Page 34 of Baby One Last Time
Her remark shocked me into silence. She opened the front door and stepped inside the house, and I followed. Maybe she was naïve or maybe she had a point, but one thing was for sure: she was on my side. And for that, if it was ever necessary, I’d follow her into hell.
When TJ had said “team dinner,”he’d left out the part about it being a holiday party. Turkey and ham with all the trimmings, Christmas cookies and a chocolate Yule log, and enough wine to keep Caesar’s army happy.
Halfway through the meal, Jensen disappeared for ten minutes and returned with rocks glasses full of dark-green liquid.
“No,” Alder fake whispered.
“TJ, I keep telling you, this is bad for the team’s health,” Bond said with a straight face, but when Jensen offered her the first glass, she took it.
After everyone held glasses of Jensen’s latest poison, we went around the table and each said something good about the team. It was a hokey bonding exercise, but it gave me all the feels. I was four glasses of wine in and pretty choked up by the time it was my turn.
“You guys are great,” I said, blinking back tears. “Really, not everyone would want me on their team, and you’ve all been...” I ended with a nod.
Sparks, who sat to my left, pulled me into a side hug and patted my head. Mai, to my right, pitied me, judging by the look on her face, but slapped my shoulder like we were buddies at the bar. High praise from her.
TJ held the place of honor; thus, he spoke last. He stood and raised his glass high in the air. “I’ll make this quick and I’ll try not to make us cry, unlike some of you.” He glanced at me. “It’s a pleasure and an honor to work with each and every one of you. I believe, based on all my years of experience, but even more so on my gut instincts, that this is the finest group HEAT has ever assembled. And if you quote me to X, your ass is fired.”
We all laughed and held our glasses higher.
“To the Reindeer Team,” TJ said. “We’re going to do great things together.”
“To the Reindeer Team,” we all echoed.
“And Santa’s elves,” Jensen added.
TJ stood straight and squared his shoulders as if bracing himself. “And now, team, our toughest test to date. Time to drink Jensen’s Evergreen Ecstasy.”
We groaned, but followed TJ’s lead and threw back the drink.
I choked as it caught in the back of my throat. “Did you grind up actual evergreen needles in that?”
Jensen grinned, then emptied his own glass in a long, smooth pull. “Ah,” he said. “Good stuff. And I’ll never tell my secrets.”
“That’ll be cold comfort when I have to put the entire team on sick leave,” Bond said, then tossed back her own drink.
As voices rose around me, I glanced down the table to find Derek and meet his eyes, to share the warm moment. A split-second later, I remembered he wasn’t there. He was barely part of our entourage as it was, and when we finished our work in Miami, he wouldn’t even be on our periphery. It was a knife to the gut. I laid my hand over my belly as if the pain were physical.
Dinner ended, and the eight of us worked together to clean up and roll service carts stacked with dishes to the kitchen at the back of the house for the kitchen staff, who were all vetted and cleared employees of HEAT.
The chatter and camaraderie eased my mind enough to let it wander. A vague plan that had been niggling around the edges of my consciousness since waking up with my hangover now clicked into place. I considered sharing my idea with TJ and the team. It might add enough value to the mission for me to be able to walk away with kudos and the ability to write my own ticket. But it involved exposing an asset I’d spent years cultivating back when I was FBI, long before I’d joined HEAT. I wasn’t prepared to simply hand him over, and besides, going through official channels would involve red tape, and that could take a week. A sense of foreboding warned me we didn’t have that long.
But I needed backup.
I signaled to Mai to follow me out onto the patio, next to a fountain that emptied into the pool. I did a quick check to make sure no one was nearby so we couldn’t be overheard.
“I’m worried about the timeline,” I said without preamble.
I don’t know what I’d expected. Maybe pushback. I was pleasantly surprised when she agreed.
“HEAT is legendary for getting the intel right, but there’s something...” She shrugged a shoulder.
I gazed out at the colorful, twinkling lights that sparkled on the pool water. “I’d feel better if I knew which Feds brought us in on this.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because agencies like the FBI that report up through Justice still haven’t fully recovered from the corruption that rotted it from the top down.” Being pulled from the field and ‘promoted’ to a desk job leading a research team hadn’t been the only reason I’d been anxious to get out of that system.
She whistled out between her teeth. “That’s a dangerous thought, given the line of business we’re in.”
