Chapter 2

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A marylis knew Tristan was chomping at the bit to have her call forensics. She wasn’t sure what the protocol was. So, since she was new and didn’t want to get herself in trouble, that was not an easy decision for her. Yet, if something needed to be looked at, it was the job, and she needed to figure it out. She quickly phoned her boss first, and, when Dr. Cox answered, she explained what the problem was.

“Call them in,” he urged. “On something like this, you always want to keep on it.”

“That’s not going to sit well with them.”

“Most of the time we don’t have any issues, but this is a strange case, with a high body count,” he pointed out, “so let’s do whatever we can.”

“Are you aware that Tristan followed you home tonight?” she asked Dr. Cox, looking directly at Tristan.

Dr. Cox laughed. “Yeah, he wasn’t very subtle about it.”

“Wasn’t trying to be,” Tristan replied, loud enough to be heard.

Amarylis groaned and put it on Speakerphone. “That’s him yelling at you.”

“Oh, where are you guys?” he asked in a surprised tone.

“He’s insisting that I look after myself,” she muttered. “We had a strange encounter with somebody outside the office.”

“I don’t know what strange encounter it was,” he noted in alarm, “but don’t take any chances. As long as this Mason case is going south, we want to ensure that we’re north of it.”

She thought about all the things he could have said and asked. “Is this part of my job?”

“Being new, you’re not used to working in this environment. You’re probably not used to working where your ass will be put on the line.” He took a moment and added, “Normally I can’t imagine that being the case, but, for whatever reason, we appear to be caught up in something unusual right now. So, if you did see something like a USB key going through the system, we do want to confirm that it won’t go missing.”

“Right, so do I phone forensics?”

He thought about that for a moment, as the silence stretched. “I’ll do it. Let’s keep your head off the chopping block as much as possible.” And, with that, he hung up.

She looked over at Tristan. “Happy now?”

“Happy enough,” he replied, with a smile. “As Dr. Cox said, we don’t want your head on the chopping block, but neither can we afford to let this slide.”

“I wasn’t thinking we were letting anything slide. I gathered evidence and handed it over as usual, pretty sure it would get processed along with everything else.”

“Under normal circumstances it absolutely would be fine, but you gotta remember”—and he leaned closer now—“that your two interested males seem to be military personnel. So, if they were looking for something in particular and thought that maybe you had it or that it was picked up, there’s a good chance they would think you have it or you would know where it is.”

“I don’t need that as a sleep aid either,” she muttered.

“No, of course you don’t, which is why we’re doing what we can right now to fix this.”

It wasn’t long before the deep-dish pizza they had ordered arrived, and, on the heels of that, Dr. Cox called her back and greeted her with “Put it on Speakerphone, please.” She did so, and they both leaned forward to listen to the coroner. “Tristan, I contacted the lab, and they say they didn’t see any key.”

“And yet I did put it in an evidence bag,” she pointed out.

“But you also mentioned that it might not be something everyone would easily recognize as a USB key,” Tristan reminded her.

“I want you both, when you’re done with whatever you’re doing there, to meet forensics at the office. I’ve got John heading over right now.”

“Do we get to finish eating first?” Tristan asked, with a note of humor. “A lovely deep-dish pizza just arrived.”

Dr. Cox snorted. “You better get it to-go then. Once you start this process, it happens, and fast.”

What surprised her afterward was how quickly they were suddenly standing outside her office building. She looked over at Tristan and sighed. “We were sitting in a nice restaurant only moments ago.”

His grin flashed. “I promise I will make it up to you.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s hardly a date that you’re responsible for.”

“Ah, no, you brought it up, so I will absolutely make good on it.”

She groaned. “Now you will be obnoxious, won’t you?”

He burst into laughter, as she unlocked the door and walked in. “I will be obnoxious always,” he declared, with a smile. “Now, where would the forensics evidence have gone?”

“Up in the forensics part.” She turned to him. “They operate in a different part of this building.”

“Good enough.” He urged her on with his hand. “Lead the way.”

And she did, hoping that somebody would be there. When she walked up to the offices in question, she found several people gathered there. When she stopped in obvious surprise, they looked up and nodded.

“When we’re told to put a rush on something,” John announced, “we put a rush on it.”

“Good to know,” she said, as grins flashed in her direction.

“The thing is, you’re not the one doing it,” John noted.

“No, I’m sure not,” she admitted. “I didn’t realize we had such a big issue.”

“Apparently you picked up a USB key,” noted another one of the forensics guys, walking over to her. She thought his name was Tommy. “Are you sure?” he asked, without any accusation or anything malicious in his tone. “We haven’t seen any sign of it.”

“In which case we’ve got a problem,” Tristan stated, standing at her side. Tommy’s gaze narrowed. Tristan nodded. “Yeah, I’m one of the investigators.”

“But not one we know,” one of the other techs pointed out.

“Maybe not, but you will.” Almost an implied threat was inherent in what Tristan said.

Amarylis hurriedly rushed to interrupt the conversation. “Regardless of who knows who, considering I’m new here myself, you need to look for something that looks like a small race car. That’s the USB key.” They each turned blank looks her way. “Do you remember a small ornamental car?”

“Why would you think that was a key?” asked the fourth member of the forensics team, a woman, walking over to the bags in forensics.

“Because I’ve seen one before.” She waited while the woman went through several bags, and then she caught sight of it herself. “There it is,” Amarylis pointed out.

The other woman quickly opened the bag in question and brought out the USB. Everybody gathered around, and they were a bit chaffed. “We wouldn’t have initially recognized this as a USB key.”

“You would have if you had looked at it close enough,” Tristan said. “You can see it here.” Pulling it open, the USB connector popped out.

There were several nods. John explained, “Obviously we would have taken a closer look at it later, but it wouldn’t have been high on our priority list because it didn’t seem to be of too much value or interest.”

“I get that,” Amarylis noted, “but, because I did find it, I knew what it was. With that knowledge, we need answers as to what’s on it.”

“Let me go take a look.” John took the key over to a computer, and Amarylis sat down nearby, waiting. The three other techs looked at each other and muttered, “I guess maybe we didn’t need to come after all.”

“You did need to come,” stated John, the man at the computer. “If I’ve got to do extra time, so do you.”

“Hey, you’re supposed to be nice to the rest of us,” Tommy joked good-naturedly.

“Did anybody else see anything unique or different at the scene?” Tristan asked, bringing the laughter to a pause.

One by one, his gaze went from one team member to the other, with Amarylis’s gaze following along, but everyone shook their heads. “Honestly, these recent crime scenes have been fairly standard for us. Depending on which body you’re talking about, we didn’t see anything unique or out of order.”

“We just didn’t notice the key for what it was,” Tommy admitted, looking at the miniature car.

“I didn’t either,” said the female tech from the side, “but we haven’t had a chance to process everything, which is where the problem comes in.”

She was in no way making an excuse, only an explanation, and that was something that Amarylis herself could understand. Everybody here was so busy and always had so much work to do that it wasn’t an unheard-of position to just need time to get through everything. “I understand that,” Amarylis agreed. “If I hadn’t seen a USB like that one before, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Good thing you did,” John noted. “I’m not exactly sure what we’ve got here, but it’s been encrypted, and I’m just working on getting it unencrypted right now.”

Tristan walked over to stand behind him, as the key slowly gave up its secrets. He leaned forward as files began to open. “I’ll need copies of everything on this key, and we’ll need this whole key backed up and secured.”

“Everything here is secure,” John noted, looking at him.

“ Extra secure,” Tristan replied.

The technician hesitated, looked over at the coroner, and she nodded.

“We’re worried about this going missing, so we’ll need multiple backups. Email it to me, email it to him, and you’ll need to email it to Jasper, the lead on the investigative team.”

“These are names that we don’t know,” John stated, turning to face Tristan.

Tristan pulled out his phone and contacted Jasper. He looked over at her and added, “You probably need to contact Dr. Cox as well.”

She nodded, pulled out her phone. As soon as Dr. Cox answered, she explained the problem.

He said, “Let me talk to them.”

She handed her phone over and watched as their faces paled slightly. She winced, as they were given a dressing down as to who and what went to whom. John returned her phone stiffly. Amarylis winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get anybody in trouble.”

“No, that’s fine. It’s just that we never get told anything.”

“I’m sorry about that too. I’m new, and you don’t know me all that well yet.”

“He’s new too.” John pointed at Tristan.

“Yes and no, but his department isn’t new,” she explained. “Definitely some bigger issues are going on here.”

“If you say so,” John muttered. “As I said, nobody talks to us.” The other techs were all quiet, as John followed through on the backups. Then he got up and sealed the key in a processing pouch, labeled it, and put it away in a wall safe for safekeeping.

She smiled and nodded. “Thank you.” There weren’t too many other comments, and, when Tristan got off the phone with Jasper, Tristan turned and asked, “Any issues?”

“We haven’t been reamed out by your boss yet,” John noted stiffly, “but I’m sure that’s coming.”

“I don’t know about being reamed out, but you guys aren’t supposed to hand off stuff without a proper chain of command, and, if you don’t know who to hand it off to, then that chain of command is compromised. You need to know exactly who and what you’re dealing with on each of these cases,” he stated, nodding to all of them, “so that will change.”

Almost immediately several phones went off. They all groaned, but Tristan smiled. “It’s still better this way. Your asses are covered, and so are ours.”

Multiple phone calls and conversations later, everybody in this group knew exactly who was authorized to work on Mason’s case.

When everybody was cleared to go home and to lock up, Amarylis walked back outside with Tristan. “I guess we had to do it that way, huh ?”

“No, we didn’t have to, but you needed to circumvent all the usual red tape,” he said, shaking his head. Then he shrugged. “They were doing their jobs by hesitating to give it to us, but we can’t tolerate that hesitation from here on out because we need things moving,” he shared, with a look in her direction.

“Got it. As long as they don’t hold it against me.” When he frowned at her. she said, “I know. It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t,” he declared. “You are working on a military base now and have more power here than you can possibly imagine. If you want any one of them removed, you can get them removed. They need to follow orders and to realize that you are the one giving those orders.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry. Dr. Cox already gave me that rundown.”

“It will just take you a little longer to get your feet wet,” he noted, with a gentle smile. As they walked back to his truck, he muttered, “We never did finish that pizza.”

“No, we didn’t,” she agreed and then yawned suddenly.

“Seems time to get you back to your place for bed.”

“That sounds good,” she replied, “and you can leave me a piece of pizza. I’ll make good use of it for breakfast.”

He laughed. “Pizza for breakfast, I like it.”

“If pizza is good for dinner and lunch, no reason it can’t be good for breakfast too.”

“I like the way you think.” He gave her a big smile. He quickly drove her to her place and got out.

She frowned. “Why are you getting out?”

“Because I will walk you up there to see that everything is as it should be.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you take the hero thing a bit too far?”

“No, I don’t think there’s such a thing,” he countered, “and, if any trouble comes up, you won’t be saying that either.”

“No, I wouldn’t be.” Still, she grumbled the whole way up. As they got up to her apartment, she unlocked the door, stepped inside, and smiled. “See? It’s the same as always.”

“Good enough. Stay here and be safe and lock up right behind me.” And, with that, he handed her the box of pizza.

“Oh, I don’t want the whole thing.”

“You can have it. I will be working for the next few hours anyway, so I’ll get something later.” And, with that, he quickly walked out.

She frowned, staring at the large pizza in front of her. “At least take half of it with you.”

“No, I’m good.” And he was gone.

*

As Tristan drove away, he kept looking in the rearview mirror. Still unsure, he drove around the block a couple times to confirm that nobody had followed him in or out. When he finally got back to the office, Jasper was sitting there. Tristan smiled at him. “You know that Masters or Gideon could show up as needed.”

“Masters was here, and I just sent him home.”

“Good enough,” Tristan replied, as he threw himself into a chair.

Jasper asked, “Did you go through the key?”

“Still looking at it. It’s pretty interesting.”

“In what way?”

“It seems to be blackmail material.”

One eyebrow slowly rising, Jasper asked, “Blackmail of whom?”

Tristan winced. “Appears to be several of our higher-ups, right here on base.”

“Okay, that’s why the key is so important. Is that also why Drew was killed? Is that why Mason was shot? What’s the connection here?”

“Ask me when we get through all this USB data,” Tristan replied. “Regardless a lot of the stuff on this key is pretty hot material right now.”

Jasper nodded. “Of course, and an awful lot of eyes have seen some of it.”

He was worried and should be. “True, but the good stuff is down farther,” Tristan murmured. “The USB itself is secured in forensics and will be something that our upper-level brass will need to look at. Damn, if he wasn’t in the hospital, that would be Mason’s priority, wouldn’t it?”

“In this case, I would definitely have thrown it in front of him first,” Jasper agreed, “but I won’t this time.”

They pondered what that would mean in terms of talking to somebody about this blackmail material.

Tristan frowned. “Doesn’t sound like a job to look forward to.”

“Never is,” Jasper muttered, “but we can’t exactly ignore this.”

“Nope, and, if the blackmail needs to stop, along with the blackmailable activities…”

“We’ll likely see a rash of, let’s say, early retirements ,” Jasper noted.

At that, Tristan nodded. “So, do we think that Drew was collecting this material, or were the bad buys just getting Drew ready to start blackmailing these people? What was happening here?”

“I don’t know,” Jasper admitted. “I have somebody coming in right now.”

“Somebody we trust?”

Jasper smiled and nodded. “Someone we trust.” At that, the door opened, and Mountain strode in.

“Good God, Mountain Bear Rode.” Tristan stared up at him. “How the hell do you even fit into uniforms?”

Mountain recognized him right away, and a huge grin flashed across his face. He smacked him hard on the shoulder. “They fit just fine. At least after I get them tailored a little bit.”

Tristan got up, gave him a big hug, and asked, “How are you? I heard you had one hell of a time up north.”

“Yeah, that I did, but we made it. Teegan, my brother, is recovering, and we’re doing well.”

“I heard you came home with a lady friend.” Tristan was absolutely amazed and thrilled inside when a flush whispered across Mountain’s face.

Then Mountain nodded, with a grin. “Yeah, I lucked out on this one.”

“Damn,” Tristan muttered. “Hell, if I’d realized that was part of the deal, I might have gone up there myself.”

Mountain burst out laughing. “You know how it is, anything to do with Mason. That guy’s just got this lovefest going on for the world.”

“Yeah, well, right now he doesn’t.”

“He’ll have at again soon enough,” Mountain stated comfortably.

“Have you talked to him?”

“Nope, I haven’t. I did stop to talk to Tesla though. Mason is doing okay, per the docs, but isn’t out of the woods yet. Although there is now eye movement, and he’s responding to fingers, hand gestures, so we have some good news, which are all excellent signs of progress.”

“I sure as hell hope so,” Jasper muttered. “A sniper shooting of Mason is well past the point of being reasonable for anybody.”

“Oh, I hear you,” Mountain agreed. “Now, what the hell is this about blackmail?”

“Good thing we have you here and now. You have a little experience with blackmail, I hear.”

“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” he muttered. “So come on. Fess up.”

At that Jasper got up and walked over to join them. “I would normally be talking to Mason about this.”

“Mason is not here, so you talk to me,” Mountain stated, with a nod. “Come on. Spill it.”

With that, Jasper pointed to Tristan. “He’s read more of the data than I have, to date.”

With that preamble, Tristan went into the issues he had just found.

Mountain listened carefully, his jaw clenching and unclenching, as he quickly processed the information. He nodded and said, “Give me a couple names.”

When Tristan mentioned just two, Mountain’s eyebrows shot up, and he nodded. “That gives me a direction to avoid then, doesn’t it?”

Jasper nodded. “It does, indeed, but the trouble keeps going higher.” Jasper wrote down a longer list of names and handed them off to Mountain. Tristan could see most of the names, and several of them made his guts clench. A couple two-star generals were in that mix.

Mountain looked down at the list and groaned. “Yeah, we will have some trouble with this.”

“I’m worried that the actual USB might disappear,” Jasper shared. “This list of names and alleged activities are all we have to go on for now.”

“You have to keep that tight,” Mountain confirmed. “Are we thinking that Mason was attacked for this information?”

“I don’t know why Mason would even have had anything to do with it,” Jasper replied. “That’s part of the problem—unless he got wind of it. You know what he’s like. He keeps things close, gives somebody a chance, and then that chance blows up.”

“But a chance on something like this? Isn’t that pushing it, even for him?” Mountain asked.

“Hard to say,” Jasper muttered, staring down at the names thoughtfully. “I only see one four-star general listed. And one is one too many. So we need to touch base with one who is not compromised.”

“Are you on speaking terms with one?” Mountain asked.

“I’m on speaking terms with a retired one,” Jasper clarified, flashing him a grin, “and he will give us an idea of how to proceed.”

“Retired?” Tristan asked. “That won’t help.”

Mountain shook his head. “I know who Jasper is talking about. This particular one says he’s retired, but we don’t believe it. He’s the one who organized that whole operation up north, and he was one who put me and Mason in charge of that op.”

“So, he’s not op-retired?” Jasper asked.

“These guys are never retired. They just go into black ops.” Mountain snorted. “Give me”—he looked at his watch and frowned—“He could still be up. It’s not that late.”

“No, it isn’t, unless you’re in your seventies. However, he’s a battle ax.” Jasper shrugged. “So maybe we should do a conference call.”

Mountain quickly pulled out his phone and started texting somebody. When he stopped, he looked over at them and added, “I will keep you guys out of this phone call to begin with, but he’ll want to see you.”

“Okay,” Tristan said, “I’m good with that.” Jasper nodded as well.

Mountain asked Jasper, “You are part of Mason’s family too, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Tesla is my cousin.”

“Good, because, at this point in time, we’re all more than a little worried about who’s invested in Mason’s recovery and who wants to see him head to the great beyond.”

“We’re all very invested,” Tristan declared.

“Yeah, I hear you. Masters, he’s on this team now too, isn’t he?” Mountain asked, without looking up from his phone.

“Exactly,” Jasper confirmed.

Just then Mountain’s phone went off. He saw the number, stood up, and stepped out of the office. They could barely hear him.

“Yes, sir.… No, I need some help on a case.” Then the conversation went quiet on Mountain’s side. He rejoined them a few minutes later and added, “Now we’re in.”

“What does that mean exactly?” Tristan asked.

“It means that we have a meeting with him.”

“Good, bad, or indifferent?” Tristan asked.

“He’s an old warhorse and doesn’t believe anything without proof, something I’m very grateful for,” Mountain shared. “So, with this blackmail data, he will take it to the next level, as he wants proof of the people involved because a couple of them he’s not very happy about.”

“What we don’t know for sure,” Jasper pointed out, “is that the people named in this have done anything wrong.”

“No, of course not, and, even if they did, that doesn’t mean that they have succumbed to blackmail. It doesn’t mean that anybody else knows about whatever it is that they’ve been getting in trouble with,” Mountain explained. “But neither do we know for sure that they haven’t done this, so it’s got to be handled.”

“When you say we have a meeting, when?” Jasper asked.

Mountain smiled at them. “You better tell any partners you have that you won’t be home tonight.” He glanced down at his watch, and, when a buzz came, he nodded. “Let’s go.”

“Okay, and where are we going?” Tristan asked.

“His house.”

Surprised, Tristan followed, and, after an hour’s car ride, and then a trip in a helicopter, they landed at a very secure property just outside of a major town. As they descended on the helicopter pad, two men stood there waiting for them. Mountain nodded, as he got out. “Hey, James.”

“Interesting times you have here,” James replied. “I thought you had more than enough trouble up north.”

“I did, but sometimes trouble finds you when you didn’t go looking for it.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” he muttered. “He was just heading to bed.”

“He’s the one who brought us in, so you and I both know that he calls the shots, and we just all jump.”

“No kidding.” James laughed. As they proceeded to walk inside the estate, they were led into a small private office. Within seconds of their arrival, the door opened and in walked retired Navy Commander Doran Magellan.

Tristan only recognized him from the news. He stood at attention, but the older man just waved at him. “Relax, son,” he barked. “You already brought me a shitload of trouble, so anything you will say to me now,” he gave them all a stern stare but landed back on Mountain, “it better be done on a one-to-one basis.”

Tristan relaxed at that, then looked over at Mountain, who walked over and gave the older man a gentle hug. “How are you doing?”

“I would be a hell of a lot better if you hadn’t brought me this,” he grumbled. “If you want to age me, this is the shit that’ll do it.”

At that, Mountain handed over the paperwork that they had printed off for this meeting. The commander sat down, and, with the three men still standing in front of him, he slowly went from page to page to page. No emotions showed on his face. When he got to the end of the document, he slammed it down and glared at Mountain.

Mountain nodded.

“Damn it, man,” the commander muttered, equally quiet. “It’s not anything we want to deal with right now. It’s not anything I ever want to deal with, but here it is.” He looked at the other two. “Who have you told?”

“Nobody,” Tristan and Jasper replied simultaneously.

“There’s that to be thankful for.”

“However,” Tristan clarified, “this evidence was found on a USB key. Out of an abundance of caution, its contents have been emailed to the four of us, just in case it went missing. Of course the actual key is in evidence at forensics on base.”

The commander drummed his fingers on the desk, as he thought about options. He looked over at Mountain, who just nodded. “Oh, I’m glad you came to me about it,” the commander admitted, “but damn it. I wish to hell there wasn’t anything to come to me about. Why now?”

“That is one of the biggest problems, and we’re still investigating in what way this might be connected to the sniper shooting of Mason.”

The commander’s face sharpened at that comment, as he stared at the men gathered before him. “You do need to figure that out, and fast,” he stated. “We can’t have any more of this happening. I hear you’ve got a trail of bodies now as it is.” His gaze turned to Tristan. “And you’re partly responsible for the bunch of them that showed up yesterday, aren’t you?”

Tristan nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“It was a good shot, I heard.”

“It happened in the hospital, where I was in the ER, getting a head injury checked out. Then we were set upon by the assigned cleaner of the group, so I had to defend myself.”

“I don’t need the details. If it was a good shot, it was a good shot. And, in the case of these guys”—the commander tapped the blackmail paperwork with two fingers—“I’m not sure I give a damn if it’s a good shot or not. I want to ensure this thing goes away forever, and I want to ensure that Mason survives and doesn’t get put upon again,” he declared. “So bring this to a close, gentlemen.”

Jasper nodded. “We are trying, sir.”

“Don’t try. Just do it,” the commander snapped, glaring at him. Then his expression cleared. “You’re Jasper.”

“Yes, sir,” Mountain confirmed. “I did tell you who he was.”

The older man just waved his hand. “Yeah, you told me it was Jasper, but you didn’t tell me how he was Tesla’s cousin.”

“I didn’t know you knew,” Mountain replied.

“Not a whole lot I don’t know.” He smiled at Jasper. “You do know I’m the godfather to that baby she’s carrying.”

Jasper grinned. “Yeah, I heard something about that.”

“Those two, they’re quite the pair—if they could just stay out of trouble, for God’s sake.”

“I think they were attempting to do that, sir.”

“No trials, no more attempts, just get the goddamn job done.” He waved at them. “You’re dismissed. Go off and do your thing.” Lifting the blackmail material, he went on. “ This is not for anybody else’s eyes. I will send men to collect the USB key, and I want all copies, electronic and paper, deleted.”

Tristan struggled with that, but he knew it was something he wasn’t theoretically allowed to argue with.

Then the commander looked at him and barked, “Speak up.”

He hesitated but not for long. “I don’t know what you’re intending to do with this, sir, but I don’t want it to just go under a rock.”

The commander asked, “Why not?”

“Because whatever is happening has been going on for a long time. It needs to be cleaned up and cleaned out, not just put away.”

Commander Magellan stared at him and then nodded, a slow smile forming. “Takes a lot for somebody to stand up to me,” he noted, “but you’re right. I have no intention of pushing this under the table, but it does need to be handled discreetly.”

“Agreed.”

“These men may or may not be involved in something they shouldn’t be. They may or may not have done something they shouldn’t have,” the commander explained. “I won’t tar all of them just because we have something here that says they may have gotten involved in something ugly. In one case, I know perfectly well that’s not his wife. It’s his step-daughter,… so that we’ll handle separately as well.”

“Right,” Tristan replied because he knew well enough not to argue.

“She’s also very, very young and has been in his care for a long time. But again, that isn’t something that has to go through the courts. We’ll talk to the parties and see how we can come up with a solution.”

“Maybe it should go to the courts,” Tristan ventured.

“If it comes to that, then it will, but it will be our courts,” the commander declared, “not the court of public opinion.” He stared at Tristan intently and then nodded. “It’s good to have morals, son. It’s good to have ethics and to stand up for what you believe in. I promise you that I’ll make sure that, if these men deserve to be punished or in any way need to be held accountable for a wrongdoing, I will hold them accountable. Is that good enough for you?”

As the commander waited, Tristan thought about it, then nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“Then we are done here, gentlemen.” Looking up at Mountain, he added, “Now I need my beauty sleep. Go.”

Mountain laughed. “We’ll talk later.” And, with that, he led the way back outside again and into the helicopter. Mountain looked over at Tristan with amusement. “I admire you for standing up to him.”

Tristan shrugged. “The only thing he can do is fire me.”

Mountain laughed. “He admires anybody standing up for anything and everything they believe in. Even if you were wrong, if you believed in it and thought you were right, the commander would appreciate that. What he doesn’t like is a yes man. He’s had a lifetime of those.”

“Can we trust him?” Jasper asked.

Mountain nodded. “Yes, the contents of that file are no longer an issue.”

“No longer an issue, except for whoever still wants the contents,” Jasper noted.

“That is your issue,” Mountain noted, with a shrug. “The contents of the file are a completely different story,” he clarified. “Now, I have been tasked with the job of picking up the key.”

“What about deleting all the emailed copies?”

“Two men are coming, who will be given that job.” Mountain shrugged. Once they landed back at base, he asked, “Which one of you will get me into the forensics lab?”

Jasper looked over at Tristan, who groaned. “I guess I can wake her up again.”

“Or you can get Dr. Cox,” Jasper offered, with an amused look. “Which is the lesser of the evils?”

Tristan smiled. “I’m always happy to wake up a beautiful woman,” he murmured.

Mountain asked. “What? Is this Mason’s matchmaking magic at work again?”

“No, no, no,” Tristan argued, as he quickly phoned Amarylis. Meanwhile all the guys sat beside him in the vehicle, already on its way to the lab. When she answered, her voice sleepy, Tristan said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but we have to get back into the forensics lab.”

“When you say we ,” she asked, “who are you talking about?” When he explained, she groaned. “Damn, I was hoping that maybe I would get some sleep one of these days.”

“And you will. I promise.”

“Yeah, says you. Give me a few minutes to get dressed and to meet you down there.”

Tristan looked over at Mountain, who emphatically shook his head. “Apparently we’re picking you up,” Tristan shared, before she could hang up.

After a moment of silence, she snorted. “ Great . In that case I guess I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Yes, and not very many of them.”

“Got it.” She struggled with a yawn. “You know how to show a girl a good time.” With that, she ended the call.

Mountain laughed. “Sounds like she’s got some spirit.”

“She’s a new coroner down at the morgue on base,” Jasper shared, by way of explanation.

“At least she has more personality than her patients,” Mountain muttered.

Tristan laughed at that. “That she does. She is quite the character,” he murmured, “but I don’t think even she’ll be all that tolerant of these midnight trips.”

“Maybe not,” Jasper pointed out, “but she is the one who found the key.”

At that, Mountain looked interested. “You mentioned it was a race car design?”

“Exactly,” Tristan replied. “Apparently her father was in sales or something and would hand out novelty items like that. So she instantly recognized what it was.”

“Interesting,” Mountain murmured. “I can’t say that I’ve seen one quite like that, but I’m not surprised. They come in all shapes and sizes these days.”

“Which was her point. When she saw it, she recognized what it was and made sure it got collected, but the forensics team hadn’t gotten that far in the lab, and it didn’t look like something that would be a priority.”

“That’s certainly changed now, I presume,” Mountain noted.

“It has, but everybody’s gone home, and nobody was worried about this case becoming top secret.”

“That classification has now changed,” Mountain replied, without looking at anybody. When the car pulled up in front of Amarylis’s apartment, Tristan got out.

She stood there, her arms crossed, as she tapped her foot impatiently.

He opened the car door and let her inside. “Sorry,” he murmured.

She got in and glared at Mountain. “How in the hell do you even fit into a vehicle like this?”

“Getting in is not so bad,” he said. “Getting out is the real bitch.”

She stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Now that I will be happy to see.”