The Puppeteer

CHAPTER 14



DANI SNUGGLED BACK INTO BED. Her bed. Well, her bed at her sister's house in Maine, anyway. The flight home had been as brutal as she'd imagined. They had left San Diego at ten in the morning West Coast time and, with stops in Nevada, Texas, and Florida, she'd finally made it into Portland and into bed fifteen hours later, at around four in the morning East Coast time.

She knew Drew would let her sleep in as long as she wanted and, though she knew she wouldn't sleep late, she pulled the covers tighter around her and savored the feeling of her sister's sheets—sheets that had a thread count higher than most countries' GDPs.

She let out a little sigh of pleasure and rolled her head deeper into the soft pillow. She opened her eyes to judge the time of day based on the little bit of light coming in from behind the thick curtains and blinked. And blinked again. Then she let out another a little sigh.

“I'm not even going to begin to wonder why my spidey sense didn't start tingling when you walked in,” she said, rolling onto her side and focusing on Ty, who sat less than four feet away, an ankle propped on his knee, watching her.

“I'm quiet,” he offered.

“Have Drew tell you about how I saved his life once in Nicaragua. It involves a dark night, a tiny but deadly snake, and my spidey sense. Speaking of Drew, he would not be happy to hear about you visiting my bedroom.” But even though she could understand why Drew wouldn't be happy about it, she was hard pressed to care all that much. Waking up to see Ty, well, there were a lot worse ways to wake up.

He smiled at her and she suddenly felt awkward luxuriating in bed. Throwing the covers off, she slid out from under their warmth. Ty snagged her before she could walk away and pulled her onto his lap. Titling her head toward his, he kissed her.

“Before you ask what that was for,” he said. “It's called a welcome home kiss, or an I'm glad you're back, or an I'm happy to see you kiss. Take your pick, any will do.”

Dani stared at him for a long moment. God, she wanted more. She always seemed to be wanting more when it came to Ty. But rather than respond, she rose from his lap and walked to the adjoining bathroom, knowing Ty's eyes followed her.

“Maybe you feel safe with me. Or at least your subconscious does.” Ty's voice carried through the half closed door. “And if it makes you feel any better, which I'm not sure it will, Drew sent me.” Dani turned on the water and didn't answer. She splashed some water on her face, dried it, then grabbed her toothbrush. There were too many implications to the last part of Ty's comment for her to think about before having a cup of coffee.

“We caught an interesting phone call, yesterday,” Ty started talking again. “Savendra placed a call to his uncle from a pay phone in the airport.”

* * *



Ty couldn't help but smile at the picture in front of him. Dani stood in the doorway of the bathroom, hair hanging loose over her bare shoulders, wearing an oversized tank top and a pair of boxers that did nothing to hide her amazing body. She had a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth and look that told him he'd better start talking fast.

“He wants out of Eagle's Wing,” Ty responded. He was about to go on when Dani held her hand up, telling him to wait, and disappeared back into the bathroom. He heard her finish brushing her teeth and then she marched back into the room.

“When did this happen and why didn't anyone tell me?” she demanded, her hands planted on her hips. For a brief moment Ty wondered what she would do if he grabbed her and pulled her back onto his lap. He wouldn't do anything else, just hold her. Probably. Not.

“Don't even think about, it Tyler Fuller.” He looked up to her face, wondering if she could read his thoughts.

“You're transparent when you get that look on your face,” she raised an eyebrow at him. That answered that question. He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Now tell me about Savendra,” she continued as she began to gather up some clothes.

“It's not much. But, one of our guys inside the airport heard him talking to his uncle about Eagle's Wing and he wants out. Thinks they're ‘really f*cking wacko’ were his exact words.”

“How do we know he was talking to his uncle?” she asked, disappearing back into the bathroom, presumably to change. A shame.

“The power of the USA PATRIOT Act. We knew he was going to be there, he's suspected of terrorist activities, we put wires on the phones.”

Dani popped her head out again, one leg shoved into her jeans, and stared at him.

“Christ, how many wires did we use? And who the hell still has pay phones around?” she asked. All law enforcement was knowledgeable about the PATRIOT Act, which was passed days after 9/11. The act expanded the power law enforcement agencies had to fight terrorism both in the US and abroad. Even so, the sheer power it granted to them sometimes came as a shock. Like the ability to place wires on any communications device a person suspected of being involved in terrorist activities might use. This included home phones, work phones, computer communication lines, and, apparently, pay phones in the airport.

“Never mind,” Dani said, shaking her head and disappearing back behind the door. “I don't want to know the answer to that.”

Ty understood Dani's surprise, it still surprised him the stuff they could get away with under the Act. Not that he wasn't an advocate of better tools to fight terrorism. But it sometimes got hard to stomach when the fight included gross violations of innocent people's civil liberties.

“Yeah, so we know he was talking to his uncle. It looks like his uncle set him up with Bradley Taylor, the founder of Eagle's Wing.”

Dani came back out, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and leaned against the door frame, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“Why would a drug dealer want his nephew to get involved with an organization that is, for all intents and purposes, planning a terrorist attack on the US when everyone knows one of the quickest results of those kinds of attacks is a stranglehold on the drug trade?”

“Maybe the uncle doesn't know what Eagle's Wing is about,” Ty suggested.

Dani thought about this for a minute before replying. “Maybe,” she conceded. “But I'm not sure I'd buy that. Militias and foreign drug cartels don't make good bedfellows. It would make sense that the uncle doesn't know what Taylor is up to, but still—” she cut herself off, lost in thought. “What do we know about the relationship between Taylor and the uncle?”

“Marmie's looking into that,” Ty answered, rising to his feet.

“So what did Savendra say?” Dani asked as they moved toward the door.

“Pretty much what I told you. He told his uncle that he didn't like it there. That he wanted to get out but didn't know how. He asked his uncle to talk to Taylor about letting him out.”

“The kid was afraid.” It wasn't a question.

“Yeah, and the uncle wasn't too sympathetic. He told the kid to grow some cajones. In much more colorful language than that.”

“So the uncle wasn't opposed to Savendra leaving the group, he was just irked at being asked to help.” She stopped at the door.

“Sort of the way it sounded, but Marmie's still looking into it,” Ty agreed.

“And where is Adam?” Dani asked.

“He's on his way to Miami now. Sonny is expected to land tomorrow morning. It should give Adam some time to settle in and get to know the locals.”

“I wish I were with him,” Dani said to herself.

“I'm sure you do but, in the meantime, you still get to go swimming.” He walked toward her, stopping a few inches away. Keeping an eye on her expression, he looped his arms around her. He expected her to pull away, to turn and walk away. For all her confidence, Dani was skittish when it came to him. But when she didn't move away, when she leaned into him a tiny bit, his reaction was instantaneous. His arms tightened and her head came to rest below his chin.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, Detective, or are you just happy to see me?” He could feel her smile against his throat.

“When this is all over, I think we should go somewhere where we can swim. Naked.” His voice was gruff.

She sighed. “Sounds nice. But, in the meantime, in the real world, we need to track down our wetsuits.”

* * *



Thankfully, they didn't need the wetsuits quite so early in the morning. Instead, Ty had arranged a little educational session so that they could all learn everything there was to learn, and probably more, about Getz's underwater surveillance system.

“Well, damn, look what the cat dragged in. We haven't had anything that gorgeous set foot in here in months,” Jay commented as Dani and Ty walked into his office.

“He is pretty gorgeous, but you're not really his type,” Dani quipped with a smile.

Jay tossed his head back and laughed. Ty rolled his eyes.

“Dani, Jay. Jay, Dani.” Ty made the introductions once Jay stopped laughing.

“So you're DEA,” Jay commented as he assessed her. She hadn't missed his initial male reaction to her, or his subsequent evaluation that, for a split second, as his eyes swept her body, conveyed doubts about her ability and about how she might have gotten to where she was. But when his eyes met hers in a gaze that didn't waver for a second, Jay nodded in acknowledgement of what she knew he saw there—intelligence, confidence, and the kind of wariness that came with seeing too much of the world and all its nasty bits.

“Well, that's that, then,” Jay said, rising from his seat. “Did you bring the aluminum foil?”

Twenty minutes later, they stood with a couple of guys from Cotter's team in a small conference room in the building where Jay kept his offices. Sitting on the table in front of them were the Hunley and Abram. Both machines were the same make and model as those that surrounded Getz's peninsula.

“This is the Hunley,” Jay said, placing his hand on the larger of the two machines. It was about two feet tall, a foot in diameter, and shaped like R2-D2. “It's the acoustic monitor Getz has around his place. If it picks up a certain kind of noise, an alarm will sound in the house and you can be sure that, within minutes, some of Getz's finest will be both on and in the water.”

“What kinds of noises will trigger it? How does it differentiate between regular ocean sounds and abnormal sounds—sounds worth triggering the alarm?” Dani asked.

“It's a smart system,” Jay began to explain to the group. “It goes through a two-week recognition period where it familiarizes itself with the surrounding sounds. It knows the basics when it's installed but it takes some time to learn the subtleties and the nuances. Once it picks up and stores information on the regular, everyday sounds, it will only trigger an alarm when it hears something else.”

“Like what else?” Cotter asked.

Jay shrugged, “Anything, everything. Excess bubbles that come out of a regulator, the sound of any kind of weapon being loaded, human sounds. Even the sound of oars hitting the water or scraping against a boat would set it off.”

“Yeah, but aluminum foil will, uh, foil the system?” Dani's lips twitched at the bad pun. A couple of the guys laughed. No one could quite believe it.

“Yeah,” Jay smiled back as he tossed each of them some papers detailing the specs of the system. “It's true, we tested it when we found out. But you still need to understand what might set it off, in case you lose your force field.”

“Just how much foil are we talking about here?” Spanky asked. Dani heard a couple of the guys shift behind her. They were used to a lot of things: seeing a lot of things, doing a lot of things—ugly things. But not a single one of them relished the idea of covering themselves in foil.

“Not much,” Jay answered and Dani heard a collective sigh of relief.

“How much?” Ty asked.

“We tested it a couple of days ago and a few bands in strategic places was enough.”

“Will it cause the system to scramble or show any errors?” Dani asked, grabbing a cup of water from the cooler in the corner. The room wasn't meant to hold more than two or three people.

“No, that's the beauty of it. Something about the composition of aluminum foil makes the machine go deaf for a minute or two, only it doesn't know it.”

“So what's the layout of these machines?” Cotter asked.

Jay nodded in acknowledgment and turned toward the back wall of the room. He pulled down a marine map of Getz's peninsula that showed a series of red and blue Xs surrounding the land.

“The blue Xs are the Hunley monitors. The red ones are the Abram monitors, but we'll get to those later. As you can see, the Hunleys are arced around the peninsula about twenty-five feet apart. It creates a basic ‘wall’ around the land.”

“What's the range of detection?” Dani asked.

“On a good day, the range can be up to fifty feet.”

“Getz chose this option,” Jay said, motioning to the map behind him. “It looks cleaner, but from a security perspective, it's suboptimal because, once you get past the single line of machines, you're over the wall, so to speak. And we didn't feel like arguing with him,” he added and cast a glance at two of his employees who were smiling and shaking their heads.

“Not that Getz's men could do anything to us that we couldn't do to them in half the time. We just didn't like the guy. Real prick. We figured if the system failed he'd get what he deserved anyway,” he added.

Dani glanced at Drew and saw a wry expression on his face. He hadn't been too keen on bringing Jay in but Ty had convinced him. Dani could tell by the smile that tugged at Drew's lips, he was beginning to like the guy.

“Any more questions on the Hunley?” Jay asked. They shook their heads. “We've got it set up in a bay not far from here so we'll take some test runs this afternoon, but we need to go over the Abram system next.” A couple of the guys took the opportunity to grab water as Jay moved toward the second machine sitting on the square table. Dani opted for opening a window. They'd gotten spoiled at her sister's place with all that space.

“It looks like something from the evil empire,” Spanky commented as they all returned to the table. The Abram machine was smaller, shaped like a basketball. Black in color, it had an ominous look to it.

“It not only looks like something from the evil empire, it acts like it, too,” Jay said.

“Meaning?” Dani prompted.

“This is one unforgiving bitch of a system,” Jay shook his head, and stared at the machine, as if trying to puzzle out its motives. “We've got people working on it, working on finding its weaknesses. We haven't found much but we do have two. And they're two substantial weaknesses.

“So, here is how it works,” Jay started, moving in front of the machine and pointing to a small black window. “This machine is custom-programmed for use in a specific area. In other words, if you want to use it in Florida, it would be programmed to recognize sharks because they've got them there and you wouldn't want the system going off every time a shark swam by. And, knowing what we know about the area, we can give an educated guess as to what Getz's systems is programmed to recognize. So here's what we think,” he moved back toward the marine map with the Xs as he spoke. “Given where we are, where Getz's house is, we're going to recommend that you assume anything over three feet long or two feet wide will be recognized.”

“That's not very big and counts all of us out,” Dani pointed out.

“Yeah,” Jay agreed, “That's the bitch of the system,” he moved back to the machine. “As I said, it has two big flaws, and we're going to need to count on those. See these?” he asked, pointing to a series of little black windows. “These are like infrared beams, like the kind you'd see in museum. And, like in a museum, unless you break the beam, the monitor isn't going to pick you up.”

“How many are there on each machine?” Drew asked.

“On a standard machine there are eighteen. We didn't install them, but the guy who did installed the standard version. Which brings up a good point, we're working on the assumption he hasn't altered either machine. Given that Getz used two different companies to install the systems, it's possible he used a third to customize them. I don't think it's likely, there aren't many of us who can do this kind of work, but it bears mentioning. But, back to the Abram, the beams can pick up movement up to fifteen feet away.”

“Okay, so we have some leeway in how we approach the monitors and I'm assuming we're going to run those trials today as well, so what's the second weakness?” Dani inquired.

Jay smiled. “The machines are completely unreliable.” He paused for dramatic effect. Next to her, Ty sighed.

“How unreliable?” he asked.

“If they bump into anything they'll shut off. If a big storm comes and shakes them around, they'll shut off. If it gets too warm or too cold, they'll shut off. And when they shut off they don't raise an alarm. Don't get me wrong, if they shut off, whoever is monitoring the system at the house will know the machine is off, but it won't raise an alarm.”

“And how often does this happen?” Dani asked.

“In the three hours we tested four machines, all of them shut off at least once for a time period of at least ten minutes.”

“Hell of a system,” Dani said. “Do they come back on automatically or do you have to reset them?”

“They come back on automatically in most cases, once the system readjusts or recalibrates, but we did have to manually reset one of the machines,” Jay answered, pacing in the front of the room.

“So, if we can get a couple of the machines to shut off at strategic times, given the number of times something similar has, presumably, happened in the past, it's unlikely the guards are going to come running,” Ty commented.

“One can hope,” Jay gave them all a satisfied, if somewhat feral smile. “The machines have created their own ‘cry wolf’ situation that we can take advantage of. And,” Jay added, moving back to the map, “looking at the placement of each system, I don't think it will be difficult to arrange for a machine or two to accidentally need to recalibrate.”

* * *



“Christ, I'm cold,” Dani swore to herself as she peeled the wetsuit off her body. Or at least she thought she was speaking to herself.

“It's because you have no body fat.” Ty stood next to her, already sans suit. Reaching out a hand, he helped her step out of her own.

“Funny, I thought it was because the water is about sixty degrees,” she shot back. She hated being cold. She'd soldier through, but she'd never like it.

Ty laughed at her disgruntlement. “We'll get dry suits next time. We should have had them this time.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Dani grumbled.

“Dani, are you grumbling about the cold again?” Spanky came up behind her and collected her suit. Unlike her, Spanky was a polar bear, the colder the better.

“Not me,” she gave him a toothy smile. “I'm being sweet as a peach.”

Her colleague snorted in response. “Remember that time in—”

Dani cut him a look and he stopped mid-sentence.

“Right, I'll go wash these up and get you a dry suit for tomorrow.” Spanky turned and walked away.

“That time when, what?” Ty asked with an amused look. He handed her a towel and a sweatshirt.

“It wasn't one of my better moments, I don't feel like reliving it right now,” she answered, drying her hair. She pulled the sweatshirt over her shoulders and then stripped the top of her bathing suit down underneath it. The air outside was warm but she was still chilled from the water where they'd been training for the past two hours and needed the extra warmth of the sweatshirt. When it fell to mid-thigh, she glanced down and realized it was Ty's. She looked up at him. He shrugged.

“You looked like you needed it more than I did,” he answered. “So, what does Dani Williamson look like when she's not having one of her better moments?”

Dani glanced around for her sweatpants before finding them under a pile of towels. They were a little damp, but better than nothing. She slipped out of her bathing suit altogether, safe in the coverage provided by Ty's sweatshirt, and pulled on her pants. It was a delay technique. She'd cut Spanky off not because he was about to reveal something about her, but because he was about to talk about a nasty operation they'd been on together in the Arctic Circle. Not a place your average DEA agent went. And Dani had no doubt Ty would pick up on that fact.

“Let's just say I get mean and could out-swear even the nastiest sailor.” Dani remembered the operation. They had sat in sub-zero temperatures for ten days before the men they'd been waiting for decided to show up. She had been frozen for every minute of every one of those long days. It'd made her cranky and tired, and being tired had made her even crankier. She'd lost a lot of weight, which had made her body feel fatigued, which, shockingly, had made her even more cranky. But when the time had come, she'd single-handedly taken out nine of the ten heavily-armed men. “Of course, I also shoot really well when I'm cranky, so maybe being cold has its perks.”

* * *



Ty walked into the big house and, for once, it was quiet. Marmie was at her computer, but she was reading. A book. Not a report or a computer printout. He didn't know where everyone else was, but it was almost disquieting.

“Hi Marmie,” Ty spoke as he approached her. “It's quiet here this afternoon. Where is everyone?”

Marmie smiled and put her book down. Ty glanced at the title but couldn't make it out since it looked to be written in some sort of script.

“Cotter is out with his men and Jay, doing some more training. Adam's in Miami, the rest of my team is downstairs. Dani is up in her room reviewing some files and Drew is in the library,” she recited with her usual friendly but perfunctory manner.

“And Spanky?”

Marmie shrugged but didn't answer. There was no way Marmie didn't know where he was, she just wasn't going to say.

“Dani might be in a good mood by now if you want to go check on what she's up to,” Marmie suggested with surprising casualness.

“Any reason she was in a bad mood?” he asked, mulling over Marmie's curious change of approach toward him. He liked the older woman, but he'd always sensed a sort of protectiveness in her when it came to Dani. She sort of circled him like a mother lion trying to figure out if he was a threat to her cub.

“The cold. She hates it. She took a two-hour hot shower when they all got back. She claimed she was feeling human again a little bit ago when she came down for some coffee.”

The information dump on Dani in those few sentences was more than he'd ever gotten from Marmie in all their previous interactions. Maybe she'd decided he wasn't a threat—at least not the kind she was looking out for. Dani, on the other hand, well, there was no doubt that she still saw him as a threat. But he'd wear her down.

But not right this minute. Right now he had something to discuss with Drew.

He excused himself from Marmie and made his way through the cavernous house toward the library, smiling all the way. He couldn't help it, something about the house always amused him. It was such a lavish place, filled with beautiful expensive things. But not filled the way a designer would fill a house. It was chock-full of stuff that looked like it was purchased merely because the purchaser liked it. There was no rhyme or reason, no matching pieces, no theme rooms, no continuous style. It was stuff that, though mismatched, seemed to go together. Probably because the person buying it, and Ty assumed it was Dani's sister Sam, had a strong personality and it came through in the things she surrounded herself with. Dani might think she and her sister weren't alike, but he suspected they were more alike than Dani would ever imagine.

“Come in,” Drew called from behind the closed library door after Ty knocked. He walked in and closed the door behind him. If Drew was surprised to see him, he didn't show it. He gestured to a leather wingback chair and Ty took a seat—debating how to bring up the subject he wanted to address.

“It didn't go well this morning,” Ty spoke, deciding on the abrupt, straightforward approach. Drew raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything, so Ty continued. “You know what I'm talking about. Your team is good and they dive better than ninety-five percent of the divers I know. I bet most have even trained underwater. But even so, they succeeded in getting past both machines only nine out of ten times.” And the thought of Dani being in the water that one time it didn't work was the single thought driving this conversation.

“It was their first time out. They're still out there,” Drew pointed out. Based on what Marmie had said, Ty figured Cotter and some of his team were still in the water, trying to rectify the numbers.

“And how are they doing?” Ty asked, knowing Drew would be receiving dive-by-dive reports—that he wouldn't wait for an end of the day recap. And, judging by the look on Drew's face, Ty guessed they weren't doing much better than this morning.

“Shit, Drew,” Ty shook his head, forgetting for a minute he was talking to the team director. “It's not good enough and you know it,” he looked the other man in the eye and held his gaze.

Drew's blue eyes studied him, unwavering for a long moment. His mind was sharp and intense, in stark contrast to his calm demeanor. Drew was taking his measure. Ty wasn't sure what Drew was looking for or if, when he looked away, he did so because he'd found it. But whatever was going on in Drew's mind didn't matter a bit to Ty—all he cared about was making sure the team director had the best people to do the job. He could never eliminate the risk to Dani, but he sure as hell would do whatever it took to reduce it.

Drew sighed and swung his eyes back to Ty. “What do you suggest?”

Ty looked at Drew, “I have a couple of friends from my SEAL days, bring them in. They can shut the machines down long enough to get the rest of the team through and they'll do it every time.”

“They're military,” Drew pointed out. Technically, US military wasn't supposed to use armed force on the US civilian population. Ty almost laughed—technically the CIA wasn't supposed to be operating against US citizens either. That Drew brought this up was amusing.

“They won't fire any weapons,” Ty offered, knowing no SEAL would willing go into an operation without weapons. They wouldn't be obvious, they might not even fire them, but they'd carry them. “But, if you're worried about protocol, one of our other teammates, Rani Khalid, formed a small securities company, Bright Line Security, when he retired. They could take a leave of absence and sign on with Rani. They'd be civilian.” The setup wasn't quite that clean, but it would be clean enough to get away with.

“Bright Line Security,” Drew cocked a brow. “Sounds like a day care center,” he added.

“It does, but it's not. Rani picked the name as a joke since bright lines were hard to come by in our line of work.”

“I know a little something about that myself,” Drew replied. Ty studied the man and, for the first time, noticed that Drew looked his age. He wasn't old at thirty-eight, but if he'd entered the CIA right out of college, he'd been doing it for over fifteen years, and Ty knew how much gray a person could see in fifteen years.

“I suspect you do,” Ty answered.

“And why would these friends want to do this?” Drew asked, bringing the conversation back on track.

“Because I'll ask them to,” Ty responded. Drew's eyes never wavered from his and so Ty opted to continue. “And because they took a liking to Dani when they met her in San Diego. They'd be upset if anything happened to her.”

“And you? Would you be upset?”

“Yes.”

“Yes? That's all you're going to say?” Drew looked at him with something akin to amusement.

“What is it you want to know, Drew? That I care about Dani?” Ty countered and then continued when Drew remained silent. “You already know I care about her. And since you keep sending me to her room and turning a blind eye, along with the rest of the team, to what is obviously not a by-the-book working relationship, I'd wager you approve. Even if you can't outwardly support it.” Ty studied Drew's expression. The director's jaw ticked and his eyes were carefully blank. He sensed that Drew had a lot to say on the matter, but the time and place wouldn't allow him to either confirm or deny Ty's assertion. So Ty took the opportunity to say what he wanted.

“So, yes, I do care about her. Very much. But the rest is between me and Dani. And if you're worried about me going off the deep end if something happens to her, don't be. I'm not going to lose it if something happens to her, but I sure as hell am not going to sit around and do nothing when I know how to reduce some of the risk both she, and the rest of your team, face.” Ty wasn't convinced he was telling the truth about not going off the deep end, but he was saying what needed to be said.

“You've changed her,” Drew said.

Ty shook his head. “Whatever she's doing differently is her choice. Maybe it's because of me, I'd like to think I might be affecting her in a good way, or maybe it's this case.”

“Or maybe it's both. And as for being in a good way, well, we'll see. As her friend, I'd say yes, no doubt. As her boss, the jury is still out.”

Ty was surprised that Drew allowed himself to comment on the matter, and he knew he should leave it at that. But he couldn't. He couldn't let Drew think Dani might let him down. “You should have more faith in her, Carmichael. Even if she's changing, or probably more to the point, letting herself change, she's not going to screw up her job. It's too much a part of who she is.”

Drew raised an eyebrow in a ‘we'll see’ gesture and turned away, ending any more talk of Dani.

“We don't know when this thing with Getz is going to go down, or even if it is going to happen here. It could be a big waste of your friends' time,” Drew said, returning to the earlier topic.

“Fawkes hasn't taken leave in a couple of years, believe me, he won't mind coming to the house to hang around for a few weeks. If you don't want him here, he can stay at my place. As for Roddy, he and his wife just had a baby and her family is from a few miles south of here. He also has a lot of leave and his wife is already excited about spending some time with her parents.”

“You've already talked to them.” It wasn't a question. And Drew wasn't happy about it.

“They know enough about what's going on from when Dani was in town—when you authorized their assistance,” Ty pointed out. Drew had approved using Fawkes and Roddy as backup, so to speak, for Dani. “They know I'd like them to come and work on the team but not what we'd need them to do. I've run the logistics by them. If you agree and bring them on, it's your show, it's your job to tell them what you want them to know.”

Drew was silent again for a long while. He rose, ending the conversation. “I'll think about it,” he said.

It wasn't what Ty wanted to hear but it was better than a flat ‘no’ so he nodded in acknowledgement and left without another word.

* * *



Ty closed the door behind him and Drew wondered if he was heading to Dani's room. For the first time in possibly forever, he liked one of the guys Dani was seeing.

Except protocol dictated that they not technically ‘see’ one another.

Ty was a good man, and strong enough to handle Dani, which was saying a lot. But Drew also saw the little things Ty did for Dani, like giving her his sweatshirt earlier in the day and sending her restaurant recommendations when she was in San Diego. Things that made Drew understand that, while Ty recognized how strong and capable Dani was, she was still someone he wanted to take care of, still someone who could use a little TLC every now and then. And he did it without making a big deal out of it. Maybe that was why she seemed to accept his attentions—the most surprising development to Drew's way of thinking. It was good for Dani, but it meant additional stress for Drew as he tried to separate what he wanted for her as a friend and what he needed from her as an agent.

And he hadn't been lying when he told Ty that Dani was changing. She'd been the same woman for years—focused, determined, one of the smartest people he knew. And she hadn't changed in those respects. But there was something more to her now, an openness that wasn't there before. A willingness to look at the possibilities. And, as her friend, he did think this was a good thing. It could be a good thing as an agent, too. But because she was changing in new and different ways, and because it was happening in the middle of a mission, Drew didn't know how much he needed to account for the differences between the Dani he'd always known and one he saw her becoming.

Yes, there was no doubt it was causing him additional stress. But if anyone deserved a chance at happiness, Dani did. And so did Ty for that matter. Now all Drew had to do was make sure they got it.