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“Yes, that was my source.” She nodded for Holly to continue. Susan wanted to see where this led before she made any decisions.
“Shit! Next time I see him, I’m gonna fold that asshole into a tiny ball, stuff him down a dunny, and invite all me mates over for a right proper piss up. His report describes Miranda as dangerously unstable and me as a psychopath?”
Susan again nodded.
“Maybe I can convince Drake to flush his ass.”
“Drake? I still can’t believe you folks call the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the President by their first names.”
“Only Miranda does in person. He’s Jon’s uncle. No nepotism. He’s the one who grounded Jon’s ass after the last fiasco that nearly got the lot of us killed, followed by his fuckups at the Vice President’s crash investigation.” Holly rubbed at her face. “Okay, I’ll lay this out once. You’re clearly smart enough to get it.”
She’d been so ineffective over the last several hours as she tried to find some handle to understand and control this team that she’d begun to doubt her skills. It wasn’t an ability she’d doubted very often in her career.
“I’m only a psychopath if you’re an asshole, otherwise I’m as sweet as a brown desert mouse.”
Susan couldn’t stop her laugh at that.
Holly shrugged her guilt. “Okay, sweet and me aren’t real mates, but as long as you don’t mess with Miranda or Andi, I couldn’t care a mouse’s hind end.”
That seemed unlikely. “What about Mike?”
“He’s a grown boyo, can tend to himself. Always a little too cocksure, though I do my best to keep him in the place such men belong.”
“You and I may match there. Men are wonderful, but mostly at arm’s length.”
Holly looked out the window over Susan’s shoulder long enough for her to turn and look as well, but there was nothing there except the sky darkening toward sunset. It didn’t take a genius to see that Mike was a topic that was causing Holly some discomfort.
“Miranda?” she prompted when the silence continued to drag out.
Holly’s attention snapped back fast. Yet she waited for Susan to speak first.
“If she’s not Major Swift’sunstable to the verge of psychotic,then what is she?”
“Thought that would have been obvious to someone like you long ago.”
“She’s autistic. I get that. I don’t have much experience with the disorder, not enough to judge how disabled she is.”
“Wipe that fucking word from your vocabulary. On the autism spectrum.Fuckdisorder! Miranda isnotdisabled. She’s an absolute genius at a level folks like you and me will never understand. But the world-at-large and people-in-specific? They’re a complete mystery to her. No, they’re a swamp of infinitely variable sucking mud that she constantly struggles to forge a path through. And she does that by applying an awesome hyperfocus.”
“So when I snatched her tablet…”
“…you dumped her straight into the deep end of the swamp.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
Holly shrugged. “Mike and Andi are good for her. Better than me. My role is more…” she flexed her hands in and out of fists.
“…physical.”
“Aye.” And once again she leaned forward, elbows on knees, and stared down at her hands.
Susan’s chagrin ran deep. She’d been treating this team’s peculiarities using Major Swift’s reports as a guide. No wonder nothing she’d done had worked with them.
But it wasn’t that simple. She’d tried to speak with Miranda several times only to have—
“You bitch! You’ve been managing me the whole time.”
Holly offered that shrug again without looking up.
