Wolfe shrugged. “Just friends. I like her, but emotions aren’t my thing.”
That was the understatement of the century. Or rather, Raider guessed there were a whole mess of emotions in the hulking man. Kind of like a volcano with magma just bubbling beneath the surface. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the vicinity when Wolfe blew.
Wolfe grinned and looked at the three men. “I like our team meetings with cookies and booze, even if Brigid and Nari are irritated with us. It’s nice just to be with soldiers for a few minutes. Or agents. You’re kind of like soldiers. I mean, everyone here has been shot. Right?”
They all nodded.
Wolfe poured a fourth glass and leaned over to hand it to West. Then he held up his glass. “To the brotherhood of still breathing after being shot.”
Raider lifted his glass as the other men did the same. Brotherhood. Responsibility and something else, something warm and comfortable, settled onto his shoulders. They’d cover each other’s backs, and they’d get the job done. He’d figure out a way to protect Brigid in the process. “Amen to that.”
* * *
Brigid finished her deep background check on her father, finding no additional arrests or records. Her hands shook a little, and her palms were slightly sweaty. How could she not have known her dad had been arrested several times as a younger man? Did she know him at all? There had been nothing on her mother, thank goodness. Brigid picked up Kat and walked out of the computer room. The four male members of the team were kicked back in the middle of the room at the old desks, drinking whiskey. Giving them a nod and purposely not meeting Raider’s gaze, she walked past them to Nari’s office, where she knocked and waited for the shrink to give her a call to come in.
Why was her heart rate picking up? She could almost feel Raider’s gaze on her back.Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
“Come in,” Nari called.
Brigid twisted the knob and stepped inside, shutting the door instantly and sighing. “I received your email to come see you when I got the chance.”
Nari looked up from the other side of her desk, surprise in her dark eyes. “You’re flushed. What’s going on?”
“Men are morons.” Brigid moved two feet and drew out a chair in what was more of a big closet than an actual office. Nari’s small desk touched one side wall and barely gave her room to move past it on the other side. Behind her was a plain and dingy wall holding a painting of a beach scene with plenty of sun and sand. “They’re all out there having a drink.”
Nari pushed her laptop to the left. A stack of papers rested to her right along with a myriad of manila folders. “It’s how they bond. At least, it’s how those four bond when bullets aren’t flying and bombs aren’t being defused.”
Brigid shared a smile with the brilliant doctor. “True that.” She smoothed her hands down her jeans. Today Nari had dressed in dark slacks with a pink shirt and one of those delicate scarves tied in the front in a way that some women seemed to naturally know how to do. The woman looked more out of place in the dilapidated office than did the German shepherd camped right outside the door. “It, ah, seems like most of us are screwups here,” Brigid said quietly.
Nari’s dark eyebrows arched. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”
How else could it be put? Brigid was a hacker out from prison, Angus an obsessed agent, Wolfe a nutjob, Malcolm a wounded agent, and Raider out for blood from an assignment gone wrong. What about the shrink? “Why are you here, anyway?”
Nari sighed. “HDD wants me here keeping an eye on all of you. I haven’t hidden that.”
Which meant she was probably informing on them to the powers that be. “All right.”
Nari tapped a gold-plated pen on a notepad. “But everything you tell me is confidential. I would not break patient confidentiality for any job. Ever.” Her voice, low and cultured, remained measured and sure. “You have my word.”
There was more to the woman’s story, and Brigid knew it. But she hadn’t had a chance to delve into Nari’s records, and she really didn’t want to get caught doing it. “If you say so,” she murmured.
“I do.” Nari smiled. “Shall we talk about your next mission? When was the last time you saw your father?”
A male voice boomed through the door. “Nari? Come look at this, would you?” Angus bellowed.
Nari rolled her eyes. “He’s been waiting for a profile from an expert at some college, and he wants me to look at it immediately. Geez.” Grumbling under her breath, she stood and strode gracefully through the narrow opening between desk and wall. “I’ll be right back.” She shut the door behind herself.
Brigid pushed unruly hair away from her face. Her father. The thought of him hurt somewhere deep in her chest. Closing her eyes, she remembered their last encounter.
They’d stood on the well-kept wooden front porch near the swing where she’d spent hours swinging while typing on her laptop through the years. The smell of grass, alfalfa, and hay wafted on the sweet breeze from the farm, and in the distance, a tractor droned methodically.
“You should not have hacked into that medical program’s computers. A federal grant is part of the package, so you broke federal laws,” her dad said, his green eyes dark and his hard jaw set. His Irish had come out in full force in a way it rarely did.
Her anger matched his. “Mom should’ve been part of that study. She might’ve lived.”
“No,” her dad said. “She wasn’t a good candidate, and she wanted to live her last days here, not being poisoned. It was her decision.” He looked toward the boy on the motorcycle waiting for Brigid. “Don’t leave with that idiot.”
The idiot was a fun guy, and she had to get away from the farm. Her father should’ve made her mom take part in the study. She’d still be alive—maybe. “I’m eighteen,” she said, needing to get out of there. Away from the quaint farmhouse surrounded by barns and fields. “I can go.” She’d gotten arrested for hacking just six months before, but her probation was up now, and she could leave town.
