Page 8 of Lost Hope

“Your protocol doesn’t account for our clearance level.” Quinn’s voice was calm and reasonable and not-to-be-disobeyed. “Or the nature of our equipment. You can call Commander Phillips if you want verification.”

Benson rubbed his tired eyes. “Look, it’s almost two-thirty. They’re cooperating. Let’s just get to base and sort it out there.”

Maya didn’t like it, but Quinn was right—they had no grounds to force the issue. These men were coming in voluntarily, and Phillips had made it clear this needed to be handled delicately.

“Fine,” she said. “But we go straight to base. No stops, no delays.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Quinn’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. He looked past her, scanning the street with too much intensity for a simple drive to headquarters.

Benson hopped into the driver’s seat and fired up the SUV, waving as he backed out of the parking spot. Maya watched Quinn and Reinhardt drive off, eerily calm in the front seat of their rental.

While the vehicles disappeared around the corner, she pulled up Quinn’s file on her phone. Former Navy SEAL. Multiple commendations. Then general discharge for killing a civilian. Just him. No one else on his squad charged.

Like the crime scene, it didn’t add up.

A dark sedan caught her attention—parked just at the edge of her vision. She shook her head. The job was making her paranoid.

Still, no need to stand outside in the dark. She slipped inside her vehicle, pulling up the terminal logs from base security while she waited for the crime scene team to finish. Might as well study the small details while she had a second.

The files loaded. And her heart stopped. In the hours before his death, Marcus Sullivan had accessed multiple personnel files. Including hers. And Benson’s.

She hit speed dial. Straight to voicemail.

“Come on, Tom. Pick up.”

She fired up the engine and tried again.

No answer.

Through her windshield, she caught the crime techs’ shadows pass back and forth under the harsh portable lights they set up in the apartment.

She tapped the steering wheel, thinking hard. Two ex-SEALs who just happened to find their friend’s body. A sanitized scene that screamed professional hit. And now her partner, alone with them, heading toward the base.

According to her father, the difference between paranoid and prepared was about two minutes.

She threw the car into Drive.

5

CHOOSING SIDES

Maya’s handhovered over her phone as she cruised the dark streets, her father’s voice echoing in her head:Trust your gut, baby girl.

Exactly why she’d left LAPD. Lawrence Chen’s shoot-from-the-hip style might have made him a legend, but it had left a trail of chaos in his wake.

And not only for the teenage daughter he’d raised after her mother quietly left them both. Chen, as the entire LAPD called him, had a legendary arrest record. And a disciplinary file only a few pages shorter.

She’d spent her whole career doing things by the book just to prove she wasn’t him.

But something about Commander Phillips’s tone when he’d called them out here nagged at her.Handle this quietly, Agent Chen.

Quietly. She’d heard that enough times in LA to know what it really meant: Someone high up wanted this contained. Dad would already be breaking every rule in the book, charging in without backup. That’s what had gotten his first partner killed.

Not a great plan.

Benson should have reached the Thirty-second Street Naval Station by now—it was a straight shot down Harbor Drive. She tried his cell again. Straight to voicemail. The digital clock on her dash read 2:47 a.m. Half an hour since they’d separated. Time enough to process Quinn and Reinhardt through the main gate, start the paperwork ...

Time enough for a lot of other things too.

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