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Tough shit.His name was indelibly linked to Doug’s, so he needed to give her something to go on. “How would you manage this if you were me?” she asked.
Cisco blinked. Clearly, he hadn’t expected to be put on the spot.
“You want my opinion?” He swallowed hard and looked discomfited.
“Youaremy second in command,” she told him. “So, yes. I’m conferring with you on team business. Now, don’t think of Doug as a friend for the moment, think of him as someone over whom you have a supervisory capacity. What would you do about his infractions today?”
“Well, shit,” Cisco grumbled. “I don’t have a fucking clue. I just wanted to let you know why he does what he does.”
“Which is all well and fine, but we need to find a way to deal with it if he’s going to remain an integral part of our squad. As Mason reminded me, we can’t have someone on board who isn’t a team player.”
“Maybe…” Cisco seemed hesitant.
“Go ahead. I’m listening.” She kept her foot still, even though she wanted to tap it impatiently.
“Is it… Do you think it’s possible for you to put him under my supervision when we do drills, and when we’re called out? Not to give me lead on our ops. But… You tell me how things will go down, and I’ll fill him in. He’ll take orders from me. I know he will.”
Talia thought for a moment how that might come back to bite her and undermine her authority, but…this was a team endeavor, working SWAT. If this suggestion brought Doug in line without having to can his ass, she could attempt to swallow her pride and give Cisco some autonomy.
She wasn’t stupid, though. This could all be a ploy thought up between the pair of them to weaken her command and make her look incompetent in front of Mason. If she were sidelined or demoted, Cisco would be in the driver seat where Squad E was concerned.
Still… He didn’t look like that was his end-goal. And Talia was normally a good judge of character. Having been seriously duped when she was young, she’d honed her bullshit detector to a fine point as she’d aged.
“Okay. Let’s try it,” she allowed.
Cisco looked flustered. Clearly he hadn’t thought she’d agree.
“But I’ll talk to him first and let him know how things will be. I’ll also let him know this is his last chance. If he can’t work well under your jurisdiction, he’s out.”
“Fair enough,” Cisco acknowledged, exhaling deeply. “But…he’s still my friend, and you…aren’t. Which means,” his jaw firmed up and he looked more like the prick she’d come to know, rather than the concerned man whom she’d briefly glimpsed, “I’ll take my orders from you in the field and keep Doug under control, but don’t expect me to play nice anyplace else.”
“Noted,” Talia said with a succinct nod, dismissing him since the kum-ba-yah moment was over. “You may go.”
He gave a terse, semi-sarcastic salute, then turned on his heels and left.
Talia drew in a deep, cleansing breath, knowing her next conversation—the one with Doug—would be far more contentious. But… There was no time like the present to deal with her insubordinate underling.
She marched resolutely from the woods and approached the man where he sat on an old split-rail fence, sipping water with another couple of male teammates, a fiercely disgruntled look on his face.
“We need to have a word,” Talia told him without preamble.
“Okay,” he answered with a careless shrug. “Talk.”
She looked around at his several companions, who suddenly looked uncomfortable. “You want me to air things out with an audience?”
“Why not. If you’re going to fire me, I might as well have witnesses when I sue your ass for discrimination.”
“Discrimination?” she scoffed. “How about insubordination. You forget, Doug, Mason and the tech people have everything you did on video. And he’s not pleased. You didn’t think he called me into the command bus to shoot the shit, did you?”
He grumbled, but gave a muted, “I suppose not. But you also talked to Cisco,” he added suspiciously. “What was that about?”
Talia had to be as upfront about this as possible, but she didn’t want him to know that Cisco had divulged personal information regarding Doug’s past. Instead, she pretended she was the one to call Cisco aside. “I had a chat with your friend, so that all my ducks would be in order before confronting you. You still okay with me telling it like it is in front of your buddies?”
He jumped the few inches to the ground and shuffled his feet. “Yeah. Go ahead.”
So be it.
“Mason wants to fire your ass, but I told him I still see a lot of good in you. That we need to give you one more chance.”
