“Good. And now I need to go recharge.” He glanced over at the other room. “I’ll go see if I can get one of the beds set up.” Then he turned and walked away.
She stared after him, wondering at the wisdom of even being here at all. When she’d first joined the group some four or so years ago, she had wondered about her own sanity, at being in this group at all. She also knew that the kind of work she did was what had gotten her in a hell of a lot of trouble already, and this was almost a way of making atonement for it. But she wasn’t so sure that it was the best idea right now.
She could just cut and run. Who the hell would follow her? It’s not like she knew anything. But then she thought about all that she could do, all she could access to get whatever she needed, when she needed it, just because of the skills that she had gained, and she realized that she would be very valuable to some people. Or very dangerous. Hence the recent gunman in her life. And that meant she was here, whether she liked it or not.
As she returned to her computer, Damon stepped up closer and asked, “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I am. It’s just a hard decision to realize that there really is no decision. This is where we’re at, and I can hardly leave and expect to stay safe by myself.” She felt something inside her almost want to break down and cry. “But it’s really not what I expected for my life.”
“If we would have had any inkling that this was coming, it would be a different story. We feel responsible for Wilson’s death.”
She nodded. “And we did check that he’s really dead, right? You didn’t have a case of missing persons or anything else?”
“No, I thought of that at the time because we’ve dealt with duplicitous deaths before,” he shared, “but I’m the one who checked his body, and it was definitely him.”
“No cosmetic surgery to make him look different, nothing?”
“No, it was Wilson. I’m sorry.”
She replied with a watery smile. “Well, it was a bit much to hope for.”
“The thing is,” he continued, “if it was that, then we’d know for a fact that he was one of the bad guys, or set up to take the fall for the bad guys, and then we would have to take him down—at least question him first.”
“I know,” she replied. “So maybe it’s better that he’s dead. Because I don’t want to face anybody who we know in this and find out they’ve betrayed us.”
“Nobody is comfortable with that.” His voice was firm. “This isn’t something you ever get comfortable with, but maybe, in this case, it’s a good thing it’s not Wilson,” he said. “I know you were sweet on him.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “Weren’t you?”
She sat up taller and frowned. “No. Hell no. He was a nice enough kid, but I wasn’t sweet on him. If you had used the brains inside your head, you would have realized who I was interested in. But that you put a stop to.”
“No I didn’t. I was just trying to—” And he stopped. “Wait, seriously?”
“Yeah, but you didn’t even know it back then.”
“Back then. … So not now?”
“God, you’re really pushing it, aren’t you?” She sent him a look. “This is hardly the time or the place.”
“You know that that was what got me into trouble the last time.” He tilted his head. “Because, if I’d said something before, maybe we wouldn’t have wasted all this time.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “And maybe it would have been worse. Maybe we would have come together only to find out we hated each other, and we would have a hell of a time trying to work together now.”
He laughed. “I highly doubt it, but I get where you’re coming from.”
“Good, because I sure don’t.”
He stared at her in surprise.
She shook her head and sighed. “This is just all too big of a nightmare for me. I deal with details. I deal with the internet,” she explained. “I can handle things that are in front of me, something concrete that I can see. I can follow the bytes. I can read the code. I can check changes in the code and detect patterns and anomalies. But the rest of this stuff? Wow, I don’t know how you guys manage to do it.”
“We do it because we have to, because we’re good at it,” he said, with a firm smile. “And, once you find something that you’re good at, it’s fun, right? Because you can make things happen. You can make the keyboard dance. You can make the code do what you want it to do. So you find out that you’re really good at something, and you stick with it because it’s incredibly rewarding to be good at something in your life.”
“Did you ever wonder if you would be good at something?” she asked him quietly.
“All the time.” He smiled. “All the time. Only as I ended up in this field did I realize what I’m really, really good at.”
“And what is that?”
He lowered his voice and whispered, “Warfare.”
And then the room fell silent.
*
It was hard to sleep; it really was. Damon dozed in and out, his mind constantly processing everything going on, and it was hard to still that activity. They’d almost established everything they needed to get functioning again, and all of it incognito, carefully concealed within a shell company that nobody could easily track. Sure, people like him would get there eventually, but it would take them some time.
Hopefully this would give Merk’s team enough time to find out what the hell was going on and to find those responsible. Damon still considered it likely that the US government was behind it all, but he also knew that Terk was focusing on Iran as well—and with good reason.
They’d come up against a team over there that had been damn near as good as them. They’d put the others out of business, but what if they only thought they had been put out of business, but it actually had been resurrected?
It was always a scary enough thought when you dropped a corrupt government that was killing off its own innocent people. There always seemed to be another government that looked better; yet, once they got into power, they became the same power-hungry greedy villains they had replaced.
And Damon felt like this secret op group out of Iran was similar. The fact that they may have some special abilities which he didn’t understand was also terrifying. Because Damon now realized he and his team had been smug all these years, thinking they were the only ones. They had looked toward Russia as being another potential threat but hadn’t really considered anybody else. Iran had blindsided them.
Terk’s team had gone in and done the job and ran into the same kinds of obstacles that they usually presented to others. They had a great deal of difficulty getting past all the safeguards but had finally prevailed and had decimated the Iranian team. By the time Damon and the team had made it back home again—exhausted, beat, and, in some cases, severely injured—it had been deemed a triumph by the US government. But it had not been a great one for Terk’s team because they’d seen themselves in the other group.
The Iranian team wasn’t quite as developed, wasn’t quite as strong, and sure as hell wasn’t as effective, but they were on the same pathway. Damon knew his team had been struggling with the reality of that job ever since. They’d handed in all their reports and had done everything that they needed to do, but it had left a really ugly taste in their mouths. A taste that nothing could remove. And now they were left to wonder if they weren’t getting some payback.