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“Shut up, Cajun,” Zak said at the same time as Gabe and several other voices.
Jean-Luc sighed. “Mais, y’all don’t know how to have a good time.”
“We have very different ideas of a good time,” one of his teammates muttered. Rylan thought it might have been HORNET’s medic, Jesse.
“Cut the chatter,” Gabe said, sounding every bit the war-hardened leader he was. “What’s going on, Zak?”
Zak’s expression remained grim. “We’ve got a situation here, Gabe. Remember Pierce St. James, one of the guys you helped pull out of the cult’s compound?”
“Yeah, I remember. He’s the engineer who went AWOL from Project Iron Horizon.”
Everyone in the room froze and stared at each other for so long, Gabe eventually said, “Shit, did I lose you?”
Zak sucked in a sharp breath and sank into a chair. “How the fuck do you know about Pierce’s work on that project? We just found out a few days ago.”
“C’mon, Hendricks. Did you really expect me to send my men into that compound without doing my homework? Our tech guy dug it up when we were prepping for the op. It’s classified, but we have connections.”
Zak ran a hand over his face, his expression a mix of frustration and resignation. “Right. Of course you did. Well, Pierce and Rylan’s sister, Rhiannon, were just found under several tons of rubble from the earthquake. They were taken to Redwood Memorial to recover, but they vanished before we arrived.”
“They were taken by someone who wants Pierce’s knowledge of the project,” Rylan said, leaning toward the phone. “My sister is innocent. She has nothing to do with Pierce and his secrets.”
“Then why would they bother taking her, too?” Gabe asked. “The more hostages, the more complications, and generally, hostage takers like to keep things as simple as possible.”
“She’s an ASL interpreter.”
“And your man uses sign language to communicate. Understood,” Gabe replied, his tone softening slightly. “Do you have any leads on who might be behind this?”
Rylan opened his mouth to respond, but Zak waved him back and answered, “We think it might be a PMC called Halston. Know of them?”
“Halston? Fuck,” Gabe muttered. “If itisthem, you’ve really stepped in it this time.”
“No kidding,” Zak said. “We have security camera photos of one of the potential abductors. Can you find out if he’s actually with Halston?”
There was a pause, and then Gabe spoke again. “Yeah, send me whatever you have.”
Zak nodded and snapped his fingers to get Sawyer’s attention. Sawyer nodded and slid on his headphones, tapping away at his laptop keyboard for a few seconds. Then he nodded again. “Sent.”
There was another pause and some shuffling as Gabe and his men presumably looked over the photos.
Finally, Gabe came back. “I might know who you’re dealing with, but it’s not Halston. Are you sure you want to go down this rabbit hole? Because once you do, there’s no going back.”
Rylan spoke before anyone else could answer. “We have to. My sister’s life is at stake.”
Gabe exhaled long and slow. The background noise lessened as if he’d taken them off speakerphone and walked away from his men. “The man in your photos? His name is Trent Dalton. He’s ex-military, now working with a covert ops team. They’re… well, let’s just say they operate in the shadows even darker than we do.”
Zak’s brow furrowed. “I’ve never heard of them, and I worked in some pretty fucking dark corners.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Gabe replied, his voice low and tense. “They’re ghosts, Zak. The kind of unit that doesn’t officially exist.”
Rylan felt his chest tighten. “What does that mean for my sister?”
“It means,” Gabe said slowly, “that if they have her and Pierce, they’re in more danger than you realize. They are ruthlessly efficient. They don’t leave loose ends.”
“Rhiannon’s innocent,” Rylan said again, his voice cracking. “They can’t hurt her.”
Gabe’s silence on the other end of the line was heavy. When he finally spoke, his voice was grim. “Innocence doesn’t matter to them, Rylan. They’ll do whatever it takes to complete their mission, and if Pierce is their mission…” He didn’t finish the thought.
“We need to talk to them,” Rylan said.
