Davy scraped the thick sugar-scrub waxed coating off the candy with his teeth to get to the sweet-sour pop of raspberry. That hadn’t changed. Fraser would still ratherhavethe candy than actuallyeatit.
Hill wasn’t the only one life was wasted on.
He rolled the sucker around his mouth, hard shell clacking against his teeth, as he gave the space bar on Fraser’s computer an idle tap with his finger. The screen flickered to life—a bland gray background with a half-translucent corporate logo of an octopus floating in the middle of it.
Davy stared at it. He’d forgotten that.
Sweat itched under Davy’s armpit. He scratched absently as he shoved his soaked hoodie into the locker.
“We can’t let what happened in Palmyra go unanswered.”
Davy shifted the door so he could see his brother without having to turn around.
In the reflection, Fraser frowned at him. He looked, like always, like someone had drawn Davy from memory.
“I saw you already sent a reply,” Davy said.
Fraser clenched his jaw. “This is the private sector,” he said. “It’s not enough to be good at what you do; you have tobe seenbeing good at it.”
Davy smirked at him. “I look good enough,” he said.
“Not that good.”
“Better than you.”
“Older than me.”
They glared at each other. Blood had always been enough reason to stick together, but not enough to like it. But…Fraser was good at what he did—crawling up rich people’s holes—too.
And, like it or not, black ops was a young man’s game. Davy wasn’t old, but he’d run himself hard. After a workout, these days, the ache lingered along stress lines that he could feel weren’t going to get any better.
He knew where people like him ended up when they lost their edge. In a grave.
He’d come very close to one in Palmyra.
“I know.” Davy gave in to the inevitable. “But we also can’t look scared. So if your slap on the wrist works, we’ll call it even.”
Fraser gave him a thin-lipped smirk. “And if it doesn’t?”
That was a good question,
Davy closed the locker, briefly making his brother vanish, and then turned around to look at him.
“It will,” he said. “I know Coate. He’s not stupid.”
“Stupid enough,” Fraser interrupted him. He pulled his Blackberry out of his pocket and frowned at the screen. “Henearly killed us. Rosen and his wife were there too, and they’re civilians. She lost the baby.”
“Don’t pretend you care.”
“I care about keeping Rosen happy,” Fraser said. “He knows where to find the money. So answer his email about the corporate logo. Make him feel like he’s got a reason to stay. That he’s an equal partner.”
“Is he?”
“Where money’s concerned? Yes,” Fraser said. “Don’t be a dick about it, either.”
Davy didn’t check his email until the next day. When he did, he’d rejected all of them. He might start to slip one day, but right at that moment, he was still good. So why not lean into his rep?
Davy Jones and CIRATTA HOLDINGS. What else could you have but an octopus? He’d gone over to their house to go through the designs, though. That had shown willingness.
