Page 11 of Jonas (Silver Team #4)

CHAPTER NINE

“Jonas?”

I ignored Kira and kept my gaze fixed on the hallway Derrika had disappeared down.

My head was pounding. I could’ve blamed it on the side effects of being drugged, but I knew that wasn’t it.

Old memories, unhealed wounds that had stitched themselves into the fibers of my soul had punched through the mental barrier that kept them at bay.

All of the times my mother hadn’t protected me or my brother from her drunken husband’s rage, his fists, his tantrums, his boot, other flying objects.

I couldn’t remember a single time she’d protected me or Adam.

She’d cower and let the monster beat us.

That was until we got big enough. Then she used us as shields.

I’m not talking until I know my friend is safe.

But Derrika, a stranger, had used her body to shield me—draping herself over my back, placing herself in danger to protect me.

What the fuck was that? Crazy-stupid brave.

“Jonas!” My name punched through the air, shoving the memories dogging my brain back where they belonged and I focused on Kira. “We have an update.”

Update, right.

Cash had abandoned following the black Mercedes and Easton and Smith had been rerouted to rescue Derrika and me. My team now had the two men responsible for our abduction in an interrogation room. I wanted in on that interrogation but Zane had ordered me to stay with Derrika, Cooper, and Kira.

Now I was stuck in a safehouse instead of doing something to work out my demons. Nothing a little torture couldn’t work out.

Without me having to ask, Kira started to fill me in.

“Easton called, Smith’s in with the goon.

Cash took the boss.” Kira paused a moment as if expecting me to say something.

When I didn’t, her attention turned piercing.

Right . The goon. If the claws of my past hadn’t dug into my skin I would’ve given her shit for being goofy as fuck.

And now it was too late, KK had latched onto my screwup.

“Are you okay?”

Not even close.

“Yeah, why?”

She glanced toward the hall. “Did something else happen?”

I could feel sweat beading on the back of my neck.

I knew what was coming—touchy-feely shit.

Where the hell is Cooper? This post-Cooper Kira was his doing.

It was only fair the man should be in the room to reel his wife in.

Pre-Cooper, Kira Winters didn’t do feelings.

She did smartass comments and snark and doled out great intel and handed out target packages like candy.

The good ol’ days.

Now, if Kira so much as got a sniff there was something wrong, the woman wouldn’t stop until she sussed it out.

“What’d I miss?” Derrika asked, coming into the room wearing a clean shirt Kira had given her.

And with that, the woman saved my ass for a second time that afternoon. This one I’d gladly take if it meant Kira got back on track and left the feelings conversation for never.

“Nothing.”

Kira’s gaze journeyed back to me. With a look that couldn’t have been misinterpreted for anything other than I’m not letting you off the hook , she went back to her briefing.

“I was just telling Jonas, the team’s already at the other…” Kira frowned. “I guess I can’t call it a safehouse seeing as Cash is interrogating the boss and Smith’s in with the other guy and neither of those men are safe. Easton also told me Zane’s on his way.”

Who the hell allowed Zane out of the office?

“Please tell me someone has a dentist on standby?” I asked.

“As far as I know he only needed a dentist that one time.” Kira smirked.

Derrika glanced between Kira and me, expecting an explanation.

Thankfully, Kira took the lead. “Our first op with Z Corps was a rescue mission. During the op, Zane and Kevin were captured. By the time the rest of the team had found them, Zane had rescued himself. Let’s just say it was messy .

As in Silence of the Lambs , Hannibal Lecter messy, complete with Zane breaking a tooth. ”

That was putting it mildly.

“I’ve heard of clawing your way free, but…chewing?”

Derrika’s blue eyes went comically wide. It was cute, but it was the way she bit the corner of her bottom lip that kept me transfixed. The way her straight, white teeth rolled her plump lip inward, drawing attention to her mouth—a mouth I had no business being mesmerized by.

“Zane’s…” Kira trailed off and smiled. “Well, he’s Zane.” She finished with a shrug refocusing on me. “Layla texted; her and Nebraska are looking deeper into Delcon’s board of directors.”

I understood why KK had directed her comment to me. Layla was at work, and feeling better. The sentiment was appreciated, but Derrika looked put off.

“I ran background checks on the board.”

“Oh no.” Kira waved a hand at Derrika. “That’s no disrespect. It’s just Garrett can and has accessed phone records and personal email accounts.”

“I’m gonna go help Coop.”

I left the women to talk tech and hacking.

Neither was it my forte nor did I find it interesting.

I much preferred actionable intel. But that wasn’t what had me fleeing the room like a scared doe.

I still couldn’t shake my reaction to Derrika.

Physically I got the attraction—she was a beautiful woman with a great smile and eyes like gemstones.

But this strange need to drop to my knees and worship her bravery I didn’t understand.

It was her allegiance to a stranger I couldn’t fathom.

Or maybe I could, it was just I’d never been on the receiving end.

My team had my back. Before he died, my brother.

A woman who was not Layla or Kira? Never.

Not even the woman who’d pushed me out of her womb had shown an ounce of loyalty or protection.

By the time I made my way outside, Cooper was rounding the corner with his phone up to his ear, eyes on me.

“Yeah, copy that,” he said. “I’ll run that by Jonas and Derrika, let you know.”

Jonas and Derrika.

Why did those three words together make my heart jump?

Coop wrapped up his call and launched in, “That was Linc.”

Lincoln Parker was Zane’s brother. He helped Z with the day to day operations of Z Corps. But more importantly, he kept Zane’s scorch-the-earth tactics in check.

I nodded, and Coop went on, “He thinks our best play is to stay the course.”

In other words, have Derrika go to work at Delcon tomorrow like nothing happened. I had a feeling Derrika would be on board with that plan. I, on the other hand, felt acid churning in my gut.

“Kira’s supposed to start work tomorrow,” I noted.

Cooper’s scowl was a clear indication he didn’t appreciate the reminder of that part of the plan now that we’d been shot at on the street and Derrika and I had been taken.

“They called her Miss Hart,” I went on. “Until the team breaks?—”

The sliding glass door opening stopped the rest of my thought. But the look of concern coming from Kira made my pulse jump.

“What’s wrong?” Cooper beat me to asking.

“You need to come inside and see.”

With that ominous direction, she left the door open but didn’t wait for us to follow.

Cooper rushed to trail his wife. I was on his heels, and only paused to shut and lock the door. When I made it into the living room, the TV was on, a ‘breaking news’ banner scrolling at the bottom of the live broadcast.

“Fuck,” Cooper murmured.

Fuck didn’t begin to cover the footage of a bridge collapse in the Baltimore Harbor.

“Please tell me there was an issue with the structural integrity.”

The video panned wide to show live video of a cargo ship’s bow under a pile of mangled bridge truss.

“The entire bridge has collapsed,” the female correspondent reported.

“A major rescue operation is underway. More than a hundred motorists were driving over the bridge at the time of the collapse.

Baltimore fire department has reported they are treating the bridge collapse as a mass casualty event.

More than a dozen divers have been deployed to the Patapsco, with more from Anne Arundel County en route.

It appears the nine-hundred-eighty-four foot, fully loaded juggernaut lost power moments before it slammed into the pylon.

“For those of you just joining us, this is breaking news from the Baltimore Harbor. The Key Bridge is gone. It is in the water. The only part that is visible are portions of the superstructure that was above the roadway. More than one hundred cars are in the water…”

I tuned out the reporter. The fine hairs on the back of my neck that had saved my life more than once were itching.

“What are the chances a cargo ship lost power and the backup generators didn’t kick on immediately?” I asked no one in particular.

“Slim,” Coop answered. “But possible.”

Anything was possible, however a Neopanamax container ship with two main and two auxiliary diesel generators losing all four power plants at once was unlikely.

“Cyber-attack,” Derrika murmured. “Could this be step one?”

Step one in a terror plot a dead CIA officer drafted. A man who knew and understood America’s weaknesses, the order in which to cause maximum chaos without dropping a single bomb or firing a shot.

“An operational technology hack would compromise control systems, including propulsion,” Kira noted.

“The crew could get power back online but with today’s network infrastructure it would take time to manually override.

If the takeover was timed right.” She stopped to point at the TV.

“The ship wouldn’t have time and a collision would be unstoppable. ”

Fucking hell.

“If not step one,” Derrika picked back up. “A test run?”

Cooper, always the voice of reason, cut in, “If it was an OT hack, why not just take control of the ship? Why cut the power? That would leave too much up to chance. A simple change in water current would veer the ship away from the intended target.”

“That kind of hack would be obvious,” Kira told her husband.

“Our working theory is Maddon’s plan is meant to cause hysteria.

A series of systematic accidents .” She lifted her hands to use finger quotes.

“Would have every conspiracy theorist coming out of the woodwork. Black swan events, false flags, laser beams from outer space. The more accidents happen, the more these theories will grow legs and spread. People who aren’t inclined to believe will start to consider the idea. ”

“Another accident would have to happen soon,” Derrika pointed out, using air quotes as well. “Start with infrastructure—bridges, ports, trains. Make people afraid to travel.”

“New York?” Cooper asked.

“No,” Kira gently denied his prediction.

Derrika wrung her hands together while staring at the floor. Her left eye squinting. Her lips pursed. If that was her thinking face, it was cute as hell.

“What’s on your mind?” I inquired.

Her head slowly came up, her eyes no longer narrowed, but her lips were still pressed together. Once again drawing me to stare at her mouth.

“What if this isn’t the first?” she started. “What if they’ve already tested, but the other incidents were minor and didn’t make national news like this one?”

Kira skirted around the couch to move to the breakfast table where her laptop was already open. “I’ll look into boating accidents involving bridges.”

“Before you get lost down a rabbit hole, Linc called,” Cooper announced. “We need to discuss Delcon.”

Derrika’s gaze drifted to Coop. “What about it?”

“Linc thinks we should stay the course.”

As suspected, Derrika nodded.

“Why wouldn’t we? Kira has her interview tomorrow. And you two are already hired .”

Despite my stomach clenching at the thought of her going back to work, I smiled at the continued use of air quotes Derrika adopted from Kira.

“Maybe because you were followed leaving work by an unknown. Then there was the Segal lookalike in front of your building. And if that’s not enough to give you pause there’s the part where we were shot at before you were hijacked off the street.

And we haven’t discussed what happened back at your apartment, which is suspect seeing as we didn’t even make it to the car before we were ambushed.

Someone knew we were leaving. Which means you were right, someone was listening. ”

Derrika waved her hand in front of her like she was shooing away my concerns.

“Your team is interrogating the men who took us. We know the Segal lookalike’s name and where he’s staying. My vote’s we go talk to him and ask him what he was doing loitering in front of my building. The added benefit to that is, he knows the unknowns in the Mercedes.”

I glanced at Cooper to see if he looked as dumbfounded as I felt. He didn’t, but he did look harassed at the prospect of his wife going to Delcon for an interview.

“Just drive to Daryl Barnes’s hotel and knock on his door, that’s your plan?”

Derrika shrugged. “Why overcomplicate it? The simplest solution is oftentimes the easiest to execute.”

“Occam’s razor doesn’t apply when people are in the mix,” I told her, referencing the problem-solving principle she mentioned. “The simplest solution could quickly turn complex when some asshole pulls a Crazy Ivan and decides to shoot us instead of sitting down for a chat.”

“He’s not going to shoot us through the door of his hotel room,” she went on like a dog with a bone.

“You’re sure about that?”

“Sure, I’m sure. Why would he?”

There were a lot of reasons. But I didn’t take the time to ponder on them all, and focused on the obvious.

“Maybe because he doesn’t want you to know why he was in front of your building. Or more to the point, who sent him.”

Derrika glanced around the room and blew out a breath like she was suffering through torture and not a conversation about her safety.

“I’m up to take the chance if you are.”

Translation: I’m going to speak to Daryl; whether you come or not makes no difference to me.

Fuck my life.

“You staying here with KK?” I asked Coop.

He glanced at his wife who was already deep into her searches, not paying a lick of attention to the world around her.

“Yup.”

Smart.

The house could catch on fire and Kira wouldn’t notice.

“Let’s roll.”

When Derrika didn’t immediately move, I turned to see what was holding her up.

That turn proved to be the nail in an already tightly closed coffin.

The look of satisfaction that she’d gotten her way, mixed with the shock that I’d given in so quickly, meant her lips were parted but tipped up, her eyes were soft but astute, her shoulders were set and determined.

All of that equaling strongminded beauty—the likes of which I’d never witnessed but right then decided I wanted to see more of.

And as the hammer pounded the nail deeper, I couldn’t find it in me to stop it.

If Derrika Layne continued to shine her stubborn loyalty down on me, I’d blindly ride with her into the unknown.