Bo cautiously shifted enough that she could touch Tricks, slide her fingers deep into the soft fur. “It’s okay, princess. I smell bloody, but I’m fine.” To Morgan she said, “I expect you’ll be heading to D.C. as soon as I’m hauled off, right?”
“It’s my job,” he said, not even hesitating.
She hadn’t expected him to stay and wouldn’t have asked that of him. What was going on was a lot bigger than what had just happened here, despite the dead man lying in her yard.
The sirens rapidly got closer and louder. Morgan stood to look out the windows as the parade of vehicles roared into the yard. “Jesse’s leading the posse,” he said. “Medics right behind him.” He opened the door to let the medics in and went out to meet Jesse.
From that minute on, Bo had no control at all—not that she’d had a lot before. Within a minute her house and yard were swarming with crisis personnel. Medics surrounded her, their bodies preventing her from seeing anything other than them. Morgan’s tee shirt was cut off from around her neck, but part of the fabric stuck and they left that, bandaged over it. It said something about how she felt that she made no protest at the blood pressure cuff, the light in her eyes, the IV line that was started almost immediately. Jesse came in to see her, his face that combination of carefully blank eyes and nothing-going-on-here expression that cops used to keep events at a distance so they could function.
“You’re leading an interesting life lately, Chief,” he said.
“I keep interesting company.”
“Tell me about it. He filled me in. We’ll handle things on this end. Don’t worry about it. Nothing will hit the news until he gives the okay.”
She managed a truncated nod because the thick bandage kept her from moving her head very much. “Can you take care of Tricks? Take her to Daina?”
“No problem. If Daina can’t take her tonight, I’ll take her home with me.”
With all the people grouped around her she hadn’t seen Morgan come back in, but he appeared beside her as she was being loaded into the back of the medic truck, one of her suitcases in hand. He’d taken the time to pull on another shirt. “Here’s your purse, too,” he said, putting the suitcase inside the truck and setting her bag on top of the stretcher with her. “I put your phone in it.” He leaned down and kissed her, his blue eyes intent as he studied her. “I’ll call you when I can.”
“Go do what you have to do,” she said, lifting her hand to touch his jaw. “I love you.”
“I love you back. Remember that.” He gave her one more fierce kiss, then was gone.
From inside the medic truck, she couldn’t even watch as he drove away.
Sometimes things just went to hell and there was nothing you could do about it except pick up the pieces and deal with what was left. He hadn’t anticipated—no one had—the hacker actually being the one guy Axel had gotten to set up the trap and try to trace the hack. They must have had a big laugh about that, picturing Axel anxiously waiting for a trap that was never sprung because they knew it was a trap.
Dexter Kingsley had moved so fast Morgan hadn’t had time to put in more sophisticated security measures, and the ones he had installed had been useless. Kingsley had evidently driven partway up the driveway while they’d been on their walk. Then he’d simply waited, maybe crouched out of sight behind Morgan’s Tahoe, until someone left the house. If Morgan had been first, he’d have been shot on sight. But Bo had been first, and Kingsley couldn’t shoot her without alerting Morgan, so he’d decided to use her as a shield.
God save him from amateurs. They were unpredictable, they did wild shit that anyone with half-assed training would never do, and sometimes it worked. What if Kingsley had thought to use a silenced weapon? He’d have shot Bo, maybe Tricks too, then waited until Morgan came out. Kingsley hadn’t thought of it, and the dumbass plan hadn’t worked out, but Bo had come so close to being killed Morgan had lost ten years off his life. Only his training had kept him moving, kept him thinking, all the while he was almost insane with gut-wrenching fear.
He wanted the hacker—Devan Hubbert—in a bad way, but Hubbert had given them the slip. At least Axel had been able to secure Hubbert’s personal computer and currently had a whole computer forensic team breaking it down to the code. Whether or not they could find anything incriminating against the Kingsleys was up in the air. The bad news was that street cams showed Hubbert entering the Russian embassy, which meant either he had asylum or he was a deep plant. They couldn’t touch him, at least not without the Russians’ permission—which wasn’t going to happen. In the meantime, they were digging as deep into his background as they could to determine if he was a deep plant or a homegrown traitor.
When Morgan had entered the GO-Teams headquarters, everyone he met looked surprised to see him. There were a lot of people on the support side who he knew on sight but whose names he didn’t know. Everyone knew his name, though, and knew something really bad had gone down a few months before. The place looked like a fire drill, with everyone rushing around and a sense of urgency permeating the air.
He’d gone straight to Axel’s office; though they hoped Devan Hubbert wasn’t still able to monitor Axel’s conversations, until they knew for certain, they were maintaining strict protocol over the phone, so nothing much had been said. Axel’s office, his car, his home were all being swept for bugs. They were routinely swept anyway, but this time everything was being checked down to the wiring. All computers were being checked for any keylogging program. The damage Hubbert could have done—likely had done—was enormous.