Chapter 8

8

CORE, SINGAPORE

Even after brushing her teeth post-shower, Delaney could still taste the curry from the gently spicy chicken satay. It had been good to shower away the tension of tracking those terrorists and two— two !—containers full of chem vials.

She grinned. Garrett had rewarded Surge with one of his chicken satay skewers. Human food was extremely rare for him, but she'd allowed the treat. That sleek jet-black Mal had proven himself.

Proven her.

She'd even earned a "good job" from Garrett. She was more than an outsider to play nice with, at last. Warmth stirred through her, remembering how Garrett had tackled the rideshare driver, fear and protectiveness in his face . . .

That man was real flesh and blood, not some fairy-tale prince.

A couple of days ago, when he'd sat on the couch with her, her hair brushed up against his biceps. His bright amber eyes gazed into hers. Ribbons had swirled through her belly. He'd been stargazing?

Oh, yeah . . . she'd gazed right back.

They had been stargazing.

It was best to stop that right now. She didn't have any brain space for it. She looked at her watch. It was time for her to rejoin the team discussion.

She unwrapped the towel around her wet hair?—

"Surge! What did you do?" Garrett yelled.

Delaney took off running into the living room.

Surge sat on a pile of men's underwear in the center of the room, a pair of boxers hanging from his mouth.

Garrett's sea bag unzipped in the corner.

Zim waved Surge's KONG in the air. Caldwell held out a bully stick. Garrett squatted with a liver treat, tapping his legs. All three called, "Surge, come!"

Surge just looked from man to man, acting like a king on his spot on the yellow-and-white geometric throw rug.

Oh men of little Surge skill. Delaney couldn't hold back a chuckle, but she was smart enough not to pull out her phone to take a picture. Barely.

"Surge, leave it. Come," she commanded.

He huffed, dropped the underwear, and came over to her.

Walker strode over to stuff the pile into his duffel. "Just got these out of the dryer," he groaned. "Your dog's a hot mess."

"He didn't destroy your . . . stuff," she pointed out.

Zim plopped in the black leather armchair, nearly cracking his knee on the coffee table. This was one tight living room. Laughing, he proclaimed, "Surge wants to knock you down a peg, take over as team leader."

Garrett gave him a fake death glare. "Better him than you, Zim!"

She snorted a laugh. Zim and Caldwell were alternately laughing and snorting.

Garrett laughed, held up a hand. "Time to reel it in, get back to it. I'll put these in the washer. Back in a mike." He jogged off to the super-tiny laundry room.

Caldwell, of course, sat on the couch—small enough to fit in the cramped living room—with his laptop and papers spread over the coffee table. He and Zim talked quietly over whatever was on the computer.

She took a step toward them to join that conversation.

Garrett returned. "Okay, so what do you have over there?" He took the other black leather armchair.

The straight-backed chair, the only thing in the room not either gentle green or soft yellow, was her option: upholstered with flowers. No wonder the men had taken the armchairs. Surge followed her over to it and sat on the floor beside her as though joining the convo. She stroked the thick hair around his neck. He sighed happily and downed.

Zim cleared his throat. "Caldwell hasn't been able to find the one container I noticed in the container yard."

"It's not on me," Caldwell objected. "Zim thinks he gave me three of the container ID numbers, so I quickly ran a search to identify the container. The last number is only partially readable. A three, a two, an eight, who knows? I'm still running searches, but it's a long shot."

Zim scowled, crossed one leg over the other. "Yeah, right, it's on me. Like I should've worked for a different angle to see the whole number. Like I could have once those Sachaai saw us."

"Let it go, Zim," Garrett warned.

The petty officer didn't take his eyes off Caldwell.

For crying out loud. What was with these men? "Nobody can find a container from a partial number," Delaney said. "I mean, right? Add to that the fact it's not crystal clear if Zim found the same containers Rashid and Tariq took to Hakim at the container yard. Or where the second one is."

They all turned and stared at her like she was a purple elephant.

She sat back in her chair. Truth was what it was.

Garrett rubbed his chin as he appraised Zim and Caldwell. "She's on point."

Whoa. She hadn't expected Garrett to back her up. She reached down to pet Surge, fast asleep, spread out like a bearskin rug.

"Besides," he continued, "we needed to focus on finding the container with chem tubes. Plain and simple."

Zim pursed his lips. "I need better footage of the container yard to find those containers, or even if we can find images or footage from last night to see if I can work angles to get the full number."

"Caldwell, I saw cameras onsite. What'd you find?"

"Sadly," Caldwell said, "they were fakes—designed as deterrents, but they weren't live that I could tell. Not even in that office. All I found was a traffic cam a mile away showing the cab turning toward that street. Blurry. Useless."

Garrett narrowed his eyes at Caldwell, his nose twitching like the man was a bad smell.

Caldwell and Garrett were both wound tighter than guitar strings about to snap. As a strained quiet stole into the room, Caldwell fidgeted with that piece of purple plastic while Garrett leaned back in his chair, hands laced behind his head, contemplating. Zim produced his smiley-face stress ball from his pocket and tossed it from hand to hand.

Delaney tilted her head. Maybe what she'd read as tension between Caldwell and Garrett was actually stress, since they'd lost the chems.

Garrett walked to the window to gaze out for a long moment, then finally turned around, making eye contact with each of them. "Sachaai wants to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. Your mom, your cousin. Grandma, Grandpa."

Delaney thought of Dad. Heath. A Breed Apart.

"We need to chase down that stash of chemicals." He smacked his hands together. "Let's work the problem."

Before her eyes, they drew silent, intent. Hunters.

Elbow on the armrest, she tapped her chin.

Caldwell was still tossing that weird piece of plastic between his hands. Was it the same plastic he'd been messing with the other day? He pitched it into his ruck, sitting in the corner. "I haven't finished digging into that shoe factory computer motherboard. I'll get on that." He took his computer off the coffee table.

Zim reached for his camera on the side table next to him. "I'm going to look back through the pics I took at the container yard, see if I missed anything."

Garrett nodded.

Surge shifted onto his side and began snoring.

Wait. She and Surge were not bumps on a log. It was an easy solution. "Why don't we sneak into Container Action, let Surge search?"

They all stared at her. Garrett raised an eyebrow.

Sachaai were probably hanging out around the container yard. But she'd follow Walker. It was a good idea.

"We could do that," Zim said. "The safe house has some conduit with their leftover remodel supplies in the entryway. We'd easily get past that electric fence."

"Possibility," Garrett agreed.

Caldwell winced as he pounded away on his keyboard. "No cameras in the yard. I won't be able to monitor the perimeter."

"Hmmm. True. Okay. Let me think this through a minute." Garrett looked up as if reading words written on the ceiling.

Caldwell's computer pinged. His head bounced forward, his eyes bulging. "Wow. It wasn't in the factory's main shipping documents. I found it in a sub-sub-sub-document file."

"Found what?" Garrett asked.

Caldwell's eyes sparked. "The real shipping document with"?—he cocked his head with a grin—"our full container number, as well as a number for a second."

Zim pumped his arm in the air. "Then where are they in the container yard?"

Scuffing his hands through his hair, Caldwell groaned. "They're gone. On a plane to Jakarta, Indonesia, as of an hour ago."

"Indonesia?" Zim threw his hands in the air. "What the?—"

"Why Indonesia?" Delaney asked.

"Likely waystation." Garrett jutted his jaw at Caldwell. "Where in the city?"

"Uh . . ." Caldwell scrolled through the document on his computer. "Not listed. But we can work with this—they're aboard a combi passenger-cargo flight, chartered by Sachaai." He tucked a pen in his mouth and typed rapidly, scrolled, clicked. "Okay, they filed a flight manifest. Shows nine passengers aboard."

"We need to get there."

Nodding, Caldwell spat the pen out and grabbed his SAT phone. "This likely means Sachaai terrorists are traveling with the product. I'll loop in Damocles and see if they can't get us a plane to Jakarta."

"Think that's a good idea? Aren't they tied up?"

Caldwell snatched up the pen, tapping it on the table as he hesitated with the call. "I do." He tapped the screen. "The combi has four other Southeast Asia stops before Jakarta. We can beat them there so you can get aboard before they unload. You're SEALs. Nine possible terrorists versus you, Zim, and the dog? Yeah, I think it's a good shot."

Garrett didn't look convinced.

Tension wound through the room, and Delaney tried to temper her rogue tendencies, but with Surge?—

"Once they land," Caldwell said, "if we aren't there, those chemicals are in the wind."

Zim nodded "Hakim too."

"Exactly why we need to get aboard that plane," Delaney said, heart thumping as she spoke up. "We don't want those chem vials in Hakim's hands," she contended. "This is why we have Surge. He can read smells a thousand times faster than we can read container numbers. Ship, plane, container yard, wherever. But on the plane, this Mal will make short work of it. On the plane, the containers are contained."

Eyeing her, Garrett nodded. Rolled his shoulders forward and back. But it was those strong arms that had been around her during their self-defense training that she had to force her eyes away from.

"Okay. Another good point, Delaney."

Exultation spiraled through her, making her a bit giddy.

He nodded to Caldwell. "Make the call." Then he pulled out his phone. "Let me know when you have them—I'd like to talk to Chapel and the cargo building management. We're getting on that plane when it lands. Gear up. We're headed to Jakarta."

Zim grinned at Delaney. "Rogue, we should keep you around. I think you're a stabilizing force to the team."

Though Garrett hesitated, his gaze found hers. And he locked it for a long second. Simply nodded.

She stopped breathing a moment, captivated by the smile crinkles around his eyes—Garrett's light side.

His Adam's apple bounced as he broke the connection and focused on his phone. He walked down the hall.

Holy moly, what was happening here?

"All right then. Getting my bag ready." Zim gave her a fist bump on the way out of the room.

Laptop in hand, Caldwell headed into the kitchen and sat down at the table. His low voice rumbled as he talked with Damocles about needing a fast jet from Singapore to Jakarta.

A little bewildered and in awe of how things were changing, Delaney just sat in that straight-backed chair, absently petting Surge with her foot. She'd never been to Indonesia. Hakim, Tariq, Rashid . . . she knew what could lie ahead of them.

There was another thought she couldn't get rid of: two times in the same meeting, Garrett had listened to her.

She could be an asset to him. As long as her stupid heart didn't get in the way.

Because it was dangerously close to getting in the way.