“She's both,” Nick said.
"You're here to spy on Sterling?" Dove asked.
"Not spy. Watch and protect." Sterling’s fingers tightened at the back of her neck. “That's the part that matters, and she’s taking a serious risk telling us. If her handler finds out she blew her cover to my team, she’ll be pulled. At minimum. At worse, well, I don't even want to think about that.”
"Then let's not," Buddy said. "
"I got no reason to say anything." Dove patted her belly. "I'm currently keeping the sex of this little one from my future husband because he doesn't want to know. If I can do that, I can keep Juniper's secret."
"That's kind of mean," Juniper said.
"So is calling our baby Scutelet and now baby Yoda," Dove said. "But we've digressed."
"Considering everything, we might need to clue in law enforcement," Buddy said.
“I could be agreeable with Dawson. Maybe Chloe. But that’s as big as this circle gets," Juniper said.
Juniper drew in a breath and let it out slowly. She’d faced armed men with less fear than this. Guns made sense. Bullets traveled in a line. People were messier. Hurt the wrong person, and the damage spread in directions no training manual covered. “I’m sorry I lied to all of you,” she said.
“No reason to be sorry,” Buddy said. “You were here to do a job that all of us knew was possible and could be happening right under our noses. The things Sterling knows, the work he did, ittouches national security. We might not love being left in the dark, but I understand the job.”
Dove rubbed her belly. “I'm used to this kind of thing. Can't tell you how many missions I went on that I wasn't even sure the core objective was true.”
“Same,” Cullen said.
“So, I guess when I come to town, I have to pretend I don't even know this Juniper.”
Juniper’s chest tightened. “You're coming to Calusa Cove.”
“He's coming to my wedding," Dove said. "I met Nick a few years ago when my team worked a JSOC mission and crossed with something he was doing in the middle east."
“Is there anybody you don't know, Nick?” Juniper asked.
"Not many," Nick teased.
Sterling’s thumb moved against her neck, and the contact steadied her before the old grief over Mark and Norfolk could crawl out and make a meal of her in front of everyone.
Buddy turned toward the board. “Now that we’re done with the first layer of holy shit, we have to figure out how all this connects.” He tapped Doyle’s name with the marker. “Because right now, Doyle makes my hair stand on end.”
“Meridian has a questionable client list,” Sterling said. “Three names on Nick’s Shrike-adjacent list.”
Buddy pointed at Frost’s name. “And a client who claims he’s being hunted because of the Bogotá corridor.” Buddy moved the marker to the other whiteboard. “Then we have Royce and Graham Halloran. Shipping. Money. Pressure on Aegis to cut Cullen which is personal. But I'm keeping it on the board because we don't know if there's more.” He tapped the marker against the board. “And some of the stuff Mia dug up on Ashbourne Holdings is starting to smell Shrike-adjacent, too.”
“That’s not news to me.” Juniper sat forward. “I had Bea run Royce after Cullen told me about the contract condition andGraham.” She pointed at the board. “I knew about the shipping money, the political donations, the shell subsidiaries, and the fact that Royce likes to pretend clean paperwork equals clean hands.” Juniper pulled her computer out of her bag. "I get you’re old school. But do you have a way for me to project my screen to something so I can show you what I've got. Then somebody needs to tell me exactly what Mia found on Doyle, this job he wants Sterling to do, and Ashbourne Holdings.”
"If the FBI ends up firing you," Buddy said. "You've got a job in this office with us."
She laughed. "Thanks, but if when my days end there, I think I'll figure out a way to keep my pub and spend the rest of my days pulling beer for you and listening to your boring stories." The words flew from her mouth before she even had a chance to think about them, but after they dropped, her heart settled.
She'd meant every single one. She glanced over her shoulder at Sterling, who stared at her with wide eyes as he smiled. Finally, after all the grief and pain, she'd landed in a place she could call home.
Chapter Seventeen
Sterling had learned a long time ago that beer tasted different depending on the company.
With Buddy, beer tasted like a debrief—though not in a bad way. With Doyle, it tasted like a bad decision waiting to happen.
With both of them at the same table on Juniper’s front patio, under strings of yellow bulbs and a sky so purple it looked bruised, the beer tasted like it belonged with a last supper.
