Page 64 of Mongrels United
Nash shook his head. “No, it’s not. And you know that too, so stop trying to save my feelings.”
Grady resettled herself on the chair and realized she was squirming guiltily. “I was. Sorry.”
“He killed Hyram…somewhere. And managed to haul the body through the ship, across the Palatine and into the engine rooms, where he made sure it would never been found again,” Nash said.
“It’s just…awful, to even contemplate,” Grady admitted. “The audacity of it…”
“He would have done it at night. Put the body in a bag. Nason was very strong.” Nash paused and grimaced. “I just realized. I’d always admired him for his strength, when I was a kid. He could bend metal, pick up sofas. He was proud of it. Only…it was the Bellish, all along.”
Grady wanted to stroke his arm in sympathy, but Nash was holding himself so rigid, she knew he wouldn’t appreciate the gesture, any more than he had liked her trying to explain away the ruined access logs.
“What I can’t figure,” Nash said, “Is how he screwed with the logs. Nason was a Skinwalker, then he was nothing. He never came close to raw code in his life.”
Grady threaded her fingers together and held them stiffly on the table to stop herself from wringing them. “Someone else did that for him,” she said, keeping her tone neutral.
Nash closed his eyes. “He didn’t do it alone. Damn…” Then he sat up abruptly, and looked at her. “He wasn’t working alone. His supplier would have wanted it hushed up as badly as Nason did. Even if Nason killed Hyram in the heat of the moment, the supplierstillwould have hopped about to make the evidence disappear for him.”
Grady nodded. “We’re getting close to…something. I can feel it. Everyone he knew or might have known around the time Hyram disappeared…we have to question them, Nash. Make it official, and demand answers. No lies about not knowing him, no prevarications to save your feelings.”
Nash nodded, although she could see his shoulders were stiff with tension.
Grady reached out and picked up his hand and got to her feet. “But not tonight,” she said firmly.
They didn’t make love that night. Instead, they lay beside each other and talked about inconsequential things, anything that wasn’t to do with Bellish. Nash had always naturally avoided talking about his businesses, which Grady was grateful for. She suspected that most of them would be illicit, if not downright illegal. If she didn’t know details, she could pretend she was ignorant about the man with who she shared a bed.
One day, likely very soon, there would be reckoning. This…affair. Relationship. Whatever it was, it would likely end badly for her and for her career. But she could not seem to stay away from Nash and his warm, strong arms and his wounded soul.
But while he revealed nothing incriminating and she saw nothing, she could live with the vague guilt such a thin line of reasoning generated.
So they spoke about her father, and his essays, which Nash had read. About tankball, which was—surprisingly—a safe subject, even though tankball was generally riddled with politics and power-mongering.
That made the Mongrels United team a very safe subject. Grady told Nash about the two games the Mongrels had just lost, after a four-game winning streak.
“They’re going crazy trying to figure out new strategies. The Quiver and Crave stuff works, but only for a while, then the other teams develop counter moves, that negate the advantages.”
“They need defensive strategies, not just offensives,” Nash murmured in the dark. “Quiver and Crave were offensive players.”
“I’ll have to point that out to Kailash,” Grady said.
Their conversation petered out. Nash curled himself around Grady, and they slept. Grady would not admit to Nash that she slept better when he was there and touching her, than she ever had alone. She didn’t want to make such an exposing confession and watch him draw away from her, with wariness building in his eyes. She couldn’t bear it if he did.
So she took comfort in his arms, and remained mute.
Two days later, Kailash reached out to Grady on the Forum, to find her at her desk. A live connection, which let her see that Kailash was barely standing still. He was standing in front of the Bridge training tank, his grey practice leotard dark with sweat, and his hair plastered against his head.
His face lit up when their screens connected properly. “Grady, what the hell…? Can I just kiss you? Would that do? I don’t know what to say. None of us do.”
Grady wanted to laugh aloud. She had never seen Kailash looking so excited and happy. “I’d like to take credit for whatever has you looking like you’re standing on hot coals right now, but honestly, Kai, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You hired Ruben Aylmer to coach us! He’s here right now, giving orders, and bellowing like he’s thirty years younger.”
“The old Dreamhawks coach?” Grady clarified. “He’s training you now?” She was conscious of Luus’s attention, that he was openly listening and grinning at Kailash’s excitement, too.
“Right now! He just showed up, told us we had a ton of work to do if we wanted to win the finals, and he would only get full pay if we take the ribbon this year, so get up off our asses and listen hard. Slackers and those who don’t listen are out. Get in the tank, get your asses moving!”
Grady cleared her throat. “I really wish it was me who thought of hiring him. He’s exactly what you need, Kailash. But I didn’t do it.”
Kailash’s grin faded. “But…we didn’t tell anyone else about Aylmer sending me that message. I only told you, and I only shared what he suggested with the team. We kept it to ourselves, because we didn’t want the other teams to know where we got our ideas from.”
