Page 15 of Baby One Last Time
“She’ll see it soon enough.” I needed to get the team off my weirdness and back on task. “So, to recap, unnamed Russian oligarch reaches out to Miami Pete to store some weapons, place unknown, and Beecher and his operation to transport them to the buyer, date and time unknown. The Russian also reached out to Leary to be ready to launder the money, so she’s our in for finding out the details we’re missing. With her under wraps, this Doppler stooge takes over communications.”
“He’s a lesser-known quantity to the Miami goons, so he’ll be easier for us to fake than Leary,” Alder said.
I nodded. “In order for you two to pose as Doppler, the man himself needs to disappear quietly, which means it falls to Tactical. Let’s talk details.”
“Not yet,” TJ said. “Lee needs to have some faith in you before you go on a job together. Show her.”
I glanced at Alder, who had kindly followed my lead in trying to change the subject. She shrugged. Everyone else was already staring at me. I pressed my lips together to avoid sayingI quit. That I could not do. Derek had a secret I needed to uncover. Criminals roamed the streets. Snacks and Macallan waited for me in my room. I needed a better nest egg and a way to fill my empty hours. So many reasons I had to stay.
I folded my hands in my lap and met Mai’s eyes. “You’re former military, which everyone in the room has already figured out from your attitude. Good with weapons, probably a sniper, based on the way you move, but even more on the way you stay still. You’re a good fighter, which is a gimme because you have to place in the company’s 90th percentile or above in hand-to-hand combat to make Tactical. But you didn’t learn that in the service. Your stance and the way you attack the bag suggest you studied as a kid and were good at it.”
She widened her eyes a little at that. “I was statewide junior jiu jitsu champion at age ten.” She held my gaze. “And I finished in the 95th percentile on the HEAT fighting practicum.”
Jiu jitsu was a kick-ass discipline and I nodded in appreciation. But I couldn’t let her have the win. “I placed in the 97th.” I was one of the rare ones on Tactical who hadn’t grown up training, but back when I was FBI, I took to Krav Maga like a pup to rawhide. I inclined my head toward Derek, a middle-weight kickboxing phenom back in his college days. “He was in the 96th. But enough about us. Back to you.”
“And the other things you’ve read in my file?” Mai leaned forward. Still angry, still toxic, but drawn in against her own will.
“She hasn’t seen your file,” TJ said.
Mai snapped her eyes in his direction, then back to me. Her look said she didn’t want to believe him.
“Your file wouldn’t tell me the exact minute you switched from merely despising me to wanting to pull some jiu jitsu moves on me,” I said.
“The minute I learned we were crewmates.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not until I called you out for being either a liar or un-self-aware. And it happened after the second one, so that’s what scares you. You’re afraid of lacking self and situational awareness.” Her subtle intake of breath that the others probably didn’t notice completed the puzzle for me. “Because you fucked up and someone else got hurt.”
Her face twisted into anger, but only to cover the pain. Not so much pain that someone got killed. “Lots of soldiers get hurt in combat. Some die. We know that going in.”
I nodded. “So do we, in this job. That doesn’t mean a fuck-up can’t make things worse. And yours didn’t end in death, but you still can’t forgive yourself.”
Mai jumped to her feet. “What the hell?” She turned to TJ. “You can’t possibly expect me to work with someone like this.”
“Like what?” I rose to my feet, not willing to let her have the upper hand by towering over me. “Someone who can see you for what you are, not the hero everyone makes you out to be as they thank you for your service andoohandaahover your kill record? But someone, somewhere knows you fucked up bad, and it was only by the grace of God or maybe some faster-thinking scrub that you didn’t get your buddy killed.”
“That’s enough, Kessler.” TJ stood beside Mai and held up his hand.
“You wanted her to see the show, let’s give her her money’s worth!” I could read so much on her face with every new word I spit at her. And I was angry enough to keep going, to tell them all the truth, to tell them she was so much like me, it was the world’s worst fucking nightmare. “He wasn’t just a buddy or a teammate, was he?”
“Enough!” Derek grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me toward him to break my laser focus on Mai.
His tight grip leeched some of the venom from me and I slumped against the edge of the table. Mai stood preternaturally still, but backed away when TJ reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder.
At the other end of the table, Jensen mumbled, “Fuck me.”
Alder elbowed his ribs.
“Sorry, it’s just, seeing her in the field is one thing, but hearing what happens in her head when she does her woo-woo shit is—”
“Jensen!” Alder elbowed him harder.
And there it was. What they truly thought of me. Proof that I was a weirdo. The odd woman out. Not really one of them. It was the reason I wouldn’t have a future with HEAT unless I convinced them I could do my work without being embedded in a team. My only hope was to work jobs with remote backup, the way Derek and I used to run delicate operations as a tactical quick-strike team, only this time, I wouldn’t have a partner at my back.
Ignoring the dull pain in my gut from too many coiled up emotions, I spoke to TJ. “If I can get my updated network credentials, I’ll go over the details on my own.”
He looked worried, as well he should be. This was his virgin voyage as a team leader, and I was the nuclear warhead that could blow it all to smithereens. He nodded. “Sure. Take some time. Alder, you have Kessler’s credentials for her?”
Alder opened a notebook and tore out a piece of paper where she’d written my username and password.
