It was well known amongst her and the team that their medic had been bitten hard by the love bug. But thanks to her abrupt departure, Shadow had apparently missed out on the exciting announcement.
“Sorry.” Baker’s brows dipped inward. “I figured you knew.”
She swallowed her guilt, hating that she’d had to choose between the team and finding justice for her mother. “I knew Evie had been rescued…again.” Her lips curve into a brief smile. “I just feel bad that I wasn’t there to offer my support. If anything had happened to a member of the team?—”
“Owens would have sent me to find you long before you reached out.”
Her head dipped in a slow nod, knowing he was probably right. “Thank you, by the way. For stepping into my place to help them when I couldn’t.”
Like her, Baker often worked behind the scenes, using his wicked computer skills to help other special ops teams save the innocent and destroy the enemy. Most recently, he’d put those skills to use aiding Tac-Ops on their mission to save the woman who’d stolen Bones’s heart.
“No thanks needed,” Baker rumbled. “Although, I did tell your boss he owes me one.”
Boss, father…same difference.
“I’m the one who owes you, Baker. Not Owens.” Shadow sipped on the same glass of iced tea she’d been nursing for the past half-hour. “If it wasn’t for your help, the guys?—”
“Would have figured something else out.” He shot her a knowing look.
Sighing, she asked, “When do you go back home to Hawaii?”
“Soon as I leave here.”
Better get to it, girlie.
“I won’t keep you, then.” She leaned in, resting her elbows atop the shiny wooden table. “Were you able to find anything useful?”
He leaned to the side, the vinyl sounding off once again as he reached for something behind his back. When his hand returned, she saw that he’d retrieved a vertically folded manila folder.
“Depends on what you consider useful.” He put it on the table and slid it her way. “But if a smoking gun’s what you’re hoping for, it’s not in there. To be honest, there’s not much of anything in there.”
“You didn’t findanything?” Shadow frowned as she picked up the envelope and released the thin metal clasp.
Holding it between her midsection and the table’s edge, she lifted the flap and reached inside. She pulled out the thinner-than-expected stack of documents.
“The guy’s clean, Shadow. As in, his ass probably squeaks when he walks.”
“That’s impossible. No one is that clean.” She quickly scanned what she could of the first few pages, being careful not to expose the intel to anyone other than herself. “Especially a politician.”
But even as those last muttered words fell softly from her lips, her heart sank, and her stomach grew heavy with a fresh dose of disappointment and dread. From what she could see of the intel Baker had brought her, he was right.
There’s nothing here.
“What about his financials?” she asked as she continued to skim through the pages.
“Everything seems to be in order. The guy even pays his taxes early. Every. Fucking. Year. I’m tellin’ you, Shadow…” Baker’s expression was serious. “Ifsomething’s there that we aren’t seeing, whoever hid it is as good as either one of us.”
“You’re wrong.” The ends of her long, blonde ponytail brushed against her lower back with a confident shake of her head. “Whoever covered the bastard’s tracks isbetterthan us.”
Which meant this was going to be even harder than she thought. Shadow was admittedly one of the best hackers in the country. Baker was even better than her. But the person who’d managed to cover her target’s tracks as well as they had…
“It’s someone he used to work with,” she whispered the words more to herself than him.
Someone within the CIA helped him cover it all up.
She hadn’t shared her theory about her target being former CIA. Not with Baker or her father.
Like everything else up to this point, she had no solid proof. Accusing someone of murder was one thing. Speaking in conspiracy theories and hypotheticals about traitorous spies took it to a whole new, tin-foil-hat-wearing level.
