Page 59 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Wolf looked at me.

“And if I tell you to leave?”

“Depends why.”

“Wrong answer,” he said in a slightly louder voice.

“Then don’t ask questions you already decided have one acceptable response,” I quipped, raising my own.

Wolf took one heavy step around the end of the table. Raven immediately looked at his screen again.

I held my ground.

He stopped on the opposite side of my chair, close enough that I could smell the faint trace of cigarette smoke still caught in his shirt.

He leaned forward. “If you’re inside, I decide when the operation ends. Not you.”

“If I’m speaking to Kade and you get nervous because somebody looks at me wrong, I’m not walking out before we learn anything.”

“If I say extract, you extract.”

“You are obsessed with that word.”

“Because people who argue about it after the problem starts tend to become the problem.”

I looked up at him and crossed my arms. “You really know how to motivate people.”

“I don’t need you motivated. I need you compliant when it matters.”

There was nothing sexual about the sentence, yet heat crept up the back of my neck before I could stop it. The slight narrowing of Wolf’s eyes told me my face had once again filed a report without consulting me.

Jackal shifted in his chair.

Wolf’s voice stayed flat. “Something you want to add?”

Jackal pressed his lips together.

“No, boss.”

“Good choice.”

For once, it was.

Wolf looked toward Raven. “Call Vale.”

Vale was the next step, which was close enough to yes that I kept my mouth shut.

◆

Commander Linda Vale appeared on the secure screen twelve minutes later looking almost exactly as she had on the call that sent me to Germany, right down to the black-framed glasses and red hair pulled so tightly away from her face that I wondered whether she had ever experienced a flyaway in her life.

Her office background was plain enough to reveal very little beyond a dark cabinet, a muted wall and the edge of another monitor. She listened while Raven summarized the Aster link and Wolf explained the surveillance problem. He did not soften the risks of sending me inside, which I appreciated more than I wanted to admit.

Vale’s eyes settled on me through the screen.

“You proposed this?”

“Yes, ma’am.”