Page 13 of Watch Over Me

The door opened behind him and for a moment he thought it was James, coming in to apologize. To explain.

It wasn't.

Todd came in and shot him a careful look, thankfully not saying a word. Eddie didn't think he could handle it if Todd tried to console him.

Another coffee was definitely a bad idea so soon, but Eddie had to get up, had to move and do something, so he went over to their little kitchenette and decided to make himself tea. As he waited for the water to boil, he stared at the text on the tea box without registering anything. His mind was stuck on not being good enough, not measuring up to yet another standard.

The story of my life, he told himself as he took his tea back to his desk.

He focused on work for a while, doing all the little things he usually handled on Mondays. He'd learned a long time ago that the correct set up at the start of the week would make the following days run more smoothly.

When he was about done with that, Jeremy and Martinez came in.

"Are you free right now?" Martinez asked. "We figured we could go over the case together from the get-go, so everyone would be on the same page."

Are you sure?Eddie wanted to ask them, and his stomach rolled at that.

Here he was, doing the same thing he was so angry at James for. One stupid comment was all it took for Eddie to start doubting himself.

And he'd thought that he'd left it behind. That he didn'tcare so much about other people's opinions anymore.

Yet another thing he'd been wrong about, apparently.

"Yes, I'm free," he said out loud, straightening in his seat. "I need to be back here in—" he checked the time "—three hours, but I don't have anything urgent before then."

"Great." Martinez tilted his head towards the door. "Come on, then."

Going with them meant stepping onto the floor with all the field agents' offices, and even though he didn't see James, Eddie's hands were sweating at the thought of facing others after…

Get it together, he told himself firmly.You have a job to do.

"Okay," Jeremy started when the three of them took seats in Martinez and Jeremy's office. "First, I'm going to talk you through our process step by step, but if something is unclear, don't hesitate to ask."

"He can be very… brief with his words," Martinez said with a smile on his face, "so don't think it's you. It's probably him."

Rolling his eyes, Jeremy handed each of them a folder.

"Do you want to do this instead, then?" he asked his partner.

"Nope." The "p" turned into a popping sound. "Go on."

Eddie looked back and forth between them, amused almost despite himself. Since he'd worked with them on a daily basis, he'd heard more than his share of this bickering, but he still found it funny. A stoic and silent type like Jeremy and an easy-going, social guy like Martinez seemed like an odd couple, and yet they worked together perfectly and, underneath all the snark, there was obvious affection there.

Now, Jeremy turned to Eddie, ignoring his partner.

"You know the beginning," he said, opening the folder,and Eddie did the same. "We go through the entire dossier and any additional documentation if it's there and we take a note of anything important, things we need more info on, and things we need tech support for."

Eddie nodded. He handled some of that initial research, so he was used to getting folders like this one, with post-its and notes from the teams he worked with.

"Then, we usually go talk to the person we're going to be covering, we canvass the areas of interest, and we set up a fitting schedule, depending on what's needed. We want you with us on both the paperwork assessment and the client meeting."

Eddie flipped through the pages. "Anything specific you want me for?"

"That's the thing, we don't know what we don't know." Jeremy shrugged as he glanced at the dossier in his hand. "Some of the stuff we saw in here is already over our heads. We need someone who can translate it into English for us and tell us if there's something we should be paying attention to in particular. Cyber security is your wheelhouse, too, so if you have any suggestions on that, that would help."

"I wonder why they didn't hire a cyber security company in the first place," Eddie said. "It's way more likely someone would decide to hack their systems than, I don't know, kidnap them on their way to the meeting or whatever."

"Don't jinx it," Martinez warned him. "And it says that they went with us because they 'wanted to seek assistance from outside of the tech world'."

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