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He was compromised by his emotions. Distracted to the point of making mistakes.
Emotions.The things that everyone swears he doesn’t have.
Although it’s not the time to deal with it, the way everyone treats him makes me irrationally angry.
Boss points his chin toward the door while holding Tomer’s line of sight. “Go.”
“All due respect, Boss, but she stays with me.” He shakes his head. “Sorry. But I’m not doing this tonight. I only came back in to drop off our gear and get my laptop. I won’t upset her any worse than she already is.” He gulps and swoops his gaze to her. “I’m taking her home.”
No one speaks while he picks up his things.
On his way out, he pauses and grazes my forearm. “Can you make sure everything gets handled before you leave? Lead a debrief?”
“Yes. Go on.” I glance at Lettie. “Take care, sweetie.”
“Thank you,” she quavers.
“We got it, T,” Klein adds, tapping his shoulder.
“Come on, sugar,” he whispers to Lettie as he tugs her toward the door. She follows wordlessly, and her fingers wrap around his bicep so firmly that I suspect he’ll have bruises tomorrow.
Big Al’s eyes bulge out of their sockets, not used to being disobeyed like that. When he realizes that no one is stopping T, he barks out, “Tomer, what the hell do—”
“Let him go, Boss.” Klein steps toward him with his palm extended. “Trust me on this. He needs to be there for her now.”
Boss cuts a side-eye at Leo. They both vibrate with restrained anger.
I don’t blame them.
Some of Big Al’s most trusted team members went behind his back to take part in a high-risk op. And Leo, his second in command, had no idea either. I bet he called him to the office, assuming he’d know what was happening.
But we kept it from him too. For good reason.
This isn’t the time to unpack everything. We have too much to do— debrief on the actual mission, get our stories straight, and figure out what to do with the shitbags and the girl downstairs.
Fists on his hips and jaw slack, Boss watches Tomer and Lettie leave.
Once they’re gone, he moves to the center of our group. “Who’s talking first? And give it to me straight. Don’t piss in my pocket and tell me it’s raining.”
All eyes are downcast, and none of us are eager to speak. Since this whole thing was my doing, I step forward and raise my chin, refusing to cower. “I’ll explain.”
“Please do,” Boss says with a faux cheeriness and a wave of his wrist.
“Earlier today, I came across a missing persons report for that young lady.” I take a quick breath, then continue so he doesn’t ask me who she is or why I was monitoring police reports.
I don’t have a good answer for that.
“I did some investigating and uncovered evidence that she’d been drugged and abducted by a trafficking ring.”
Leo curses under his breath. Boss flicks his wrist again, encouraging me to continue.
“I suspect it’s Lenkov’s ring, but the men downstairs can likely confirm that. We know Yuri is involved too because one of his guards was the one who kidnapped Violet.”
Boss glances at Shep at the mention of Yuri, and then he pinches the bridge of his nose.
When he stops grumbling unintelligibly, Boss glares at me. “You were behind this, huh?” He shakes his head, something resembling disgust radiating from him. “Why didn’t you come to me? Is that how they do it where you come from? Just run rogue ops to bust up trafficking rings? Like it’s no big deal?”
I appreciate him not saying the CIA. Not everyone here knows that’s where I worked. Most of them think it was the state department, the typical cover the CIA uses. Safer for everyone that way.
