Tactical Force. Elle James
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buy us? There are hundreds of thousands of females in this area. We have to narrow it down a little more than that.”
“We’re working on it. We don’t have a lot to go on and now your lady doesn’t have a phone for our mystery texter to send messages to.”
“She figured out Ms. Bellamy was associated with John Halverson,” Jack pointed out. “She’s smart. She’ll come up with a way to communicate with Ms. Bellamy again.”
Cole glanced up. “What’s your girl’s plan from here?”
Jack frowned. “She’s not my girl. And I have no idea. I just got her here.”
“I’m going to work tomorrow, as usual.” A female voice sounded behind them.
Anne descended the steps into the war room, followed by Grace and Charlie.
Jack faced her, his feet spread, his arms crossing over his chest. “The hell you are.”
Anne’s eyebrows rose up her forehead. “I have a big meeting to prepare for on Friday. I need to be in my office every day this week. Besides, the person who texted me wanted me to help stop Trinity from doing something. I can’t help if I’m locked behind the walls of this estate.”
“You’re a walking target,” Jack said. “It would be suicide for you to step past the gates.”
Anne lifted her chin. “I can’t hide away forever.”
“You can until we figure out what’s going on,” Jack insisted.
“We can figure it out a lot faster from inside the government offices. I assume since the person texted me, I’m probably in a position to find out something. Otherwise, why would he ask me for help?”
“She,” Jack corrected.
Anne cocked an eyebrow. “See? You already know more than when we started.”
“Okay, she’s female—” Jack threw his hand in the air “—so is half the population of the Metro area.”
“I’m going to work tomorrow,” Anne said. “I just need a ride in to a Metro station, and I’ll take it from there.”
“You can’t go alone,” Charlie said.
“Charlie’s right,” Jack said. “It’s too dangerous. You’re not equipped to handle armed assassins.”
Again, Anne stared at him with a cocked eyebrow. “And you are?”
“More so than you,” Jack shot back.
Charlie clapped her hands together. “Then it’s settled.”
Jack glared at the woman whose money funded Declan’s Defenders. “What’s settled?”
“The fact that Anne can’t go to work alone.” Charlie smiled as if everything was perfectly obvious. “You’ll go with her.”
Anne frowned. “Jack can’t go with me. You have to have a badge and a security clearance to get inside the office where I work.”
Charlie nodded toward her computer guy. “Jonah, can you make it happen before morning?”
He nodded. “I’ll do my best.” He held out his hand to Anne. “Could I borrow your badge?”
Anne shrank back, her hand on the purse she still carried over her shoulder. “You most certainly cannot. I swore an oath. I could get fired.”
“You could die,” Jack reminded her.
Anne chewed on her lip, her gut knotting. She’d spent her entire career trying to do right by the people of her country. She prided herself on always taking the high road. Helping someone into the inner sanctum of the West Wing was almost like committing treason.
Charlie touched her arm. “Based on your informer, others could die if Trinity isn’t stopped. But you have to do what you think is right.”
“If it helps,” Declan said. “As a Marine Force Recon team, we all had top secret clearances.”
“Had?” Anne questioned. She knew what Marine Force Recon meant. They were the best of the best of the Marines.
Declan glanced at the other members of his team. “Until we were discharged from the Marine Corps.”
“Discharged?” Anne tilted her head, her gaze going to Jack. “Honorably?”
Jack’s lips thinned. “No. We were dishonorably discharged.”
Anne reeled, shaking her head, her hand tightening on her purse. “Why?”
“For doing what we thought was the right thing,” Declan said, his face grim. “Unfortunately, the powers that be didn’t agree.”
“Did you…kill someone?” Anne asked. “Is that why you were discharged?”
Jack snorted. “No. We didn’t kill someone we were ordered to kill. If we had, a lot of innocent people would have been collateral damage. We made the decision to abort.”
“I don’t understand,” Anne said. “I thought, as a country, we weren’t in the business of killing innocent people, if we could help it.”
“Someone had to take the fall for not taking out a high-powered terrorist.” Declan pushed back his shoulders and lifted his chin. “My team took that fall.” He spread his arms wide. “And now, because of Charlie, we’re fighting the good fight, helping people when the government can’t.” He stared directly into Anne’s eyes. “We understand if you don’t feel comfortable giving us your badge. We’ll find another way to create one for Jack. He will be with you tomorrow, one way or another.”
Anne chewed on the information Jack and Declan had imparted. If what they were saying was true, they’d been booted from the military because they hadn’t wanted to kill innocent people. Their government had let them down.
If the informant who’d texted Anne was correct, Trinity had somehow infiltrated the government and was planning on doing something catastrophic. She couldn’t let it happen. But how could she, a single midlevel analyst, stop anything from happening? It wasn’t as if she could spot a Trinity operative by looking at him.
She didn’t know who they were. But they knew who she was, and they didn’t want her to tip off anyone as to their intentions.
By going to work, she was putting herself at risk. If she died, no one would know that Trinity was planning something big.
She might not be anyone or know anything, but she did know something was about to go down. Since the informer had contacted her, she had to be close to either the entrenched Trinity operatives or close to the people who would be targeted. Either way, she had to find out what was going down and stop it before anyone got hurt.
Anne dug in her purse, pulled out her employee badge and handed it to Jack. “I’m trusting you to do the right thing, as I hope I am by handing you my badge.”
Jack took the card, holding her hand in his for a long moment. “I promise we’ll do the right thing. When it comes right down to it, we love this country, despite what some individuals in powerful positions have done to us. We want what’s right for the country we swore to honor and protect.”
Her fingers curled around his for a moment, then he let go and handed the card to Jonah.
Jonah nodded. “I’ll have that badge and your clearance entered into the system before morning.”
“I don’t want to know how you’ll make that possible.”
Jonah grinned. “It’s best you don’t know. Ignorance is bliss.”
Anne