Page 49 of The ARC Unit: Breach

I smiled without any warmth as Wolf began removing his gloves.

“You saw what you needed,” he continued.

“I did.”

I looked toward Hawk’s distant position, then at Bear discussing the ruined door with Viper.

“Your reports make all of that sound boring.”

“They’re reports.”

“Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

Wolf’s attention returned to me.

I lifted one hand before he could start. “Not saying it is. Just saying context matters.”

“Then use the context.”

“That’s the plan.”

He nodded once and walked past me. The metal hardware on his belt clicked again when he loosened the retention webbing and folded it back into place and for some reason, I kept noticing the sound. Raven nudged my shoulder and the moment passed.

“Come on, Magpie.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Worth trying.”

“One more time and I tell Wolf you let me into the armory.”

Raven stopped walking.

“You did not enter the armory.”

“I know. Then behave.”

He stared at me for several seconds.

“You’re learning from Jackal.”

“That’s insulting.”

“It was meant to be.”

◆

By 10:30, I had returned to the operations floor with mud drying along the edges of my shoes, hair beginning to frizz where the morning air had pulled loose pieces from my ponytail and a considerably better understanding of why half the reports on my desk were written the way they were.

I also understood why Wolf had been so quick to dismiss me from the field, which irritated me enough to keep working.

Raven dropped into the chair beside mine and opened the border camera results from the night before. Most were useless with duplicate reads and partial matches, so we spent an hour eliminating false positives.

The possible Vienna sighting remained uncertain. A camera had caught only the last four characters of the registration, and the vehicle shape didn’t match any of the three confirmed cars. Raven left it in a separate folder rather than throwing it away.

“What now?” he asked.

I looked across the map, from Prague to Budapest and down toward Constanța. Every confirmed point showed the same problem: Cerberus targets were being watched before ARC became involved.