Chapter 136

I was furious at so many people and so many things that I couldn’t even begin to figure out what to be mad about first.

One: Devlin’s attitude was absolutely unsustainable. When we’d been partners – professional or romantic, it didn’t matter – our greatest strength had been our ability to communicate. While other teams fell apart because of nursed grudges or secret agendas, we’d formed a highly functional partnership based on trust and honesty. We had relied on each other implicitly. When things went sideways, both he and I had known we weren’t operating alone.

Until he’d gone and screwed that up, of course.

When circumstance forced me back into the field, I’d been pleasantly surprised to see that the old rhythms were still easy to grasp. Granted, it was often difficult to separate the professional lines of communication from the unfamiliar, bittersweet romantic ones, but that hadn’t influenced us on the job. We just worked. And I’d been hoping to keep things like that for as long as possible.

That wasn’t going to happen if he insisted on brooding in his hotel room and sniping at me in public. I needed to force him to sit down and spill, but we didn’t have the time for the kind of fallout that conversation could produce. At the same time, waiting until the Mouse was dealt with didn’t seem to be an option anymore, either.

Two: Barrett was handsome, admittedly, but he was also a troll of the highest order. Without any knowledge of my history with Devlin, Barrett had accurately honed in on the exact things he could or say that would drive my ex-husband crazy. The fact that he seemed not to mean anything personal by his antagonisms didn’t make them any less effective or any less detrimental to team morale. Maybe scaling so many buildings in the dead of the night, with no one but his own thoughts for company, had given him something of a complex. Maybe he didn’t realize that his comments and snark could cause any one of us to make a mistake at a critical moment.

Maybe he just didn’t care.

Whatever the reason, he needed to be reined in. Although, if he decided that he didn’t want to be reined in…what exactly would I do? He knew just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to realize the stakes. I wasn’t about to tell him anything about the Magi or the Lady, if I didn’t have to. Without that information, it was entirely possible that he’d dig his heels in and continue taking shots at Devlin whenever possible for his personal amusement. I needed to figure out a way to convey the seriousness of this job to him, without giving him any of the particulars.

And that, of course, would also take time.

Three: My sister was coming to town. And I was going to have to talk to her. Compared to the other threats and hassles on my mind, sitting down to a fancy dinner and listening to a string quartet with my sister shouldn’t have even rated as worth mentioning. But, while my head knew that academically, my emotions didn’t seem to have received the same memo. I could already imagine her insufferably well-meaning questions and comments, backed by a lifetime’s worth of inherent superiority.

“Oh, I wish I could just fly off to London. I had such a good time there last year, but I was busy working on a research project and couldn’t really enjoy it.”

“Oh, Barrett, it’s so lovely to meet you. If Sarah had told me that she was having a wedding, of course I would’ve cleared my schedule. I’ve made sure that all of my colleagues know the latest procedure, just in case I have to drop everything anyway.”

“Oh, Father, I looked over those projections you sent me and, if you’re looking to get into the medical equipment overseas, I know just the person to put you in touch with.”

And so on and so on. Just an endless barrage of tiny, insipid little barbs hidden in polite conversation that I couldn’t ever point out or even defend myself against. There was a reason I tried not to be in the same ZIP code as her whenever possible, but here I was, about to deliberately expose myself to an entire evening.

That, more than almost anything else, made me want to strangle the Mouse with my bare hands.

A million other irrelevant irritations tumbled around in my head, vying for the spotlight, and I didn’t make any effort to sort through them. Instead, I did what any red-blooded American woman would do, when faced with more troubles than any one person should reasonably have to deal with.

I called my grandmother.

An hour passed before Virginia got back in touch with me. She said that she’d been out with CJ, enjoying a day without her daughter-in-law, but that she’d be able to meet me when she back to the hotel. I insisted that we meet on neutral ground, instead. The last thing I needed was for Barrett to come sauntering back in or to run into Devlin while he was stewing…or, with my luck, both at the exact same time.

We ultimately agreed on Klyde Warren Park. Virginia had, through some distant subsidiary that she’d contributed to once upon a time, helped to fund the creation of the park, but had never actually seen it in person. I wanted to take in some fresh air, but also didn’t want to find myself anywhere isolated enough that Hunter and his team of kidnappers might be able to get a clean shot at me. Klyde Warren worked nicely for both of us.

Michel entered the bedroom while I was finalizing our plans. He waited patiently until I finished before he said anything.

“That was something, wasn’t it?” Michel asked.

I rolled my eyes and flopped back on the bed. “I swear, Michel, the ego of the average heterosexual male is going to be the death of us.”

“Us?” Michel coughed. “As in, this team?”

“Us, as in humanity,” I clarified.

“For what it is worth,” Michel said, “I do not think that ego is limited to only heterosexual men. Or even men, for that matter.”

I sat up. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

He raised his hands in surrender. I noticed that one of them trembled slightly. “I am hardly the person to talk about another person’s relationship problems.”

“And yet, here you are,” I said. “Speak your mind, Michel.”

Michel sighed. “I do not know what I think,” he said. “Or…maybe I just do not how to say it? I only mean that I have noticed the…difficulties…that you and Devlin are having lately.”

“You aren’t the only one. You still talk to him pretty regularly, right?”

He nodded.

“Has he said anything? Is there some clue you’ve managed to uncover that might explain why he’s acting like this?”

Michel hesitated before answering. “I would not want to tell you anything that he has not already told you. But, even without getting into details, I think that you can figure out most of what he’s thinking on your own.”

“Barrett,” I said and rolled my eyes again. “Sure, there’s that. But Dev’s been sulking since before we came to Dallas and long before Barrett became a part of…whatever it is that we’re doing.”

“Since Atlanta?” Michel suggested.

“Yes, since Atlanta,” I said, “but we talked about that.”

We had talked about that, hadn’t we? I thought back to our time in Atlanta, trying to recall the specific details of that conversation. Devlin had sniped at me all throughout my chat with Virginia, only to turn around and earnestly apologize later on for getting emotional. He’d asked me why my choice to hide him from my parents had pissed him off so much and…

Oh. Oh.

Something must have changed in my face, because Michel raised a concerned eyebrow. “What is it?”

“He said that he thought I’d kept him hidden because of what we do,” I said. “And I told him that wasn’t true, but…”

“But?” Michel prompted.

“But I wasn’t really sure if that was true,” I admitted. “And then we never really had a chance to get back to that conversation, and…”

I trailed off as I realized that wasn’t quite true, either. We’d had opportunities to talk. In Atlanta, before we’d left. After the debacle when we’d met Barrett in the first place. While we’d been flying to Dallas. Hell, we were staying only a few rooms away from each other right now, and I’d spent an hour and change stewing over my problems instead of walking down the hallway to confront them head-on.

It wasn’t a matter of time. It hadn’t ever been a matter of time. I was actively avoiding that conversation, because I didn’t have a response to what he’d said and I didn’t want to think about that fact.

I groaned. “God, I need a therapist.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I keep making the same mistakes, over and over again, without realizing it,” I said. “Is Devlin still here?”

Michel shook his head. “He and Mila went out to speak with her local friends.”

I caught a bitter note in his words and lifted a concerned eyebrow of my own. “Everything alright there?”

“Things were fine,” Michel said. “Maybe even good. But then I was hurt at the theatre and she just…pulled away? Does that make sense?”

I’d caught the looks during the conference earlier, but I hadn’t understood them. Now that he mentioned it, though, it was strange that she’d gone to run errands without him. Since landing, the two of them had been pretty much inseparable.

“Have you guys argued about anything?” I asked. “Or had any disagreements, at all?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

“Are you still training with her?”

“No.” Michel frowned. “She was too busy at first; now, she just finds excuses to be somewhere else.”

If Devlin was difficult to understand, Mila was inscrutable. If she choose to let me know exactly what she was thinking, in clear English, I was liable to assume that she wasn’t feeling anything at all. Of course, I knew better than to think of her as an emotionless machine, but that only made it too easy for me to ascribe my own thoughts onto her actions. Michel, what with his feelings towards her being complicated by the job and her general demeanor, was probably making that same mistake.

“I mean…I don’t know, Michel,” I said. “That just sucks.”

“It is as good as can be expected,” Michel said. “I do not know any other way to explain that. It will be whatever it will be.”

“Well, as this current conversation has proven, I’m not in any position to give you advice,” I said. “Although, talking to each other is probably the only thing I could really suggest.”

“Talking,” Michel said, blowing out air through his nostrils. “I do not think that Mila is the type to talk much about her feelings.”

I knew that Mila was, however, the type of person to think about her feelings, even if she didn’t voice those thoughts. But I couldn’t say that to him without betraying her confidence.

“I think you’d be surprised,” I said carefully. “Whatever happens, it’s got to be better than just staying locked in your own head and coming up with worst case scenarios all day, right?”

“That sounds like good advice.” Michel winked at me. “Maybe it is something that we can both work on?”

“That’s the plan, as soon as I can pin him into one place.” Silently, I made a promise to myself to follow through on that. “What’re you doing for the rest of the day?”

“I need to look at maps of the area around the target,” Michel said. “I do not know what the fastest way to get away yet, but…traffic will be different at night than now, so I do not know how much good it would do now. I will probably train until nightfall, I suppose.”

I’d never really thought about what Michel’s job in our crew actually entailed. As the wheel-man, he was responsible for our entry and exit from target areas, but his contributions went further than that. His training with Mila had turned him into a passable fighter, if pushed into a corner, and the many conversations he’d had with Devlin had given him the skills of a fair grifter. If Devlin generally served as the troubleshooter in the team, Michel was rapidly shaping up to be a Swiss Army Knife of Criminal Talents.

That had to be exhausting.

“How long does that take?” I asked.

“Which part?”

“All of it, I guess?”

He gave the question several seconds of intense consideration. “Several hours,” he said finally. “But if I get started now, I can get most of it complete before I have to drive.”

At that rate, he was going to work himself to the bone. We were all pushing ourselves to function under sub-optimal conditions, taking on harder tasks than we were used to and putting ourselves at ever-greater risk. But Michel seemed to be working even harder than the rest of us. I found time to go out to lunch dates – professional dates, I quickly corrected myself – and to attend fundraisers, after all.

“You can take a break, you know,” I said.

“I know,” Michel said. “But…you all are doing so much more than me. I cannot break into a building like Devlin or fight a dozen men like Mila. This is what I can do to help.”

“I mean, that’s true, but we’ve been doing this for years,” I said. As soon as the words left my mouth, I instantly understood that I’d said the wrong thing. “Wait, no; I don’t mean that your, uh…inexperience is a bad thing. What I meant is that we’ve had a long time to get to where we’re at. You don’t have to put more things on your plate, just because we happen to be better in our respective areas.”

“We have dangerous enemies,” Michel said. “If I can work myself a little harder and make us all a little safer, I am happy to do it.”

“Right up until you collapse from exhaustion or make a mistake because you’re drained,” I countered. “Trust me, Michel; the fact that our adversaries are so powerful is exactly why we need to make sure we approach every one of these jobs when we’re as rested and clear-headed as possible.”

Which, of course, was optimistic thinking at its finest. That didn’t make the advice less viable.

“I…do not have anything else to do,” Michel said slowly. “What are you doing?”

“Getting some perspective, I think.” I forced myself to stand up, rolling my shoulders as I did so. The motion released some of the stress I’d been holding in my back. “Everything has been so intense the last couple of days.”

“Only these last few days?”

I smiled at him. “As bad as it’s been, it feels like it’s worse now.”

It was personal, now. My identity was on the line and, with that, my family’s safety. I could scarcely imagine the damage the Magi would be able or willing to inflict on Raymond, Elizabeth, or Virginia if they thought it might force me and the rest of the team out of hiding. Failing at this juncture wouldn’t force us to cut bait and hide; it would mean the end of everything I knew or had known.

Instead of voicing those thoughts out loud, I forced myself to smile wider. “Grab your keys,” I said. “We’re going for a drive.”

Michel was already moving toward the dresser, where he’d thrown his keys upon entering the room. “Where to?”

“Over the river and through the woods,” I said.

He stared blankly at me.

“To grandmother’s house,” I finished, rolling my eyes slightly at his expression. “Let’s go.”