“Being prom king is never worth the crown,” Templeton said. And laughed when everyone looked at him. “But you better believe I looked fantastic in mine.”
Blue rolled his eyes. “Like they had prom in jail.”
“I didn’t go to jail, I joined the army.”
“Like that’s any better,” Blue said with a snort, all navy.
“We can eliminate most of Sowande’s suitors,” Oz said, though Jonas saw he was fighting back a grin. “They would have to have a particular set of capabilities, like being able to track your extraction from a South American desert to Europe and over to Canada, all without any of you picking up on it. Then they would have to be able to penetrate security measures we had in place in the safe house, secure and abduct two adults and their things, and then disappear, all without leaving a trail.”
“We don’t know the scientist didn’t do it himself,” August said. “It might be unlikely, but we don’t know he didn’t.”
“We don’t,” Oz agreed. “Except that he would have to have that same capability to remove himself and his sister from the safe house and then disappear into the greater Montreal area. Again without tripping over any of the safety measures we put in place, which I have to tell you is even more unlikely.”
“And if he could do that, why would he have been hiding out in that flat in Lisbon?” Isaac asked. “You didn’t find a single security measure. A toddler could have broken into that apartment.”
“Unless he was setting himself up as a decoy,” Jonas countered. “As bait for a trap that we walked right into.”
Everyone sat with that for a moment.
“Anything is possible at this point,” Isaac acknowledged, looking pissed. The way he did when things didn’t go according to plan, because that wasn’t how he rolled. It wasn’t how any of them rolled. They liked successes, not failures. It was why they were all alive.
The screen changed. “If I map out the necessary skill set against all the known entities that sent Sowande into hiding in the first place, I come up with only five realistic possibilities,” Oz said.
He flicked through a series of five headshots. Three high-ranking military officers, all currently serving in the Pentagon, and two Fortune 500 CEOs, one on either side of the very thin line between certain pharmaceutical corporations and the military-industrial complex.
“Interesting,” Griffin muttered.
That wasn’t the word Jonas would have used.
“Bring it on,” Templeton threw out into the room, with a big laugh. “It’s going to be fun figuring out how to get a little sit-down chat with security clearances like theirs.”
“I personally volunteer to break into the Pentagon,” Blue offered. “Because who doesn’t want to break into the Pentagon?”
“You need to let that Mission: Impossible fantasy go, brother,” Templeton said with another laugh. “You can’t swim into the Pentagon, no matter how impressive you were in the SEALs.”
“Does Alaska Force break into places like the Pentagon?” Jack Herriot asked.
“Can Alaska Force break into the Pentagon?” Benedict Morse shot back.
“We can argue whether or not we’re capable of it another time,” Isaac said, but he was grinning. “For the record, of course we could. The question is whether or not we want to lower ourselves to such parlor tricks.”
That set off several different spirited arguments, and it took a while for the room to settle again.
Jonas didn’t engage in any of the arguments. He was too busy going through what they knew. They were all good at reading people, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be played. Anyone could be played. And the minute someone had enough ego to think they couldn’t be, they might as well sign up to learn that lesson the hard way.
That said, however strange that creepy mining village had been—not to mention the men there—Jonas could have sworn that Iyara Sowande’s reactions, and later her brother’s, had been genuine.
And the men Oz had presented them with were a very specific type. Three of them were actually in the active military and could send their own commando teams to do their bidding, officially. Two had enough money that they could hire their own. Either way, any one of them could have staged that fight in South America, then turned around and extracted Iyara and her brother from Canada.
When the room quieted, he said as much.
“True story,” Blue agreed. “Fun fact, I’ve actually met General McKee. He didn’t think the rules applied to him when he was gunning for his first star. No way that changed since.”
“What’s the mission here?” Griffin asked coolly. “Are we trying to locate the scientist again? And if we do, where do we take him this time that he can’t be reached?”
“It’s also possible that the client made a deal with one of these guys,” Templeton said. “And we were just a delivery service.”
Jonas eyed him. “Then why would the client call us to report them missing?”
Templeton shrugged. “Because people suck?”
Isaac frowned at the screen. “Any of this is possible. That’s the problem. The ideal scenario would be if we could round up all five of them, get them in a room together, and ask a few questions.”
“Good luck with that,” Rory said, laughing.
But Oz and Isaac exchanged a look, and Jonas stood a little straighter.
“About that,” Oz said, a strange note in his voice. “As it happens, we’re about two weeks out from an event with all five of them on the same guest list.”
Isaac nodded, not really looking at anyone, which was weird. “Ordinarily we would figure out the appropriate parameters and send in a team without a second thought. But this is different. It’s . . . delicate.”
Jonas realized Isaac was looking at Bethan. Both he and Oz were watching her closely. And the longer they did it, so did the rest of the room.
“I can already tell I’m not going to like this,” she said.
“It’s your sister’s wedding,” Isaac said in a gentle sort of way that still felt like a bomb.
Jonas tried to evaluate why that was. Maybe it was the fact that Bethan looked so surprised, as if she’d forgotten she had a sister. Or hadn’t planned on attending the wedding either way. Maybe it was that he’d forgotten she had a whole life outside Alaska Force that he’d gone out of his way not to know too much about. Then again, maybe he was the only one reading anything in her, because a quick glance around the room made it clear that everyone else was gazing at her expectantly.