Eve’s pulse kicked up a notch. After everything they’d done for her in the past week, did helping these men work for her? Yes. A million times. Yes.
In fact, until she got her life sorted, she wanted nothing more than to have a purpose. A reason to stay among the people she’d grown attached to. She could do some of her own healing here. Connect with Dr. Christina. Figure out what came next.
Adam was right. She had time. “Works for me. How about you, Z?”
He grinned and gave her a nod. “Works for me too.”
“Let me know what you need for software,” Jay added. “I’ll get you set up on a computer this afternoon, and you can get started.”
“The room next to Doc’s office will work for a treatment room,” Cody said, flipping an egg. “We can move tables and furniture around however you want. Make some space for a desk and chair.”
“Eve’s not doing anything before I get those stitches out.” Doc said, pointing to her abdomen. “Come see me after you’re done breakfast, and we’ll take care of them first. Alright?”
She nodded, because really, what else could she do with a grapefruit-sized lump of gratitude stuck in her throat.
Outside the windowof Adam’s office, a light snow fell. Over the last week, winter had arrived in the valley, and with it, the temptation to hibernate. Eat. Sleep. Recover. Shore their energy reserves for the battle ahead.
An hour after he’d given Chase a hard copy file containing the details of a modified JTT operating model, he knocked on the door, entered, and shut it behind him.
“What do you think?” Adam asked as Chase dropped himself into the sturdy chair beside the desk. He couldn’t pull off what he planned without the support of the colonel’s second in command.
He needed Chase, without him, the unit folded, and they went their separate ways. For every single one of them, it meant going into hiding. Staying off the radar and living underground, hoping Johnson, his backers, and the US fucking government didn’t catch up with any of them.
They had the money to do it. Easy enough to divvy up two and a half billion. But they were stronger together. Safer together. Could be a force for good—together.
“What do I think?” Chase repeated, tossing his file onto the desk, and leaning back in his chair. “I think what you’re proposing is risky as fuck, and our only option. How long have you been considering this?”
“Been thinking about it for a while but started to map it out last week.”
“After you found Eve?”
“Yeah.” No point in hiding the truth. Finding Eve had changed him. Altered his plans to go it alone. She’d become his world, and in doing so had forced him to care about the world she lived in.
What he did now mattered because she mattered.
“When you found her, you were going after Johnson on your own?”
“Yes.”
“For Gray?”
“For Tak too.”
“You think he’s still alive?” Chase asked.
“Doesn’t matter what I think. We all agreed, he’s alive unless we have irrefutable proof to the contrary. Until then we keep looking.”
Chase’s black gaze held his, analyzing, assessing, weighing. “So, we let the CIA think they own us, meanwhile we’re running our own black ops using the intel they give us to stay alive, find Tak, and take down Johnson?”
“Yes.”
“And if the CIA doesn’t want to play ball?”
“They will.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“They have limited authority to operate on American soil. Thanks to the JTT, they know something big is going down, but they don’t know what. Johnson is a puppet. The question is whose. Someone is after control of the White House. Diane Heughan and the CIA need an off-the-books unit to find out who and why.”
