The very crowded room.
The gang was all there.
Zora and Logan stood shoulder to shoulder.
The last to arrive was Kelsey and Felecia.
Why the hell was she the last to know about this?
Logan’s gaze went straight to her. He wore jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt that didn’t hide a bit of tape sticking out the neck. He lifted his uninjured shoulder and inclined his head toward Zora.
What was that supposed to mean?
Exasperated, Kelsey grabbed a stool and pulled it over to sit at Cat’s workstation. Felecia was bubbly and warm, but with her husband present, Kelsey wasn’t keen on getting too close to those two. They seemed to be more in love every day, which made sense given that they’d known each other for all of a week before getting married.
Talk about wild.
Cat held out her mug to Kelsey while staring at Zora with a straight face.
“That bad?” Kelsey muttered.
She sipped what she thought was coffee.
Rich chocolate hit her tongue, followed by the bite of something distinctly alcohol.
“That bad, huh?”
Cat merely nodded.
“Evan, lock the door, will you?” Zora asked.
“On it.”
Kelsey eyed Cat.
Shit.
How bad was this going to be?
“I’ll be meeting with Mr. Bornstein and Senator Dixon shortly,” Zora began, “but before I do a few details need to be shared with the team. Currently, the building is on lock down. No one is allowed in or out without my approval. Immediately following this meeting we will be taking actions.”
Kelsey took another sip, then handed the mug to Cat.
What the hell had they found out?
Zora glanced at Logan and nodded.
Logan cleared his throat. “At four this morning, Senator Dixon left his residence. We found this out thanks to a neighbor’s security cameras and the senator telling the guys when they picked him up at the bank.”
“What did he think he was doing?” Felecia asked.
Kelsey dug her nails into her palms. Whatever Dixon was doing wasn’t the headline story here.
Logan’s lips twitched. “He said he had found someone who would get him out of the country for twenty grand. The senator, ah, wasn’t aware he couldn’t withdraw that much cash at a machine.”
“He was damn serious, too,” Harper, the team’s resident jokester, blurted out.
“Shit,” Kelsey muttered.
Logan took a deep breath. “This morning at a little after eight, someone used the new codes to access the house.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
Was he saying what she thought he was saying?
“New codes?” Kelsey asked. “As in, the ones installed this morning because Senator Dixon didn’t have a security system new codes?”
Logan locked eyes with her. “Yes. They were shared with the top tier of the team around seven thirty.”
“Fuck,” she said before she could catch herself.
The room went silent.
“Who knew?” She glanced around the room.
“Top level knew,” Zora said softly.
Kelsey could hardly breathe.
Top level.
That was six people.
Two were in this room.
The other four were Agents Quentin Joon, Nadine Baker, Samuel Jenkins, and Baruti Wimbush.
Three of those people were close to Kelsey.
She sucked down a deep breath.
“Where are they now? What’s happening?” Kelsey asked.
“Those four agents are reporting to individual meetings they think they are having with me,” Zora said. “From there, they will be temporarily relieved of their badges and guns pending an investigation. I think, given the nature of what each of them has access to, we can’t wait to spring our traps any longer. One of them is the mole.”
There was no way it could be Baruti or Samuel. Just no way.
Kelsey squeezed her eyes shut. “But, Baruti and Samuel came onto the team when I did. You already had a mole problem then.”
Zora glanced at Logan, then back at her. “That is something I’ve thought about. I don’t have a good answer for you, only that one of them could have been trapped into giving over information.”
“No way. Baruti and Samuel. No way.” Kelsey shook her head.
“Easy.” Cat placed her hand on Kelsey’s shoulder.
That only left Joon and Nadine.
“It has to be Joon. Right?” Kelsey glanced around the room.
Some met her gaze, others didn’t.
“We don’t know,” Zora said slower, emphasizing each word. “Whoever it is, it’s someone we have all trusted. We need to be prepared for that.”
“It’s Joon,” Kelsey said again.
Zora glanced at her phone. “That’s it for now. Logan, your team has the afternoon. Diha, I need you ready to work on the agent’s personal devices as soon as we get cleared. And Kelsey—”
Kelsey waved Zora off. “Yeah, yeah. Psych eval.”
Of all the damn times to have to go do this. Why now?
Samuel and Baruti were about to walk into a trap. And they didn’t even know. What was worse? She couldn’t warn them.
She stood abruptly and stalked to the door.
“Kelsey,” Logan said.
She grabbed the door and yanked, only it didn’t open. Muttering curses, she twisted the lock.
“Excuse me. Kelsey.”
She ignored Logan and stalked out into the open lab area. Logan’s footsteps were heavy behind her. He’d catch her simply because his legs were longer.
Damn him.
She didn’t exactly run, but she almost jogged to the door and out into the hall.
Her friends—the people she’d counted on—were going to be accused of working against the very things they believed in most. She knew deep down that the mole couldn’t be Samuel or Baruti. She just knew it.
“Kelsey, wait.”
A strong hand grasped her own, pulling her to a stop.
She let him, mostly because she didn’t know which hand he’d grabbed her with and the idiot man was injured. She had seen his bone.
Logan wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her sideways, into a short hall that led to the stairs.
She stubbornly refused to look at him.
“I know you’re upset—”
“Don’t you start,” she snapped and looked up at him. “Samuel and Baruti have been there for me from the beginning. They might as well be family. I’m not going to be okay with this. With any of this.”
“I know,” he said softly and placed his hands on her shoulders.
She glanced at that bit of tape. “How bad was it?”
“The shoulder?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, your bruised ego. Yes, your shoulder.”
“Dozen stitches and some antibiotics. It wasn’t as deep as it looked. No bone.”
Kelsey wasn’t sure she believed him. She’d seen...something. But what did she know? She wasn’t a doctor.
“Mind if I ride along with you?” he asked.
She arched a brow. “To go talk to a FBI shrink?”
“Yeah.”
That was...unexpected, to say the least.
She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that request. Fleeing the situation seemed safest. At least until she could overthink what the hell was going on.
Kelsey shrugged. “I’m afraid you aren’t cleared to leave the building. So, rain check?”
He frowned. “You agreed that we’d talk later.”
“Yeah, like—later tonight. Not later, right before I go get my brain squeezed like a lemon. Give a girl space, okay?”
“Tonight. Okay then.” He took a step back and dropped his hands.
She missed the contact immediately.
Her insides wobbled.
“See you later.” She waved over her shoulder and
did the only thing she could think of.
She walked away from him.
SATURDAY. WASHINGTON, DC.
Skilton adjusted the audio and leaned back in his chair. He hadn’t believed his source when he said they’d coordinated to get a listening device onto one of the Task Force’s inner circle. It sounded too good to be true.
Now they’d find out.
“Yeah. I had to shoot them,” a woman’s voice said.
The quality was almost crystal clear. Just a little bit of static. He could even hear her intake of breath. The microphone had to be very close to her face then.
“Impressive,” Skilton muttered.
“Thanks.” The beady eyed man across from him smiled. It was a predatory expression on his round face. “So long as your guy stays within range of her, you should hear anything and everything that’s said in the vicinity of her jacket.”
“What did you use?”
“I was told it is a small, adhesive transmitter under the left lapel. Since the temperature’s dropped, she’s never without her jacket.”
Skilton doubted the device would go unnoticed. No doubt what they learned would be valuable. Whoever this Kelsey person was, she was part of the inner circle of the Task Force.
It was time to hire some additional help. Skilton had too many things to manage and not enough people. He’d come to the US for one job and was now doing two. That required more manpower. Case in point, someone would have to tail this woman at all times to squeeze the most information out of her.
Things were getting interesting.
SATURDAY. WASHINGTON, DC.
The atmosphere at headquarters was suffocating.
Logan had even resorted to using his injury to get special clearance from Zora to let him slip out early. He wasn’t proud of that, but he’d deal with his conscience later.
He tapped his phone screen, consumed with watching the minutes tick by.
Kelsey had been gone for almost three hours. Her truck was still in the parking lot, so it stood to reason she hadn’t driven herself. Had she taken the train? A cab?
His ass was almost completely numb from sitting on the concrete. The weather had warmed up enough that it wasn’t uncomfortable waiting outside. Unfortunately, the concrete hadn’t gotten the weather update.
Kelsey was going to have more questions about what Zora was going to do with the four agents. Logan didn’t have a single answer. In this, Zora was no longer consulting the team. She’d narrowed her pool to four people,, and that was all she saw.
Logan wasn’t sure that was it.
Their mole had killed people in their custody. That took a highly opportune moment, or more reasonably, coordination between multiple people.
He hadn’t said it out loud, but he thought there had to be multiple people leaking intel. A team embedded within their team at different levels.
Thinking through it, the leaked intel used to not be this bad. They only suspected a mole.
His theory was that there’d always been several low-level leakers on the Task Force, but they’d somehow recruited one of the four agents. Maybe one of them was dirty, had some secret issue, or these people had leverage on the particular agent. Logan couldn’t say. In his book, they were all potentially guilty.
Nadine Baker was the least obvious of the four. Her grandmotherly personality put people at ease. He didn’t think she’d have the physical ability to kill, though. She was quite frail looking.
Her partner, Quinten Joon, was more suspect. The Asian American agent was the most aloof. Honestly, Logan didn’t think he’d ever had a casual conversation with the man. He was the easiest to track, though. He always had an alibi or a purpose to be somewhere when bad things happened, which eliminated him from the suspects.
Samuel Jenkins struck Logan as a by-the-book kind of guy. Too straight laced and up-tight for Logan’s tastes. Still, Kelsey thought highly of him, so Logan would always give the guy the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes it was hard. According to Diha, he turned his phone off for hours, even a whole weekend at a time, and would become untraceable. What was happening during all of those hours? What was he doing?
And then there was Baruti Wimbush. He was the most likable. His laugh filled a room. Everyone liked him. And yet, something about the guy was odd. Logan couldn’t put his finger on what. If that was all he had to go on, Logan would have dismissed it. The real red flag to Logan was Baruti’s constant disappearance. There were times when he’d randomly vanish, which was saying something of a guy with his build. Where was he going? What was he doing? Who was he talking to?
Logan knew better than to discuss any of this with Kelsey. At least not right now. She was very close with both Samuel and Baruti. At some point recently, she’d bonded with Nadine. Kelsey was too close to these people. Too emotionally attached.
He hadn’t realized that though until this afternoon. Her reaction to the news had taken him and the others by surprise.
A yellow cab pulled up to the building.
The back door opened and Kelsey got out.
He stood despite protesting muscles in his thighs. It was damn cold.
Kelsey turned and looked at him as the car pulled away.
Her stony expression betrayed none of her thoughts or feelings, so he waited as she walked toward him.
“How’d it go?” he asked when she was only a few feet away.
She shrugged. “Fine, I guess. They let everyone go?”
He nodded at his shoulder. “Nah, Zora said I should head home, take it easy.”
“Ah.” She scrubbed a hand across her face. “And Dixon?”
“He is still closeted with his lawyers, last I heard. There’s a bit of a stand-off between them and Zora right now.”
Kelsey wrinkled her nose. “Glad I don’t have to deal with that.”
“Yeah, I’ll say.”
She rocked back on her heels. “Hey, so, I know we said we’d talk after I got back, but do you think I can get a shower first?”
“Sure. You hungry?”
“Starving, actually.”
“How about you shower and by the time you’re done I’ll have dinner ready?”
Kelsey seemed to relax. “That sounds great. Give me half an hour?”
“I should be about done by then.”
“Great. See you then.”
She side-stepped him and he turned, watching her unlock and slip into her apartment. He told himself it was to ensure she got in okay and was safe, but the honest truth was that he liked looking at her. He liked being around her when they didn’t butt heads.
Logan blew out a breath, creating a little cloud of fog, and headed to his own apartment.
What should he cook?
His options weren’t very impressive seeing as he’d frozen what he could before this gig got going. Still, he had enough to throw in the pressure cooker for a simple chicken cacciatore. He even had some leftover bread that toasted nicely. By the time a knock sounded at his door, he was draining the pasta.
Logan checked the peephole and was relieved it wasn’t one of the guys. He’d be hard pressed to get rid of them without sharing dinner and some beers.
But it wasn’t one of the guys. It was Kelsey.
Until he and Kelsey had worked something out, he wasn’t keen on letting the guys know anything. Besides, honesty of that nature would only make himself a target of Harper’s jabs. Especially since it seemed that Kelsey had developed a friendship with the guys, too.
“Smells good.” She stepped inside and tipped her chin up. “Really good. What are we having?”
“Chicken cacciatore.”
“No idea what that is, but I bet I’ll enjoy it.”
“Sit.” He gestured to the barstool. “It’s almost ready.”
Kelsey shrugged out of her black coat and hung it on a chair at the dining table while he went to check on the pressure cooker.
“Is this the small talk section before we get into the heavy stuff?” she asked.
She braced her elbows on the bar and studied him. “I don’t think this is going to work.”
Logan kept his face as neutral as possible while he processed that statement. He wasn’t surprised to hear her say that, but he was disappointed.
Hadn’t she felt the spark between them? Couldn’t she see the potential? What was holding her back? Was it something he’d done? Or something from her past holding her back?
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“Age difference.”
“Seven years?” He squinted at her. “My parents are ten years apart, so I am going to disagree with you there.”
“Wait—what?”
He chuckled. “Mom likes to say she robbed the cradle.”
Kelsey’s eyebrows rose. “Your mom is ten years older than your dad?”
He held up a finger. “Sorry, ten years, one month and three days. Dad likes to be very precise about that.”
Kelsey grinned and her features softened. “Wow, okay. What’s his deal? Is he a mathematician or something?”
“No, he’s a professor. He used to specialize in mythology, but moved into Native American studies when there was an opportunity.”
“What’s your mom do? Is she a professor, too?”
“No. She’s a baker. She always dreamed of working in a French pastry shop, but that never worked out. So, she made her own.”
Kelsey’s smile was utterly charming.
Logan had a goal, though. Distracting her with his parents wasn’t going to get them there. “I’m guessing age is not the only point on your list?”
Her smile dimmed until she was once again serious. “I’m twenty-nine. I have no idea what I really want to do with my life. I’m not ready to settle down or be serious about anything except this job right now. I don’t know what comes next.”
Logan leaned against the far counter and faced her. “And you think that’s an issue?”
Her gaze traveled down his chest, then back up. “You scream commitment and settling down.”
He blinked at her. “Do I?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” That was news to him. “Well, I don’t actually know what I want to do either. So, we’re in the same spot there. All I’m really focused on is this job right now. I have no idea what I’ll do next.”
Intercepted Risk (Aegis Group Task Force Book 5) Page 17