Page 75 of Unraveling Connections

Pete grins, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Alright, I will catch up with you guys in a minute then. This call shouldn’t take very long; they are pretty much stuck at the moment,” I tell them.

“We will try and save you some food,” Riot grins.

I flip him off as I grab my coffee and head for my office, it’s not technically just mine but I am the only one that uses it, and everyone pretty much just calls it mine, so I have claimed it now.

Settling in my chair, I open my laptop and pull up the video feed, clicking on the button and waiting for Elijah to come on. There is no point in putting it on the big TV screen here when it is only me who is on the call with them. I'm even more glad that I haven’t done that when Elijah finally makes the call.

“What happened?” I demand, seeing the bruised faces of Elijah and his team in front of me.

“We ran into a slight issue,” Callan smirks, stating the obvious, and then adding, “we won.”

My shoulders relax slightly at his usual joking, but I still need to know what has happened, “Of course you did. An issue with the case, or an unrelated issue?”

“With the case,” Elijah replies, “one of his associates recognized us when we went to the bar for some food; he thought he and some of his people would deal with the issue, as he put it. We took care of him and all of the people he had with him. They are now in custody.”

“They were wanted in several states, so the arrest is a good one and one that will stick, just not the arrest that we wanted,” Marty adds.

“They have been extensively questioned, and as far as we can tell, he didn’t tell anyone else that we were watching our target. We are just waiting to hear back about any information found on their devices; as soon as that comes back clear, then we can head back out to carry on the observations,” Noel explains.

“That’s great. Are you all okay? Nothing serious?” I ask.

They all shake their heads, and Callan says, “We are all fine. I actually enjoyed it, we have done so much watching and evidence gathering without being able to do anything that I needed the fight.”

“Yeah, me too,” Elijah agrees.

“Are you getting any closer to being able to extract the children and then bring him in?” I ask.

Elijah sighs, and I can see how much it is wearing on him. This case has been a fucking difficult one, and he and the team are going to need some decent time off after this for their mental health; I grab a pen and make a quick note to clear their schedule and rearrange a couple of things pushing any case a bit further away. We always have at least a week off between jobs, but I think that they are going to need more.

“We are getting closer, thank fuck, but there are so many things that we need to put in place still. It is an incredibly delicate situation. We need to get them out as safely as possible, but if we don’t time it perfectly, then he will just kill them because he is that twisted.” Elijah explains.

I nod, “I understand. Have you got some backup there now? Do you need us to come up?”

“We have got backup on the way, and I am going to be coordinating with the teams in order to figure out the best way to approach it; we are hoping to have everything resolved by the end of next week, but there is no guarantee. Nothing has gone according to plan so far,” Elijah replies.

“Okay, got it. If you need us let us know, I know that Lucien, Creed and the others said that they were out but I think they are already struggling and Lyric’s already got Quinn and Ezra to go with Ever, Cash and Jensen to stake out the shipping yard, so I’m sure we can call them in if we need to as well.”

They all start laughing. Callan grins, “I knew Ezra wasn’t going to last.”

“Yeah, I don’t think any of us are too surprised about that,” I reply.

“We should be fine. Mr R is sending some teams with guys that we’ve worked well with before, so they know how we work, and we know that they are actually going to listen and not try to take over or waste time arguing with me that they know better because they’ve been agents longer than we have,” Elijah adds.

I sigh, “Yeah, I’m glad he has found you teams that work well with you. To be fair that reaction has been happening far less since the whole poisoning inside job thing.”

“Yeah, it has, but it is starting to pick back up again,” Noel says.

“It is fucking ridiculous and childish, I would expect it if we were still in high school, but we aren’t. We are grown-ass adults.” Callen comments, rolling his eyes.

“Let me know if anything happens and I’ll have a word with Mr R,” I offer.

Elijah shrugs, “It’s not a massive problem, it's more annoying than anything, if it ever becomes something that we can’t handle without getting really violent, I’ll let you know.”

I smirk, “Maybe let me know after you’ve gotten a little bit violent.”

“Done,” Callan replies immediately before anyone can argue.

---