Watching Megan walk out the door sucked, but logic insisted it was for the best. It was Kayden who got us back on track. Within a couple of hours, we had a handful of certainties. One—the trace on the colonel’s phone was a no-go. Even when Rabbit tried turning it on remotely, all we got was crickets, making it highly probable the phone was nothing more than shattered electronics. Two—Rabbit found one outgoing call on the colonel’s phone just after Jinx filled her in. Surprise, surprise, the call was to base command’s HQ, where one Major General Hawes claimed an office. Three—the last known location of the colonel was base command’s parking lot, where Tag and Cyn found her locked and empty car. Cyn tried retracing Delacourt’s steps, using her ability to read past events, but unfortunately didn’t get much. There was too much foot traffic, she said. As a post-cog, she relied on the emotional echoes to sneak a peek into the past of a place or object, and the more personal the space or object, the clearer she could read. In this case, the base command’s parking lot gave her nothing but a headache. Like any military installation, security was a bitch, so accessing the video feed on the lot meant Rabbit exercising his hacking skills. Working his magic, he found the colonel’s arrival fairly quickly. Unfortunately, all we got was her getting out of her car and crossing the lot. Right before she went inside, someone off camera caught her attention, and she moved out of frame to where there were no electronic eyes.
With no other avenues to explore, we changed gears. Jinx combed through the electronic calendars, financials, and real estate holdings of the major general and, by process of elimination, got us a fairly solid schedule with an address. We also added Delacourt’s home address to our to-do list, even though the chance she was home was slim to none.
We split into two teams—Kayden, Cyn, Tag, and Jinx taking the colonel’s home, leaving Wolf, Doc, Rabbit, and me to scout out Hawes’s expansive estate. With plans in place, weapons strapped, and comms check complete, we headed out into the early evening and the snarling mess of Thursday-night traffic in one of the bland SUVs kept in the office lot. With nothing to concentrate on but driving, my mind decided to replay the scene with Megan. Cyn’s concerns were legit, but that didn’t erase the smudge of guilt for kicking Megan out that lingered like a bad taste on my tongue.
“For fuck’s sake, Bishop.” In the passenger seat, Wolf rubbed his temples. “You want to tone it down a little?”
Wincing, I threw up the mental shields Wolf had made sure each of us had honed into nearly impenetrable walls. “Shit, sorry.” Wallowing in my thoughts was not a wise move around a telepath—a point to remember, considering our suspicions about Hawes.
He waved my apology off. “It happens.” He sighed and focused on the passing scenery.
Something was working in his mind. I just wasn’t sure what, so I kept quiet. He’d share if he thought he needed to. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he said, “She wasn’t blaming you, you know.”
I shot a look to the rearview mirror to find Doc staring out the window and Rabbit with his head back and eyes closed, both attempting to give us privacy. Getting into this now, in front of them, was not on my agenda, but they were my team. If I planned to lift up my skirt, at least they wouldn’t post it all over social media.
My hands tightened on the wheel. “Yeah, I know.”
“Then what’s with the guilt?”
I poked at the feeling in an effort to answer, wincing when I hit a sore spot. “Admitting she could be used against us…” I shook my head. “Hearing her say it is one thing, but hearing the same thing from Cyn…” I rolled my shoulders, trying adjust the shitty feeling. “It felt like we were kicking a damn puppy.”
Wolf snorted. “Fuck that. She’s more like a damn pitbull.”
That made my lips twitch. “I know that. You know that. But…”
“But?” he prompted when I fell silent.
Relationships were not my thing, so I had no idea if I was breaking a cardinal rule and sharing where I shouldn’t, but dammit, this was Wolf and Doc and Rabbit. If I couldn’t talk to them, I was screwed. Besides, they’d zip lips with the best of them. “She hates being thought of as weak.”
“Who the hell called her that?” Rabbit asked.
I snorted. “No one, but it doesn’t seem to matter. She can’t let go of her fear that she’ll hurt the team.”
“Not the team. You,” Doc corrected. “She’s trying to protect you.”
And wasn’t that a kick in the balls? I wasn’t used to someone trying to protect me, especially since I considered the protector role to be my job. “Yeah, she’s so fixed on saving my ass that she’s not watching hers.” Having that kind of blind spot worried me because Megan was the type to risk it all for those she considered hers. She never said it, but in every touch, every look, those damn sketches—hell, even the act of pulling me into her dreamworld—all of that said what she never had aloud: that she considered me hers. And that was a damn good thing because I, too, was just a tad possessive of what I considered mine.
Rabbit lifted his head and sat up. “Good thing she has you, then, ain’t it?”
No truer words were ever said. “Yeah it is,” I said. But it also makes my job that much more difficult.
“Warned you, brother.” Wolf went on to prove that no matter how strong my mental shields were, things got through. “I told you getting emotionally involved would blur your lines.”
I risked shooting him a look. “Didn’t stop you with Meli.”
Wolf flashed me a grin before he muttered, “It’s like that, then?”
“Yeah, it’s just like that.” Unfortunately, I’d do a hell of a lot more than just blur the lines for Megan if it meant keeping her alive and breathing. That truth sank into my battered heart, throwing my world off kilter. At the last minute, I remembered to keep my mental walls high and tight, but it was too little, too late.
Wolf shook his head. “Damn, man, you’ve got it bad.”
Rabbit leaned forward, arms braced on the front seats, his shit-eating grin taking up my rearview mirror. “’S all good, ’cause while he’s coverin’ Megan’s cute little ass, we’ll cover his.”
“Keep your damn eyes off her ass,” I warned Rabbit.
Doc shoved Rabbit back into his seat. “Dare you to say that in front of Jinx.”
Rabbit widened his eyes in mock innocence. “I ain’t foolish enough to tug on death’s whiskers.”
With that, sharing time was over. Thank God.
Twenty-five minutes later, we pulled into a ritzy neighborhood filled with tree-lined gates guarding overly large houses that sat back from the road in tiny pretend fiefdoms. We did a drive-by of Hawes’s address as we cruised through the elite neighborhood, and I pretended to be just another everyday gawker in a tinted-window SUV. I kept our speed at the limit, taking in the fifteen-foot wall wrapped around the property’s boundary, the ornate gate with thick bars, and the huge-ass house sitting back behind the screen of trees. As the full extent of Hawes’s estate sank in, I let out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s got to be worth—what, three to four million?”
“More like five plus,” Doc said. “Especially since he’s got no neighbors behind him.”
“Bet that’s where some of that squirrelly money went.” Soft clicks accompanied Rabbit’s comment. “Looks like he picked a primo lot. It backs into a park.”
“He’s got security,” Wolf said in a hard voice. “At least ten that I could sense.”
At the end of the street, I took a right. “Did you catch positions?”
Wolf shook his head and turned to Rabbit. “The side neighbors looked pretty close.”
“Yeah, they are, but there’s a ridge along the back line we could hike over. It would bring us in from the rear of the property.” Rabbit made a few more clicks and directed me out of the neighborhood and into the parking lot of a ritzy golf resort.
We pulled into the back and parked in the employee lot, where the SUV fit in with the other reasonably priced cars. With night settling in, it wasn’t hard to blend in with the shadows and make our way back over the ridge. We snaked down the ridge, our goal Hawes’s back fence. While we hiked, Rabbit checked in with the others. Unsurprisingly, Delacourt’s place was locked up tight with no sign of the colonel or anyone else.
Hitting our target, we separated and picked our spots for overwatch. Rabbit sent the other team our coordinates, and we settled in to await their arrival. Spread out along the back line of Hawes’s property, we had an uninterrupted view of his three-story McMansion and the glittery pool caught in the spill of landscaping lights. There was enough illumination to negate our need for the night-vision viewer I’d pulled out of my pocket. The scene was straight out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, minus the famous part. Why in the hell would one man need that much space? The whole place was dripping in pretension and left me wondering how no one found it odd for the major to afford a house like this.
I didn’t realize I’d said the last part out loud until I heard Wolf’s voice in my ear. “Don’t forget the wife came from money.”
“And he’s fucking creative with his finances,” Rabbit chimed in.
“Got movement,” warned Doc. “Counting two, both armed.”
“I’ve got one walking the yard.” I kept my voice low, knowing how well sound carried.
“Two on this side,” Wolf said.
“Got interior patrols moving in pattern,” Rabbit added. “Hard to tell. Could be two, maybe three.”
And that isn’t counting whoever patrols the front. “Hell of a security force for a single man,” I said. “Wolf, can you scan for Delacourt?”
“I can try. Distance is a bitch, and if Hawes is the telepath we think he is, he’ll have precautions in place.”
“Give it a shot.”
We fell silent, waiting while Wolf did what he did best. One minute ticked by, then another before I heard Wolf’s soft curse. “Son of a bitch is definitely psychic.”
“You trip something?”
“No. Went in soft and slow. Found a few triggers and let them be, but he’s shielding like a bitch.”
“Any sign of Delacourt?”
“Not yet, but he’s got a lower level out of sight.”
Fuck. That was not good. “Rabbit, can you get—”
“Blueprints. On it.” A piece of shadow broke from the others and slipped away.
We continued to watch as the minutes ticked by. Recon required patience, which was no easy thing when you knew shit was going down and you were stuck watching for hours at a time. This time, we didn’t have hours to waste. Twenty minutes in, a soft warning click in my ear signaled the arrival of the rest of the team. We left Doc on watch and retreated behind the ridge, far enough away not to draw attention. Rabbit was hunched over his phone as everyone circled around. He’d managed to find a blueprint of the house, and sure enough, there was a basement level. We kept the comms open so Doc could listen in. Discussion was short and to the point.
With such a large estate, it was imperative that we search the entire house for Delacourt, which meant splitting into teams. The sticking point came when we had to figure out how to keep Hawes unaware of our infiltration. Then Cyn turned to me. “Why not go with the initial plan you came up with? The one where Megan keeps Hawes busy?”
My initial reaction was to snap Fuck, no, but then I shoved my emotions aside to make room for practicality. I turned the plan over and over, a sense of knowing growing with each revolution. Asking Megan to step back into that dreamworld was risky as hell. I remembered Rico’s warnings. Inside that psychic sphere, it wouldn’t take much for a telepath to turn the tables on a dream-walker, with disastrous results. But going in without a distraction was an even bigger risk—not just to our team but for the colonel as well. In the end, despite leaving my guts in a tangle of icy knots, the decision was simple. We needed that distraction.
I turned to Wolf. “Can you reach Ricochet? Get his take.”
He nodded, tilted his head, and half closed his eyes. Everyone waited while Wolf stretched his ability out and spoke to Ricochet. Although there wasn’t much light outside the small penlights we were using, I caught his slight flinch. He gave the merest hint of a smile, blinked a couple of times, and rubbed his chin. “They’re a go, but I got to say, based upon what she threatened Rico with if he didn’t say yes, you might want to make it a point not to piss her off.”
That didn’t exactly ease my worry. “If Ricochet isn’t sure—”
“No matter what she threatened,” Wolf said, “if he wasn’t okay with it, he wouldn’t have given the green light.” His eerie sea-green eyes held mine, and his voice was steady in my mind when he added, just for me, Give her this. She needs to be a part of this.
Swallowing hard, I nodded.
Wolf turned back to the group. “They need about thirty minutes to pull him in, then we can move in. We’ll need to rely on our comms because I’ve got to keep a mental path open with Rico.” A round of nods came back. “All right, then, in case you missed it, Hawes is definitely a telepath, so keep those mental walls locked tight. Don’t give him a crack to slither through, copy?”
I heard a soft chorus of “Copy.” Then we went back over the plan, piece by meticulous piece. The peculiar calm that preceded any mission settled over my shoulders, smoothing away the ragged edges of worry and leaving nothing but the immediate in its place. The expressions around me fell into familiar lines as we did our last-minute checks. Then it was time.
“We’ve got fifteen minutes to get into position,” Wolf warned, twisting his wrist up to set his watch. We all mimicked him, fingers poised. “Starting now.”