Page 7 of Black Bay Enforcer
“Miss Knox?”
He probably already knew, so why lie? “They avoid me, sir.” A touch of hurt bled into her voice and she knew the general heard it.
“And you’re surprised by this?”
She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, probably looking like a beached fish. But, no, she wasn’t surprised, not after she’d made such a horrific blunder on her first day here. Why would anyone want to approach her if she might start screaming again?
“May I be blunt, Miss Knox?”
She’d kind of rather he didn’t, but she figured he was going to say what was on his mind regardless. “Of course, sir.”
“You’re here to do a job, not make friends.”
Katherine swallowed hard and was horrified to feel the prickle of tears behind her eyes. Right. He was right. “Yes, sir.”
General Davies opened the door for her, dismissing her. With a strained smile, she left. Walking out of the building, she headed back to the Resurrection hub, the sun no longer feeling as warm on her skin.
Sitting back down in his chair, the general picked up a pen, fiddling with it thoughtfully before he punched the intercom on his phone. When his assistant answered, he said, “Call the infirmary and leave a message for Paige to come see me in my office when she has some time.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was his duty to look into what Miss Knox had told him.
The woman had been as nervous as a long-tailed cat on a porch full of rockers. He’d half-hoped she’d come to see him to confess she’d somehow been sending secret messages out. It would have made his life a hell of a lot easier, especially after the report he’d gotten from Kong on the Venezuela op. No such luck.
He’d called a meeting soon after the team had touched base. Most of the talking points had been about Cleary potentially supplying the enemy and possibly attempting to start a war, but Katherine Knox, as the man’s daughter had come up as well.
Kong suspected she might be feeding her father intel, but if she was, no one knew how. All of the woman’s communications had been monitored since day one, and he was copied on everything she sent her government contact to keep him in the loop. Those messages were analyzed, and his best cryptanalysts hadn’t been able to find even a hint that she might be attempting to send a coded message. Her belongings and her room were searched regularly – no other communication devices had been found – nor had they found any bugs on base during their regular sweeps or sniffer programs on their network to suggest they were being surveilled by a third party.
Pulling his laptop closer, he clicked on the file that contained everything she’d sent so far. Most of those communications were the same – day-to-day monotony – nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary. She reported when ORION ran diagnostics andthe outcome which, thus far, had been all good, no problems. She included updates on the Resurrection soldiers that were verbatim what was in the reports from the doctors who were overseeing their rehabilitation. The only thing she ever included about Black Bay was when he showed up at the hub, and even that was a simple time-stamped bullet point of when he arrived and left, the total time usually less than five minutes, followed by a note that it was a routine check-in. There was nothing of her personal feelings or observations. All but for her very first message.
Clicking on it, he read through what she’d written.
It’s my first day here and I’m nervous. I’m afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself when I was introduced to General Davies and some of the others. I wasn’t prepared. I’m sure I’ll overcome it though.
I was introduced to ORION. I tried to break the ice with a knock-knock joke. It turns out the AI doesn’t have a sense of humor. Who knew?
General Davies chuckled at the tongue-in-cheek attempt at levity. Her liaison hadn’t shared the general’s amusement. The return reply was:
These messages are not entries to your personal diary, Miss Knox. Please keep all correspondence going forward succinct and professional.
So she had.
But if Kong was right and she was somehow getting messages to her father…
A tap on his door had him snapping his laptop shut. “Come.”
Paige came in and shut the door behind her. “You wanted to see me?” Licking her lips nervously, her eyes went from him to the phone. “Jace? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. They’ve been in the air a couple of hours now, and should make it back around dinner time.”
She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Have a seat.”
He didn’t beat around the bush, nor did he bother keeping Katherine’s name out of it when he told Paige what the woman had said. Considering it had just happened that afternoon and it only involved the two of them, it wasn’t like Paige couldn’t figure it out. He did, however, add, “She was concerned for you.”
Paige groaned and her cheeks turned red with a blush before she covered her face with her hands. “I didn’t know what to say,” she admitted, her voice muffled until her hands fell back into her lap. “She was asking about Jace – nothing intrusive – but I just kind of froze. Everyone says she’s a spy and to keep away from her. I didn’t know what I should or shouldn’t say, so I just kind of bolted on her.”
