Page 64 of Boomer
Boomer came in a few seconds after her, expression shuttered, calm. If not for the mess of his shirt and the raw look he hadn’t quite managed to hide in his eyes, no one would’ve guessed what had just happened between them.
She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t.
Instead, she locked onto the item on the table.
A black binder.
Charred around the edges. Metal spine warped. Laminated sheets peeking out from inside.
“Where did this come from?” she asked, voice steady, clipped.
Boomer answered, voice low. “Bash and I found it while clearing the northwest corner of the warehouse buried under collapsed steel. The whole thing nearly went unnoticed.”
Taylor stepped forward and opened the cover. Her blood chilled as her eyes scanned the columns.
Port codes. Cargo manifests. Transit dates. But not justanymanifests. These were ghost ship routes. They were current. She flipped a page and another. Multiple European ports listed: Lisbon, Marseille, Cagliari, Constan?a. One in Tangier. Another that raised alarm bellsinstantly—Porto de Aveiro. Not even on MAOC’s high-alert radar.
Her pulse stuttered.
“These are live movements,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Some of these vessels are already in transit, and we haven’t interdicted a single one yet.”
Lockhart stepped in beside her, grim. “They’re rotating ships and identifiers. Dead captains. Disposable crews. Every one of these could be rigged with mobile labs or worse.”
Taylor looked up, her throat dry. “This changes everything.”
Bash spoke, voice hoarse. “The shell company’s name was on the last page. I flagged it before bringing it in. Cross-border financial chain, loosely tied to a logistics firm operating out of Dubrovnik. No hard links to Arkan Holdings, but it smells like the same sewage.”
Boomer’s jaw ticked. “They’re testing us. Using ghost ships as floating trials. Maybe even distractions.”
Iceman leaned forward. “How many on this list?”
“Seven,” Taylor answered. “Three of them flagged to arrive within the next ten days.”
No one spoke for a long moment.
The weight of it settled like sandbags across the room.
She closed the binder gently, knuckles white. Then looked right at Boomer.
Not a flicker of anything crossed his face, but she felt him watching her in return. Not just professionally. Not just like a man listening to a mission brief.
Like a man waiting. Waiting to see if she would fall apart. She wouldn’t. But God help her, she still wanted to kiss him again. Hard.
Iceman exhaled, slow and deliberate. “We’re not touching this tonight.”
Taylor looked up. “You want to stand down?”
“I want my men alive and sharp,” he said, eyes flicking over to Boomer, then back to Lockhart. “We’ve been running hard for two ops back to back. This notebook’s a gift, but it’ll wait a few hours while we sleep off the last engagement and hand it to the analysts who get paid to sift through logistics code.”
Lockhart nodded once, his gaze going to Bash who looked about ready to collapse. “I agree. My team needs to regroup.”
Taylor considered the intel again. It was hot but not in danger of going cold overnight. They’d need fully operational teams to start planning multiple interdictions.
She gave a nod. “I’ll get it couriered to the MAOC intel cell and loop in the CIA liaison. We'll prioritize follow-up at 0800.”
Iceman stood. “Good. Everyone clean up, rack out. We hit this fresh.”
Chairs scraped. Boots thudded. The room started to clear, but Boomer lingered a beat too long. So did she. Neither spoke. He didn’t look at her. But shefelthim, like the memory of that kiss had heat and weight and a body of its own. She turned away before she could do something stupid like follow him.
