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“I don’t know shit about hacking, and Tuck shoots like there’s a bug in his ear. Think any of us know how to build the crap Zave comes up with? And Thad, he’s an optimistic, upbeat little fucker with zero combat experience. But he’s pulled bullets out of all of us. Stitched us up. Given us meds we’d have had to jack if it wasn’t for his prescription pad. We can’t even say the shit he brings, but he’s got a drug for every day of the week.”
“You all bring something to the team.”
“And so do you,” he said and carried on before she could interject. “You ran a goddamn billion-dollar corporation. You sat in on strategy meetings, stood up to arrogant fucking business men who tried to dismiss you. How many fucking staff did you oversee? Five? Ten? Twenty?”
“It varied through the years.”
“You know about shit the rest of us have never seen. You can read accounts and legal contracts that are foreign to us. You know where the boss hides the money. You broke into Saint’s office, and with one look at a file, you did what it took us six months to achieve. You know how to work people. And fuck, baby, you killed a man for threatening to reduce you to an irrelevant object he could fuck around with.”
“Why are you saying all of this?” she asked. It was nice to know that she was appreciated, but she hadn’t voiced any more doubts about her place in the Kindred.
“Because I can’t run this shit, you can. Combat decisions will be made as a group, but I need someone to keep this shit together, someone who is used to juggling a whole bunch of balls all at once.”
Being a sniper, he was used to having a singular focus with Art telling him what to pin it on. Sometimes he probably didn’t know why, he would never question Art’s decisions. Just like her. He’d declared himself and his rifle as dedicated to her. Raven had killed on her command before, and now he was handing her his sword.
“You want me to run the Kindred?”
“The logistical stuff, yeah. You’ve been doing it for months, since we lost Art. He always dealt with supplies, he cooked, looked after us all, called us on our bullshit. You’ve been doing that.”
Running the manor was Art’s job before it was hers. She hadn’t realized that she’d fallen into the supporting role Art had once occupied. Brodie and the others didn’t have the time to deal with bullshit like paying bills or grocery shopping.
Her head fell when his hands dropped. Zara tried to step away, but he caught her waist to haul her back. “I’m not sure how I feel about this,” she said. “It’s too much responsibility for me to take on.”
“You’re doing it already, and responsibility is more your thing than mine.”
“What if I make the wrong choice?” she asked. “What if I send you into danger?”
“You won’t,” he said. “We consult on ops, Art always did. But he had to sign off, if you say yes or no, we’ll find a way to make it work.”
This wasn’t like working under Grant, she wasn’t going to be disciplining anyone for acting on impulse. But coordination, she’d done that at CI, delegating tasks that Grant needed done to work efficiently.
“Ok,” she said, nodding. “We’ll do it together.”
“We’ve already been doing it together,” he said, and although there was no lust in his eyes, she smiled. “Not that.”
Brodie needed support, and he was calling her his constant. “Art meant the world to you, and I know it’s important to you to honor his memory. But I know he took care of things for you so that you would be better in the field, rested. I can’t make decisions about missions, but I can make sure that you all have everything you need to complete your work.”
“There’s one thing that we will have to deal with together today.”
“What?”
“Cuckoo.”
He hadn’t been calling Mischa that when she first came to bail him out at CI. Finding out the truth of what she was up to with Caine and what she’d been responsible for all of these years must have sullied his opinion of her.
“You can deal with her alone,” Zara said because she didn’t covet standing between the old lovers. “I don’t want to be in a room with you and her together. It will be too… weird and difficult.”
He frowned. “Why would it be difficult?”
She sighed and balled her fists on his diaphragm. “Because you used to fuck her, beau. I don’t want to see you interacting with her. It will just make me think about… the things you did with her and the things you do with me. She’ll rub my face in it and…”
“Rub your face in what? You’re the one who gets access now, the only one. And what I had with her is nothing like this.”
“You didn’t love her?”
“I didn’t know what love was,” he said. “I think I thought I was in love with her… maybe.”
“I knew you weren’t when Art told me you left her on his recommendation. I knew if you loved her, you wouldn’t have given her up easily. But I don’t know how long Art spent persuading you.”
