It wasn’t until Riggs leaned over to Carter that I realized I’d missed something big. “Did we know they were actually in love?”
Carter shook his head. “I’m not sure they knew,” he whispered back.
I blinked at Champ. His words played back in my memory. “You… you love me?” I breathed.
His forehead crinkled. “I tell you your life is in danger and that’s what you’re taking from this?”
I grabbed the front of his shirt and grinned. “You love me?” I repeated.
“Mpfh,” he grunted, lowering back down into his chair.
I barked out a laugh. “Not good enough, Percival Champion. Say it.”
His blue eyes met mine. “Already did. You say it.”
I still held him by the shirt front and pulled him close again. “I love you so much it terrifies me,” I admitted in a soft voice. Despite the table full of men, I felt like it was just the two of us in a bubble.
Champ’s big hand came around to cup the back of my head. “I love you too. But it means I can’t let anything happen to you. I can’t, sweetheart. Please don’t expect me to stop protecting you.”
He tempered the statement with a kiss that was tender and loving. It wasn’t the kiss of a sixty-four-night stand. It was the kiss of forever. The kiss of new beginnings.
It was Hux’s voice that exploded our little bubble. “Can we get back to the op, please? Because this shit is awkward as fuck.”
Kev sighed. “You’re just jealous because you’re the only person here who doesn’t have someone in their life.”
Hux huffed. “You’re claiming your pissant Horn-flirt as a special someone now? Are you for real? They could be a fourteen-year-old girl or a sixty-year-old Russian oligarch. Jesus, Kev. Use your brain.”
Kev’s knowing smirk was new. “We’ve had video sex, moron. He’s got a killer body.”
The room went quiet for a beat before everyone started asking questions. Champ finally called a halt to it by shouting, “Back to work! We don’t have any time left before Tommy Drakes finds out Marissa and Levi have flown the coop and this shit all goes FUBAR.”
He turned back to me. “You know Vince wants you to get him into the farmhouse.”
“Not if he has to get the Horn out of the vault himself,” I countered. “What he’d really like, what he’s been asking for all along, is for me to convince you to turn the Horn over to him. Alternatively, he’d probably like me to steal it from you and give it to him. And in a pinch, he’d love to know how you’re gonna get the Horn so he can take it off you immediately afterwards.”
“Fuck. That’s Vince’s MO, alright. Why do his own work when he can piggyback off someone else’s?” Champ looked around at his team. “And he knows how we work too. I shared too many stories with him when we were together. He’d probably expect us to go in during the wedding reception, and if we went with that plan, he might have caught us.”
Elvo shook his head. “No, boss. Vince knows how we used to work. He doesn’t know shit about how we work now. Improvise, adapt, and overcome.”
“Oorah,” the rest of the team barked.
“And,” Riggs said, placing one huge hand on my shoulder, “they don’t know about our secret weapon.”
“True.” Champ leaned over and snuck a quick kiss on my lips before turning back to the task at hand. “Okay, so first, we figure out a way to approach Tommy and get him to cooperate.”
I nodded firmly.
“Then, we’ll set it up so that, to all outside observers, Marissa’s wedding is still happening. Might be too late to get Trey on board, but we can ask the Drakes not to tell their guests the wedding’s off until the very last minute. We lure Vince to the farmhouse so he can steal the Horn right after we’ve supposedly stolen it, except it’ll be Kev’s Horn we’ll be using as a decoy. We let him walk out with the decoy—no violence, nobody gets hurt, especially with the Drakes family still on-site. Agreed?”
Everyone nodded.
“Hux, are you ready to strip the data off that thing as soon as we get it?” Champ continued.
“Not a problem.”
Champ reached for a sandwich. “What data do we put on the decoy? It has to be something believable.”
Riggs asked Hux several questions about his ability to decrypt the data quickly once we had it and whether or not using any of it on the decoy would be an option.
Hux explained the various types of encryption it could have on it, and Kev piped up to add to the conversation. They completed each other’s sentences in a way that proved their shared passion for the topic of cybersecurity. The two of them together were a sight to behold as long as they forgot they hated each other. I wondered if Champ had ever been tempted to offer Kev a job just to lock down his expertise.