Page 41 of Defenseless
“You get any sleep last night?” Ethan asked, taking a seat to Chad’s right.
“Enough. You?”
Ethan lifted a shoulder. “Enough,” he echoed.
Teague, Tucker, and Colton made their way to seats, then the rest of Sabina’s team filed in. Leo and Collin were the only ones in the room unaware of the prior evening’s events. Both looked more curious than concerned about the early-morning company meeting, though.
When everyone was finally seated, Colton turned to Sabina. “Why don’t you give Leo and Collin the quick rundown. Then we can jump to why we’re all here now and what our plan is going to be.”
Sabina’s body drew back. Chad suspected that her hesitation, and the flash of fear in her eyes, stemmed from habit. Having someone so bluntly tell her to reveal secrets she’d kept for years had caught her off guard.
As if sensing her need to gather herself together, the room stayed quiet. Her attention swept over everyone before finally landing on him. Sitting across from her, he held her gaze and hoped she saw the support that he offered. Support that was hers to take or not.
After a beat, she nodded then turned to speak to her two colleagues. In less than eight minutes, she gave them the facts of her past and her assumptions about the present. When she finished, she turned to Ethan and asked him to step in. “I know what wethinkabout the ambush and intruders, but you three might have some actual facts.”
“We have the shell casings from the ambush, and Mystery Lake PD is running a comparison,” Ethan said. “We think they’ll be a match for a sniper rifle we lifted off one of the intruders last night. It was the right kind of ammo for that weapon, but we’ll let the tests confirm.”
Sabina nodded and he continued.
“We have prints from two of the intruders that the police lab is running through IAFIS. I forwarded them to Ava, too, and she’ll start looking in our systems. There’s overlap, of course, between HICC and Mystery Lake PD, but HICC has more resources. We may have better—or if not better, faster—luck.”
Chad cast a glance at Ava. “I put them into the computer just before this meeting,” she answered his unasked question. “We may have something by the time we’re done here.”
“Good,” Colton said, stepping into the fray. “Hopefully we get a hit or two, but in the meantime, we need the three of you to start picking apart Kevin Jacobs’s life.” He pointed to Sabina’s team as he spoke. “I want to know everything from his travel schedule to his credit card expenses to where he likes to eat for breakfast. You name it, we want it.”
“Four of us,” Sabina interjected. When everyone looked at her, she clarified. “You said ‘the three of you.’ There are four of us on the cyber intelligence team.”
Colton paused then nodded. “There are, of course. But there’s something else we thought you might want to do.”
Sabina’s gaze skittered to Chad before returning to Colton. “What’s that?”
“You said you thought your uncle might have found something just before he was killed,” Colton said.
“I did say that, and I do think that,” Sabina replied.
“Gina O’Rourke had everything in his house boxed and put into storage within hours of his death,” Colton said. “She pulled some spook-strings and claimed it was best for national security. Locked them up tight enough that Jacobs couldn’t get to them.”
Sabina blinked. “You talked to Gina? When did you do that? I don’t recall her ever telling me that. Why wouldn’t she tell me that?”
Colton shrugged. “She says she did. Maybe you were still in shock from his death. Or from the subsequent attempt on your life and murder of your boyfriend. But she said she did tell you. And yes, we called her last night after you left here. Had a nice long chat. She’s retired now and was even talking about coming out to visit.”
Sabina frowned in thought. “We should keep her out of this. Especially if she’s retired,” she said. “I do vaguely remember her telling me about a storage unit. I guess I blocked it out, or maybe it just didn’t fully register at the time.”
“Shock can do that,” Chad said, drawing her attention to him. He wanted to reach out and take her hand but stopped himself. Not only was she sitting across a four-foot table, but the two of them still had a few things to work out between them.
“What’s the plan with the storage unit, then?” she asked, swinging her gaze back to Colton.
“I want you and Chad to go pick up the contents,” he answered. “It’s in a place a few miles outside Memphis. You can take Bertha. She’s small, but also the fastest plane we have. Based on what Gina told us last night, everything you’d want to bring back should fit.”
Again, her gaze slid to his, as if checking to see if he was okay with the decision. He gave her a tiny nod, and she turned back to Colton. “Fine. When do we leave?”
“We’ve got the pilot getting the plane ready. Before you go, though, I want to follow up with you on something you told us last night.”
To her credit, she didn’t hesitate. “Anything.”
A hint of a smile flashed across Ethan’s lips, and he turned toward Chad and discreetly wiggled an eyebrow. Chad wasn’t the only one who noticed Sabina’s about-face. Now that she was committed to this new path, it didn’t surprise him that she wasfullycommitted.
“You said that Jacobs was muttering something about if your mother had only given him what he’d asked for. And then, when you walked into the room, he was going through her desk. Do you have any idea what he wanted from her or what he thought he might be able to find?” Colton asked.
