Page 85 of Don't Let Go

“My eyes hurt,” I told them in a nasally voice that held all the evidence of my weeping.

“No doubt.” McQuade settled a hand on my thigh. The contact helped to ground me. “You did good, Sugar Bear. Clean groupings on both men.”

Locke sighed. “I don’t thinkthatis going to help.”

“It doesn’t matter if it helps right now,” McQuade countered easily. “It matters that she knows she took care of herself. Shesavedherself. She did it damn well.”

I sniffed a laugh, then reached up to pull the damp cloth down so I could peer at him. Even squinting hurt. “You mean that… Don’t you?”

Why I had to verify, I didn’t know. But I needed to hear him say it. McQuade didn’t sugar coatanything. Whether he was calling me Sugar Bear or not, whether he was grousing on the phone or buried inside of me, he was one of the most brutally honest people I’d ever known.

“Fuck yeah, I mean it. You didn’t even use the full clip, which…” He mimed a chef’s kiss with his fingers before returning his hand to my thigh. “Damn good job.”

Somehow, thathelped.

Still… “We’re not done.”

“No.” Now there was a measure of apology in his voice. “We need to move. I’ve dealt with the bodies and the blood. We’re better off getting back out on the highway and away from here before they send someone to look for them.”

I used the damp cloth to press against my eyes as I sat up. Locke helped balance me and then eased me to sitting next to him. It was a lot chillier even with that small distance between us.

Holding the damp cloth to my face, I worked on taking a little self-inventory. The tears had stopped—mostly. The fog of panic wasn’t clouding my brain anymore. Right…

I needed to focus.

“Did they have any identification on them?” I took the time to wipe my face. The tear tracks could at least be erased, even if I stayed blotchy.

“Nothing I found useful. A couple of plain white security cards with no numbers, addresses, or names. Likely access to something but who knows. Car appears to be stolen, so nothing in there. They are dressed in suits—look like government issue except…”

I dragged the damp cloth down to meet his measured gaze where he knelt in front of me. “Except?”

“Military issued boots. The suits don’t fit them well.”

“Wet work operatives made to look like FBI or another alphabet agency.” That made a kind of sadistic sense.

“That would be my guess. Their fingerprints were burned off. I don’t have time to do dental impressions but I got some DNA.”

“Pictures, too?”

“Yes, but I’d rather you didn’t look at those until more of the shock wears off.” The guarded suggestion wasn’t a bad one.

“I can do that. We need to move right now, more than we need to dig.” Bit by bit, I was clawing my way back. “Remy still on Stone and the others?”

“Yes,” Locke answered. “We’ve got him on comms still.”

Right… “Okay, I need my headset and some water. Then I’ll get on this.”

“You can take a beat,” McQuade said. “We need to get on the road and Remy is waiting for your word before he acts.”

Before he puts a bullet in all three of the targets. “That’s tempting,” I admitted. “But I’d never know for sure without verification.”

The look McQuade and Locke shared said they’d already guessed that. Honestly, that decided me even more.

“Right. We need to drive to Leesburg, Virginia.”

“Leesburg?” McQuade verified. At my nod, he continued, “For?”

“We need to identify all the players. We need to know what my former boss, Stone, and the ASIS agent have in common. To do that, we need to get an item from Leesburg and then I can get the data from the dark web.”

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