Page 68 of The ARC Unit: Breach

“Anything else?”

“Kade appears, you confirm and stay inside the cover. You do not follow him somewhere we can’t support. Bellandi touches you, flirts with you or gets close, you let the cover dictate your response instead of getting offended.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Very generous of you.”

“It’s the job you argued for.”

“I know.”

His gaze dropped briefly to the place beneath the linen where the transmitter sat against my hip.

“You feel the unit shift or loosen, don’t start digging around for it in front of people. Go to the bathroom and tell Raven.”

“I can manage a bikini.”

“You couldn’t manage a shower curtain three days ago.”

“Did you just make a joke?”

Wolf’s expression went flat again.

“Vehicle in five.”

He turned away.

I looked at Raven. “He did.”

Raven unplugged one cable and began packing his field kit. “I heard nothing.”

“Coward.”

“Survivor.”

I checked the cover-up once more, picked up the small bag that belonged to Mia Morgan and followed Wolf toward the garage.

His large steps moved ahead of me, steady as ever. The black tactical belt sat low around his hips with the webbing folded where I had seen it during training. The hardware gave one last quiet click when he reached for the door.

Three days earlier, he had decided I would never belong in the field. Now he was opening the garage so I could walk into the first place ARC had reached before Cerberus emptied it.

He still didn’t trust me.

Fine.

I had a party to attend.

Chapter Five

MIA

By the time the Mercedes turned onto the narrow road leading toward the estate, I had repeated Mia Morgan’s employment history enough times that I was beginning to resent a woman who did not technically exist.

I sat in the back with the transmitter clipped inside the right hip of the bottoms exactly where Wolf had put it. I had stopped feeling the cold metal against my skin before we left the compound, but I had not stopped remembering the two fingers that had put it there. That was frustrating enough, but having the man responsible sitting across from me made it worse.

Wolf had added his plate carrier before we left, the black tactical fabric making his shoulders look wider while magazines, medical gear and enough equipment to solve several different kinds of problems sat tight against his chest. His heavier field mask covered everything below his eyes.

I looked out the window.

Raven sat beside Wolf with a field kit open across his knees, watching audio levels and the position feeds from the team already spread around the estate. Hawk had been on the north ridge for almost an hour. Viper was working the south approach from a rotating vehicle and Jackal had the east service road and enough traffic around him to disappear without sitting still. Bear waited farther out with the Transporter and the extraction equipment Wolf had approved after rejecting half of what Bear originally packed.