“Okay. I want in,” she says, her eyes locked with DB’s.
The whole room shifts.
“You want in?” DB asks. “What do you mean, you want in?”
“I’d like to kick a rapist’s ass. And a cut of whatever y’all made tonight.”
Chattering starts in the room and on the video call with Jake.
DB holds up his hand. “To be clear, we’re not just kicking somebody’s ass, beating them up as some act of revenge. We’remurderingthem. We don’t take on someone unless our intent is to kill them in a decidedly premeditated fashion. Every person on an op must be willing to take a life, even if Anders will always volunteer to do it for you.”
Anders grins, proud of himself.
That guy ain’t right.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I get it. I want in. And I do my own killing, thank you very much.”
“That seems like an awfully fast turnaround,” DB says, looking at her strangely.
She gestures at the photo in front of her. “Let’s just say that I know what that base was like before and after his death, and it is a better place now. The MSA number at that base has dipped below the national average for the first time in ten years.”
Rafi asks, “MSA?”
“Military Sexual Assault,” she answers grimly.
The room goes quiet before DB brings our focus back to the matter at hand. After some debate, we decide to give her a temporary berth on the team. Before we break up and go our separate ways, I up-nod Parker. She raises her brow, her hands firmly planted on her hips.
She walks up to me. “What am I, new? Already taken care of,” she says, pointing to a laptop stashed in her unreasonably large bag.
DB orders Everett and the twins to watch our guest, gesturing for me follow him to the back room. It’s not my favorite place because it’s lined in subway tiles and there’s a drain in the middle of the floor, along with a handheld shower head on the wall. Not many people who enter this room leave it alive.
DB paces unevenly, his gait worse than it’s ever been, and it makes me want to find out what’s happening with his knee. But I value my balls, so I know better than to ask about something he hasn’t yet volunteered.
“What are your thoughts?”
I smile to myself, nearly laughing. “I like her. Now that we know what she’s about, I wouldn’t mind giving her a shot.”
“I’m not a fan of recruiting her from an op gone sideways.”
I shake my head. “Oh, for sure. Thatwasway fucked up, from top to bottom. But I still don’t hate the idea of having her on the team. Why don’t we bring Hedy in, use some of her recruiting magic, have either Jake or the Wimberley team do the full work up? If she passes Hedy’s sniff test, we put it to the team.”
“What do we do with her tonight?”
“Honestly? Have Jake go another layer beyond his initial inquiry, to make sure we’re not missing something obvious, then bag her and drop her off at home. Put the twins on her detail for tonight, then let’s see what she can do.”
“You think?” he asks, a rare moment of indecision marking his handsome features.
“I do. I also think there’s a real possibility that Hedy’s going to try to steal her, to be honest. We put Abigail on the payroll, have her help us with a few more defensive moves. From what Jake already sent us, it doesn’t look like she has family or very many friends. Maybe she needs us as much as we need her.”
DB tilts his head back, staring at the ceiling. “There’s a blood spot up here that someone missed.”
I take a long, hard look at my old friend. Like Everett, the shadow ops that DB and Jake ran in the sandbox informed many of my missions, and their info saved my life countless times. I’ve gotten to know him even better through our time together on the Guardians team, and I’ve never seen him this anxious. In fact, that’s not a word I’d use to describe DB. Ever.
“What’s going on, DB? You haven’t been yourself here for a little while.”
He avoids my eyes and settles into a thousand-yard stare. After a long moment, he speaks softly. “I just…I wanted to keep the Guardians quiet. Small. We started with the five of us, just a few hours a month, dealing with whatever floated across our radar with the network security work. And I don’t regret expanding to include people from the Marshal’s list, but on the other hand…damn.”
I stand quietly with him. I know this is hard. DB’s sense of right and wrong is acute and guides everything he does. Not everyone’s going to agree that murder is the right course of action, but he’s seen the devastating effects of letting the wrong people live. Still, he hates making these decisions. It costs him so much.
