Mac shook his head. “I always said that if I ever found her, I’d put a ring on it before she had the chance to say no. But we just … shit. Never mind. Maybe our ship sailed no matter how badly I wish it hadn’t.”
A loud knock sounded on the door. Six shoved the ring box back in the backpack just before the door opened.
Delaney pushed it open. Her cheeks flushed as soon as her eyes landed on Mac. “I think we have something. Come see.” The door closed behind her as she went back to the conference room.
“For what it’s worth,” Six said, making sure the diamond was hidden away, “I don’t think that ship has sailed … I think it’s well and truly docked.”
“Yeah. We’ll see.”
They returned to the main room to see Louisa, Delaney, and a couple of the guys standing in front of the map. “What did you get?” Mac said.
Delaney stepped up. “Since we know that the formula was only available from September onward, we looked for leases of buildings and facilities that would be suitable to run this kind of op.” Delaney gave a nod toward Ghost, and Mac had to bite down the urge to fire Ghost on the spot for being so fucking helpful. “We got us a ton of listings, but we then cross-referenced with the names on all the leases and pulled out those that were companies—which reduced the listings by half. We then went through and dismissed all legitimate companies, like grocery stores and manufacturers.”
“I pulled together a list of companies that sold the kind of supplies needed for something like this,” Louisa said. Her bangs still hung covering her eyes, and she stood ever so slightly on the outside of the group. “I pretended I was looking for supplies for the lab I was setting up. People were happy to talk when I told them which lab I was talking about. I told them I needed references and wanted to go see these items in action. We were able to cross-reference this with the locations Delaney’s team had found.” When she’d finished, she looked over at Six, who was staring at her as if she’d found the solution to world peace.
Mac couldn’t help but smile at the way these women had aligned his men into two teams beneath them and at how the suckers had gone along willingly. “How many locations did that leave us with?” Mac said.
“Initially, twenty-two,” Delaney answered. “But there are two other things. We took those companies and researched them to find out about their trading histories, their financial performances, who was on their board of directors, and whether those people on the board were real. Less than ten of those companies ended up looking suspicious.”
Mac rubbed his hand along his jaw and took a long breath. As much as he was frustrated with Delaney, he had to admit that what they’d put in place was genius. Plus, she looked incredible while she stood up there presenting all this to them. The color in her cheeks was high, her eyes were bright, her body language was animated. It was contagious, and he found himself wanting to get to the answer. “So, how many places are left?”
“Eight,” Louisa and Delaney said at the same time, and then, rather ridiculously, they high-fived each other.
Eight they could work with.
“We thought maybe we could fly a drone-thing or something into them,” Delaney said.
Six laughed. “Drone-thing? You come up with all this shit, then call it a drone-thing?”
“You know what I mean.” Delaney stuck out her tongue at him, and Six winked in return.
Mac looked at the map. It might take some time. Some of the facilities were much closer to L.A. than San Diego. “Why don’t we start with the ones closest to us?” The clock told him that light was going to become an issue if they didn’t move quickly. “Bailey, how quick can we get on that?”
Bailey looked at his watch. “Right away, I can always attach a night vision camera to the drone if necessary.”
“Get on it. Take Sherlock with you. If I assume we’re going in tomorrow to get a better look at whichever places pay off, I think the rest of us should go get some rest, come back fresh.”
“I can get behind that plan,” Six said, marching over to Louisa and reaching for her hand. “We’re out.”
Mac watched as his guys began to pack up, and he offered to help Buddha and Jackson get the gear they were going to need but they didn’t need his help. So he waited until the room was empty except for him and Delaney. “We should go. You ready?” he asked. They’d driven in together after visiting the gun range that morning.
She reached for his hand. “Mac, can we talk?”
“Just wait until we get home, okay?” If he had to hear her say that his job bothered her, he didn’t want to hear it in the very place he did it.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Delaney said as soon as the door clicked shut.
Mac didn’t stop walking until he reached the living room. He turned on a couple of lamps, dropped his keys onto the kitchen counter, and slipped out of his jacket, which he threw over the back of one of the bar stools. Then he turned to face her. “Tell me what you’re sorry for. Why?”
There was a right answer here. She could feel it. And the idea that she might get it wrong squeezed her stomach so badly, she thought she might throw up. She’d offended him deeply, but she wasn’t a hundred percent okay with his choices and she needed to articulate why.
Mac wandered to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of white wine. She watched as he removed the cork, grabbed two glasses from the cabinet, and poured them each a large glass.
“Cheers,” she said, offering her glass toward him, but he simply raised his in silence and took a sip.
Delaney followed suit, allowing the dry wine to settle on her tongue for a moment before swallowing. “I’m sorry that I made you feel like I don’t respect what you do. A thousand times over, I would always pick defending those around me, so I get why you need to look after Louisa and me that way.”
“But…” Mac said. “I know that there is a ‘but’ on the end of that sentence.”
Delaney shook her head. “Listen. I’m probably going to screw up articulating this, but hear me out and don’t get mad.”
“I’m not going to get mad,” he said. She raised one eyebrow at him. “Fine,” he agreed. “I’m already a little mad.”
“I figured that.” Then she had an idea. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Bed. We’re going to have this conversation in bed.”
“Delaney, please. It’s been a long day, can we just—”
“No.” She grabbed his hand and took him into his room, to where his bed was made with a military precision. “You don’t need to get naked or anything weird, but this is a conversation about us, and I think those kinds of conversations should be had somewhere important to us.”
“We’re adults, Delaney. We can have conversations without being in bed.”
“Just shut up, Mac,” she said, placing her wine on the bedside table before she climbed on. “Lie down and face me.”
Once they were in position, she was suddenly inspired to say what she needed to say. “We stand on the same side of right and wrong. I believe, like you do, that perpetrators of crime should be found and dealt with for what they do, whether that’s Bin Laden in a cave, or Bout for trading arms, or the men who tried to hurt Louisa and her family. Where we differ is how they should be dealt with.”
She slid her hand down Mac’s arm and slid her fingers through his. He didn’t shake her off, but he didn’t close his fingers around hers either. Still, it was progress, and she’d take it. “I want to be the girl who makes the news. I want to be the girl who brings those people to justice. Sometimes death is too easy. I want these people to be forced to give up names. I want to tug at the loose threads of a criminal organization and unravel it, pick it apart, find all the evidence, give them nowhere to hide. I want them tried and found guilty.”
Mac sighed. “And sometimes those people get off on technicalities because they have great lawyers, or they have a long reach—and when you are least expecting it, someone slips through the n
et and someone you love is gone. Sometimes those who are opposed to violence need to be protected by those who aren’t. With Louisa, if we’d called the police when the Russians had her, they’d have brought in SWAT and negotiators, which can sometimes make those bad guys you’re talking about do crazy stupid things to the hostages they have. Or just as bad, the hostages get shot in the crossfire. I could never, never, leave you at risk that way. The same way Six couldn’t leave Lou.”
She cupped Mac’s face gently and kissed him. “I know you couldn’t. And I am sorry if I made you feel like you needed to make that choice. In this case, I still want the story, Mac. Do you know who Nellie Bly was?”
Mac shook his head. “No idea.”
“She was an American journalist who worked for Joseph Pulitzer.”
He turned and kissed her palm. “The Pulitzer Prize is named after a real guy?”
“Yeah, based on money he left to Columbia University a hundred years or so ago, but I’m getting off topic. Nellie Bly did this incredible investigative reporting to reveal the horrors taking place in a lunatic asylum in 1887, by pretending she was ‘crazy.’ She was so convincing that a swath of doctors declared her insane and she was admitted to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, now Roosevelt Island, in the East River in New York City. Her ‘act’ was so convincing that the administrators didn’t believe her when she came clean and told them who she was. She was stuck in there for ten days, and it took her newspaper, the New York World, to get her out.”
“This is a fascinating story, Delaney, but what does it have to do with you and me?” Mac slid his hand over her waist, skimming the line between her jeans and her T-shirt. Never had contact on that tiny sliver of skin felt so good.
“She could have just reported that she’d heard stories that the asylum was bad. Interviewed people who had been there. But I doubt she would have gotten anything to change. But by staying those ten days, being able to report firsthand about rats crawling over her skin, about how the only way to bathe was with freezing water poured over your head, and about being physically beaten and mentally tortured, she helped bring about changes to the way people cared for the insane. If she’d just gone after the current manager, gotten him removed, nothing would have really changed for the residents. And it certainly wouldn’t have started the domino effect across the whole mental health sector.”
Mac sighed. “I get it. You want the story.”
“I do. And I won’t be able to get the story if you kill them off—because I won’t be able to report it without drawing attention to you, and I would never make you a target like that. I’d rather you had my back while I figured all this out, than have you kill them to keep me safe, but I never get to solve a part of the bigger arms trade issue.”
She looked into his eyes, the ones that used to reveal his every emotion but which he’d somehow learned to control with poker-face accuracy. They showed he was beginning to come around. “Fine. We’ll go about this from a reporter’s perspective, but I swear, Delaney, anyone tries to hurt you, I won’t have any problem pulling the trigger, whatever the implications are for the story or for me. Even if we didn’t have CIA privileges, I’d serve time first.”
Gently, she pressed her head to his shirt, almost too overwhelmed to speak. It would never cease to amaze her how far he would go for her and how lucky she was to have a man with such a strong moral compass. His hands rubbed up and down her spine, dipping lower until one rested on her butt, strong and warm. She was so lucky to be loved by this man and to get the chance to love him in return. She looked up suddenly. “I love you, Mac,” she said, and meant it with every inch of her fragile heart. “I’m sorry I couldn’t say it earlier. But I do.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Mac said as he pulled her against him, pressing his lips to hers. “Say it again, Buttons.”
“I love you, Mac,” she mumbled against his mouth.
“And I love you too, Delaney. Do we get to have make-up sex now?”
Delaney laughed. “Yeah. We can have make-up sex now.”
Mac stripped them both in record time, put on a condom, and then settled back on the bed facing her. “Give me that leg,” he said, gripping behind her knee and dragging her leg along his thigh, opening her to him fully. He slid a hand between her thighs and pressed his fingers against her clit. “God, you’re already wet for me. Do you know how much that turns me on?”
“Getting turned on by each other has never been our problem, Mac,” she said playfully, using the line she’d once used to hurt him in the hope he could see they’d moved beyond it.
“I know we have to deal with what’s going on. But you and me … we don’t have any problems now, right?” he asked, running himself against her opening.
She jerked in response. How could it be that time after time, he always made her feel this good? “No. We don’t have any problems. Please, Mac, make love to me.”
As he slid inside her slowly, he kissed her tenderly, so tenderly that she felt like her heart was going to explode. “I’ll make love to you for the rest of your life if you want me to.”
It was a statement she didn’t need to think about twice.
* * *
“I’m still pissed at you.” Six lay down next to Mac on the ground in the dark as they looked at a building they’d decided had all the factors necessary: a preexisting lab with new ventilation equipment; a facility that had changed hands in the last six months; a lease signed by a shell corporation with no trading history, no financial performance, and untraceable directors. It was at the top of the list in terms of being the most probable candidate.
Through night goggles, they watched the security team that surrounded the building. They were reasonably trained but not visibly armed, which he knew meant nothing.
“I know you are,” Mac whispered. “But I’d make the same decision in a heartbeat, so either try to break my other ribs, or get over it.” It was an exaggeration—his ribs weren’t actually broken from Six’s earlier punch—but it sure felt that way when he took a deep breath in his protective gear. In fact, he was praying tonight didn’t involve running because he’d be screwed. “And again, in my defense, when I asked Lou for a consult on a chemical formula, I didn’t know it would lead to this.”
“Can you two shut up?” Cabe said quietly through their earpieces. He was on the other side of the building with Gaz. “You’re like two old fucking women.”
“I’m still pissed at you too,” Six shot back.
“What are you? Twelve?” Cabe laughed. “You sound like a pouting kid. Plus, there was no shaking Louisa once she figured out the formula.”
“Plus,” Louisa joined in, “I’m actually kind of good at this stuff, Six.” The women were back at base, but connected in via radio.
“Didn’t say you weren’t, Lou.” Six rolled his eyes at Mac, and mouthed “This is your fucking fault.”
“Shouldn’t you guys be quiet?” Delaney asked.
This time Mac rolled his eyes and for a moment questioned the logic of having the women patched in through cams on their foreheads. They were a distraction the team simply wasn’t used to on a mission. But a very smart and necessary distraction. Only Louisa would be able to tell them what they were looking at once they got inside. Delaney wanted proof of what was going on inside—shipping documents, freight carriers, intended destinations. Anything that would link the facility to Afghanistan and to the Russians they’d been following. And Louisa wanted to stop production safely. Apparently, there was a way to destroy any chemicals in production, depending on where they were in the process and how they were being stored. All Mac wanted was to protect the women on the other end of the line.
For once, Mac was worried. His conversation with Delaney had him second-guessing whether drawing his weapon and killing someone was right—which was a surefire way to get himself killed. Right now, lying down in the dirt with Six, his ability to switch off and concentrate was nonexistent.
He needed that
back, so he focused on the routine of the security guards. Yesterday, Buddha had sent a drone up around the facility, which was on the outskirts of Vista, about forty-five minutes north of San Diego. There was a cluster of industrial units on the premises, and from what the camera on the drone had recorded, it looked like only one of the buildings was in active use, or at least only one had a continuous rotation of security guards. A second building had a stationary security guard by the door, and it appeared to be where the chemicals were being stored.
Which reminded him. “Ryder? Got anything?”
The radio crackled. It wasn’t the best connection. “Truck is due in about ten. We’ll get in it, see what we can find.”
Louisa had contacted the vendor who had provided samples to the lab she’d worked at for and with the Popovs. When she’d asked about who was ordering the chemicals she was interested in, the vendor had started his answer with, “Well, besides your lab…” It was an innocuous enough sentence, except for the fact that that lab didn’t need those chemicals in any significant quantity. So she’d called an old contact there in the spirit of catching up and inquired about what research was still going on there. He was someone she trusted, so she’d asked him about the chemicals specifically. He’d investigated and found out there had been a delivery that couldn’t be accounted for in the lab inventory.
Which meant her old lab had been buying the required supplies. It made sense. The lab had the facilities and the permits to store them. It also supported Delaney’s theory that Ivan Popov was alive and well.
The vendor had confirmed another delivery was due that evening, so Ryder and Lite had gone to catch the handover.
“From what I can tell, there’s nobody permanently on the inside,” Cabe said. “But I’ve seen one of the security guys go into the building to grab stuff for a smoke break. Leads me to think that the alarms aren’t on.”
Mac agreed. All they needed to do was get through the perimeter unnoticed. “I still think it pays to have Gaz check it out before we go in there and blow everything to shit.” He looked down at his watch. “My patrol just went by. By my reckoning, it will be another three minutes before I see him again. I say we go.”
Final Siege Page 24