Page 222 of Operation: Defiance

Raine flinches at the sound.

“It’s him.” I put the call on speaker. “You’re late.”

“You assume I’m in North America. How very mundane.”

“Stop fucking around. Northbridge. I need access to your contact. Now.” Anger prickles over the back of my neck. If I’m not careful, he’ll hang up on me. Though that would be a mistake he’d never come back from. Not with what I have on him.

“My contact only surfaces once a day. I won’t be able to reach him again until tomorrow evening.”

He says it like he’s ordering takeout or commenting on the weather. “Unacceptable. I need to speak to him right fucking now.”

“If I push, I lose access entirely, and you, Mr. Locke, are not worth that.”

“Are you? Because I highly doubt your constituents would look kindly on the Gentleman from the Great State of Georgia committing tax fraud.”

He sucks in a breath. “That is not information you were meant to know.”

“Get me in touch with Northbridge and I’ll develop a convenient case of amnesia,” I counter. “Otherwise…”

“The facility has strict protocols for their contractors. Twenty-four hour shifts, no electronic communication in or out. You could threaten everything I hold dear, Mr. Locke, including my own life, and it would not allow me to reach him before late afternoon tomorrow.”

Fuck.

“Give me a time,” I grit out.

The man’s sigh rubs my last nerve raw. “He will be off shift at four p.m. He will likely not check his messages for another thirty minutes. That has been the pattern for the past year. If it holds, I will be able to speak to him then. Not a second earlier.”

I keep my voice level, despite the rage threatening to spill over. “For the sake of your career, Senator, you better not be wrong.”

“For the sake of your life, Locke,” he replies, a cold edge to his tone, “do not threaten me again.”

The line disconnects.

I want to throw the phone across the room. I could. There are a dozen burners in the closet. But that wouldn’t solve a damn thing.

“If the man had checked his messages last night, we’d have been able to talk to Northbridge already. When this is over, I’m burning him anyway,” I mutter.

The words hang in the air, angry and impotent. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this useless before in my life.

Heating up last night’s leftovers gives me something to do, though Raine doesn’t look up from the laptop as she picks at her pasta. We eat without talking. Every few minutes, she frowns and scribbles something else in her notebook. I don’t ask. Don’t try to read over her shoulder. She’ll tell me what she needs when she needs it.

“Why would they delay Ellen’s final correction?” she asks halfway through the meal, her gaze focused somewhere over my shoulder. “If they expect us to turn ourselves in at one p.m., why not schedule Ellen’s disposal for that same time?”

The answer hits me hard enough I almost drop my fork. “Because they don’t know what you have on them.”

Raine blinks once, slowly, and focuses on me. “They’ll have the log of what I copied yesterday.”

“Yes. But they don’t know what I took from the black site. Even if they had some idea, those other three files—the Contractor Risk Exposure Analysis, the Continuity of Care Guidelines, and the Operational Standards Adherence—didn’t belong in that directory. They want those four hours to find out what we know.”

I can see her mind working. The way her eyes unfocus, her thumb drifting to her index finger, then her hand digging into her pocket to find the challenge coin.

“And who we might have told,” she says softly. “Tessa. Jonas. Every person you’ve ever been close to—they’ll all be at risk.”

“You’re the only person I’m close to, Raine. This life…it’s lonely.” I set the fork down, the certainty of what I’m about to offer killing the last of my appetite.

“You’ve landed somewhere.” It’s not a question. Or a demand. She pulls the coin from her pocket and presses her thumb over the three lines that vaguely resemble a Z.

“GSD set the terms. If we refuse to come in, Ellen dies. They can’t walk that back. So, you’re right. If we’re still free at five p.m. tomorrow, they’ll funnel her to disposal. And then escalate someone else.”