Page 17 of Unmade

“Could it be that she might feel you’re…closed off? Numb?”

I blew out a breath.

“You’d have to ask her,” I said. Then I eyed him and felt the need to make something clear. “I’m ready to work, Doc. I don’t gotta be 100% blissed out to do a good job. And there’s gotta be a loophole in the whole…you can’t take on more than one case at a time. Coach and Shira benched me from Mogadishu.”

“Well, you’re too close,” he said matter-of-factly. “It was only last week you admitted you’re still angry.”

“Of-fucking-course I am.” I straightened in my seat again and felt annoyance sizzling through me. “You would be too if you’d witnessed your brother getting shot in the head.”

I clenched my jaw and looked away.

God.

I couldn’t close my eyes to take a single breath anymore. Every time I tried to rest or sleep, I was transported back to the docks in Mogadishu. The clammy heat that’d stuck to my skin that night, all the containers around us, the moonlight, and then— I flinched as the shot went off in my head. The sound had bounced off the containers, and my brother had fallen to the ground.

“Bo, your anger is entirely natural and justified,” he said. “And you’re right—if I were in your shoes, I’d be murderous.”

Then…what was the problem?

“There you go.” I shrugged.

He sighed and gave me a patient look. “We don’t put a gun in the hand of a murderous person.”

What the fuck? I sat forward and felt a rush of anxiety settling in my chest. “Are you changing my status? You fucking cleared me, man.”

“I’m making an addition,” he amended. “For the time being, you’ll only get low-risk and domestic assignments. You will have a ton on your plate with the recruits anyway. We can reevaluate in a few months?—”

“A few months?!” I yelled and shot right out of the chair. Holy fuck, the anger that tore through me almost set me on fire, but it wasn’t half as maddening as the ever-composed expression on Doc’s face.

Fucker didn’t even flinch.

To put me on domestic bullshit wasn’t fucking fair. We barely handled those contracts anymore. We had a sister agency on the West Coast for that.

“You wouldn’t accept this outburst from one of your recruits. Why would I accept it from you?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, Doc.” I was done. I was so fucking done. I stalked right out of his office and slammed the door shut.

I was cleared, but I wasn’t cleared. I could work, but I couldn’t work. I’d have a shit-ton on my plate, all while I’d do nothing of importance.

* * *

August 5th, 2024

“Oh, we’re driving here today.” Alex peered out the window. “You always change it… What do you call it?”

“The route,” I supplied.

She was pulling through, wasn’t she? Little by little. It’d taken months for her to fully comprehend that Daddy was never coming home again, and it’d allowed her to start healing. She talked more in the car, and she finished her breakfast donut rather than just picking it apart while she was lost in thought.

“You want another donut, mouse?” I asked in the rearview.

“No, thanks.” She licked the last of the glaze from her fingers. “I wanna come with you to work.”

Because that was what we needed at Hillcroft, an eight-year-old running around.

Not that she hadn’t been there before, but she’d been Vince’s responsibility back then.

“I promise you can visit one weekend when work’s slow,” I said. I’d told her that before. “Maybe when school starts. We’ll come in one Saturday or Sunday, and you can help me with my homework.”

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