She stared at him in surprise. “Okay, I guess I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“Well, you weren’t not thinking of it,” Damon added, “since you were already checking to see where and what there were for vehicles and faces around his place.”
“No, I guess you’re right,” she agreed. “I just wasn’t necessarily thinking of that as a focus. But then, honestly, I’ve been pretty scattered. This whole thing has got me rattled.”
“Of course it has,” Terk murmured. “And you’re surely not the only one. We’re in this together. Remember that.”
She nodded and smiled at him. “Got it.”
Damon watched the interplay, wondering how Terk always managed to make her feel so comfortable and at home, while she was stiff with Damon. Then again, Terk was a friend, while Damon had deliberately kept himself out of that category.
How foolish of him.
Chapter 9
The day passed in a flurry of tracking information. Tasha settled into her routine, one that she’d thought she would never get back to. When she had found out that the government would be closing them down within days, she’d been heartbroken and yet almost euphoric because it meant a change in her life, one that she was ready for. This scenario was far from the change she’d expected though. It felt like the same thing to a degree but without the official compass, without the umbrella of protection, without the full team. Nor did they have the same resources. Although, as she was finding out, they had plenty of money. “How come we have money?”
“Because we still have access to the bank account. We always did, since it was set up under my name,” Terk said.
She looked at him sharply. “And they didn’t change that?”
He smiled. “I never gave them access. I didn’t want them digging in and removing money when we needed it.”
She burst out laughing. “Oh my, that’s perfect.” Then she frowned. “But that also means, if you use any money, they’ll know that you’re alive and well.”
He nodded. “Which is why I changed the name to something else.”
“Interesting,” she murmured quietly. “What did you choose?”
“A mock name. One that nobody knows and one that doesn’t lead anywhere.”
“So then you think we’re safe?”
“We’re safe. We have access to the money, and we’ll pull it as we need it.”
“Good enough because I highly doubt you have much for weapons, do you?”
“We have some, as you’ve seen, but we’ll get more.”
“And yet we can’t use the same supplier.”
“We can, but we’ll need a middleman.”
“Great, and who will that be?”
“Merk is on his way over.”
“No way,” she said. “He’s your brother. Surely he’ll look like you to some degree.”
He stopped, shook his head. “He’ll be in disguise.”
She withheld a comment on that because Terk had very strong features. She highly doubted that Merk would look anything less. But she’d been wrong before, so who knew? “If you say so,” she muttered.
He chuckled. “Have a little faith.”
“I kind of lost that a while back.”
“I know. I see that, but don’t be so lost that we can’t pull you back.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” she muttered.
“Anything else on the tracking?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I did track down little bits on the vehicles seen around Wilson’s and Mera’s places. But I never did get sight of them on the cameras around mine and lost them a few blocks away in car parks.”
“What does the time stamp show for each of the three hits?”
Tasha knew he would ask that. “Wilson first, Mera second, me last, with a quick in-and-out assassination and the allotted travel time in between.”
“As expected. Still doesn’t mean the same person was the killer for each, doesn’t mean that they drove the same truck, doesn’t mean that they drove a truck at all,” he reminded her.
“I know. I know,” she said. “I was looking for something definitive that would tie to the three of us.”
“Definitive won’t be part of our world for a while.”
“That’s not fair,” she complained. “How will we know if we got the bad guys or who the bad guys even are if we don’t have proof?”
“We’ll get the proof.” Terk’s tone brooked no disagreement. “No argument on that. But it’s likely to be a slightly different process than we’ve seen before.”
She wasn’t even sure what to say to that and didn’t like the sound of it at all. But she also knew that, right now, their lives were in danger—all of them, the three here, but what about the other team members and … “Do you think Mera is okay?”
“She is right now. She’s moved to another location,” Terk shared.
She looked at him. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Nope, I didn’t.”
“Is that a trust issue?”
“No, not at all,” he stated. “It’s just a simple matter of, if you were caught, you can’t tell anybody what you don’t know.”
“Right,” she said, not exactly wanting to hear talk of getting caught. “I keep forgetting that level of need-to-know and why. I guess I wanted to think that we were a whole lot closer as a family unit now.”
“It’s not about that,” he explained. “But, if you are taken down, we can’t have you holding information that’ll hurt the rest of us.”
“You know that I’d never give it up, right?”
“When they’ve broken both your arms, broken every toe in your body, split open your leg, and used other nasty elements of torture,” he explained in gruesome detail, “you’ll tell them anything to make it stop. Don’t ever misjudge the level of torture that these people would do. They kill without a thought, and they will do so again.”
She stared at him, knowing that the color on her face had probably bleached out. “I forgot you’re always so brutally honest.”
“Brutally honest,” he stated, “that’s what counts.”
She nodded. “I got it.” She swallowed. “So do we know who else is coming with Merk?”
“Maybe nobody.” Terk shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Will we have any contact with them?”
“Not directly, no. We can’t risk it.”
She frowned at that. She’d known the likely answer before she had even asked and even understood it, but she still didn’t like it. Not at all. “We’re really isolated now, aren’t we?”
“We are,” he said cheerfully. “And believe me. That’s a good way to be.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We don’t have to worry about other people stabbing us in the back anymore,” he admitted. “It’s just us. We only have to trust each other, and, therefore, we’re safe.”