Page 16 of Baby One Last Time
“Thanks.” I took it from her, stared at the letters, numbers, and symbols until they were emblazoned in my brain, then dropped the paper in the burn box as I headed out of the room.
“Dinner’s in half an hour,” TJ called after me.
“Not hungry, thanks.”
“I still expect to see you there,” he said as I pushed through the fire door and launched myself up the stairs.
He could expect any damn thing he wanted. He’d see me at 0700 sharp, when PT started, and not a minute before. He and the rest of the team could bond over meals and late-night drinking and ridiculously competitive afternoon volleyball games on days off. Those were the memories that had haunted me late at night over the past month when I’d been out of the company. But fuck FOMO, and TJ and Mai and the team, and Derek. Especially Derek for dragging me back into his orbit and this mess.
I hated him. I hated them. I hated all of it. But I had no choice. I had to finish this mission, prove myself to X, and find some way to stay with HEAT. Not only did this feel like home, itwashome. And the pathetic truth was I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
I atemy dinner of chocolate-covered popcorn and wine alone in my room while I pored over the mission briefing. In seventy-two hours, Mai and I would execute our first job together. It should be a cakewalk, quietly removing Doppler and his erstwhile companions, two beefy but manageable bodyguards. Not much could fuck it up except a bad attitude, hers or mine. And mine was getting pissier by the minute. Call me petty, but I tend to dislike people who dislike me. The mission was sliding toward disaster, and I knew who had to stop it. Sometimes it sucks to be the adult in the playroom.
There was a knock at my door. I snapped my briefing book closed and glanced at the microwave clock. It was after eleven, and whoever it was should be multiple drinks into team bonding by now. But maybe it was someone not actually on the team. I smoothed down my hair as I headed toward the door, hating myself for caring how I looked for him. With the last breath of a drowning woman, I pulled open the door.
A pale blue cocktail floated in front of my face. “For you,” Mai said, slurring a bit. “A peace offering from Jensen. And an apology.” She held up a finger. “And I’m supposed to say he’s a world-class ass and you should ignore him. That’s from Alder.”
Alder always was my favorite when I had to work on full teams.
I took the cocktail out Mai’s hand, not because I wanted to drink it, but because I didn’t want to wear it. Although, watching more closely, her hands were steady as rocks. She threw back the last swig of her own drink, a vodka martini from the smell of it, then stared at me. “You going to drink that?”
I almost said no, but what were the odds she’d try to poison me? I was amusing myself with baseless suspicion. Kind of. I took a swig. The heat exploded in my mouth, then settled down into a fruity-sweet finish. “Yeah.” I blinked back tears. “That’s Jensen’s work.”
She grinned and held up her empty martini glass. “I had to make my own. The shit he mixed up for me was undrinkable.”
I smiled back at her and we stood there in my doorway like idiots. Look at us, not hating each other’s guts for a minute.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. “I was out of line. Blame it on the jitters.”
I stopped myself dropping my jaw in surprise. That was unexpected. “Thanks for that. But the file—which I swear I just read tonight—says you’re a sharpshooter. I’m not sure how I feel about you getting the jitters.”
She threw back her head and laughed.
I liked to think of myself as amusing, but let’s be honest. My reluctant partner was smashed.
“First-day-on-the-job jitters. Don’t worry. I don’t ever get nerves or shakes or out-of-control adrenaline rushes in the field.” Her face went still and serious. “You can trust me to have your back. I mean that.”
She sounded a lot less drunk when she said it.
Maybe it was the half-bottle of pinot mixed with whatever the fuck Jensen had made for me. “Same. The shit-show with Henderson was a one-off deal. Some really bad stuff went down that day...” I shook my head. I wouldn’t give her the details, but hoped she was perceptive enough to notice my sincerity.
Mai nodded. “Wilder read me the riot act. Said I shouldn’t judge what I didn’t know, blah, blah, blah.”
Well, hell. I hadn’t expected him, of all people, to cut me slack on the biggest fuck-up of my career. Wasn’t he just full of surprises? And secrets.
“Blah, blah, blah sounds like him,” I said, and we smiled together again. If this kept up, we might get through our first job without killing each other. Or getting each other killed.
“So, truce?” she asked.
The dread didn’t leave me, but it settled down into a manageable pit in my gut. I was careless and too reactive to negativity. That had gotten Derek and me separated. It had gotten Henderson shot. But this was my chance to make amends and prove myself to X and the rest of the company. Mai, for all her assholery, was giving me a foot in the door to redemption, whether she realized it or not.
“Truce.” I took another mouthful of Jensen’s concoction and handed it back to her.
She crossed the hall and leaned against her own door. “Can I ask you something?”
Not about Henderson or the botched job or Derek or the rumors about our affair. But I said, “Sure,” in the interest of team-building.
“What’s your family story? Are you missing the holidays with them?”
