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chipped?”
    “I didn’t get the sense it was optional.” She turned to him. “I have to say, I don’t really have a warm, fuzzy feeling about Jill.”
    Dal smiled, then burst out laughing.
    “What?”
    “I thought… I thought… about Jill… that I was glad we were on the same ‘page’.”
    Emily dropped her burger and covered her mouth, giggling like a schoolgirl. He laughed with her, the tension and hyper-vigilance of the day releasing.
    “There’s something about that woman I don’t like either,” he continued, more serious. “Did she give you any assurances about the chips? How do we know they won’t track us all the time?”
    “She didn’t tell me anything beyond what time to show up in the morning.”
    “Seems like a huge invasion to our privacy.” He didn’t like it, not at all.
    She turned to him. “I agree. On the other hand, in a tight situation, they might be the thing that saves us.”
    He finished off his fries and threw the boxes back in the paper sack sitting on the seat between them. “How did things go with your father?”
    Silence dropped over them like a curtain, as Emily looked out the side window and finished chewing.
    “That’s a big shock to deal with, is all I’m saying,” he said.
    She set what was left of her burger in the box on the dash and turned to him. “I’m still processing it. We talked over breakfast. He explained most of it but…”
    Tilting his head, he held his tongue, waited for her to continue.
    “We had a big blowout at the end. He refuses to believe anything I say about Jack. He insisted Jack did the things he did because he was ‘deep undercover’.” She threw air quotes around the last phrase.
    “That’s bullshit. How could he not believe you?” He reached for her hand, but she shifted closer to the door and turned back to the window. Her lip trembled and she took a slow deep breath before speaking again.
    She turned back to him and shook her head. “I don’t know. We’ll have to prove it while we’re down there. In fact, I did talk to Jill about it again and she asked me to get video proof.”
    “That’s something.” The truck was getting stuffy. He cracked the window. “What else did your father tell you? I mean, has he been doing this your whole life without you knowing?”
    “I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s more of a need-to-know situation.”
    Dal’s stomach clenched. “You don’t think I need to know?”
    She shrugged. “No, I don’t.”
    “We’re supposed to be a team. Surely whatever clearance you have, I would have the same.”
    “This is more… personal.” Her voice dropped and she turned her face away.
    “All right,” he said, reaching out to stroke her arm. “Keep in mind that we’re going to depend on each other out there for our lives. Like we do in firefighting.”
    “It’s not the same,” she said, standing her ground.
    “It’s exactly the same. In firefighting we share everything we know and we have to trust one hundred percent that we have each other’s backs.”
    She refused to meet his eyes, fiddled with the burger box, threw it in the paper sack on the seat.
    “I won’t press you, Em,” he continued. “But I hope you reconsider. We need to be completely open with each other, a true team, otherwise it won’t work.”

    * * *
    S he couldn’t rehash it all again tonight. Her eyes slid to the digital clock in the dash. It was well after midnight and she’d been on the go since before dawn. According to Jill, they weren’t a team. Emily was to lead them, be the point person. There was no way in hell she could tell Dal that now.
    “Can we get out of here? It’s been a long day and I want to go home.” She’d left her car at the training facility but she’d deal with that tomorrow.
    He dropped the truck into reverse. She stared out the window on the ride home, gut tight, the words unspoken hanging in the air. She’d almost prefer an outburst to his carefully controlled