Still, having soaked himself like a damn sponge in whiskey couldn't have done anything to help his brain power.
After tracking him down in the kitchen, Nasa shoved the composite of Ghost in the commando's face and demanded to know whether or not it looked familiar.
Tobias had seen the sketch before, but he took it and studied it in absolute silence for at least ten minutes.
Nasa wanted to wrap his hands around Tobias's neck and squeeze until the bastard's head popped off.
“Well?” Nasa finally demanded, his patience strung thin on the possibility that Tobias could give him definitive proof Ghost was the same man Tobias had worked with at the black site.
Tobias shrugged and shook his head, “This is the sketch compiled from Damon and Saint's description of Ghost. I've seen it before and you must have discovered another clue to be showing it to me again, but I don't see it. What happened?”
On purpose, all Nasa said was, “Duchess.”
Tobias sat up straighter, his gaze snapping from the page to Nasa in a blink, his face tightening with understanding.
“Did I say that name when I was on my drinking binge?”
“No.” Nasa watched closely as Tobias relaxed a bit, waited for him to exhale. “It's what Ghost called Dillon the night he came for her, and it's what Ghost said to me on the phone. He called her his little Duchess and told me what a remarkable woman she was.”
Tobias's chin jerked back slightly, his mouth opened and shut.
“You think John Lewis might be Ghost?”
“Is it possible?” Nasa countered, feeling it in his bones that They were finally on the right path.
Tobias shook his head and raked his hand through his hair in frustration.
“Maybe? I don't know. I mean... I guess it could be.”
Nasa hissed out a short breath, fisting his hands to keep from slapping Tobias upside the head.
“How would Ghost know to call Dillon by that name? Who knew about the interrogation?”
Before Tobias could answer, Top and Veracruz came trooping in, both of them looking fit to be tied.
Nasa's gut cramped instantly in reaction to their grave, angry expressions, his entire body bracing for whatever was coming.
Nasa didn't want to ask, but he had to. “What happened?”
Top waved a hand at Veracruz. “Boys got a call out they can't refuse.”
Nasa dropped his head and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Not because he was pissed, but because he was so relieved he wasn't getting bad news about someone he cared about.
“There's activity in a pipeline I thought we'd busted up down in Houston. Duke and Tobias are going to stay behind, Nate and Tate are en-route to take their place with me,” Veracruz said, looking back and forth between Nasa and Tobias. “Something going on here I need to know about before we bounce?”
Nasa didn't see any reason in hiding the conversation. “On the phone, Ghost called Dillon his Duchess.”
Veracruz pulled a disgusted face. “He's possessive of her?”
“I don't know yet,” Nasa admitted, hating those four words with the fire of a thousand suns. Not knowing could mean life or death.
Top's beard jutted forward with a grunt. “The disturbing thought of a psycho feeling possessive of his victim aside, what's the significance?”
“At the black site, it's the only name Styles used to address her,” Tobias told them, looking a bit green around the gills.
“Whether he was talking to me and Lewis or to her, Styles never used her first name.
“I was just about to say, there are only a handful of people who would have known to call Dillon, Duchess. Two of them are dead, and I quit.
"I don't know what happened to John Lewis, but my direct supervisor knew. So, yes, Nasa. It's possible Ghost is the man I knew as John Lewis.
“Counter-intelligence and agents who work in counter-terrorism get plastic surgery after so many years on the job.
"I don't even know if the face I remember is the one John Lewis was born with, so there's no way for me to tell you if the guy you know as Ghost is John unless I'm in the same room with him. Even then...”
Tobias trailed off with a useless lift of his uninjured arm, and Veracruz finished for him.
“Active operators are taught to reinvent themselves at every opportunity. Change their appearance, their voice, to bulk up or slim down, to blend no matter their environment.”
“You mean in the way Ghost took on the identity of Toad, the UPS guy Ripley was about to start getting serious with, and that bastard Jerry all at the same time?” Top pointed out with a heavy layer of sarcasm.
“Yeah, we saw firsthand the level of skill Ghost employs when it comes to taking on someone else's identity, but I sure am feeling like dog shit for giving Nasa a hard time about his paranoia and ongoing conspiracy theories regarding any three-letter agency. Where is Dillon right now?”
Nasa felt a lick of ice cold panic go through him to realize he'd booked it out of the basement after she'd nearly cracked in half, leaving her down there alone with photos and files of shit that might spin her off into another episode. Fuck!
“In the file room. I left her alone. Shit. Shit!” Nasa ran out of the kitchen so fast he nearly tripped over Ruckus, and then Gee in his haste to get back to Dillon.
“Whoa, man! Where's the fire?” Ruckus shouted after him, but Nasa was halfway down the stairs, casting a quick glance to see Lyon still tucked up in the crate watching Scooby-Doo.
Nasa caught the end of the banister and swung himself around, half sliding into the open hallway, only to come up short when he found Dillon seated in the middle of the file storage room, papers and folders open all around her.
A quick look at the cabinets showed a few of them disturbed, but seeing the mess she'd made of his precisely organized system didn't even bring up a twinge of OCD to put them right.
