“That seems likely.” Cap looked up from his laptop. The silvery blue eyes behind his lenses were laser sharp. “If we assume the bots were engineered as a weapon against humans, targeting other species would decrease the weapon’s efficiency.”
After several seconds of silence, Wolf clicked the remote to advance the page. “I see no names associated with this cell.” Wolf glanced across the table at hisjavaanee. “Did theTaounahagive you anything more? A name? Location?”
Was Benioko still the mouthpiece? Or was Aiden? Did Wolf serve two masters now? A shadowTaounaha,alongside a waking one?
“Yeah. Hang on.” Aiden pulled out his phone and scrolled through the apps. When he reached the notes app, he tapped the screen. “Said we should look into a dude named Malcolm Oura.”
Cap typed the name into the Shadow Mountain search engine. Multiple hits came up. Cap scrolled them. “None of these match our criteria.” He stopped at the first ID. “Too old.” Scrolled to the next. “Too young.” Onto a third. “Too capitalistic.” And then another. “Too poor.” Finally, the last ID. “Too active online.” He sat back with a grunt. “I’ll need to refine my search criteria.”
O’Neill shoved back his chair and rose to his feet. “While you do that, I’ll reach out to my contacts. See what they can find out.”
Aiden waited until O’Neill walked out of the door before turning to Wolf with raised eyebrows. “You two seem cozy all the sudden.”
Wolf shrugged. “There is more to—” he bit back his former unfavorable title for the Warrior.Jie'vanno longer suited him “—O’Neill than he allows others to see.”
It was Aiden’s turn to shrug. “At least he’s admitting to contacts now.”
Wolf cocked his head and swiveled his chair until he and hisjavaaneewere face to face. There had been an odd note in Aiden’s voice, one hinting at secrecy. “What are you not telling me?”
At first, it didn’t look like hisjavaaneeintended to answer, but then Aiden shifted, and his guarded face thawed. “I don’t suppose it matters now that you two are buddies. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that your new BFF was the contact who approached Benioko with Kuznetsov’s location. My contact in USSOCOM believes O’Neill is, or was, with ODNI. So, I askedthe bastard to reach out to his contacts and see if he could get a hit. Boom, next thing I know, Benioko had a lead.”
The surprises just kept coming today. “When was this?”
The more Wolf thought about Aiden’s story, the more it made sense.
Benioko had been certain his information was correct. Yet he had no intel contacts himself—and the Shadow Warrior did not use waking world technology when advising hisTaounaha. Everyone had wondered where the tip came from. Yet Benioko refused to say.
“Two weeks ago, give or take. Six hours before I went down, and you had to peel my ass off the walkway.” Aiden said after a healthy gulp of coffee.
The timeframe was right. O’Neill would have had five hours to hear back from his contacts and funnel everything over to Benioko.
Why hadn’t the warrior come forward and shared his intel? Wolf frowned over that, and realized nobody would have believed him, which would have impacted the urgency of the mission. Even though nobody had known Benioko’s source, they had trusted theTaounaha’scertainty enough to greenlight the mission. This would not have been the case if O’Neill had come forward himself.
Wolf turned to stare at Cap, suspicion rising. Aiden’s SOCOM contacts had tracked O’Neill down, yet Capland hadn’t? Not possible. Capland’s spirit gift was technological information. He was undoubtedly one of—if not the most—accomplished hacker onHokalita.Nobody could keep him out of their database: not the alphabet soups, not other hackers, no organization or government. All of Shadow Mountain’s intel came through Capland’s spirit gift. Yet somehow, he’d missed O’Neill’s dossier?
Not a chance.
“Something you want to tell me?” he asked mildly, his gaze hard on Cap’s face. The warrior’s stoic expression screamed that he knew he’d been exposed.
Cap shrugged and held Wolf’s gaze. There was no apology in his eyes. “TheTaounahaordered me not to look into him and to convince you I found nothing when you asked if I searched his name.”
Wolf was not surprised. Of course, Benioko had held O’Neill’s secrets tight to his chest. He didn’t ask Cap if he’d disobeyed and run a search on the enigmatic warrior. Cap would not have betrayed Benioko’s trust.
Aiden, who’d been glancing back and forth between Wolf and Cap, pushed back his chair and stood. “If that’s all, I’m gonna grab some grub.”
Wolf put a hand up to stop him. “That is not all. There is another matter to discuss.”
Aiden didn’t like that. His gaze chilled and narrowed. “If this is about the mouthpiece nonsense—”
Wolf stared back. “We can talk here, or in the cafeteria. Your choice.”
Of course, if they took this discussion to the mess hall, someone would overhear the conversation and soon everyone on base would know Aiden was the newly chosenTaounaha.Wolf watched that realization sink into hisjavaanee’seyes.
A scowl spread across Aiden’s face as he slowly sat back down. “What the fuck do you want now?”
Wolf steepled his fingers and stared into the black gaze so like his own. “We need explanations from the elder gods.”
Annoyance spread across Aiden’s face. “Can’t help you with that.”
