Her GO-Team had been flown to an isolated location to launch the drone, which was outfitted with special equipment because of the explosives, and had a long-range capacity. People from various branches of the government and the military would be back at Lowden, watching the feed from the camera on the drone. It was only the third time Hannah had been tasked with doing something this enormous and she’d spent hours checking and double checking everything to make sure nothing would go wrong. She knew she’d probably driven her team nuts, but she hadn’t cared. There was no room for error in a situation like this.
She was stunned when the helicopter carrying Greg Kingsley, Lowden’s vice president, had shown up at their site. Jumping out of the chopper, he’d told them they had to shut down the job. Right. Now. Right that minute. For a moment, she’d just stood there, stunned.
‘But—why?’
‘There’s a situation, Hannah. Something went wrong big time with the drone delivery. A fuckup and we have a tragedy on our hands.’
‘A tragedy?’ She’d stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language.
‘Worse than that. A disaster of epic proportions. We have to get everyone out of here while we sort this out.’
‘But—’
‘No buts. Lowden needs to see you ASAP, since this is your baby.’
What the hell?
She’d pestered him for details, but he had little to say beyond what he’d told her. Just said to wait until they were back at Lowden. She could not understand how this had happened. Misdirect a drone to dump its payload in a different place? Her? Hell, no. She was committed to her job, her country, her patriotism. That was why working for a paramilitary company that did black jobs for the government had been so satisfying, because she got to serve her country in a way a lot of people never could. She didn’t even have friends outside of the job. How disgusting was that?
The moment they’d landed at the complex, they’d hustled her right to Eric Lowden’s office, where he’d told her she was off the job until the situation was resolved.
Situation? This was a hell of a lot more than that.
‘Situation?’ She’d repeated the word.
‘Your drone flew off course.’ Lowden didn’t mince any words with her. ‘I don’t know if the programming got screwed up or something else did. The fact remains that somehow that drone ended up at Senator Mark Hegman’s summer house and blew it all to shit. Including the senator. We’re just damn lucky his wife wasn’t there at the time.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Her stomach had cramped and a chill slithered down her spine. ‘How did this happen? I double and triple checked all my settings and we tested it several times.’
“That’s what we have to find out.”
He continued talking to her in a low voice, but underneath it was hard anger at what a disaster this was for Lowden Tactical. She knew they had to fix this.
She could still hear his voice in her head.
Don’t worry, Hannah. We need to keep you tucked away for your own good. We’ve got nice accommodations for you, Hannah. You’ll be very comfortable while we sort this out. We just need to keep you away from the media while we figure out how it went wrong. You understand.
No, she didn’t understand. She wanted to go home. Why couldn’t she hide away there? Oh, right. The media. Lowden explained very carefully what a disaster that would be.
Although Lowden’s voice had been even and reassuring, it left no room for argument as to what the plan was going forward. He was, after all, the boss. Someone had to take the fall for this, someone other than him. Comfortable, huh? Yeah, right. Why couldn’t she be comfortable in her own apartment? She had the sickening feeling they were going to keep her under lock and key until they could definitively blame the whole thing on her.
You understand why we just need you out of the office, right? And available while we look into this? And as I said, away from the media. If you’re not guilty, you have nothing to worry about. Besides, you might not be safe at home.
Not safe? Who would she be in danger from? Did they know? Or was the evidence not that conclusive? It was, after all, as Lowden had pointed out, her drone, her controls that had supposedly misdirected the drone to dump its payload on a vacationing ranking member of the Senate