Page 49 of Remade

I have reached my limit for social interaction. Can you go get my parents?

Oh. Right, yeah. “Of course.” I got up from the bed and…paused when I noticed her scribbling something quickly on the notepad.

She showed it to me seconds later.

Leave your online handles with Mom so I can share them with everyone.

I smiled. “I will.”

I walked out with a huge weight off my shoulders, and I wasn’t too surprised to find Mary lingering a few feet away, as if she’d been waiting.

She looked up and walked over to me. “How did it go, dear? Is she okay? Areyouokay?”

I exhaled a chuckle and rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, everything’s fine. She just reached her limit for social interaction—her words. She asked me to get you and Mr. Quinn.”

Mary beamed and squeezed my hand. “How many times I’ve heard her and Elise say that. I’ll go check on her.” She turned toward the rec room and hollered for James to join her, and it didn’t take long before he reappeared and moseyed down the hall.

Wait, what was… I did a double take after a brief glance toward the library, and I saw Bo and Darius at one of the tables there. Why were they alone? If they were talking work…

I excused myself to go see what was up, and I winced when I turned too quickly. That bruise on my stomach really hurt sometimes.

Since Bo had his back to me, Darius spotted me first, but he didn’t look like he was giving Bo a heads-up about my approach. He continued with whatever he was saying, his expression remaining the same.

“…to submit an HW-27 form—and I don’t see why Quinlan would deny it,” he was saying. “Frankly, Vince shoulda done this already.”

“There’s a lot he should’ve done,” Bo muttered. He must’ve heard me at that point, because he looked over his shoulder and smiled faintly. “Hey, pup. How did it go?”

“I cried. ’Cause that’s what I do now.” I stopped in front of their table, and I didn’t want their topic to fade away. “What’s an HW-27 form?”

His eyes flashed with a pinch of amusement, and he carefully leaned back in his seat and adjusted his leg, which was by no means held in an upright and straight position. Goddammit.

“It’s a request to open up old case files that might help with a new one,” he replied. “Over the years, we’ve probably worked six or seven Hahn-related assignments, so…”

“I’d double that,” Darius said.

I pointed to Bo’s leg. “You can’t go shooting more Hahns with that leg.”

He grinned a little and pulled me to him, and he stuck a hand down the back pocket of my pants. “He worries about me.”

Darius smirked. “It’s a good feeling.”

Bo peered up at me. “It is.”

Well, all right, then. Good.

“You don’t have to worry anytime soon, kid,” Darius said, capturing my attention again. “Omar Said gets shit done, but he’s a meticulous planner, and there’s no way he could’ve foreseen everything going sideways the other day. He has to start fresh with a new plan, and it’s going to take months.”

I tilted my head. “How can he be in a top position if he doesn’t possess the smarts to have backup plans?”

He inclined his head. “I’ll rephrase. The plan might exist, but he operates on a larger scale. Executing it will take months. And now we know who to keep an eye on. Intel will be all over this.”

That made more sense. To set up a new drug route or whatever he might plan required land, property, manpower, and a big network. Not to mention the logistics.

It made me curious, though. “Would you let him execute any part of his plan, then?”

Bo weighed his answer. “Technically, yes. We need time to map out his routines and behaviors so we can learn how to predict them. It would also help if we could lure him to a specific location for his final days.”

Oh, we’d read about that in training. Legacy had told us about a case during the Cold War—two American agents had dug so deep into a KGB agent’s life that they could manipulate his daily schedule without raising too much suspicion. And on the day they had killed him, they’d essentially created a ripple effect, starting with a slashed tire on the KGB guy’sneighbor’scar. Not his own—the neighbor’s. Because that had prompted the KGB agent to take another route to work, then one thing led to another, and the spy had fallen into several traps that ultimately led to his death.

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