Page 72 of Surge

“How?” Delaney asked.

“I led us to empty LD3s.” He shook his head. “I had Chapel’s backing, but I doubt that will ever happen again.”

“But you’re team leader for a reason—and you’re a good one.”

That strange warmth simmered, but he squelched it, his own anger too fresh in his mind. Anger at the team, at everyone else. Now at himself. He rubbed his arm as memories of Dad’s rage flooded in.

Her voice was just loud enough to hear. “God corrects mistakes. No more, no less.”

“I royally reamed Caldwell after the fight on the combi plane.” Garrett slumped against the railing of the deck. “Then he proved that he didn’t even know the building manager was Sachaai and that no Sachaai were linked to the plane’s passengers. He couldn’t have known about the hidden men waiting to attack us.”

He paced out to the fence and leaned against it with both hands. He was half tempted to jump it and take a long run. “I should’ve left picture-taking to Zim. Nearly unreadable pictures of the manifest were all I got. I should’ve waited for Caldwell to get accurate intel instead of racing the team into the container yard. An unnecessary risk. An unnecessary waste of time.”

He stopped and leaned against the fence again. “And I hammered you.”

“That wasn’t a hammer. And your team is still with you.” She laid her hand on his arm, where she had last night. “You’re not your dad.”

“If I don’t get control, this team will fall apart. We will fail the mission. Americans will die. That will be on me.”

“Leadership is not control.”

Oh, her head tilt.

“My dad taught me that, and he was right. But some wise guy named Heath showed it to me. You are not leading a dog if you’re yanking him around on a lead.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Surge, come!”

The Malinois sniffed along the fence and shot toward her.

“Crawl!”

Surge dropped to the ground and squirmed the rest of the way.

Ugh. Control again. Garrett knew better.

Where was Lieutenant Commander Taylor? He needed his Navy boss to slap him on the back of his head. Hard. Order him to do push-ups. Five hundred of them.

He deserved it.

Surge and Delaney trusted each other.

Instead of controlling his team, he had to work with and trust each of them. They needed everyone’s skills, working together. That was the only way they could stop Sachaai’s chemical attack.

He bowed his head.Forgive me, God.

He lifted his head and couldn’t help but smile to see Delaney on her knees ruffling Surge’s neck fur. “We call that combat crawl.”

“Makes sense.” She gave him a smile, but then her face turned dead serious. “Boss, I’m sorry I intervened between you and Caldwell last night.”

He frowned. “It could’ve ended badly. So you deserve a thank-you.”

Her lips flattened. “Well, I have to tell you, something is off with Caldwell.”

Feeling a bit of whiplash hearing that, Garrett struggled to know how to respond. Hadn’t he just asked God to forgive him? But for Delaney to say that . . . he wanted to kick open the safe-house door and take down Caldwell. Instead, he leaned against the fence with his hip. “Why do you say that?”

She held out a strange piece of translucent purple plastic.

He took it and turned it around, trying to get a bead on it. Nothing. “What is it?”

“No clue. But Surge straight-out hit on it in Caldwell’s duffel. I’m 99.9 percent sure this is the plastic he was fidgeting with in Singapore. I thought it was trash, but he stuck it in his duffel.” She puffed out her cheeks and blew out the air. She lifted her palms up with a shrug. “Surge was obsessed with his duffel again yesterday. I thought it was his weird, uh, you know . . . clothing thing.” She blushed, shook her head. “But today he hit on this. So I brought it straight to you.”

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