“You’re looking at ’em, kid,” Tara said, waving her hand as though presenting us to him.
“He’s damn right,” I said with pride. “F5 has clearance to audit any organization—including our own—at our convenience, whenever it becomes necessary, which right now, it certainly is.”
“I guessX-Fileswasn’t as far off as I thought,” Ty said with a bitter smirk.
He didn’t know the half of it.
“Yeah, even though this is on the books and our job,” Kyle said to Ty, “the higher-ups aren’t going to like this. They’ll resist or try to get in our way until we have answers. Bottom line is: we have immunity like nobody else.”
“Now that you boys have compared our dicks to other peer agencies’, do you mind if we get back to business?” Tara asked. “First things first, in order to make this official, since Liam isn’t technically a part of the team anymore, I’m recommending we bring him on as an independent contractor to head up the investigation. Don’t make fun of me saying this, but we have to do this by the book, so when I’m filling out paperwork, I can say we dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s. Votes in favor to bring McKinney on as an independent contractor with his recruit, Ty?”
“Done,” Mick said as Kyle followed with, “Whatever.”
“I’m pretending I heard clear yeses all around,” Tara said without flinching. It was clear she was ready to get down to business. “Now. Mick will grab the intel for these two cases and pull reports for all F5’s cases during the active years we discussed.”
“That’s hundreds of cases,” I noted.
“And we have all the time in the world to review them in this fabulous rathole. So let’s make some space and get to doing what we do best. Time to find us some aliens.” Mick cringed, and Kyle angled his head. “Oh, so I make a reference toX-Filesand suddenly everyone’s annoyed?”
“I got it!” Ty told her.
“Thank you, Ty.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at how proud he looked.
And damn if it wasn’t his adorableness that made it all that much more bearable.
