Page 3 of Benny

He squeezed her shoulder once, then left the SMS team to their own devices, walking toward his wife and their toddler, who waited on the stoop.

Warren pulled away and headed toward the Zephyr, their public-facing base of operations, and both men let Jordan just sit in the quiet for the short ride. It helped to ground her, gave her a few moments to let everything that’d happened sink in. To truly assess the mess her life had become.

It wasn’t just the shootout that’d come to the front door of their headquarters in the wee hours this morning.

No, the unraveling of her life truly began the day Benny saved her in the C-17 crash several years ago. The whole team--patients, rescuers and planners--had been stuck together in group therapy when they returned stateside, weathering the media shitstorm that followed them home. It’d bonded them in the way only trauma could.

Then she and Benny had been the last to leave their appointment one day and had grabbed a bite. That dinner had led to an unforgettable night which had evolved into four of the happiest months she’d ever spent.

When he’d been killed in a senseless distracted-driver accident, she’d spiraled into a depression only work had been able to assuage. Dev starting up SMS had been a nice side gig to keep her attention anywhere but on her broken heart, and witnessing Clay, Warren and Tate heal from devastating wounds had been nothing short of miraculous.

She didn’t really care that they’d all been exposed to nanites that fateful day in the Syrian desert, because her friends’ lives had been saved. If only Benny had been infected as well, he might be here today. Now they knew they’d all been experiments of a sort and had spent the last few months trying to figure it all out.

God, thinking about it made her even more exhausted, so she closed her eyes and leaned against the very cushy leather seat and let herself drift until Warren pulled up to the Zephyr. She climbed out of the vehicle as Warren handed off the keys, then they filed into the residence portion of the casino.

The conference room was basically theirs now, and when Dev had revealed that he was a partial owner of the casino, their exclusive, easy access had begun to make sense.

The rest of the SMS team was already present in the sleekly appointed room when they entered. Clay sat with Ivy at his side; Harper next to them with an empty seat for Warren; and Tate with Beth, the woman he’d most recently protected, the woman who had witnessed the murder that had set this entire chain of events in motion.

Devin sat at the head of the table in his customary spot, Cali Masters to his right.

Even with everything going on, it did Jordan’s heart good to see most of the men in her life with someone who made them happy. She’d lost her own shot at happiness when Benny died, and that would always haunt her. Their romance had been fast and hot and had seemed predestined. But right now, they all had bigger things to worry about than the wound that still felt so fresh inside her.

“Here’s what we know.” Dev turned on the big screen, and a trio of photos filled it. Men they were all intimately familiar with.

To the left was Andy Benedict, the mega-millionaire who had started this all. In the middle was U.S. Marshal Mark Turner. His death was the reason Jordan and Abel had been placed on administrative leave. One of their bullets, maybe even several, had ended his life. On the right was Tobias Davenport.

The first two men were dead. The last a mystery none of them had a handle on.

“Davenport has disappeared off the face of the earth. Again.” Dev said succinctly.

The fact the man was in the wind surprised no one, least of all Jordan. He’d been bebopping in and out of their lives for the last few months with maddening abandon. She respected his skill set, but she still didn’t understand where the hell he’d learned half of what he could do. Delta Force operatives were amazing, sure, but they tended to handle the dirty work in-country, not screw around with computers and high-level security like Davenport apparently enjoyed.

But he’d landed a helicopter in a space equivalent to a postage stamp and saved Tate’s life by activating her friend’s nanites, so she wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. Let Dev worry about the man’s motivations.

“So where do we go from here? I’m pretty much at your disposal until IA is done poking around,” Jordan asked when the table remained silent.

Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. She wasn’t heartbroken by the possibility her bullet had killed Mark Turner, but she wasn’t proud of it either. The man had been trying to murder Beth and Tate. He’d made his choice. Still, the weight lingered.

“I’ve got some of my old friends keeping their ears to the ground to see if we can ferret out Davenport,” Dev said, referring to his CIA past. Most of his work had been intelligence gathering and he still had contacts in very low places. “Honestly, I’m more interested in discovering who offed Benedict.”

Jordan understood where he was coming from. Andy Benedict had invaded their lives, called out their integrity, and put SMS in the public domain, when before they’d operated more discreetly.

She wasn’t sure what they were going to do when they found the shooter; turn him in or thank him for pulling the trigger and ensuring none of them had to do the job.

Dev glanced toward Beth, sympathy softening his expression. It’d been a very traumatic few weeks for her, with watching Tate almost die this morning the proverbial cherry on top.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said tiredly. Jordan knew worry for Tate had kept her wired and sleepless when she probably should have catnapped with him as he recovered. “I’m perfectly happy Benedict is dead. And while I’m sorry Jordan and Undersheriff Jones have to go through an IA investigation, I’m just as happy Turner is gone. He was a slimeball who would’ve put bullets in all our heads. I can’t be sad he’s gone.”

Well. That certainly put things into perspective, Jordan thought.

“Let my old friends dig,” Devin said. “Let the Marshals, the FBI and all the feds we don’t know about do their thing. There’s not a lot we can contribute right now besides being available for questioning. It’s not as if we did anything wrong. We were protecting Beth and Davenport, and no one but Abel understands what happened with Tate.”

He leaned back, folding his arms. “As for Davenport’s helicopter? The FBI will probably pawn it off on Homeland Security. Homeland Security will toss it back to the FBI, assuming it’s one of their classified ops. We’ll just keep muddying the waters until everyone gives up.”

Honestly, it sounded like a plan to Jordan. There was more than enough for the agencies to dig through already. The helicopter’s arrival and departure, the mysterious pilot, the black-book military vibe--it all fit right in with the other off-the-books crap that happened out here on the regular. Hell, the Air Force still had testing areas that didn’t officially exist. Davenport’s helicopter slotted perfectly into that world.

God, she could use some sleep.