Page 15 of Deep Cover

Jolie compressed her lips. “I hope I don’t lose a stitch over this.”

“No yarn in the war room,” Stina repeated. “Got it. You can carry on now.”

Cannon issued a low growl. “That means you leave with the yarn, or you’ll be hurled out after it.”

Stina brushed yarn fuzz off her jeans in an unhurried way. Neither of them appeared bothered by Cannon’s threat as they walked out.

The door swung shut behind them, and now it was Rivers’s turn to face the heat. He was ready. “Cannon. Any way we can discuss this alone, just the two of us?”

“Apparently not.” Cannon didn’t address the rest of the team dropping into their usual spots around the table. “Unless you’re partial to the game of telephone this would create?”

The last thing Rivers wanted was a bunch of false information circulating through Sierra, morphing and growing into taller tales with each recounting.

Pushing a breath through his nose, he sank to his own seat, already feeling the weight of every eye in the room.

Before Cannon could get a word out, the door opened again and Caryssa stood there, looking as though she’d rather be anywhere else on earth.

“Sorry to interrupt. Jolie said you’d have a roll of tape.”

Cannon swung toward her. “Sorry, you can’t be here—team only.”

Her gaze flicked to Rivers—there and gone.

“That’s fine.”

Her response did more damage than any threats against his life ever could.

She whirled out of the room, and the door clicked shut. Cannon didn’t let the dust settle before he turned to Rivers and continued as if the interruption never happened.

“Start at the beginning.”

He dragged a hand over his jaw to buy himself time. “Eight weeks ago? When I was shot in the liver?”

“I think we need to go back a lot further than that.”

A few of the guys nodded, and Rivers gritted his teeth. Everyone settled in to hear what he never intended to say aloud.

Rivers closed his eyes for one beat, two beats, then reopened them. “Do we have to do this with an audience?”

Cannon sat back, completely at ease as he watched him squirm. “I’m going to need you to walk me through how you personally know the intelligence analyst sent by the FBI.”

He closed his eyes again. There was no version of this conversation that ended without every person in this room knowing more than he wanted them to.

But the men in this room—his brothers—deserved the truth.

“Her name’s Caryssa Lane. We were together.”

The air was sucked out of the room.

“Before Blackout.”

A collective sigh rippled through the team.

They each had a person in their lives they walked away from when they were handed the Blackout papers that made them dead to the world. Even if those people weren’t as close as a girlfriend or family, there were people out there mourning them.

Rorke gave him a steady look. “How together?”

His throat clicked as he swallowed the lump lodged there. “Together together.”