s what they’re doing?” King asked.
