“Help you find Owens and Shadow? I’m insulted that you thought you had to ask.”
Relief filled his veins, and he wanted to reach through the phone and hug the brilliant man. But since that wasn’t possible…
“We need you to hack into the security system at our current location. There are cameras in the hallway, so I’m hoping we’ll get lucky and get a look at whoever it was that did this.”
“Thought you already knew it was that Reiner guy.”
“Oh, he’s definitely involved,” Bones chimed in. “But the guy’s like five-five, if that. No way he got the upper hand on Owens and Shadow unless he had some help.”
The sound of keys being struck at a high rate of speed filled the phone’s speaker as Slade and the others waited. “Okay, I’ve got the feed up now. And yep, you’re right. There were two assholes working together. They were dressed like fucking firefighters, if you can believe that.”
“Firefighters?” Apollo frowned. “Was there a call about a fire in the building?”
A few more clicks, and Rawlins was back. “Nope. But the building security recorded two firemen being let into the building. According to the guard’s notes, the firefighters claimed someone called in a possible gas leak from your location, and they’d been sent to check it out.”
“Can you get facial rec?”
“Not from the camera by the apartment door, but maybe… Well hello there, Andrew Reiner. And who’s that you brought with you?” The tech genius worked his magic while the men of Tac-Ops waited. “Damn. I can’t make out the other guy’s face enough for an ID, but you’ve got Reiner dead to rights. Bring him in alive, I bet he’d flip faster than an IHOP pancake during the breakfast rush.”
Bones snickered, and Falcon’s lips twitched with a grin, but Slade was in no mood to smile.
“Okay, so we know half of the who,” he pointed out to Rawlins and his team. “But how do we figure out where?”
“You know how they found the safe house in the first place?”
“No clue.”
A slight pause ensued before the man on the phone spoke up again. “Hate to ask, but any way you picked up a tail after leaving the hospital following the explosion?”
“No,” Slade’s response was immediate. “There’s no fucking way.”
“You sure?” Bones looked at him, regret filling the other man’s eyes. “Don’t come at me, brother, but we have to look at every possibility. Even ones that seem unlikely.”
“It’s not just unlikely, it didn’t happen. And this isn’t my ego on some big fucking trip. I’m telling you, there was no tail. You’ve all seen me drive whenever we’re protecting total strangers. You really think I’d put Shadow at risk by not watching my rearview the entire fucking time?”
The longer he spoke, the more pissed off he became. And then he felt like shit because he knew his brothers were only trying to help. But dammit, they were wasting time asking if he’d been followed.
Time that Shadow and Rafe didn’t have.
“Okay, so if you weren’t followed, then how?—”
“A tracker.”
All eyes turned to Apollo who was staring back at Slade with a solemn expression.
“You think one of us was compromised?” He clarified, making sure he’d heard the other man correctly.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Especially given the pictures we found at Reiner’s place.”
“Ooh, that’s a good point.” Bones nodded excitedly. “If you weren’t followed, then you had to have been tracked. And since you drove the SUV from our building straight here, it couldn’t have been on the car.”
“It had to be on your persons,” Rawlins agreed. “One of you had to have come into contact with someone you didn’t know.”
Digger met his teammate’s stares as the answer finally began to sink in. “Shadow.” He swallowed. “She was the only one checked out by the staff.”
“Was there ever a time she was out of your sight?” Rawlins asked. “A time when she was alone with someone on the hospital payroll, or even another patient or visitor nearby?”
“The CT,” Slade shared. “It was the only time I wasn’t with her.”
