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T he next morning Jordan awoke and yawned so hard his jaw cracked. There was a knock on the front door, and he thought about Trooper Mires.

Had that really happened?

Part of him hated himself for having mindless sex last night, but more for knowing he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Would he call her tonight for an escort home?

Why not? Mindless sex beat thinking about his ghosts.

The knock came again, louder this time, impatient.

It was still dark out. He grabbed a black bathrobe from the back of his bedroom door and walked to answer it.

He checked his security feed and saw a man he recognized as Unit Chief Jon Regan himself, head of TacOps, standing with a tool kit in hand and a pissed-off expression on his face.

Jordan unlocked the door, and the other man pushed inside, closely followed by a geeky-looking girl in black glasses that peeked out from thick black bangs.

“They sent the big guns, huh?”

Regan tossed his bag on Jordan’s kitchen table.

“I’ve got one team with HRT, another in Brooklyn, and one in Texas—doing things I can’t even think about outside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.

Figured I’d deal with this myself as it was close to home and on friendly territory.

This is Crisco—not her real name. She’s in training. ”

“I need?—”

“It was Crisco, San Fran, or something vaguely lard related, but apparently that’s not allowed anymore.” Regan smirked, clearly trying to get a rise out of someone.

“I threatened to shoot him if he went with anything even remotely body-shaming.” Crisco stuck her hands in her back pockets. “So we settled on Crisco.”

“Fair.”

“You got any coffee?” Regan asked.

“Yes.”

“Black. No sugar. Crisco likes cream and two sugars, even though I keep telling her all her teeth are gonna fall out.”

Jordan glanced at the clock. 6:03 a.m. He filled the coffee pot and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. I’m fighting jet lag.”

Regan nodded. “I’m sorry about Montana. He was a pain in the ass and a damned good friend of mine.” The man’s mouth pinched. “He was in Africa?”

“I’m not allowed to say.”

Regan laughed and clapped him on the back. “You don’t have to.”

Regan was a legend in the FBI. Same as Montana and Lincoln Frazer. The cases they’d worked, ops they’d run were taught at the academy. Montana would be glad Regan was here.

“Look, you probably know someone tried to run me off the road on Tuesday night, which is why I initially asked for additional surveillance, but”—he lowered his voice until it was barely a whisper and leaned closer—“can you check if anyone fiddled with my alarm system yesterday and maybe got inside without me knowing?”

Regan was paying attention now, and it was unsettling to be his entire focus.

He pulled a gadget out of his pocket and turned it on.

“We can speak freely now. This blocks all transmissions from devices within a ten-meter radius. Bugs can still pick up your voice outside that zone though, so keep the volume down, especially if you’re outside.

Tell me why you think someone got inside? ”

“I thought I’d left Kurt’s bag under mine in the bedroom, but when I came home, they were the other way around.” He sounded like a paranoid idiot.

Regan strode into the bedroom and took a look at the bags. His gaze also hit on the used condom in the waste basket. Although he didn’t say anything, his mouth took on a knowing smirk.

Christ.

“You check inside the bags?”

“No. I planned to drop Kurt’s at his place, but I didn’t figure there was any rush. I need to go through it for HRT equipment first.”

Regan nodded. “Let’s do it now. Just in case there are any hidden surprises.”

He looked carefully at the bag then placed it on the unmade bed.

Jordan shoved aside the flashes of having his brains screwed out. He wasn’t a stranger to anonymous sex but never here. Never in his home.

“You know what was supposed to be in here?” Regan asked.

“I was there when he packed it, but I wasn’t staring over his shoulder or anything. Friend from DEVGRU brought it back and dropped it at the HRT compound for me to pick up.”

Regan ran a wand over it—checking for bugs or explosives? But if it were the latter, they’d have gone off last night. Shit.

“Hmm.” The man unzipped it slowly, inserting another machine into a tiny gap. “No explosive residue.”

“Skippy.” Crisco’s happy tone seemed to bounce off the other man’s abrasive exterior.

Regan started pulling the neatly packed items out of the bag and going over everything individually. Crisco wielded a wand- like black light and inspected every item a second time— for electronic rather than biological residue.

The wand changed color when it ran over an adapter, and Crisco shot him a look.

Jordan wasn’t stupid. That meant there was a bug inside it. Someone had been inside his home—unless the bug had been planted before that. At DEVGRU or even back in Africa?

Regan removed several handguns and a bottle of G96 gun oil. “Where can I put these? I don’t wanna get grease all over the bedcovers.”

Jordan grabbed a towel and laid it out on the other side of the bed.

Ammo followed. Lots of ammo. Regan swore. “You guys are a walking armory.”

Just because they’d been away from the compound didn’t mean they’d stopped training. It hadn’t stopped death from finding Montana though.

“Okay. Nothing here. We’ll take care of that for you.” He pointed at the adapter.

Regan put everything back in the bag and placed it back on the floor.

Regan repeated the procedure on Jordan’s own kit bag and found another bug, this one tucked into the inside piping of the bag itself. A wave of unease moved over him in a cold shiver. One of his ghosts giving him a friendly warning? Or something more sinister?

Regan repacked the bag, and this time left the bug in place. Jordan wanted to smash it under a hammer.

“Let me take a good look around. You go outside and help Crisco with the ladder.”

Jordan realized he was still in his robe and pulled on some underwear, black tactical pants, and a black T-shirt. Before he could leave, Regan ran the wand over every inch of him and then over his socks and black tactical boots. He gave him a satisfied nod. Drew a finger across his lips .

Jordan got it. They were leaving the bugs in place for now. Who the hell would bug him or Kurt? Why?

Obviously, someone somewhere worried they’d been on to something.

What though?

“That coffee would be great about now. Thanks.”

Jordan poured coffee for each of them and then went outside to help the shorter agent haul a large ladder down from the top of a panel van with a painting company logo on the side.

She slung a bag over her shoulders and grabbed one end. They tromped through the wooded area around his lot. “We’ll start here. Create a complete perimeter with cameras and motion sensors.”

“The deer?—”

“We know we’re gonna spot wildlife in the woods, Operator Krychek.” She rolled her eyes.

Ouch . “Call me Jordan.”

She smiled at him. “We already have a Jordy at The Center, so I’m gonna go with Krychek instead. It’s cooler. Very X-files.”

He was getting whiplash from the conversation, but he wanted to know about the bugs. “Back there…”

“I have the first bug in a box in the van that shields the persons being spied on but still allows the signal to transmit. Once we get it to the lab, we can try to trace the signal back to its origin. To have a hope of doing that we have to leave the other bugs in play for the time being.”

“So they just assume the FBI is incompetent?”

Crisco smiled coolly. “They get to think they’re safe. Right up until the moment they aren’t.”

He helped her set everything up and was impressed by the coverage the cameras gave in all directions. “Can someone come in and cut the power?”

“Battery operated.”

“What about block the signal?”

“Sure. We’ll have an alarm set up that goes straight to us, the local cops, your boss, and the nearest resident agency if that happens.”

“What about blocking that alarm?”

“Any interruption or change in the signal results in an alarm being sent regardless. If they block that…” She cocked her head as she considered. “Pretty sure that would mean we’d lose all our feeds, in which case, the alarm would be raised.”

“How would you bypass this system?” They trudged back slowly to the house, carrying the heavy ladder. The mist was rising through the trees in the early dawn.

“We do brainstorm this kind of thing, you know. One of the reasons we have multiple cameras in each position is so that no one can approach the camera from a blind spot.” Her eyes lit up.

“If it was me, I’d use a drone with a paint sprayer.

Do it at night and block out all the lenses.

But I’m pretty sure that would trigger an alarm, as we have infrared cameras at night.

Bottom line is we will know immediately if and when anyone tampers with or sets foot on your property, and that will alert local cops and feds and alert you on your phone, hopefully giving you time to protect yourself. It won’t stop an army, but…”

Jordan grunted. “I don’t know why anyone is wasting their time bugging me. I don’t know anything.”

“Someone thinks you do. Be careful what you say inside until Regan gives you the all-clear.”

Had whoever bugged him heard him having sex last night with Ellen Mires? Should he warn the Trooper? Was she in danger? Did it matter if he had sex? It wasn’t illegal. It hadn’t been intimate. In fact, it would have been more intimate if they’d had a romantic dinner or played chess.

He and Crisco arrived back at the house. Secured the ladder back on top of the van.

Regan was smoking a cigarette on the wraparound porch. “Didn’t find anything to worry about.” He held up his hand with four fingers—obviously he’d turned off his signal blocker .

Shit . “Well, that’s good news. Thanks for coming out. Apologies for it being a waste of time.”