Page 48 of Delta Force Defender

She glanced over at Oz. “We both memorized the number. I pay the bills online through a secure server. If necessary, I could probably access the messages online. But on the off chance that anyone’s monitoring the account, we use burner phones and codes. I told her I was compromised when I was in Riverside, but we only check once a month. More, if we want to, but at least once a month. Which means it might be a full month before she checks again.”

“And what will she do when she checks?” Isaac asked.

“She’ll either tell me that she’s also been compromised, or that she’s fine. If she’s been compromised, too, we might figure out how to have a conversation. Find a chat room, somewhere. Or something like that.”

Caradine seemed to relax, slightly. Just slightly. “A couple of years ago she got in touch to tell me that she was moving from one Hawaiian island to another. We like to know where the other one is, at least generally. We like to remind ourselves that as long as we’re alive, we’re winning. Sometimes that’s a direct message on social media somewhere. Other times it’s a code word on an old voice mail.”

She shrugged, and there was that ghost of a smile again. “Never let it be said I don’t know how to make a mean lemonade out of whatever lemons come my way.”

Isaac wanted to touch her but figured she might take off a limb. He stood instead.

“So here’s the situation right now, as I see it,” he said. “Somehow, somebody from your old life found you. Whether they’ve been tracking you since Phoenix or whether this is a separate situation, we don’t know. What we do know is that whoever’s coming after you doesn’t care too much about collateral damage, and I don’t like that.”

“If that’s the opening act, I’m worried about what comes next,” Templeton agreed.

“Or it’s a deliberate overreaction,” Jonas countered. “Maybe the intended audience isn’t Caradine.”

Isaac considered that. Next to him, Caradine shifted position. “If I’m not the intended audience, who is?”

“Never underestimate your average scumbag’s desire to impress the scumbag above him with his commitment,” Jonas replied. “Speaking of boys who like to break their toys. The more toys, the better.”

“Who did you call from Camden?” Isaac asked.

Caradine didn’t smirk, exactly. But Isaac wouldn’t call what she aimed at him a smile, either. “It wasn’t a ‘who.’ There’s a particular bar in Boston that you should really never walk into without a tetanus shot and a militia. I called and said Mickey Sheeran was alive and in Camden, Maine.”

Isaac’s eyes narrowed. “So if I hadn’t carried you out of there, he wouldn’t have followed us, because he would have seen you weren’t an old man.”

Now it was a smirk. “Even Captain America makes mistakes.”

“I’m not convinced it was a mistake.” Isaac rubbed a hand over his jaw. “It seems to me that we have several options. Option one, whoever blew up the house in the first place wants to finish the job. Option two, someone else survived and wants to clean up the mess. Or who knows? Maybe this is how the Sheeran family says hello. Option three, that person is one and the same. Whatever option we go with, we have to factor in Grizzly Harbor. Someone knew Caradine was here.”

“On it,” Oz said from his corner. “But if I had to guess, I’m going to say it’s social media. It always is.”

“I’m not on social media,” Caradine said flatly. “I mean, I don’t post anything. I have a few accounts I don’t use, that’s all. And I’m very, very strict about lettinganyone take my picture. Meaning I take the camera and boil it, even if it’s their phone. I’m not an idiot.”

“You only have to be in the background of the wrong tourist’s snapshot,” Oz said, very calmly. “But don’t worry. I’m going to find it.”

“I want to know what option we’re dealing with here,” Isaac said then. “I wanted to know yesterday. Any questions?”

“Option four,” Jonas said in that stark way of his. And standing so still it made the rest of them look like fidgeters on a sugar high. “The sister with the big mouth made a new friend.”

Caradine tensed. Isaac was sure that she was about to flay Jonas alive, but all she did was nod, stiffly. “It’s hard not to make that jump. Believe me, it’s one of the first things I plan to ask her when and if she checks in.”

“What’s your fail-safe?” Blue asked. “She doesn’t check in, what then?”

“She’s my baby sister,” she said quietly. “And as far as I know, my only living relative. What do you think the fail-safe is?”

“This time,” Templeton said, and the chair he was rocked back in slammed into the floor like punctuation. “Thistime, if you go chasing after her, you’re not going alone.”

He threw a glance around the room, and Isaac saw everyone’s version of a nod. Including from Everly and Mariah, the two civilians, who would be going nowhere.

“Oh, goody,” Caradine said, without cracking even a hint of a smile, though her voice was still much too rough. “When I walked into this room you all thought that I was a murderous sociopath like dear old dad. Now you all have my back. Excuse me while I nurse my whiplash.”

“I’m so pissed at you for lying about who you are,” Isaac told her then, biting out the words before everyone else in the room could jump in. “That’s not going away.And as I said before, I would understand if you’d had to do something horrible because you had to get out of the situation you were in. But don’t confuse that for what’s really happening here.”

He could see hermakeherself square her shoulders, like she was determined to start the fight again, no matter what. “You mean the interrogation?”

“No, jackass,” Isaac replied gruffly, and he made it worse by reaching over and hauling her stiff, outraged body against his, side to side, with everyone watching. Her worst nightmare, he was sure, and that notion made him cheerful, despite everything. “This is your home. We’re your people, like it or not. And you’ve been feeding us all for five whole years. Why don’t you let us feed you a little in return, for a change?”

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