“I heard about Thule,” he said softly. “I’m sorry about Dane. He was a good Merc. They all were.”
Dane had trained both him and Fairchild as cadets, and Reece had looked up to him as a kind of father figure. He was certain Fairchild felt the same. He hadn’t really known the other two members of her squad—Bryce and Rook—but he could only imagine how difficult it was, losing all three of them in one flash.
“Thanks,” Fairchild said.
Her face was like stone, but Reece could see the pain behind her eyes. Pain, and a desire for revenge. Her grip loosened, and her hand withdrew. She turned her head and looked at the other two Mercs standing behind him.
“Meet your unit,” Col. Barnes said from the front of the room. “You already know Reece. The others are Dutton and Nash.”
Up to this point, Reece’s comrades had been standing silently behind him. Now, at the mention of their names, they both stepped forward and removed their hoods. Dutton was wearing a cap beneath his, and he gave the brim a little tug by way of greeting. He was a man of few words. Nash, on the other hand, was a man of too many, and as usual, his greeting came with significantly less tact.
“Pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Fairchild,” he said, smiling. “I promise I’ll do my best to make you scream convincingly.”
Reece cut his eyes in Nash’s direction. The youngest member of the squad was a hell of a fighter with an amazing ability to think outside the box. Unfortunately, he also had a tendency to let his mouth get ahead of his brain. Reece knew the kid didn’t mean any harm. He just said whatever was on his mind without anyfilter. Often that was an asset, but sometimes—like now—it was an annoyance.
Nash noticed Reece glaring at him and lifted his eyebrows as if to say, “What?” Then he got the picture, and his face grew serious. He looked at Fairchild again.
“I look forward to working with you,” he said. “I’ll do my best to make sure the mission is a success.”
Reece watched to see her reaction.
If Fairchild was fazed by Nash’s earlier quip, she didn’t let it show. Damn, she really had grown up, hadn’t she? There was a time when she would have busted a man’s lip for talking to her like that. Back in their cadet days, she’d had a chip on her shoulder the size of a damn neutron bomb.
“That’s all any of us can do,” she said, responding to Nash’s comment about a successful mission. Reece thought he heard a hint of bitterness in her voice.
Was she still thinking about the Thule incident? She’d always been hard on herself as a cadet. It would be just like her to blame herself for her teammates’ deaths. But Reece knew it wasn’t her fault. He’d read the debriefing report. She’d done everything right. She’d followed her leader’s commands. She’d gotten the package out alive.
Fairchild turned her head and looked at him again, her expression cold and businesslike beneath the brim of her cap.
“So,” she said, “it sounds like you’re already up to speed on the details of the mission.”
Reece felt his cock swell against the front of his pants. Indeed, he had been brought up to speed. When he’d first heard about it, he’d been apprehensive. His specialty was wetworks, and not the kind he and Fairchild would be engaging in for this mission. He’d almost passed on it—Barnes had given him that option—but two factors had made him say yes.
The first was Dane. Even though Reece hadn’t seen the man for many cycles, he still thought of him as a mentor, a kind of second father—or fourth father, to be more accurate. If Reece could play a part in avenging Dane’s death, he was down.
The second factor was Fairchild. The idea of some other random Merc squad sharing her just didn’t sit right with him. He felt protective of her, even if she didn’tneedhis protection.
“I want to nail this bastard, Slayn,” he said, “and I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
As he said the second part of that sentence, his thermal sensors detected a slight increase in temperature coming from Fairchild’s direction. His olfactory receptors also picked up a not-so-slight pheromonal response. She stared at him for a moment, and he swore he could almost hear the calculations going on inside her head. Then she turned and faced the two handlers standing at the front of the room.
“Okay,” she said, her tone all business. “I accept. When do we start?”
“Not so fast, Fairchild.”
The words came not from Barnes, but from the other person standing at the head of the table—the woman, Lennox. Reece had never met her before today, but he’d heard stories. In herday, she’d been one of the Guild’s top agents when it came to lurework and intimate cover operations, equally adept in the arts of sex and killing—a dangerous combination.
“It’s not as easy as that,” Lennox went on. “I’m still not convinced you’re the right Merc for the job.”
Reece could see the slight tension building in Fairchild’s shoulders.
“I said I’ll do whatever it takes,” she said, “and I mean it.”
Lennox shook her head. “Saying and doing are two different things. We’ve already lost one squad because of Slayn. I’m not willing to lose another—which is exactly what will happen if your cover gets blown.”
Reece felt his protective instincts rising. He didn’t like the way Lennox was talking to Fairchild, and he was tempted to say something about it, but he reminded himself that Fairchild wasn’t a cadet any more. She could take care of herself, both on the battlefield and in the briefing room. He held back and waited to see how she would react.
“I can do this,” Fairchild said, her voice quiet yet firm.
