Page 11 of Play the Game
Jason
I movedTam’s breakfast tray to a side counter and sat down across from her at the conference table. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be within arm’s reach, in case she hated the rest of the plan as much as the part I’d already told her.
The rest of the team filed into the room. First came Alder, who commandeered one of the laptops, pulled up the team briefing slides, and projected them onto the flat screen on the wall. Kessler and Li came next, uncharacteristically subdued, which could be explained by the briefing notes they carried with them.
Bond followed them, huffing as she entered. “Before anyone asks, Penn will not be at any briefings for at least the rest of this week. He is a terrible patient, and I’ve had to up his sedation. If that doesn’t work, I’ll put him on a horse tranquilizer next.”
TJ laughed as he entered. “That bad, huh?” He looked at someone behind him in the hallway. “Don’t worry, she’s kidding.” He held the door, and X appeared there.
In contrast to the rest of us, who were in casual outfits of shorts and jeans with T-shirts, and in Bond’s case a blue sundress, our agency’s founder, supreme leader, and original badass was dressed head to toe in her signature color. Silk blouse, wide-legged dress pants, and stilettos, all black. Her blue-black hair was pulled up into a tight bun. At least she was smiling today, which was unusual these days given how much tap dancing she had to do in DC to keep our clandestine operations funded.
“Good morning, Alpha Team,” she said. “It’s my pleasure to introduce you to your temporary team member.”
This seemed less like a team introduction and more like an awards ceremony announcement.
“Some of you know her or have already worked with Kat Hartman,” X continued.
“I go by Hart, for those who don’t know me,” our temporary teammate said as she strolled into the room. She was wearing an emerald-green ballgown and had her auburn hair in an elaborate upsweep.
No one around the table batted an eye as they said hello, assuming she’d rushed here straight from another HEAT job. But one person did remain silent. And frowning.
“Sparks,” TJ said. “Something wrong?”
Tam cleared her throat, one of her tells that she was waging an internal battle. I knew her well enough to practically read her mind. She didn’t like this choice for Penn’s replacement, and with good reason, but she also wasn’t the type of person who enjoyed going up against authority. Lucky for her, her best friend was a brash asshole.
“Kat’s a great agent,” I said, grinning at her because she was also easy on the eyes, “but she’s not logistics. She’s tactical.”
“Exactly!” Tam shot me a grateful look. “We’re about to send a non-field agent into the field, we don’t have enough information for an extraction plan, and you’re putting a tactical agent in charge of logistics.” She glanced at TJ. “With all due respect, sir.”
TJ did not abide being called sir when we weren’t on an operation in the field, but he made an exception for Sparks. Living with her inculcated-since-birth code of respect made more sense than upsetting her by hounding her to change. Also, she said it unironically, unlike others of us around the conference table.
“Hart is cross-trained in logistics, so she’s not a total wild card.” X joined TJ at the front of the room. She furrowed her brow. “But I don’t understand why Sparks would think Hart will be in charge of logistics.”
“There might have been a miscommunication.” TJ rubbed his jaw.
He looked frayed around the edges. We all were. We were exhausted and stretched thin, and now the agency had to cross-train agents just to keep coverage on a mission to stop a fucking dirty bomb. It made me want to pummel every senator on that stupid fucking subcommittee that was giving us so much grief. In fact, maybe I would, in my own Jason Jensen way. I grinned, thinking about how I could mess with everything from their Amazon accounts to sexts with their affair partners, which several of them had.
Tam kicked me under the table, probably to make me pay attention, but possibly because she knew what that look on my face meant.
“Sparks,” TJ continued, “Hart is here to backfill your position. You’re stepping into Penn’s role.”
“Oh.” Tam sat up straighter. “Thank you, sir. And ma’am,” she directed at X.
“Nothing to thank us for,” X said. “On any other team, we’d be preparing you to be a logistics lead. For now, we need you here on Alpha Team, but this will be a good trial run for what’s to come in the future.”
I caught Tam’s eye and smiled, conveying that I was proud of her. I understood the need to keep all of us here on Alpha Team, but it was stunting her career growth. She refused to blame the circumstances and tended to think she wasn’t leadership material. Too many years of being the vice-president of student council, the understudy in college plays, the second-best logistician at the agency. She needed this confidence boost.
“Thank you,” Tam said again. Her voice grew stronger as she turned her attention to the job at hand. “But I have to register my concern with this planned operation.”
“I share your concern,” TJ said. “But Jensen, of all people, has a mitigation plan.”
I wanted to hug TJ for giving Sparks her moment to shine, even if it was the result of shitty circumstances, which I’d caused. Thus, I ignored his little dig, which I knew was said with love anyway, and started explaining the slide Alder showed on the screen. I ran through the broad strokes of the discoveries we’d made on Franklin’s phone and where those had led us, making sure everyone on the team had the same understanding of the operation since they’d received the briefing notes only fifteen minutes before the meeting.
“That leads us to the hacking competition,” I said. This was the part I hadn’t yet explained to Tam, so I glanced at her as I spoke. “We anticipate the Carbonados will provide security themselves, but Franklin is tasked with staffing the event with caterers. That will allow us to put Kessler and Li in the building as serving staff.”
“I’m already getting you set up,” Alder told them.
Cynthia frowned. “Back up, Jensen. I’m sure someone in that world who could recognize you has paid attention to your ‘case’.” She put air quotes around the last word. “How are you going to explain being there when you’re supposed to be in a federal prison?”
