Page 63 of Nothing to Fear

Sanborn’s divorce had been finalized shortly after he stood up the Gray Box. His wife of twenty-three years closed that chapter on his life, putting an end to the dinner parties and barbecues they used to hold for his team at their lavish home when he was with the Agency.

Now, he preferred to keep a little distance, except for his second-in-command, Knox, who already knew him far too well and was also deployed. Sanborn guided and protected all his people, would sacrifice for them if necessary, but he couldn’t let them in as he once had. Still, every now and again, he needed to bring them together in a social setting. Remind them that they were more than coworkers, tight as family, and the team would be stronger for it. And when he held one of his gatherings, he did it at Rocky’s.

Today, however, he’d brought them here for a darker reason.

“Is everyone clean?” he asked.

Heads nodded around the table.

Cell phones should’ve been turned off in the parking lot of the Gray Box, so it’d show as their last known location. Removing the battery prevented them from being tracked. Cutting the power supply was the only way to temporarily disable a roving bug or any other potential malware on their phones capable of spoofing an authentic shutdown while keeping the phone very much on, traceable, and vulnerable to eavesdropping. Then they were to run a surveillance detection route to the bar, ensuring they weren’t followed.

Sanborn sat at the head of the table. “The evidence on Willow Harper is convenient and tidy. It reeks. I don’t believe she’s guilty.” He’d plucked that brilliant ingenue as an NSA newbie, and in all the time he’d known her, she’d never been one who’d prevaricate. “I suspect neither does Reaper. If anyone here isn’t on the same page, you should leave now.”

Heads bobbed in agreement and butts stayed planted.

“Has Reaper contacted anyone?” Sanborn asked the group but stared at Maddox.

If Reaper had reached out to anyone, it would’ve been her. The two were close. Very close. Sanborn had once worried something romantic might’ve started between them after Gideon’s wife died and the grieving widower started sleeping at Maddox’s place. Office hookups that went badly inevitably spelled trouble, as he’d learned from experience.

But office romances that took a wrong turn careened into disasters.

Fortunately, Reaper had only crashed at her place for a few weeks. Eventually, he had started making his rounds at Rocky’s, and Maddox hadn’t seemed to care.

Maddox sat silent, holding Sanborn’s gaze. The deliberation in her eyes was subtle, but the fact that it was there at all stuck in his craw.

“He called me,” she said finally.

“I’m happy to see you’re being forthright and no longer consider me a possible suspect.”

“Whoever the leak is wants Harper dead. If you were the mole, she already would be.”

“Thank you.” Maddox didn’t mean it as a compliment, but he’d take it as such.

“Gideon thinks her brakes were sabotaged,” she said. “Forensics is examining her car.”

Sanborn shrugged. “Even if her brakes were tampered with, it doesn’t prove anything. There’s damning circumstantial evidence against her. What’s Reaper’s plan?”

“Follow the money.”

“Good.” It had to be done with boots on the ground, since the bank couldn’t be hacked into from the outside.

“He’s too smart to fly,” Alistair said, “but going by boat will be dicey.”

“Why?” Sanborn asked.

Alistair took a long pull on his tap beer. “The tropical storm in the Atlantic was upgraded to a hurricane. It’s been erratic, fast-moving, and was supposed to swing up the Gulf. But it just turned toward the Eastern Seaboard, putting itself smack-dab in their path.”

Wonderful. Reaper better have been resourceful enough to get more than a gosh-darned dinghy, or those two were going to be fish food. “Is there a protective detail on Willow’s father?”

“You bet,” said Reece. “Local law enforcement’s there around the clock. In the first 911 call that came in about the fire, someone mentioned that they saw Willow arguing with her father and overheard her threaten to kill him. Our surveillance of the house was jammed at the time the fire was set.”

This tumbleweed kept rolling and growing uglier by the minute. “Get a copy of the call. Whoever made it is our mole.”

“Problem,” Castle said. “Willow is our best hacker and the only one in that department we can trust.”

“We have another option.” Ares looked around the table like he was reluctant to share it.

From the corner of his eye, Sanborn glimpsed Castle shake his head.