Rome gave him a flat look. “I bet that she’d answer a call when she was given explicit orders not to.”
“A technicality.”
Rome twitched his fingers, waiting for Rivers to hand over the twenty bucks he owed him. He stared at Rivers until he let out a dramatic sigh and reached for his wallet.
He shelled out the first ten. “This is robbery.”
“This is what happens when you lose a bet.”
Jolie stepped around Monk and held up the phone. “Stina is basically my sister!”
Monk’s jaw flexed as he clearly fought the urge to tell them all to shut up, but Rivers just ignored him and handed over another ten. With a nod of thanks, Rome pocketed both.
Cannon popped two more aspirin, gaze settled on the woman. “Jolie, tell us what happened.”
The command was like hitting a switch, and Rome felt it. One second they were joking about Jolie’s chronic inability to follow orders. The next, every operator in the room was focused on her.
She held up her phone again. “Stina received a message.”
Monk’s expression hardened. “What kind of message?” He reached for her phone and she let him take it.
He stared at the screen for three beats. Every trace of humor drained from his face.
Rome’s muscles bunched as his body prepared to leap at a single command.
Wordlessly, Monk crossed the room and handed the phone to Cannon. He studied the screen, and the way his eyes narrowed spilled ice into Rome’s veins.
Cannon passed their tech guru the phone. “O, put this on the big screen.”
O Carino might not have revealed his real name, even to his brothers on Sierra, but he knew tech like it was his native language. The image popped up a second later, and the air was sucked out of the war room.
A photograph of Jolie and Stina standing together, wearing the uniform of the restaurant where they both waitressed.
Red crosshairs were drawn over both of their faces.
Nobody was smiling anymore.
The money in Rome’s pocket suddenly weighed as much as bad intel received five minutes before an operation.
“Who sent it?” Cannon asked Jolie.
“She said it was an unknown number.” Her voice wavered, and she scraped her fingers through her wavy brown hair.
“Any message attached?”
She shook her head.
“O. Any demands attached to the message?”
O hunched over the screen, a deep crease between his brows. “Negative.”
A tremor ran through Jolie, and Monk slipped an arm around her. He guided her to a vacant seat and anchored himself at her back, hands on her shoulders and his body a human shield. As if worried a threat could breach their hidden base.
“Nothing but the picture,” O said, finger swiping over the image. He enlarged the image on the wall monitor until only their faces remained. Jolie and Stina smiled back at them from the screen through the scope marks.
“Call the agent watching Stina,” Cannon barked.
Henry Younger, the oldest operator on their team, grabbed the phone and placed the call through the secure line.