Page 41 of Clay

Warren hadn’t told Katie anything, only that he’d been sent by Ivy. Clay could guarantee that Dev was about to shatter her anger.

“Hamilton has Ivy, but he wants you,” Dev said baldly, because there was no way to sugarcoat this. “He’s going to call and want to trade her for you. Which of course is bullshit and is never going to happen.”

Katie, as predicted, had gone sheet white. “He’s got Ivy?” she asked, her voice small, just a bit brittle.

Clay inserted himself. “He does. Fucker outsmarted me and took her right from under my nose.” He didn’t even try to make himself sound calm and collected. Now that the team was there, that was what they were for. To ground him. To bring their collective experience and wisdom to the table.

“He took her from beneathournoses,” Dev clarified. “But beating ourselves up about it doesn’t get her back, or put Hamilton behind bars, where he belongs.” He shot Clay a reproving glance. “We need to be ready when he calls.”

Katie took a deep breath, then turned her attention to Warren. “And you couldn’t have told me this when you outed me?”

Warren shook his head, his usual charm gone. “No. We all needed to be together, with the latest intel. I was already freaking you out, I didn’t need to add bad information to the mix.”

“I was not freaking out,” she said coldly, then turned her attention back to Clay and Dev. “But I am now. What do you need me to do?”

Clay’s estimation of her went up a few notches. While he’d understood that she may be less than enthusiastic about Ivy’sinterference, now that she knew what was on the table, she’d come out swinging.

“Cali will be going into the swap as you.”

Katie looked at the other woman doubtfully. “You don’t look anything like me.”

“I don’t need to, at least not close up,” Cali said. “I’ll be wearing a wig matching your hair and have a friend coming over to do some makeup contouring so from far away it won’t be obvious. We just need time to get the rest of the team in place.”

“So in the meantime we wait?” Katie asked, looking around the table.

Dev nodded. “We wait. But while we do, we prepare.”

~

Dev fired up the wall of screens and went to work monitoring whatever it was that he monitored. Cali and Jordan were off in one corner with Cali’s friend, who was working her makeup magic.

Warren and Tate were setting up the team’s gear. Everything from slimline earpieces that were all but invisible to night vision goggles. First aid kits. Trauma kits. It was like they were all active duty again.

Katie sat with them for awhile, then when the two men had started working over weapons, she stood, walked to Clay, where he was watching the proceedings. He didn’t really have much to do until Hamilton called and he was trying really hard to calm the fuck down.

“What are they doing?” she asked, nodding toward the men.

“Prepping for war,” he said simply, and with the words felt himself begin to go cold. Tactical. “We’ve got a good team here, Katie. We’ll get her back.”

“And what about you?” she asked. “What do you bring to the table?”

Clay was silent for so long that Dev interjected from across the room. “Logistics. Clay is the planner of the group, and he can’t do a damn thing until we have an idea where this is going to go down. As for me,” he said, likely knowing she was going to ask. “I’m money and tech.”

He was so much more, but it wasn’t relevant, not right now.

Katie swung her attention back to him. “That’s what you did in the military? Plans?”

He shook his head. “No, I was a C-17 loadmaster. I just like planning on the side. Always have.”

Dev cut in again. “Don’t let him bullshit you. Loadmasters have to be logisticians, understand all kinds of information that we would never even consider, to make sure our cargo planes don’t become lawn darts. The fact he’s excellent at planning overall is why he’s exceptional. Just like the rest of us.”

Katie digested that information as Dev went back to his monitors. From what Clay could see he was hacking CCTV cameras at casinos and businesses around the city, specifically on the Strip, where it’d be so very easy to lose oneself. He’d loaded Hamilton and Ivy’s photos into a facial recognition program that was sweeping each of the cameras he’d hacked, looking for information. While that was going on, another monitor showed a stream of numbers that made absolutely no sense to any of them but always got them what they needed.

Katie looked around the church, really looked at what they were doing, how they were going to the mat for Ivy, and that seemed to break something in her. She motioned him away to the end of the conference table, away from the others.

“Tell me that you’re as good as Dev thinks you all are,” she demanded, tears glossing her eyes. “I need to hear you say it.”

“We’re better than Dev thinks we are,” he said. “Because he knows everything about us, just like we know everything about him. That kind of familiarity makes us function as an incredibleteam, but it also has the potential to blind you to ways we could be better. That’s my job, to maximize our potential.” It all sounded very cold and clinical, but now that they had Katie and were buckling down, he’d turned his attention from self-castigation and into what he did best, without even really thinking about it. Multiple contingency plans rolled through his mind, looping back to the prime objective. To recover Ivy and take down Hamilton—however they had to.

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