Page 162 of Piece Us Together

“I don’t know, old man,” Ash counters. “You’ve been around a pretty long time.”

Keats flicks Ash in the ear and tells him to just drive the damn car before continuing. “I let him bullshit you because he thought you needed to feel like the powerful one or whatever the fuck, but it’s over now. That bullshit before about you already being a monster and wanting to keep Maison’s hands clean by doing things yourself? You’re wrong. His hands are as dirty as yours. Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been dragged through the same kind of muck as you, Trav.”

Travis takes a moment to process his words, looking out his window as he does. It’s a long enough time for Ash and Keats to shift gears, talking through the finer details of our plan.

“Carter doesn’t know,” Travis says quietly. It’s not a question. He trusts that if Carter knew, he’d have told him. A sharp guilt twists in my chest as I realize Nolan could trust me in that way,but Hunter can’t.How could he, when all I keep doing is shut him out?

“No,” I confirm. “Carter doesn’t know.”

“Why?”

I shrug helplessly. “He needed me to be his villain, I think. He needed to see you as the hero and me as the one who got him hurt in the first place. And he wasn’t wrong, really. It was just easier to let him see me that way. It’s not like the shit I did before would erase what happened to him. I mean, he couldn’t care less about what happened to me that last night at the compound, and that was ten times worse than any other trauma I experienced during other missions.”

“He cares, Maison. Jesus—of course he cares.”

“Maybe. Yeah. In his own way.”

“Maison—”

“Not to break up this…whatever the fuck this is, but we really need to hit this place sooner than later,” Ash interrupts. “It gets fuckin' busy after midnight.”

Travis looks like he wants to argue, but thankfully, he decides against it. We stand in unison, heading to the back where Ash has a shit ton of goodies for us to choose from.

It’s just as he’s grabbing an ammo pack that Travis pauses, looks at me, and says, “You know I have to tell him, right?”

I grab a pack of my own and sigh. “Yup.”

We’re all in place with three minutes to spare, according to Ash’s ideal timeline. I settle in, eyes scanning the area, my un-mic’d ear taking in as much as I can. The area is definitely seedy, complete with the cliche neon green sign for a bar down the street that casts everything in a sickening glow.

The mic in my ear suddenly shifts from everyone’s steady breathing to Ash’s husky Southern voice. “What’d we got, K?”

“A standard security detail—one in the front, one in the back. Cameras on the corners. You with us, Ace?"

"I'm here," Ace says from his spot at his desk in the Big House. I'm not surprised they roped him into this, too. It's not the first time he's helped me on a side project.

"Where are you at with that system?” I ask him.

“Give me five,” he says in his distracted voice that always means stop bothering him.

Keats continues his update on the situation. “I’m tagging fifteen heat signatures inside.”

“Schematics showed a main room, then a hall with three rooms on each side and a bathroom at the end.” Travis isn’t exactly telling us this, since we all saw the layout. He’s working something out, doing it verbally instead of just in his head. Weall give him a minute. Sure enough, “Those signatures in the main room should be hostiles. A setup like this, the vics don’t usually leave their rooms. Customers go to them. Probably one to a room, likely six total. Twelve if you count their guests. The three in the main area are either all in charge of things, or one is running the show and the others are waiting for their turn.”

“Are the windows secured?” I ask. They weren’t when Ash did his recon the week before, or his recon two nights ago, but things change. We need those windows. Well, for our first plan, at least. I was hoping to avoid any of the other ones.

“The ones to the south are,” Keats announces.

Travis adds, “Northside looks good too.”

“System is down,” Ace says.

“Alright. We’ve got two signatures heading out of rooms one and five. Let’s strike now. Maison, take one, I’ll take five. Travis, you’ve got the front. You remember the word for if shit feels like it’s going south?”

“Rough.”

He picked the word himself. As strange as it sounds, the word can be used in so many ways that it’s perfect for a code. You can’t be sayingpinkorelephantif shit hasn’t gone all the way south yet. That’s a recipe for a blown cover.

“If we’re going to do this, we have to go. Those two in the main area might be for one and five,” I warn.

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