In that moment, Rocky wanted nothing more than to take away the fear reflecting back at him from her perilous stare. But he couldn’t. Not until they located Samer and, most importantly, that fucking bomb.
Because she was right. His gut was also screaming that all of Samer’s planning would soon be coming to a head. And if he and the others couldn’t find him in time to stop him…
God help us all.
12
The next afternoon…
“I’m in!”
Rocky turned to Liam whose face was lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “As in…”
Sitting on Rocky’s couch in what had affectionately become known as Liam’s Spot, the other man spun the laptop around for Rocky to see. “As in, I’m finally fuckingin.”
“Please tell me I just heard you correctly.” Raegan hurriedly joined them from the kitchen, where she’d been fixing them all some fresh iced tea.
With three glasses balanced expertly in her hands, she let Rocky take his before setting the other two down onto the coffee table’s smooth surface.
“You heard correctly,” Liam confirmed. “And now that I am, it shouldn’t take long to see what we have to work with.”
While his teammate began scrubbing Samer’s laptop for anything that might be useful, Rocky and Raegan continued going over everything they knew up to that point.
The house Samer and his men had been using was owned by a retired couple who’d moved to Colorado to be closer to their kids. According to the information Agent Atwell’s team had uncovered, they’d rented it to a man named Charles Smith looking for a safer place for his family of four to live.
In reality, Smith was actually Samer. The asshole had created the alias as a way to live here under the radar.
Rocky had to hand it to him. Fake Illinois driver’s license. Fake social. The guy even managed to create a false credit history for a man who’d never existed.
“So Samer somehow manages to get into the States, and for whatever reason, he picks Chicago as his target,” Raegan began to summarize the facts. “He creates the Charles Smith alias, rents the house down the street. He gets to work putting together a crew of young, impressionable teens who are so desperate to find a way out of their low-income lives, they’re willing to let themselves be brainwashed into thinking robbing banks at gunpoint would be a good idea.”
Picking things up from there, Rocky continued with, “Eventually, Samer trusts these kids enough to share his plan of using coordinated robberies as a way of spreading law enforcement paper thin. That way, he can plant and detonate a dirty bomb before they could have the chance to stop him.”
“Except we know about the plan, and we have irrefutable evidence proving Samer’s involvement. We just…” Raegan drew in a deep breath before exhaling in time to finish saying, “We just have to find him, first.”
“This might help.”
All eyes turned to Liam, who was staring intently at the screen before him.
“I found a hidden chatroom where it looks like he was communicating with one of the men in his crew. The last conversation took place three days ago.”
“What’s he say?”
“It’s all very vague and in code.” Liam squinted a bit as his eyes raced to scan the digital conversation. “They’re talking about the weather. This other guy asks when he thinks it would be a good day to get together for a picnic. Samer writes back, and says…” The man’s spine straightened, and his expression turned serious. “Oh, fuck. The message reads, ‘Three days from now looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day’,” Liam uttered the typed words verbatim.
Raegan raced to where Rocky’s teammate sat. With her stare locked on the small screen, she stood next to Liam and asked, “How many days ago did you say this was?”
“Three.” Liam’s throat worked as he gave a single, hard swallow. “Which means?—”
“He’s going to set off the bomb today,” Raegan finished the terrifying thought as her worried eyes turned Rocky’s way.
The room fell silent as the three of them tried processing exactly what that meant. Rocky’s mind raced to come up with the fastest way to find a direct line to the most ideal setting for a terrorist’s attack.
At the same time, he was yanking his phone from his pocket and putting in a call to Christian. They needed the rest of the team here.
Right the fuck now!
Less than fifteen minutes later, the rest of Delta Team was there.