“It depends on your definition of rival. He may consider me his, but I don’t consider him mine. He’s barely dirt on my shoes.”
Matthew’s knee bounces under the table. “Have you told him that? Because that would answer some of my questions.”
“Are you saying I’m unlikeable?”
The bouncing stops. “Well, no, but your communication skills could use some work.”
“He’s not wrong,” Hunter says dryly, placing a mug in front of Matthew and one in front of me. “That’s an inside thought.”
“We are inside,” Xavier says innocently, with an expression that says butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “How can one expect to improve if they don’t know they need to?”
“By telling them they’re barely dirt on your shoes? That doesn’t sound like constructive feedback,” Matthew says. He rotates his mug in his palms a few times before taking a sip. His lips part in surprise. “It’s sweet.”
“Caramel candies.”
Matthew glances at his mug. “Huh. It’s nice. What made you think of it?”
“Necessity, at first. They’re inexpensive, and ants don’t find them the way they do sugar and things that aren’t sealed properly,” Hunter says, sliding into his own seat. We’re each on a side of the table, facing each other like a comical kind of standoff.
“That’s…weirdly specific,” Matthew says, confused. I highly doubt he has any idea why Hunter would care about that, or why it was knowledge he needed in the first place.
Hunter doesn’t elaborate, stretching back in his chair and spreading his legs. “Roger is a problem that needs to be solved. Preferably sooner rather than later. My team is looking into it, and I’ve asked them to coordinate with Theo and Adam. What’s our next step?”
“Your team.” Matthew pauses. “I didn’t know you had a team. What do you do for work? I thought you were, like, a political advisor or something. Olivia talks about you meeting with the mayor and stuff.”
Hunter takes a long sip of his drink before answering. “I am, in a way. When Jericho was seventeen, he was approached by someone deep in the government, a department you won’t haveheard of. One that deals with things below board and plays fast and loose with the law.”
“What does that mean?” Matthew says. He’s bouncing his knee again.
“Black ops,” I answer, getting to the point. “He and the rest of his team run a covert black ops group that does wetwork for the government.”
“Wetwork. That’s like… killing people, isn’t it?” Matthew asks, face losing some of its colour. He tightens his hold on his mug and swallows hard.
“I wouldn’t classify it as wetwork,” Hunter says dryly. “Perhaps at first, but we’re valuable enough now that we pick and choose what we want to do, and I turn down anything I consider morally disingenuous.”
“Notice how he uses the word ‘disingenuous’ and not ‘reprehensible’?” Xavier says, the corner of his mouth lifting in an amused smile. “There’s a fine line, but the difference is not as subtle as he’d like to think.”
“We mostly dabble in searching for certain missing persons,” Hunter continues, ignoring Xavier, “and deal with high-risk targets as well as investigations they want kept out of the public eye.”
“So what happened, the shooting thing, that was something to do with your job? Miles said it didn’t have anything to do with you.”
“In this case, Miles is correct. This isn’t linked to any cases that me or my team are dealing with. This has to do with Xavier’s inability to use tact and be friendly.”
“I can be friendly,” Xavier says amiably, “Wasn’t I friendly earlier, Matthew?”
Colour returns to his face in the form of a blush.
Hunter chuckles. “We need to talk about Roger and what we plan to do about him.”
“Unfortunately, Roger is only part idiot. Once he stirred the hornet’s nest, he would be smart enough to go to ground. Not impossible to root out, but it makes our job harder. Lester, however, is still out and about. We find him, we find our rat.”
“Then what?” Matthew asks. “Is this where the wetwork comes into play?”
“They tried to kill you.” Stretching out my leg, I rest it against his, calming the bouncing. “Should we play nice?”
“Is there an option in the middle of playing nice and murder?”
“We could hang him upside down somewhere quiet where he won’t be found,” Xavier suggests. “He’ll die in a day or two. Sometimes less than that; it’s not an exact science.”
