Page 43 of Baby One Last Time
An hour-and-a-half later, the entire team was assembled in the otherwise empty hotel gym, sweating our asses off. As the others fanned out around the room to cool down, Mai and I took up positions by the pull-up bar. We alternated turns, going three one-armed pull-ups at a time. By the second set, my forearm was on fire, and I nearly lost my grip a couple of times, but I finished and dropped to the ground.
“Call it draw,” TJ said as he walked by us. “Keep something in the tank in case we get some news and have to move fast.”
Penn and TJ exchanged a look. Was there news he and Sparks weren’t ready to share with the team? That might mean I wouldn’t need Frankie’s intel. Or it could mean Frankie was shaking trees and causing vibrations that were coming our way.
“I’ll see you at the pool in ten,” I told Mai.
“Don’t be late or I’ll start the race without you.” She grabbed a towel and headed for the locker room to rinse off.
I stepped closer to Penn, who was wiping down the free weights he’d used. “Hey, Penn.”
“Hey, Kessler.” He smiled, much less tense than he’d been at breakfast. “You and Lee in some sort of gladiator challenge?”
“Something like that. Thanks, by the way, for texting me about the plan.” That was my in, my excuse for fishing for knowledge TJ obviously didn’t think Mai and I needed to know. I dropped my voice. “Listen, I know you and Sparks don’t want to bring anything half-baked to the team, but I was hoping for a little heads up, in case there’s a chance we’re going to move soon. You know, so I can make updates the the E&E plans.”
“I’ll let you know if and when we need plan updates.”
Well, this was going nowhere fast. I recalibrated. “Also, though, it would be good to know if Mai and need to pace ourselves.”
Penn shouldered his gym bag and glared at me. “You’re on Tactical. Shouldn’t you always be pacing yourself, anticipating the order to move out?”
I frowned. “You might have noticed I don’t always do what’s best for me.”
Penn sighed and stared over my head, collecting his thoughts. His posture was relaxed, but his hands were tight on the gym bag strap. “Listen, Kessler, I like you. I really do.”
That was news. When it came to me, Penn was the last holdout on the team. His words were like an invitation to the cool kids’ table for lunch. My heart fluttered even as I forced my expression to remain calm. “Thanks. Same.”
“But the attitude that worked for you when you and Wilder were on Tactical Strike won’t fly when you’re working on a full team.”
That was a turn in the conversation I hadn’t expected after yesterday’s awkward but civil time together in the SCIF.
“What is it you think I’m doing wrong?” I asked.
“Trying to get in my business.” He met my gaze. “Stay in your own lane. When you need to know something, you will. On a full team, mission information falls under logistics, which is my lane. Mine and Sparks’s. Let us doourjobs, and you worry about yours.”
He turned and walked away from me.
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled after him.
Penn’s little lecture brought home the tenuousness of my current situation. Because I’d contacted Frankie, I was already out of my lane. All that remained to be seen was whether I was driving in the wrong direction, too, in which case I’d have to U-turn fast, before it bit both me and Mai in the ass. Even if I learned something valuable from Frankie, I’d have to run it to ground myself—with my reluctant partner-in-crime’s help—before we brought the rest of the team into the loop.
If Derek were still my partner, he would have advised me to come clean about contacting Frankie. Scratch that. He would have stopped me from meeting with Frankie in the first place. Derek was a wet blanket. An albatross around my neck. An impediment to proving I could be a strike team of one.
There was also a more-than-zero percent chance he was the reason I hadn’t yet gotten myself killed, but I’d ponder that another time, when I wasn’t up to my ass in a bad situation that was my own damn fault.
On my wayto the team house for dinner that night, I spotted Bond, wearing something red and slinky, stepping through the gate that led out of our enclave. She winked and waved to me. Obviously, she had a better offer that evening. “Have fun,” I called. At least someone on Reindeer Team was getting laid.
I joined the rest of the group inside, including my once partner and future...I didn’t know after last night, Friend, maybe? While my mood was sour from the hours ticking by without a word from Frankie, everyone else’s spirits ran high. I gave into peer pressure and the need to look like I wasn’t up to anything or rattled by Derek’s presence. I laughed and smiled along with the team.
We settled in over the salad course, and TJ gave us a quick update. Alder and Jensen had intercepted another call between Miami Pete, our oligarch, and the point man for the weapons buyer. They’d used burner phones and code phrases, the latter of which had taken all of an hour for the experts at HEAT’s DC office to decipher. Turned out we might not be looking for one big warehouse to hold the weapons cache. The intel now pointed to a handful of smaller stockpiles hidden throughout the city. Penn and Sparks had spent the afternoon poring over aerial maps and had narrowed it down to just over two dozen locations. They would spend the next few days driving around the city to perform street-level recon in the hope of further narrowing the list.
Something about the intel felt off to me, but I couldn’t come up with anything specific.
“The Pellezo Job,” said Derek, sitting at the far end of the table from me, and instantly, the puzzle pieces clicked into place.
“Yes.” I pointed my finger at him in ana-haexclamation. “It was a clusterfuck. They were trying to move drugs from ten different locations to a transport plane. Too many moving parts. They lost three shipments and were delayed long enough for us to take them down.”
“That was just six months ago, right up the road in Vero Beach,” Derek said, meeting my gaze. “No doubt Petrov and his buddies know about it.”
