Chapter 12

12

JAKARTA, INDONESIA

They'd been betrayed, and that leak was trying to split their team in two. Sitting at the kitchen table, Delaney kept thinking about the argument last night.

This was a gray table in a shades-of-gray kitchen. The safe house here was nicer than the one in Singapore. More space but no color. Garrett walked in with his huge stainless steel coffee tumbler and aimed straight for the pot. Which he emptied into his mug.

She eyed his freshly showered wet hair and his tight black tactical shirt.

Delaney looked away, the heat in her cheeks telling her they were probably pink. She forced her attention to her plate and picked up her toast as he started a new pot of coffee.

"Sorry to interrupt your breakfast," he said, "but it's time to recalibrate our mission. Living room." He strode under the arched entry between the rooms and claimed one of the armchairs, and Surge followed him in.

She shoved in the last bite of her scrambled eggs and pushed away from the table. Whatever he had in mind for this mission recalibration, she would make sure Surge's nose was part of it after Garrett's whole "overwhelm" comment last night.

She walked in behind Zim as he wiped peanut butter off his mouth with his hand. She pushed him from behind, and he grinned back at her, wiped his face with his hand again.

Caldwell already sat on the couch with his laptop, feet on the coffee table, frowning at his screen. He pushed his laptop to the table, then scowled at his phone, poking it. He shook his head.

Delaney slid off her shoes and socks and headed for the rocker. Surge sprawled on the floor beside her . . . eagle-eyeing Garrett. She knew Garrett was mad at Caldwell, not her. But Surge obviously still remembered he'd laid into her last night.

He'd hugged her in the container yard too. And he'd protected her—his team—in the warehouse. She took a breath. This took up way too much time in her brain.

Oh. He was watching her watch him. Yeah, anything between them would only be a distraction—for both of them. She tore her eyes away.

Garrett cleared his throat. "Let's start. At the container yard, I got a picture of the cargo manifest. I've sent images to your phones. It lists shoes as the goods on the LD3s. No surprise, considering where we found the first stash. But yesterday, the containers were empty. Where'd they go? Any ideas, Caldwell?"

The CIA operative sighed and chucked his phone onto the couch. "I've been hunting for them, but no joy yet."

"Those plastic tubes can't magically disappear out of the containers."

Caldwell leaned forward. "Yet," Caldwell repeated. "No joy on the intel . . . yet." He snatched up his phone and glared at Garrett, his face pinched like a rotten apple. "Like intel magically appears. I'm working on it."

There was something about this man that made it hard for Delaney to figure out if she liked him or not. On one hand, he seemed skilled. But on the other . . . he took no small pleasure from annoying Garrett, to the point of acting like a victim about it.

Garrett's jaw worked. He looked at his phone. "Be right back." He put it to his ear and stalked toward the front of the house and out the door.

Had he gotten a call? She hadn't seen his screen light up . . .

Phone in hand, she started looking at some photos.

"Garrett's being a bear because he expects immediate and perfect intel." Caldwell pulled his laptop to himself, peered at the screen. "But I've got seven different search engines looking for this freaking mother lode. Nothing. I tried to contact my HUMINT. Haven't heard back. Garrett's asking for the impossible." He tossed his phone back on the couch. "Right, Delaney?"

Oh no. Delaney was not going down that conversation path with him. "You might call him Bear, but you weren't there yesterday. You didn't see that moment when we realized the container was empty. So yeah, he's a little grumpy, but he's on a mission—we all are. And I, for one, feel a little bearish about these guys getting away with the LD3 containers. And we all know, Garrett included, that accurate intel is the right intel."

Caldwell glared, but again picked up his phone and poked away at it.

Guess the meeting was over, and she wasn't going to get a chance to bring up the power of Surge's nose for the team. At least, not yet.

It had been a couple days since she'd worked with him on the desensitization of that triggering tone. She wanted to keep working it every so often, so she reached down to wake Surge up. But he wasn't there. He'd gone off to explore the safe house again. Nah. Bet he'd sneaked outside with Garrett.

She heard a whine in the other room.

"Surge?"

Another whine.

Working dogs didn't just randomly whine. She followed the sound down the hallway and into the laundry room, where he was sniffing Caldwell's duffel in the corner under the stainless steel utility sink.

He saw her and planted his rump on the floor, ears pointed at it. He nudged it with his nose, eyes lasered on the duffel.

Heart jamming in her throat, she gaped. This wasn't obsession with dirty socks. This was a hit .

"Good boy," she whispered, stock still, listening for what was going on in the living room. Caldwell and Zim were intent on a conversation. She quietly closed the laundry room door, pulled the duffel to herself, and unzipped the front pocket. Looked over her shoulder again.

Deep breath. She opened the pocket and peeked in. Nothing. Wait. Something was stuck in the corner. She pulled it out.

The random purple plastic trash she'd seen Caldwell fidgeting with the other day. What was it doing here? There had to be something in Caldwell's duffel that'd rubbed off on it.

Delaney unzipped the main part of the bag. "Check it, Surge."

He sniffed it, then he nosed her hand holding the plastic and downed, his ears pointed at it. His tail twitched, and he woofed as he belly-crawled even closer to the piece of purple plastic. "It's this, Delaney. Are you stupid?" he seemed to say.

"Good boy." She chucked his chin, then stood and studied the translucent, glittery plastic that gave beneath her fingers. Silicone.

Surge was homed in on this thing. Whatever it was, it must've been exposed to Sachaai's chemical encapsulation lipid. She had to talk with Garrett.

Zim and Caldwell were up and moving in the living room.

She shoved the silicone in her pocket. "With me," she signaled. They left the room and headed down the hall to the front door. She stuffed on her socks and shoes.

What was Caldwell even doing with this silicone . . . thing? Maybe Garrett was right about the CIA operative.

* * *

"You're sure?"

"I don't bull people, Walker."

At Chapel's terse response, Garrett nodded. "Thanks. Appreciate it." Call ended, he rammed his cell into his pocket, paced the safe house's tiny yard that reeked of the river. According to Chapel, he had vetted Caldwell before even recommending him to ABA.

So . . . Caldwell was Caldwell. He didn't care if the man liked or trusted him.

But Zim . . . Samwise was no longer here, but Zim, he had become more than a friend to him. A battle buddy. Iron sharpening iron.

Garrett's stomach twisted, knowing he'd done a fine job of making the whole team not trust him, including Delaney. Shoot, even Surge.

Frankly, he was starting to doubt himself.

He hopped up, grabbed the handrail of the deck above him, and began chin-ups. He had to recalibrate himself first. Then the mission. Hopefully convince the team.

"Garrett?"

At the soft, warm voice, Garrett dropped to the ground, a strange something spiraling through his chest as he faced her. "Hey, Delaney."

"Hey." She entered the yard with Surge, then paused and glanced back to the house. "I need to talk to you."

"Sure. But first, I owe you an apology for laying into you last night."

She smiled. "We're good. And I?—"

"I've lost the trust of the team." He couldn't stop talking. "It's my fault we don't have the chems now."

"How?" Delaney asked.

"I led us to empty LD3s." He shook his head. "I had Chapel's backing, but I doubt that will ever happen again."

"But you're team leader for a reason—and you're a good one."

That strange warmth simmered, but he squelched it, his own anger too fresh in his mind. Anger at the team, at everyone else. Now at himself. He rubbed his arm as memories of Dad's rage flooded in.

Her voice was just loud enough to hear. "God corrects mistakes. No more, no less."

"I royally reamed Caldwell after the fight on the combi plane." Garrett slumped against the railing of the deck. "Then he proved that he didn't even know the building manager was Sachaai and that no Sachaai were linked to the plane's passengers. He couldn't have known about the hidden men waiting to attack us."

He paced out to the fence and leaned against it with both hands. He was half tempted to jump it and take a long run. "I should've left picture-taking to Zim. Nearly unreadable pictures of the manifest were all I got. I should've waited for Caldwell to get accurate intel instead of racing the team into the container yard. An unnecessary risk. An unnecessary waste of time."

He stopped and leaned against the fence again. "And I hammered you."

"That wasn't a hammer. And your team is still with you." She laid her hand on his arm, where she had last night. "You're not your dad."

"If I don't get control, this team will fall apart. We will fail the mission. Americans will die. That will be on me."

"Leadership is not control."

Oh, her head tilt.

"My dad taught me that, and he was right. But some wise guy named Heath showed it to me. You are not leading a dog if you're yanking him around on a lead." She waggled her eyebrows. "Surge, come!"

The Malinois sniffed along the fence and shot toward her.

"Crawl!"

Surge dropped to the ground and squirmed the rest of the way.

Ugh. Control again. Garrett knew better.

Where was Lieutenant Commander Taylor? He needed his Navy boss to slap him on the back of his head. Hard. Order him to do push-ups. Five hundred of them.

He deserved it.

Surge and Delaney trusted each other.

Instead of controlling his team, he had to work with and trust each of them. They needed everyone's skills, working together. That was the only way they could stop Sachaai's chemical attack.

He bowed his head. Forgive me, God.

He lifted his head and couldn't help but smile to see Delaney on her knees ruffling Surge's neck fur. "We call that combat crawl."

"Makes sense." She gave him a smile, but then her face turned dead serious. "Boss, I'm sorry I intervened between you and Caldwell last night."

He frowned. "It could've ended badly. So you deserve a thank-you."

Her lips flattened. "Well, I have to tell you, something is off with Caldwell."

Feeling a bit of whiplash hearing that, Garrett struggled to know how to respond. Hadn't he just asked God to forgive him? But for Delaney to say that . . . he wanted to kick open the safe-house door and take down Caldwell. Instead, he leaned against the fence with his hip. "Why do you say that?"

She held out a strange piece of translucent purple plastic.

He took it and turned it around, trying to get a bead on it. Nothing. "What is it?"

"No clue. But Surge straight-out hit on it in Caldwell's duffel. I'm 99.9 percent sure this is the plastic he was fidgeting with in Singapore. I thought it was trash, but he stuck it in his duffel." She puffed out her cheeks and blew out the air. She lifted her palms up with a shrug. "Surge was obsessed with his duffel again yesterday. I thought it was his weird, uh, you know . . . clothing thing." She blushed, shook her head. "But today he hit on this. So I brought it straight to you."

He held it up to the sun and studied it. "Weird. There's kind of a gap—a pocket—on either side. What even is this thing?"

Delaney lifted one shoulder, checked behind her, then inched nearer. "Garrett, I don't want to imply anything, but what is Caldwell doing with a piece of plastic that Surge recognizes as Sachaai lipids?"

Staring into her eyes, he felt his heart jar at the verbal connection between this and the lipids. "I need to think about this."

Surge sat in front of Delaney and pawed at the pocket of the olive green jacket she was wearing. "Okay, buddy." She pulled out the KONG and tossed it into the yard.

Bolting after it, Surge seized it in midair. Took turns which one of them he brought it back to as Garrett and Delaney threw it for him. Not a dumb dog, for sure. She finally reached into her magical pocket, and out came a bully stick. Her constant hoodies and jackets with pockets of dog stuff made him laugh. Surge dropped the KONG and sat politely in front of her, his tail wagging. She handed it to him, and he sank to the ground with a contented sigh.

Garrett leaned against the safe house. "What do you mean, something's off with Caldwell?"

"The plastic, most of all. But there's also living on tech twenty-four seven." She looked him straight in the eyes. "And you punched him on another mission."

"What does that have to do with this?"

"I thought it was just a piece of history, but now . . ." She waved her hand at the plastic he was holding. "I think your instincts might be spot-on."

Yeah. He didn't trust Caldwell, for sure now. He stuck the plastic in his pocket.

"So, what is it between the two of you, Garrett? You're not a hate 'em, punch 'em kinda guy."

He looked at her. "I punched Caldwell in Djibouti, over Sam and Tsunami."

She nodded slowly and leaned against the safe house with him. "I get that." Another captivating head tilt. "What happened?"

He'd told her about his dad's rage. Yet she was still here. Willing to listen.

He cleared his throat. "We didn't know Fahmi was in Djibouti. That bit of missing intel is what killed Sam—and Tsunami. So I punched Caldwell. With our history in Burma, I lost it."

"Burma?"

He didn't talk about this, especially after the call from his CO. But the gentleness in her eyes . . . he sucked in air. "My team was tasked with locating a missing American missionary woman there to help the people standing against the military junta. I found her, but bad intel made things go south. Sam and Tsunami had to rush in and pull us out of there."

Her eyebrows rose. "Thank God for Sam and Tsunami. But you found her. You got her out of there. Of course Caldwell thought of you when he thought of undercover and leadership for this mission." She crossed her arms with a sniff. "But bad intel. Both times. From Caldwell. Both times. No wonder you distrust him."

"There's more."

Her hands fell to her sides. "Okay."

"I did not re-up after Djibouti. I walked away from the Navy SEALs. But my CO called me a few days later. Grieved about Sam, he'd checked into the incident. Turns out Caldwell's HUMINT contact in Djibouti was simply wrong. Then my CO checked into what'd happened in Burma. Turns out that contact was simply a liar. So technically, it wasn't on Caldwell."

"And still you don't trust him."

"Caldwell has a strong CIA operator record, or else Damocles wouldn't have sent him out with this team. Wouldn't even have allowed him to build a team for this mission."

"Heath wouldn't have sent me with Caldwell."

He nodded. "He checked into it himself, before I even showed up at A Breed Apart."

"Sounds like Heath." She laughed. "He wanted to be certain I could trust you as leader. And at the same time, leadership means trusting the team."

What, was she reading his mind? "Yeah. Not controlling them. God's teaching me that."

She chuckled. "God has a way of teaching us things, doesn't He?"

"Yeah. I'm learning. Except truth is, I keep my eyes on Caldwell twenty-four seven."

Her hand on his chest spread a warmth through him. "But after the cargo plane fight, you let Caldwell explain how he couldn't have known about them. That's leadership." She screwed her face in thought. "Leadership doesn't mean perfect, Garrett. God is perfect, not you or me."

He nodded, lips pursed. "Caldwell probably doesn't trust me any more than I trust him."

She quirked an eyebrow. "Probably not, given yesterday's fight."

"Right." He had to think about this thing. If they were going to trust him, that meant—Caldwell or not—apologies. Starting with Rogue.

Surge decided he was done with his bully stick, stood up, and dropped his KONG at Garrett's feet, begging for a game. Garrett gave in, tossing it across the postage-stamp yard. He scampered after it, then skidded to a stop in front of them when he dashed back.

"Delaney, while I'm at it, sorry I questioned you last night at the port."

Her grin at Surge's skid faded. She picked up the KONG, shook it at him. "I've seen his overwhelm with that sound trigger. In the empty LD3s, that was not it. The whole empty area smelled of lipids that used to be there." She spun the black rubber toy out to the corner of the grassy area. "I know dogs. I know Surge."

"I know. And I'm sorry." Nothing more or better to say to a fearless dog trainer.

Surge paraded the KONG around the yard. "You didn't lose your faith in Surge's nose?" Her deep-brown eyes lasered him. "Or in me as a teammate?"

"I trust you." He swallowed hard. He hadn't meant to let his personal thoughts out. "You and Surge."

"You trust me?"

Yes. And more, maybe. Probably. He offered a smile and nodded.

She grinned. "Okay then."

Surge returned, picked up his bully stick, and plopped down between them.

Garrett pulled the plastic out of his pocket, tossed it back and forth between his hands. His subconscious decided not to be sub anymore. "Surge hit on this piece of silicone we know nothing about." He held it in his right hand and just stood there. "And he hit on cartons all over the shoe factory in Singapore. Then empty LD3s that the manifest says were loaded with shoes."

Delaney bit her lip. "Surge hit on this plastic and on shoes, but that plastic doesn't look like it has anything to do with shoes. So what's the connection?"

He nodded slowly. With a final toss of the unknown thing, he stuck it back in his pocket. "That's what I want to know." He pulled out his phone. "Zim, meet us in the living room with your FTIR. We're on the way in."

Surge trotted backward with them, proudly carrying the bully stick in his mouth.

They walked through the kitchen into the living room as Zim barreled down the hallway, bearing the infrared spectroscope and a smile as wide as his face. "What do you need me to take a chemical fingerprint of?"

Garrett laughed. "Easy. This." He lobbed the silicone to him.

Surge sniffed at it in Zim's hand, then walked over to his mat beside Delaney's rocking chair and plopped down for a nap. Delaney took off her shoes and sat in the rocker.

Caldwell walked in and saw Zim holding the purple plastic. Paused. "Where'd you get that?" he asked, his voice low.

Zim was focused on the plastic. "Bear gave it to me."

Watching him, feeling uneasy and uncertain, Delaney said nothing.

Caldwell spun toward him. "Bear?"

"Delaney found?—"

He spun toward her. "You were in my duffel bag, Thompson?"

She cringed, then squared her shoulders. "Surge?—"

The spook grabbed for the plastic, but Zim stared him down, then calmly walked to the dining room table, got the FTIR ready.

Caldwell whirled back to Delaney, his ears bright red. "Your dog got in my private duffel like he got into Bear's? Thought he was trained."

Surge sprang to her side and went on alert, eyeing Caldwell and very ready to address any aggression.

Delaney settled her hand on his head, met Caldwell's stare. "He smells what he smells. He is a working dog trained to sniff out chemicals—Sachaai's lipid in particular."

Garrett knew she didn't need him to defend her, but he was the team leader, so he simply took her six.

Caldwell stepped closer. "You dug into my duffel to see what he was sniffing."

"I did." She jutted her jaw. "We are on mission. When Surge hits on Sachaai lipids, it's my job to check it out, turn it over to Garrett. This was his second hit on your duffel."

Caldwell stared at them, shook his head. "That's insane."

"What is the plastic?" Garrett asked as Zim aimed the FTIR at it.

Caldwell watched. "I have no clue. My Singapore asset gave it to me. I've been trying to puzzle it out ever since." He shrugged. "Maybe it had nothing to do with Sachaai. I simply don't know."

Garrett stepped into his space. "We need to know why Surge hit on it." And he needed to make a choice—choose to believe the spook or ditch him now. The latter seemed a stretch. So, believe it was.

A shrill beep sounded, and Zim scrolled through the report on the screen. "Positive for Sachaai lipids."

"It is?" Caldwell balked, his face slack.

Garrett pulled over his laptop on the coffee table. "Plastic, silicone, Sachaai," he murmured as he pounded the words into the search engine. He read his screen, pounded some more. "What's the connection? It's not . . . Work your sources."

As everyone went to work, Garrett rubbed his chin. Maybe "shoes" was the terrorists' code, their front, whatever. No. That just didn't feel right. He strode to the window, squinted out at the river for a long minute, running through all they'd seen on the mission, starting at the shoe factory.

Then it hit him. Garrett sucked in a hard breath. The puzzle pieces suddenly fit. "Zim! They actually made shoes at the Singapore factory-slash-chem lab. Agree?"

"Don't think they'd fill up the place with shoeboxes and leather and twenty-four sewing machines if they didn't."

Garrett sat back down, pulled out his phone, and clicked away on the search engine until—he popped out of his seat. "Caldwell, what about this?" He held his phone to the spook. "Shoemakers Extraordinaire is connected to Shoe Luxe on the web. They're based in Jakarta." He nodded. "Look at this listing."

"Wow. The biggest shoe retailer in the States," Delaney said, pointing down at the leather boots she was wearing.

"Unbelievable. I could have found that in a second." Caldwell reached for his laptop.

Garrett snagged the computer. And Caldwell's phone next to it. "No you don't. No way are you going to leak this."

Caldwell lifted his hands in innocence. "You can't seriously believe I'm behind this or to blame."

"You don't leave my sight until the mission is complete." He spun his index finger in the air. "Everyone load up. We're heading to the Shoe Luxe warehouse."