I smile. “Yeah. However, the odds of either of us getting sleep before noon are slim.”
“I wasn’t expecting that kind of fucked up shit when I took this job.”
That kind of shit is why there is now private security at the mine site and the camp. Old loyalties and new bribes. Blood and emeralds will get to a man…or a woman.
“You want to run me through what happened?” Or was Hargrave done with it all? Did the rescue break him? I study him over the lip of my cup as I take a sip.
He runs his thumb along the edge of his plate. “At the time I didn’t ask, but are we going to have our asses kicked for going in? We made a mess.”
I shrug. “The big bosses are liaising with the government.” I don’t think we’ll be told to leave, but we don’t know what deals are being made. “They wanted our people back.”
They may not have been ready for the bloodshed though. No one really is.
“The more you can tell me, the better. It’s going to be awhile before I can talk to Reed.” I’ll catch Ashley and Colton once he’s on the chopper.
“I’ve seen a lot and done a lot. But some things stay with you. You know?”
I nod.
“He was naked, tied up in the middle of their camp. They had headlights on him. I don’t know what they did to him, but I have no doubt they were hoping that Ashley was nearby and that they’d stop if she came back. When she didn’t, they didn’t know what to do with him. He’d have been dead by morning.”
That he was alive when Hargrave reached him was nothing short of a miracle. If he makes it a few more hours to the hospital…
I push the thought away because I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is make sure that I write up something cohesive and compelling to cover our asses.
A young guy is wiping tables and getting too close. “Come on, we’ll sit in my office and get this done, then you can turn in.”
With a groan he stands, and for a moment he watches the guy cleaning up. “Sometimes I think a nice, boring job is what I want.”
“You mean the morning after, that’s what you think you want.” I down the rest of my coffee and collect our plates to put in the tubs with the other dirty dishes.
“Yeah…”
“Don’t worry, in a week’s time you’ll be complaining about watching people wash rocks again and asking for a change of duties.” I tried to rotate my guys through the different areas, but they weren’t there only to help the rest of the security team. They were there to watch them too. And the rest of the security staff knew it. When we started, some walked off the job. Now there were still pockets of resentment, and an edge that meant we weren’t going to be making any new friends, but for the most part, everything had settled down. And there’d been less trouble.
Hargrave snorted.
“Seriously, if you are done. Tell me straight. I’ll arrange for a replacement and you can head home.”
“If he’s okay…”
If he died, Hargrave was going to take that hard. It was going to hurt all of us, but some could take it and some wouldn’t. That’s the way things went. And most of the time, I’d never been able to tell which way someone was going to fall.
“Let’s make it through the next couple of days. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He nodded.
As we walked out, the familiar thumping of a chopper made us both look up. That it had come so quick meant someone higher up was pulling strings, and when that happened it usually meant my ass was not on the line.
Not today anyway.
We watch it land. For a moment, it brings back not so fond memories of fighting and losing friends. Some who didn’t live long enough to catch the ride and others who didn’t make it to the hospital. The blades slowed, and the paramedics got out.
Overhead, the pearly gray sky seems a little lighter in color and weight.
“You’re not going to put everything in your report, are you?”
I frown. “What do you mean? I don’t want to lie, even by omission.”
