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Mauz Kouri walked into the conference room and was unsurprised to find Logan already at the table. Hawk McGregor was always on time, but Logan Bane was always early, a pattern that described the differences between Mauz’s two bosses as well as anything else.
Logan looked up. “Hey.”
Mauz nodded, taking his customary seat next to the head of the table. There was no official hierarchy among management at Imperium, but there was a tacit understanding among the men that in their business, physical prowess counted more than anything else.
And that put Mauz at the top, whether it was official or not.
Logan turned his face to the big windows overlooking the Pacific and Mauz wondered if it was his imagination that his boss looked preoccupied. Bane was as neatly groomed as ever, his dark hair combed into place, his trousers and button-down shirt crisply pressed, but there was something remote and unfamiliar in his eyes.
There were a lot of differences between Hawk and Logan, but one thing they had in common was their ability to be present in every situation. Being around them was like being under a spotlight, although Logan’s focus was calm and pointed while Hawk’s was so intense it sometimes burned.
Or it had been anyway, before Laurel and the baby.
Mauz shrunk back from the thought. There had been a time when he thought love and family was in his future too. That time was past, and the realization still hurt like a motherfucker.
“Everything okay?” Mauz asked Logan, eager to redirect his own thoughts.
Logan looked at him in surprise, like he’d forgotten Mauz was still there.
Logan hesitated, like he was considering his words, then sighed. “This job. It’s… pers— ” He stopped when Sawyer Grant walked into the room. “Sawyer."
“Hey, boss,” Sawyer said. He took a seat next to Mauz and looked at him. “Hey.”
Mauz nodded and took inventory of Grant’s attire, glad to see he was wearing trousers instead of jeans.
Sawyer was head of logistics now, but Mauz remembered back when he’d been a fresh-faced delinquent with blond hair that was too long, a physique that leaned toward scrawny, and more nerve than common sense.
Mauz had beaten it out of him in training, or more accurately, had taught him to use his audacity with more discernment. He’d also taught Grant how to eat, how to train, how to fight, and he’d enjoyed watching the younger man evolve from a mouthy weakling on the mat to a focused and formidable opponent.
It had taken longer to get him on board with the more nuanced company protocol — he’d been a serial offender of the no-jeans rule in the beginning — but he was coming along nicely.
A minute later, Ford Parish walked into the room with his usual swagger and dropped into one of the chairs around the conference table. His dark beard was well groomed, and tattoos snaked up his neck from under his long sleeve T-shirt.
He looked at Mauz. “You didn’t tell me the new guy was a hothead.”
Mauz didn’t have to ask who Ford was referring to. Two weeks earlier, he’d dispatched one of his graduates to Ford’s team, which focused on the design and installation of cutting-edge home security systems.
The guy had scored high enough on the technical portion of the aptitude test given to all Imperium trainees that it had seemed like a good fit.
“They’re all hotheads,” Mauz said. “You were a hothead.”
It was an understatement. Ford was a monster of a man, even taller and bigger than Hawk. His penchant for bar fights was what brought him into contact with Hawk — or more accurately, with Hawk’s fist. Being a hothead was practically a requirement of the job. They could teach a hothead discipline but they couldn’t give an apathetic man the drive necessary to protect the people they were hired to protect.
“Yeah, well, our friend Drew got into it with the head of security on the Burman job,” Ford said. “I had to ask him to leave the site.”
Mauz shrugged. “Some of them don’t make it. What are you going to do?”
Ford rubbed the shadow on his jawline. “It’s his first incident. I’ll probably give him a warning and give it one more shot.”
Mauz nodded, impressed with the measured response. Ford had come to Imperium fresh out of CIA training, where he’d been kicked out of FLETC for sending one of his training officers to the hospital after a dressing-down that involved a choice insult directed at Ford’s sister.
Ford didn’t have a sister, but he took the insult personally anyway and the training officer ended up in the hospital with his jaw wired shut while Ford became the recipient of a Class C felony.
Mauz had had his doubts about Ford’s potential for the company, but Ford had taken to its training and culture like a fish to water and Mauz was happy to have been proven wrong.
“It’s your call,” Mauz said. Once the men went through his physical training program and completed all the other course requirements for a job at Imperium, they were assigned to a team based on their aptitude tests and areas of interests.
After that, it was up to each team leader to decide whether the new hire would make the cut long-term.
