Page 119 of The ARC Unit: Breach

I looked toward Wolf’s position on the feed. “What about Varga?”

“Wolf has him. German investigators are two minutes out, and Hawk is staying until the handoff is done.”

“I can stay with the evidence.”

Raven looked at me before pulling into traffic. “I need you on Bear’s channel while I drive. If the medical team changes the rendezvous, you keep everyone on the same route.”

I could actually help with that, so I took the tablet and stopped asking to be somewhere else.

Bear’s vehicle moved ahead of us through Augsburg while the radio stayed mostly quiet. When he spoke, it was to give Raven Jackal’s condition or to tell Viper what he needed. Jackal answered questions when Bear asked them, though the pauses between his answers grew long enough that I started counting them without meaning to.

“Jackal,” Bear said after one silence stretched too far. “Stay with me.”

“I’m here.”

“Tell me what you stole from Raven this morning.”

Jackal took long enough to answer that I started watching the seconds again. “Nothing.”

Raven looked personally offended even while driving.

“He’s absolutely concussed.”

“Not a head wound,” I reminded him.

“Then he’s lying under medical duress.”

Jackal’s voice returned, weaker but recognizably his.

“C-coffee pods.”

Raven let out a breath through his nose. “It’s a miracle.”

Hearing Jackal answer Bear’s questions was the reassurance we needed while the vehicles kept moving toward the rendezvous. The medical team met Bear where Raven had arranged it and took over without wasting time.

By the time our van reached the hospital, Jackal was already through the emergency entrance with Bear beside him. Viper arrived moments later carrying the black pack Jackal had dropped near the response vehicle. Wolf arrived almost forty minutes later.

He had stayed long enough to transfer Varga into German custody under ARC authority and personally preserve the messenger bag with the phone inside its evidence chain instead of letting either disappear into a random room for the next six weeks. His trust issues were well warranted.

When he walked into the waiting area, his mask was still on and a dark smear had dried along one glove near the wrist. I knew whose blood it was before I looked away.

“Status?” he asked.

Raven closed the laptop he had been pretending not to work on. “Surgery. Bear says the knife went through the abdominal wall on the left. They don’t think it hit anything immediately catastrophic, but they’re checking the depth and controlling the bleeding.”

Wolf looked at the clock on the wall. “When did they take him back?”

“Thirty-one minutes ago.”

He nodded and sat across from us.

The waiting room was ugly in the way hospitals usually were when nobody inside cared about the furniture. A television played silently near the ceiling, and I spent the next hour pretending to read Varga’s preliminary evidence inventory while every opening door pulled my attention away from it.

I had known Jackal for only a little while, yet his voice already belonged in the kitchen before sunrise and somewhere behind me whenever Raven was trying to work. I knew the expression he made before saying something vulgar, and I knew about the red ribbon he thought nobody had seen. The possibility of those becoming memories instead of habits I could keep complaining about made my chest hurt.

Across from me, Wolf appeared almost indifferent if I only watched his body. He sat forward with his forearms on his knees and spoke to nobody unless they brought him information. When Bear sent the next update, Wolf read it before Raven did.

Five minutes later, he asked Raven whether the surgical team had requested blood. When Raven said yes, Wolf wanted to know how much. He asked when Jackal’s pressure had stabilized in transport and whether Bear had seen any change in consciousness after the handoff. None of the questions sounded panicked, but he kept collecting details as if knowing the exact sequence could keep the outcome from surprising him.