Page 25 of Jonas (Silver Team #4)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“This wasn’t on my New Year’s bingo card.”

I caught Jonas’s smile at my comment, but only in profile. He was staring at Zane. I would’ve been, too, except the look on Zane’s face scared me enough to look away.

“Switchboard.”

At Zane’s insane word, I glanced back at him to see him pulling his phone away from his ear and angrily jabbing at the screen.

“Good afternoon.” A crisp, female voice came over the line. “May I announce who’s calling?”

“Zebra-six-five-eight-two-six-oxford. Nine-one-one-alpha,” Zane rattled off.

“Color and number please.”

“Purple. Six.”

“Thank you. Please hold.”

What in the world was happening?

I glanced around the table looking for clues about what was going on and who Zane was calling. When I got to Kira she jerked her chin up and mouthed, POTUS.

President Trent Graham came on the line. His greeting was harsh and impatient. “Mr. Lewis.”

“I can imagine with today’s attacks you’re busy?—”

“Attacks?” Graham’s question sounded evasive.

Zane gave a deep, frustrated exhale. I was sure that was meant to calm his irritation but it didn’t seem to loosen the tight clench of his jaw. So he growled his next words.

“I seem to remember you telling me you’re a politician but you don’t play games. Tell me, Graham, in the years since you’ve taken the Oval have you changed your mind?”

“Zane—”

“Answer me. Neither of us have time for games, Trent. But only one of us is marked for death.”

There was a pause before the president spoke again, and when he did it wasn’t to Zane. It was to whomever Trent Graham was meeting with.

There was an, ‘excuse me’ then doors opening and closing, then finally, “I have privacy. What’s going on?”

“Who was in the room with you when you said my name?” Another moment of silence. Zane didn’t let it go too long before he broke it to tell him, “Remember, it’s your life on the line, not mine. Was Senator Rutte in the room?”

“No. My national security team.”

Zane glanced at Kira. With a nod she focused on her laptop—my guess to find and vet the national security team.

“Do they know who’s behind the attacks in Baltimore and San Francisco?”

“Intel is pointing to the Houthis. Retaliation for the relief aid sent to Yemen.”

Holy shit on a brick, the president of the United States told Zane Lewis top-secret information.

“Your intel is wrong. Has anyone informed you the Pentagon is compromised?”

“Compromised?” Now the president was growling.

“The data center that stores our nation’s secrets has been infiltrated by the Chinese.”

“That’s impossible. No top-secret information is stored off-site.”

“Just like it’s impossible for the US to contract out the manufacturing of our power transformers to the Chinese, leaving us vulnerable for them to plant a backdoor in the hardware so they could turn the transformer off and leave fifty-thousand people in Arizona without power in the middle of summer?

Just like they’d never hack into cargo ships that contain hardware out of China, take over the controls, and veer those ships into bridges and take them down? ”

“Where does this leave us now?”

“Vulnerable as fuck,” Zane grunted. “I have a team headed to Phoenix. They will be at your disposal. Within the hour another team will be headed to Three Mile Island. And a third will head to Kemmerer, Wyoming.”

“Are you telling me the Chinese are going to nuke the US using our powerplants?”

“I’m telling you I need a face-to-face with you by the end of the day, and under no circumstances are you to get on Air Force One.”

“And the men in my office? What am I telling them?”

“Nothing. Let them chase the Houthi lead.”

“You want me to?—”

“Not be assassinated, yeah, Trent, I want that .”

The tension in the room was getting harder to breathe through. Just when I thought Zane was going to explode, the president gave in to his demands.

“You have until the end of our meeting to convince me not to take this intel to my team.”

“Name the time,” Zane ordered.

I wasn’t sure snapping at the president was the way to go, though neither did I think giving orders to him was smart. But what did I know?

“Nine.”

“We’ll be there.”

“Who’s we?”

“The team that’s going to keep you alive.”

With that, Zane hung up on the President of the United States .

“You hung up on POTUS,” I breathed out my thought.

“How else would he know the conversation was over?” Zane shot back.

“Um, maybe he’d know if you said goodbye ?”

“My way’s more efficient.”

And rude, but I didn’t point that out.

“We’ve got ten hours before we leave for DC,” Zane announced, glancing around the table. “Cooper, you’re on the road back to Annapolis. Once you help Layla get the families to Kentucky, you and Kevin are with your team. I’m sending Blue to Three Mile Island. Gold will hit Wyoming.”

“Black’s already there,” Cash interrupted.

Zane pinned Cash with an ominous stare. What he didn’t do was speak actual words, yet Cash understood his non-verbal communication.

“Right,” Cash muttered.

“What about Gold’s families? Do you want them in Kentucky or Tennessee?” Cooper asked.

“Tennessee. Bridget and Aria go with Blue to Kentucky.”

With Zane’s instructions, Theo and Smith visibly relaxed.

Zane being Zane didn’t miss this. “Go call your women, explain what’s happening.”

Smith and Theo quickly stood and went for the stairs.

“Walk me out, baby.” When Kira didn’t immediately push away from the table, Cooper plucked her hand off her keyboard.

They, too, left.

“I’ve got calls to make,” Zane announced, suddenly looking weary.

I didn’t think that was a good sign.

Obviously, Jonas spoke to Zane. “C’mon, Dee Dee, let’s go take a walk.”

Oh, we were being dismissed.

“Shouldn’t we stay and help?”

My question was for naught; everyone else around the table was already standing. Jonas wordlessly pulled out my chair. Together we all exited the basement with me being second to last, Jonas coming up behind me.

By the time we made it into the living room upstairs, only Cash and Lore were still in the house.

“I’m taking Derrika out for a walk.”

Well, that made me sound like a dog.

“Do I need a leash?” I quipped. “Or is Zane’s property free range?”

Jonas startled, then glanced down at me with a broad smile.

“We’re leash-free around these parts.”

The wink he added at the end almost made me swoon. Thankfully, I caught myself before I gave anything away.

“We save puppy play for the office,” Cash tossed in.

“I’d pay good money to see you collared,” Lore snickered.

Cash’s crystalline eyes zoomed to Lore. It wasn’t so much his lascivious smile that sparked my interest, it was the way his eyes fired with mischief that caught my attention.

Boy-oh-boy, Cash had Trouble with a capital T written all over him.

“All you have to do is ask nice, Stella.”

Oy. There it was.

“I don’t do nice,” she supplied. “But I wouldn’t mind a game of animal control if you’re willing to play the part of the stray.”

Weirdly, Jonas stepped closer to me. The easygoing look on Cash’s face evaporated. Along with that, the sex-on-a-stick smirk turned into a wolfish grin that looked less sexy and more homicidal.

“If strays are your thing, darlin’, then you’ve come to the right place.”

With a dip of his chin, Cash turned and walked into the kitchen. Lore’s gaze followed. I looked up at Jonas, wondering what the hell just happened.

“See ya around, Lore,” Jonas told her, and tagged my hand.

Once we were outside far enough away from the house I felt safe to ask, “What happened back there? One minute the two of them were getting hot and heavy with each other and the next Cash looked like murder was on tap.”

Without stopping our trajectory towards the woods, Jonas answered.

“Cash was raised in the system.”

“You mean foster care?”

Jonas blew out a breath that sounded like he was exhaling nothing but pain for his friend.

“Yeah. When he was really young his mother surrendered him.”

“What does that mean, surrendered him?”

“It means she walked him into a social worker’s office and handed him over, telling CPS she no longer wanted him.”

She didn’t want him?

Like Cash was a piece of furniture you donated to Goodwill?

What the hell!

“I know you wouldn’t joke about something like that, but are you fucking kidding me?”

“Wish for Cash’s sake I was. He was raised in the system until that became too much, then he ran away and lived on the streets. He calls himself a stray among other things.”

So that’s why he retreated.

It was one thing for Cash to call himself a stray, using humor to cover devastating pain but to hear a beautiful woman he was flirting with call him that would be like a hit to the gut.

“I can walk back to the cabin by myself if you need to go talk to him,” I offered.

“We’re not going to the cabin,” he told me, and hooked a sharp right, pulling me onto another dirt path, this one less obviously less traveled with the amount of growth protruding onto the trail.

“The power of nature,” I marveled. “I’ve always found it so interesting how quickly Mother Nature would reclaim the earth if we didn’t continuously fight to keep what we’ve claimed.”

Jonas glanced around at the overgrowth.

“You’re not wrong.”

The path had veered right and narrowed, not leaving much space between us, making it hard for me to ignore. But when the trees thinned in the distance, my focus went to the silver of clearing I could see.

“Is that a lake?” I asked, unable to hide my wonder.

I missed the water, missed sitting by the creek, missed everything about being alone in my thoughts.

“More like a pond.”

I quickened my steps to get to the natural pool of water. At this point, it could be nothing more than a puddle surrounded by briars and thistles and I’d be happy. Anything to quiet the noise for a few minutes. Something beautiful to focus on, something other than the uncertainty of the world.