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I can’t help but notice how relieved and yet shocked her men look,, and I’m reasonably sure they are her men; look when she replies, and I have a feeling she’s going to be dealing with some long conversations later—rather her than me.
“Sorry to interrupt, miss, but what do we do now? It’s not like we can just leave them on the runway?” Carter interrupts us, gesturing around at the bodies that litter the runway of the airport. It’s a damn good job that this airport is small and used mainly by private planes, or we would’ve garnered a lot of unwanted attention by now.
Asher answers him with a smirk, “We’ll load them all up into the van. We’ll be long gone by the time that they come around, and if someone finds them before then, well, the alive ones are going to have to answer a lot of questions about why they’ve got a van full of dead bodies.”
Carter’s eyes widen slightly as he looks impressed and replies, “Fair enough, that will certainly take the heat off you.”
Fox grins, “Exactly, we’ll start loading the van.”
I nod in response to Fox and then turn to look at Carter with a giant smile, causing him to look at me slightly warily, “You are a dark horse; there was no hesitation whatsoever; you just took them out.”
“He can fight too,” Rome adds, his arms crossed over his broad chest as he reluctantly looks impressed.
Carter’s smile is small as he replies, “Well, I was a part of your grandmother's crew when this plane belonged to her. You learn to be pretty damn quick at assessing situations and thinking fast on my feet, also I don’t exactly have the most traditional of pasts. I’m not sure how she managed it, but she pretty much rewrote it so that I could be employed by her and the airline here.”
Suddenly, Carter becomes a hell of a lot more interesting, and instead of just being a pretty cool guy to have around when we fly, he becomes someone who could be extremely valuable to have working as a Raven if he’s interested and dependent on his past.
Mason’s eyes narrow slightly, and he asks, “What sort of past?”
Carter’s eyes become hard, but surprising me, he does answer, “I was a part of the military, it didn’t really suit me, and I got in a bit of trouble when I got out, not used to civilian life. It made it rather difficult to get any job worth having, Demelza made all of that disappear, and I’ve been here ever since. Occasionally using some of the other skills that I have learned over the years when she has required me to.”
An idea has gained traction the longer that he talks, and I see no reason not to ask him about it now, “If you’d ever like a change of career, let me know. I’m reasonably certain that I can offer you a position that you’d be interested in.”
Carter looks intrigued, but he shakes his head, “I love flying too much to give it up, but thank you for the offer. I appreciate it.”
I nod, “Well, in that case, how would you feel about still flying but only being employed by me? I have a feeling that we’re going to be using the plane a lot, and certainly more than my grandmother. We’re also likely to need the backup that you seem to be more than capable of providing as well.”
He seems to hesitate slightly still, and in all honesty, I can understand why. He knows nothing about what I really do, what we do, and to be honest, only a certain kind of person can handle what we do.
Malachi also seems to sense this because before Carter can answer, he suggests, “Why don’t you sign an NDA, and then we can explain exactly what we do, what you’d be involved in, and what your job would be. Then you can decide for yourself if you want to take Jynx up on her offer?”
Carter immediately nods, “Yeah, that would make me feel a lot better about it. I’m not stupid. I know that you’re not exactly doing things legally, not that the legality of things has ever bothered me before.”
I nod and reply, “Makes sense, we will get that sorted when we get back, but right now, we need to get going.”
While Carter and I have been talking, the others have been loading all the bodies, dead or just unconscious, back into the van where they came from. However, some of them did occasionally stop to chime in on our conversation.
Finally, everything is finished, and we actually make it onto the plane and take our seats. I was right with my guess earlier; Harley and the Conspiracy team are sequestered at the back of the plane and seem to be deep in conversation and not paying attention to anything else. I’ll leave them to it for now, but we do need to start discussing the plan and fill them in properly soon.
Once we are in the plane Carter makes his way down the aisle and pauses by me, “Something is bothering me.”
“Okay, what’s up?” I reply immediately, curious about what it could be.
“Well, NDAs usually work for legal businesses and that sort of thing, people that only have the odd scandal that they don’t want to get out, usually so their reputation isn’t negatively affected. Having said that, I feel like the things that your NDA will cover are a lot bigger than just mild indiscretions.” He starts.
I raise my eyebrow, “Yes, you’d be correct in thinking that. What’s your point?”
He grins, “My point is, how are you enforcing them? Someone could potentially go to the cops or anything. How are you ensuring that they’re adhered to, and how are you even getting them drawn up, since lawyers tend to have an issue with illegal things.”
“Ah, okay, now I understand what you meant. One, we have our own lawyer that writes them all up, and because he’s been with us for so long and is trusted, we can put all sorts of things in it. We also police it ourselves, which tends to discourage most people from defying us. I’ve also called in a few favors and have people on the lookout for any police reports that may pop up. Everyone who signs them has a full background check done, and that is done to protect us as well, as you’d expect this quite often brings up unsavoury things in their pasts which also deters them from going to the authorities.” I try to explain as best I can; at the end of the day, I’m sure that someone, especially one of the old Ravens, is going to try something, but not only will I personally ensure that their breaking the NDA results in their death but I also have D and Alaric on my side, they’d be signing their own death warrants.
Of course, I can’t really explain all of that to Carter, and judging from the look that Rome gives me, he hadn’t realised just how well that I’d covered us either, and to be honest it completely slipped my mind that I needed to tell him. We’ve had so much going on at the moment that I must have dropped the ball on that one. I make a mental note to explain it to them all later. I also need to let them know that D’s tech team, or his nerds as he affectionately calls them, will be keeping an eye on all the Ravens that do leave in case they get any ideas. The plan is that as soon as D’s tech guy has trained our tech team and is happy with their abilities and progress, they will take over those sorts of things as well.
Carter nods thoughtfully, “It appears you really do have everything covered.”
My lips tilt up slightly, “I can’t really afford not to.”
“Wait,” Sawyer interrupts, their conversation with Harley obviously having been put on hold for the time being.
