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After giving Beowolf a final scrub and a promise to pick him up early the next day so they could have a walk together before court duty, Nutsbe said good night to Bob.
Once in the Panther Force War Room , Nutsbe sent an encrypted heads-up message to Sy Covington, letting him know that his legal name—the one that Russia knew—was in the federal court documents. Granted, it wasn’t the first time his name had been listed in various courtrooms across the United States. Nutsbe was often called as a witness. But this was the freshest iteration.
Yeah, this one felt bad to him.
Usually with his job, Nutsbe was danger-adjacent. The field operators were the ones fast roping into the fray.
The FBI, Russia, Albania—Nutsbe didn’t love that his name was part of the chatter that U.S. intelligence was picking up.
Nothing to be done, Nutsbe concluded as he headed home for the day.
The operators liked to talk about the three-foot square around them. Deal with what’s in front of you.
What was in front of him was a day in court with a scared young woman who had obviously walked into hell and somehow survived. He didn’t know the how or the why, but he’d hear her story tomorrow. And he needed to get his mind right. He needed to show up as strength and protection, no matter his personal shortcomings.
It was about his ego; Nutsbe fully recognized that.
When anguish came up, Nutsbe wanted to fix it. He wanted to relieve the burden, to cool the burn, to assuage the pain.
If there was no physical action he could take to make it better, his whole system went haywire.
It sucked.
This deficit on his part had interfered in all his relationships with women. They needed an ear to listen to them when he’d rather have a hammer in his hand fixing the damned thing.
Nutsbe was aware of his hypocrisy. He had down days, bad days—physically and psychologically. When he’d left the military, going to therapy had helped—talking it out, and yeah, emoting—whether it be to rage or cry. He did that, especially in the beginning with survivor’s guilt and acute traumatic stress. Nutsbe wanted to tell his story. But he certainly didn’t want anyone to tell him what to think or feel or, worse, to try to fix him and say that he was emotionally better.
Better was a journey, and it was his alone to travel.
After a while, his feelings evened out. He got used to his new life, and things improved.
They were good.
His life was really good.
For him, therapy was ongoing, as it was for everyone in field positions at Iniquus. You’d think he would have gotten better at being around women crying after all these years. But so far, he had not.
Nutsbe could use some tips, maybe some mentorship from Beowolf. Beowolf had moved calmly through that whole scene. Having Beowolf in the room had been interesting. He was like an emotional sponge, seeming to sop it all up. But when the front door shut, he trotted away from the group to the middle of the lawn, looked around, and shook his coat like he’d just come out of the lake. He shook it long and hard. And Nutsbe thought that was how Beowolf was able to do what he did. He took it on, then shook it off.
Skills. Man, Nutsbe would love to learn that trick.
With that thought, he concluded that with Beowolf in the courtroom doing his Beowolf support duties, Candace would get what she needed, and Nutsbe would be off the hook, searching for a way to pressure wash that woman’s pain away.
To get off the gerbil wheel and clear his head, the whole way home, Nutsbe sang along to the music blasting from his radio. Pulling into his drive, he thought it would be cool to see Olivia in action tomorrow—watch her shift from a friendly neighbor into a cut-throat prosecutor.
With his motor idling, Nutsbe looked past his fence to see Olivia’s roofline. She’d been living right there all this time. He’d run by her house day after day, waving at her pooch—Henrietta, the cockapoodle-do. He grinned. It was all so bizarrely normal that she had lived a sedate suburban life, then went to work, facing down vicious criminals. “Poor Henrietta has fence envy,” he said, putting his car in reverse.
Sunset turned the clouds tangerine and purple. There was still daylight left to burn, enough time for a quick fix, he thought. Nutsbe motored back up the street and hung a left. Within ten minutes, he was at the hardware shop. Thirty minutes later, he tied an exterior door frame to the roof of his vehicle.
A quick run of the circular saw. The wizz of his drill. The cool metallic taste of screws held between his lips. And the piece de resistance, a coded door lock so Olivia could access the yard any time she wanted, and the job was complete.
Nutsbe stood back and admired his work. The wood would take a little time to weather and blend in. But all in all, it looked professional. Nutsbe whistled as he cleaned his tools and returned them to the garage.
Coming back around for a second load, he thought that a dog lying on the porch, keeping him company, would make this scene complete. He missed Beowolf.
Bending to pile the discarded lumber onto a tarp, Nutsbe wished the project had taken longer and required more physical exertion. He needed something more to burn away the excess energy in his system. A lot was going on in his world. The prep work for his team’s next mission covered Nutsbe’s desk. That needed his full attention; his planning often made the difference in keeping his team safe. Then there was Candace and the trial. And big in his mind was Olivia and her smile. And, of course, just as Kennedy predicted, that low-level hum playing through his mind had a distinctly Russian thrum.
Dragging the tarp to the compost, Nutsbe decided to go in and read—let some author’s vivid imagination pull him away from the shit mountain he was trudging up.
