Page 24 of Baby Take Me Home

TJ

“Explainto me how a reporter has come to be detained by my agency.” X stared me down across my office, where she stood with her back to the glass wall.

The gym beyond the glass was currently empty. In fact, the entire first floor was deserted, and the rest of the building was so quiet, it could have been abandoned. For a group of fearless operatives, the Alpha Team members were going to great lengths to avoid X’s crosshair as she raked me over the coals for bringing Ashlee Armand into WitSec. And I couldn’t blame them for a hot second.

“Not detained,” I explained. “Here for her own protection, until we have her prepared for her meeting with Kovac.”

“And then her new identity and new life.” X arched an eyebrow. “You expect me to believe there was no other way?”

I’d been standing in front of my desk, facing her. Now I sank down and perched on the edge of it. I’d asked myself the same question a hundred times since we’d met Samantha and Jensen in the secure parking garage and Ashlee’s bravado had crumbled into a million pieces.

“What I believe,” I finally said, “is she won’t leave this story alone unless we give her a damn good reason to walk away.”

“She’s a reporter, an investigator by nature.” X sat down in an office chair and crossed her arms and legs. “How do you propose to make her give up the story of a lifetime?”

I sat in the chair across from her. “She’s already concerned for her own safety, as she should be, but I don’t think she’s considered that others in her life could be in danger, too.”

That was something the typical WitSec informant turning on a mob boss or drug syndicate would expect, but civilians weren’t necessarily cognizant of the same dangers posed by such ruthless foes.

X nodded. “What’s the plan to keep her cooperative if she figures out we can only tell her some of the information she wants?”

I leaned forward to prop my elbows on my knees to brace myself. “It’s not about sharing all the information, it’s about reframing it. Alder has been analyzing the data we downloaded from the cloud Armand and her editor have been accessing. Not all of the research is hers. She’s building on an investigation that was already underway.”

X frowned. “Her deceased colleague was working on a story about the Carbonados,” she surmised accurately. “And Ms. Armand has taken over where he left off?”

I nodded. “I know it sounds bad.”

“Bad doesn’t begin to cover it, given that any day now, the Subcommittee could pull the plug on us. This is our top-priority mission, and if Ms. Armand blows the lid off even a small part of the Carbonados before we shut them down, our supporters won’t be able to save HEAT.”

Over the last several months, in search of a Carbonados mole, we had done the deepest dive into the senators’ staffers we could without crossing a legal line that would get us all thrown in Leavenworth. But we hadn’t found enough information to connect the dots or eliminate the problem. Meanwhile, the mole seemed to be sewing doubt about our tactics, results, and efficacy. If we handled the delicate situation with Ashlee poorly, we might be handing the mole and his—or her—bosses our asses on a silver platter.

“After we stopped the dirty bomb incident last month, I thought the Subcommittee was in a better frame of mind,” I said.

“And the Subcommittee still isn’t in a better frame of mind?”

She shook her head. “You and I know the suspects we caught in the bombing case are low-level Carbonados. But the senators want proof the bombers weren’t independent bad actors, and the FBI hasn’t found any.”

“And they won’t,” I said. “The bombers would rather throw themselves on the mercy of the justice system than cross their bosses.”

“Can you blame them?” X asked.

“Luka is the lynchpin in all of this. If we can get enough proof to tie the bomb back to him, we can take down the Carbonados and save HEAT at the same time.”

X stood and glared down at me. “And you think the reporter is the answer to our problems?”

“The warrant situation has effectively tied our hands,” I said it gently, hoping she wouldn’t take offense. “I think we have to try some new tactics to get to Kovac.”

A door squeaked, proving there was life elsewhere on the first floor after all. Two shadows emerged from the dark tech room. Jensen and Alder had been working down here all along but had probably wanted to fly under X’s radar while I was being chewed out for bringing Ashlee into our operation.

“Boss?” Jensen called as they approached.

“What is it?” X and I asked at the same time.

Jensen and Alder stopped in the doorway. Jensen shifted from one foot to the other and Alder cleared her throat. They never acted this nervous, even when our lives were on the line in the field, although at those times we were all running on adrenaline.

“Spit it out,” I said.

“About Ms. Armand,” Alder started.