The communication piece might still be a stumbling block—but he could work on that. He would work on that. Finding the words to tell Eve how he felt shouldn’t be an insurmountable challenge if he could let go of the fear.

Too bad it had taken a crisis for him to arrive at that insight.

But assuming they could foil whatever plans had been cooked up in this basement command center, he wasn’t letting another day pass without—

“Sarge is going to work this hard.” Colin strode back into the room. “You talk to Eve?”

He had to forcibly shift gears. “No. She must have turned off her cell during the appearance.”

“Not a problem. Sarge is assigning several of the on-site patrol officers to stick with her. He’s also got people digging into Olivia’s background. We should do the same while we wait for the all clear to dive in here.”

“Does Sarge think there will be any issue with the warrant?”

“Not in view of the link between Eve and Olivia, the tactical setup here—including the map of the park—and the threats Eve’s been receiving. Plus, there could be a public safety issue with today’s event.”

“Okay.”

But it wasn’t. Not really.

Though his job demanded he stay here, he wanted to be with Eve.

Now.

“I also asked Sarge to have one of the officers there tell Eve to give you a call if you hadn’t gotten through.” Colin gave him a one-sided grin.

“Thanks.”

“Happy to do it. Did you bring your laptop?”

“Yeah. It’s in the car.”

“Mine too. Let’s grab them and see what we can unearth on Olivia Macie. We can use our phones as a hotspot.”

With a clipped nod, Brent followed him out.

Waiting for confirmation that a warrant was in process was beyond frustrating.

But in the interim, perhaps they could pull some data on Olivia that would explain why a brownie-baking, soap-opera-watching senior would be running what appeared to be an Antifa command center in her basement.

“Ms. Reilly . . . may I spirit you away for lunch?”

At the touch on her arm, Eve excused herself from the conversation she was having with one of the Young Republicans during the meet and greet and swiveled toward the president of the group. “Of course.”

In truth, though, eating before a major speech was never her preference—less so with news vans parked nearby. The flutter of nerves in her stomach was a definite appetite killer.

Strange how she was perfectly comfortable spouting off to tens of thousands of people from a studio, but in front of a couple hundred warm bodies she always had to fight a slight but unnerving case of stage fright.