Page 69 of Leading Conviction
He held up his hands in surrender. “I trust you, dove. Just got to make sure for myself, is all.”
“Consider yourself reassured. Your dove can fly all on her own,mi cielo.” She smiled right before he opened the door.
That grin nearly took him out, and the use of the endearment made his heart full with gratitude over this second chance. The urge to steal another kiss was nearly overwhelming, but Hannah had already walked by him. She took her seat at the table beside his without waiting for him to pull her chair out for her. Pride filled his chest at the sight of her so confidently taking her rightful place by his side.
My dove can fly on her own.
Hawk dragged his eyes away from his woman to assess the room. Once his gaze landed on Nora and Wes in front of the wall of monitors, his brows shot up to his hairline.
Nora’s head drooped onto the table from exhaustion and Wes’s blue hair stood on end like he’d been electrocuted. His black glasses were askew over half-open eyes and his fingers typed furiously over the keyboard, almost like he was in a trance.
“Wes… Nora? You good?” Hawk asked, trying to temper his voice so he didn’t scare the shit out of them. “Do you need a few hours of shut-eye, or…”
Nora muttered about Vikings and their longships before her eyes squinted and tried to focus. Finally, they seemed to register his presence and they snapped wide open.
“Oh, hey, Cap’n. Wassup?”
“Our meeting?” he asked, emphasizing each word as he settled his hands on the back of his chair. “We’re supposed to be checking in with the team on what you and Wes came up with overnight?”
“Oh… right… I’ll let Superman cover this one. I can barely think at the moment.” Dark circles bruised her pale skin underneath her eyes and she pressed into them with the heels of her palms before pointing at the pile of paperwork and pictures on the table. “Here’s the mess we went through all night. Right, Superman?”
Wes—or Superman, as Nora liked to call him—had yet to peel his eyes away from the wall of screens and his fingers continued to fly over the keys as he typed. With his hair tugged upward like it was, he looked every bit like a mad scientist.
“Superman… Snake,” Nora called both of his nicknames before picking up a purple highlighter beside her. “Wes!”
“You don’t need to scream at me,” he muttered, still not taking his eyes off the computers. Wes was harder to distract than a home plate umpire when he was onto something. “I’m tired, not dead.”
“Pay attention, then, Superman.”
She threw the highlighter at his head, but Wes swatted it away lazily with a huff, “Dammit, Nora. Warn a person before you throw things at them.”
“Idid,” she insisted with a saccharine sweet voice. “We have visitors.”
Hawk gave Wes a slight wave just as Draco slipped into the room behind him. The blond Viking placed a gallon-sized coffee container in the center of the table and sat in the chair closest to his girlfriend. Hawk barely had time to register the monstrous drink in his large hand—with its whipped cream peaks and drizzled syrup—before Nora zoomed to the table in her rolling chair and snatched it out of Draco’s hand.
“Thanks, handsome,” Nora cooed to Draco as she waggled her eyebrows suggestively and rolled back to the computer desk.
Hawk tried not to read too much into howappreciativethe look was, or how Draco’s tan face blushed dark red. Instead, he turned to Wes, who finally seemed ready to report.
“Morning, Hawk, Hannah, Draco. Sorry, I was locked in. This is where we’re at…” Wes pulled up several different spreadsheets and outlines on the monitors. He pointed at the screens and the table as he spoke, while Nora slurped obnoxiously on her sugary drink. “We’ve been poring over all the evidence we’ve gathered over the past year and a half… not to mention going back in fucking time to our MF7 days to see if there’s anything we could find out, or should’ve seen in any of the footage from CTI, the General’s security firm, or the McIntosh Hotel. Needless to say, there are mountains of stuff to go through.”
Hawk’s gaze darted to the actual hills of paperwork, stacks of laptops, and other technology they’d collected from their various missions over the past couple of years.
“I can see that,” Hawk murmured as he walked around the table. “Anything of immediate importance?”
“Yuppers.Justabout everything.” Nora sucked her top lip to get the whipped cream off. A light groan slipped from Draco and Nora gave him a mischievous grin.
“Nora’s right,” Wes admitted. “We’ve gotten some leads, though. Some more disturbing than others. Especially those pictures from the General’s office. It’s almost like they’re from his private stash.”
Wes’s finger visibly shook with disgust as he pointed to the Polaroids they’d retrieved from the General’s security firm and underground private headquarters a week ago, after Callie and Phoenix escaped his clutches.
A small gasp made Hawk stop his perusal of the electronics beside the pile. Hannah had stood from her chair and was sifting through the pictures of naked women standing in front of the camera like they were taking a mug shot. She picked up one and seemed to analyze the name, date, and location penned on the back.
“Hannah, shit, you shouldn’t see this stuff,” Hawk insisted, but she waved him off and focused on the pictures.
“These were from his office, you said?” she muttered as she looked through the hundreds of pictures that had been in her father’s filing cabinet.
“Yeah,” Wes answered. “Callie and Phoenix found them before setting off the fire and escaping.”
