Tactical Force. Elle James

keys, then he’d pause and study the screen. He repeated the process several times, shaking his head, his lips pressing together each time.

      “Find anything?” Cole asked, taking the seat beside Jonah. Cole pressed several keys on the keyboard in front of him and brought up a screen.

      “I traced the call back to a burner phone purchased at a store in Arlington,” Jonah said. “I hacked into their computer system, but the name the phone was registered to was Linda Radcliff, a woman who died five years ago.”

      “Did they have video surveillance at the store?”

      “Yes, but I haven’t hacked into that system yet. I’m working on it.”

      “If the phone was registered to a Linda, the person had to be female,” Cole surmised. “Surely, the clerk or store owner would have denied the sale if the ID didn’t match the person presenting it.”

      “So, we’re looking for a female texter.” Jack paced the length of the room and back. “What will that buy us? There are hundreds of thousands of females in this area. We have to narrow it down a little more than that.”

      “We’re working on it. We don’t have a lot to go on and now your lady doesn’t have a phone for our mystery texter to send messages to.”

      “She figured out Ms. Bellamy was associated with John Halverson,” Jack pointed out. “She’s smart. She’ll come up with a way to communicate with Ms. Bellamy again.”

      Cole glanced up. “What’s your girl’s plan from here?”

      Jack frowned. “She’s not my girl. And I have no idea. I just got her here.”

      “I’m going to work tomorrow, as usual.” A female voice sounded behind them.

      Anne descended the steps into the war room, followed by Grace and Charlie.

      Jack faced her, his feet spread, his arms crossing over his chest. “The hell you are.”

      Anne’s eyebrows rose up her forehead. “I have a big meeting to prepare for on Friday. I need to be in my office every day this week. Besides, the person who texted me wanted me to help stop Trinity from doing something. I can’t help if I’m locked behind the walls of this estate.”

      “You’re a walking target,” Jack said. “It would be suicide for you to step past the gates.”

      Anne lifted her chin. “I can’t hide away forever.”

      “You can until we figure out what’s going on,” Jack insisted.

      “We can figure it out a lot faster from inside the government offices. I assume since the person texted me, I’m probably in a position to find out something. Otherwise, why would he ask me for help?”

      “She,” Jack corrected.

      Anne cocked an eyebrow. “See? You already know more than when we started.”

      “Okay, she’s female—” Jack threw his hand in the air “—so is half the population of the Metro area.”

      “I’m going to work tomorrow,” Anne said. “I just need a ride in to a Metro station, and I’ll take it from there.”

      “You can’t go alone,” Charlie said.

      “Charlie’s right,” Jack said. “It’s too dangerous. You’re not equipped to handle armed assassins.”

      Again, Anne stared at him with a cocked eyebrow. “And you are?”

      “More so than you,” Jack shot back.

      Charlie clapped her hands together. “Then it’s settled.”

      Jack glared at the woman whose money funded Declan’s Defenders. “What’s settled?”

      “The fact that Anne can’t go to work alone.” Charlie smiled as if everything was perfectly obvious. “You’ll go with her.”