The Director sat back in his chair, his fingertips from one hand touching the fingertips of the other in a sort of mock prayer pointing to his downturned mouth, and asked, "and how did you get out of there?"
Alec spoke up first. "We did not see the two players once back on dry land, so Max administered some field med and drove us back to base."
Well, that was the truth, Max thought, but it wasn't the whole truth. After she removed that big ass splinter, emphasis on ass, Alec sat himself somewhat gingerly in the passenger's seat while Max adjusted the driver's seat and turned on the heater. She had asked how he was feeling, if he was feeling any better.
Pretty great not being dead, he had offered.
At the time, it may have been the closest thing to a real thank you she was going to get from her commanding officer. It still pissed her off, though. Why couldn't men just admit whatever they were feeling and move the fuck on?
Then he'd surprised the hell out of her when he said, I gotta say, out of our two mouth-to-mouths tonight, I definitely prefer the former.
That admission had sent her reeling. What the fuck was that? A compliment? Or just an observation that no one wants to be in a position where CPR stands between life and death? Did he just not get the fact that he almost died?
Sure, their frantic grope-fest at the mansion would forever be emblazoned on her mind, and very possibly be her go-to fantasy on lonely nights when no one was there to scratch an itch, but the CPR wasn't sexy in the least. It was life-saving. It was a freezing, terrifying emergency medical procedure. It was way more important than any physical contact they could have romantically.
After that, Max doubled down on hostility and had uncharacteristically stated, Glad I could be of service, sir. That was the type of comment to which Zack would have responded with threatened insubordination, and Max felt a twinge of sadness followed by a whole yacht-ful of guilt after that.
Alec seemed a little looser with her use of sarcasm, like he might not give a shit under normal circumstances, or might even verbally spar with her otherwise. This time, though, was different.
Alec had huffed and looked out the window.
"Any trouble between the harbor and base?" asked the Director, interrupting Max's thoughts, and looking down at the two reports from his officers. Likely, he had noticed the time discrepancy between when the boat exploded and when they arrived back at base. He didn't normally micromanage his operatives' mission debriefings; perhaps he suspected something was off about them?
"Took the scenic route in case those two guys were lying in wait," Max lied. If the director suspected anything, he didn't let it show.
What really happened was Max drove in near silence the rest of the way back to the Eilers Estate. Parking just off-grounds, Max turned off the ignition and pulled the laptop from the back seat, offering it to Alec. In a matter of just a few minutes, he had been able to tap into the tech device they'd left somewhere on the property and hit the kill switch.
With the ominous black cloud of a possible blemish on Max's record effectively erased, she eased up a little on her offense and drove the rest of the way back to base. She still disdained the idea that Alec knew she had messed up.
Safely parked in the underground structure, Max turned off the SUV and pulled the handle to open her door. Alec reached out to catch her by the elbow.
"Max, I..." he said, searching her eyes in the darkness of the vehicle. "I just wanted to say thank you." He swallowed thickly, and she watched his Adam's apple dip low and back up like the buoy they'd been on hours ago. "For saving my life."
Fucking finally, her brain supplied. It wasn't like they, as soldiers, were incapable of human emotion. She softened her own visage, even though she was still pissed off at him. If she hadn't have been there, he could really have died. And she just really was not ready for a world that didn't have Alec in it. And he really didn't seem to get how stupid that action truly was.
"Sorry for not saying it sooner." He got out of the vehicle and walked into the building.
There were times when they were alone that she felt he was pure mission control, no room for anything else, and there were times like now that she felt he actually let his guard down and presented a peek at the real Alec.
With her lips curved up a tiny bit, Max stared into the darkness, grateful he was alive.
"Despite the fact that you did not find the containers," the authoritative director continued his debriefing, his two spies daring to keep eye contact with him through the slight admonishment, "IT worked on the flash drive you found and was able to ascertain the specific containers in question. There is a strike team on the way now. We'll have the weapons within the hour."
Alec looked over at Max, and if she read the room right, it was to give her that shit-eating grin, as if proving his life was worth the risk because they achieved mission objective by getting the container's location. She looked away, still pissed at him.
"What about the listening device?" Lydecker flipped a few pages in Max's report and she hid a deep breath. She hadn't mentioned it in her report at all. She opened her mouth to speak, but Alec interrupted.
"I asked Max to give it to me at Eilers' place and I dropped it in the course of the night. As soon as we were free of the estate, we hit the kill switch."
What the fuck? Why did he just cover for me?
"Do we have any intel on the two players?" Alec asked, diverting the conversation from their possible omissions.
Lydecker took a deep breath, seeming to decide not to question them further, and informed them that chatter on Cale's informant net indicated that someone out there knew Manticore was involved. "It was a trap meant for a Manticore soldier. Objective: to eliminate the soldier or soldiers in question."
Checking to see if each other knew, Max and Alec separately considered who might have known about this. Who the fuck was targeting them? Cale? Eilers? Someone else?
"There's no way those two guys were the masterminds behind the explosion." Max leaned forward in her chair. "They even said as much when they arrived. Someone else had placed the charges and sent them to push the button."
"Yes, well, IT agrees with you. All signs point to Cale, that he orchestrated this event as a message to Manticore - a revenge plot for his girl having been captured." Lydecker looked somewhat pleased, which confused Max about as much as it pissed her off.
So Cale wanted someone to pay for Manticore's alleged recapturing of me. That meant he was somehow involved with Eilers, either directly, or indirectly through the Jiminezes. It also meant Manticore wanted Cale to lash out like that. Maybe to expose some part of his network, she wasn't sure.
The urge to roll her eyes was almost too much to overcome. This fucking Cale op was going to be the death of her. As much as she thoroughly despised the idea of even getting within SCUD missile striking distance of Cale, she was beginning to think she needed to take care of him and put a stop to his asinine agenda sooner rather than later.
"That's rich," Alec said. The irony was not lost on any of them that the explosion Cale set up nearly took out the woman he so badly wanted to rescue.
"Now we need to send him a message back," Lydecker said. "Let him know this exploding boat stunt is nothing compared to our firepower and our reach." Looking pointedly at Max, he said, "We're going to leak the footage of your death."
"So what would be believable enough to make Cale back off?" asked Alec, walking down the hall toward their barracks.
Max shrugged as she thought about it. The most they could hope for was that he'd back off for a little while. Righteous vigilantes rarely gave up their missions. Poisoning would not work, bioweapons would not work, anything that looked like an accident would not work. "If it's a direct message, then it needs to be personal."
Making it look like his 'asset' was eliminated would only add fuel to the fire that was Cale's vengeance, she realized. Was that what Manticore wanted? For Cale to stop hiding, to expose himself or to manipulate him into action before he'd had a chance to plan out his counterattack? Give him enough room to make him make a mistake?
No. They wanted to string him along long enough to infiltrate his network, obtain knowledge of his contacts, associates, assets, anything and anyone assisting him in his fight, and then use it to their own advantage. They didn't want him dead. Not yet.
Max stopped mid-stride. "It needs to be extremely personal, and very convincing, but there needs to be one tiny crumb that doesn't add up. One little thing that makes him doubt whether I'm actually dead. If he sees me as his girl, his spy, his property, then we have to make him want to retrieve me."
She utterly despised the idea of being someone's property. And she fucking hated Cale for treating her like his.
Alec looked up for a moment. "Maybe he did blow you up," he said. Max could almost see the idea take shape in his eyes. "Okay, play this scenario out with me. We haul ass back to the scene, leak a tip through his informant net to a reporter about the yacht. Reporter does a piece on the explosion, unfortunately it killed a young woman, then we show a gruesome picture of you with your head wound and part of your barcode. Cale takes the bait and contacts the station for a copy of the footage, and you are in the background, barely visible."
"Climbing out from the water under a dock or something. Except if I truly was injured in a blast, maybe I'd need someone to bring me in. The other person who'd been sent with me." The Director wanted Alec to accelerate this assignment, and this was one way she could get Alec involved without raising suspicion.
He nodded in agreement. "So we make it look like debris opened up your head a bit and knocked you unconscious, you slipped underwater and sucked in a lungful of water, and then I get you out of the water and administer CPR."
It would be so goddamn similar to what actually happened, except it would be Max instead of Alec, and it would be fake instead of real. He wouldn't actually feel like he lost her. Regardless, she thought it a good plan.
Something else tugged at Max's thoughts, though. If Cale believed her to have been recaptured and held prisoner, then why would Manticore send her on this op? Would Cale just assume she'd been reindoctrinated? Or that Manticore knew about the plan to blow up the evidence, and deliberately put her and another soldier on that boat?
"What are you thinking?" Her handler asked.
"Trying to figure out if you need to drag me away or if we will walk side by side."
He nodded. If they voluntarily went to the boat together, then would that be confirmation for Cale that she had been successfully reindoctrinated? If they were placed on that boat together by Manticore, then could they convince Cale that they were both disenfranchised? Was that a way to get Alec in?
"This is going to get convoluted real fast, but maybe you were just pretending that reindoc succeeded, and we were sent out to the harbor to steal the weapons." He paused for a moment and scratched his eyebrow. "Cale blows up the boat, you quote-unquote die, then the video shows me saving my fellow soldier's life, and once you've got your feet back under you, you incapacitate me and take off on your own. We meet back at the car and head back here."
She liked the idea. It supported the capture/reindoc narrative and reinforced her cover's intentions. "I like it," she said plainly. "Except how will we get you involved?"
"That's what the CPR is for. If he thinks 'evil Manticore' really wanted you dead, then my action undermines them and makes me sympathetic to your cause, not to mention might make him think Manticore wants me dead, too. He might try to reach out to me to get more information about you. Could work for us down the line when the op is active again."
She pursed her lips and nodded. "Perfect. It'll take him weeks to find that little Easter egg." Max almost smiled. It would be so gratifying to make Cale think he'd killed her, only to show back up later. If he truly did love her, he'd be wracked with guilt, unable to sleep, exhausted.
Let him be, she thought.
Cutting right to the chase, Alec leaned against the wall by her barracks. "Good, because we have two assignments coming up, and I need your expertise and your fresh set of eyes."
