Chapter 8
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP
Jamie set a mug of coffee down beside Katie’s work spot at the desk in the office they were both sharing on the first floor. Then he unscrewed the bottle of whiskey in his other hand and poured a generous amount into the cup.
“I’m sorry about how I reacted last night,” he said.
Katie’s hand swiped out cat-quick to grab the coffee, bringing it to her mouth. “Doesn’t sound like you’re sorry for what you said.”
“Because I’m not. But I could’ve expressed myself better.”
Katie held the coffee mug out to him. “Your apology sucks. Take it back.”
Jamie sat down on the other side of the desk from her. He didn’t take the coffee mug. “You should have told me what was happening when it was happening.”
“You had a role to play, Jamie. I didn’t need you thinking about what you were going to say because any hesitation would be too obvious. I was busy trying to keep Jansen out of everyone’s minds without him figuring out we’re metahumans.”
“Don’t you think you doing that would tip him off to begin with?”
Katie swallowed a large sip of coffee before grabbing the whiskey bottle to add a touch more to the cup.
“I can mimic the wavelength of a human mind pretty damn accurately. I can’t guarantee Jansen will believe we presented as human, but I’m working on the assumption that I did my job right.
Are you done second-guessing me? Because I have work to do. ”
Jamie tried not to wince. Apparently, sleeping off her anger hadn’t happened as it had with him. “If you think we’re still in the clear, then all right. We’ll work off that assumption.”
“You’ll know in a week,” Katie said, voice coming out clipped.
“I can’t tell if you’re mad at me personally or the situation in general. Which is it, Katie?”
Jamie hoped she answered. He didn’t want to have to order her to talk to him about this problem because that would just make things worse.
But they needed to get through this for the sake of the team and the sake of the mission.
Problems started at the top and rolled downhill, and Jamie prided himself on being a proactive officer over one who let infighting happen in the ranks.
“Do you need an answer, or do you want an answer?” she asked.
“Need.”
Katie took a sip of her coffee and used her other hand to save what she was working on. All the holoscreens disappeared, minimized on the embedded desk screen below them. She leaned back in her seat and sighed tiredly, rubbing at her temple.
“You’re playing this role a little too accurately, and it grates. It’s honestly more me than you. You normally don’t question my field decisions,” she said.
“We’re normally taking out targets in the field, not trying to get them to dance to our tune. This is different.”
“Not for you.”
Jamie tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling, eyes tracing the crown molding along the edges and the shelves that held family heirlooms. “I’m trying not to regress too much.”
“The mission seems to call for that. I just don’t like watching you become someone we both don’t like.”
“This isn’t fun for me either, Katie.”
“Most of it’s not fun for you.” She paused, then said, a bit teasingly, “I’d argue that you enjoyed the little show you and Kyle put on last night for everyone.”
Jamie wasn’t even going to deny it. “Wished it was under better circumstances.”
“Don’t we all?”
Jamie leaned forward to steal her coffee and take a sip.
The whiskey was almost too much paired with the coffee, a bitter burn that coated his mouth, but he swallowed it down anyway.
“So how do we fix this? Sean’s idea has merits, but we both know there’s nothing outside of a Faraday cage or neuro-jammer gun or null power that can stop our abilities.
And you can’t be there every time we meet with the enemy. ”
“I can build everyone shields against mental interference, but that’s a stop-gap measure. They won’t last forever, not without constant reinforcement by me, because your minds aren’t built for it.”
How Katie had described her power in the beginning, when everything about their bodies was new, was a wall between her mind and the world.
It formed out of an automatic function when Splice altered her brain structure along with everything else.
If she wanted to use her telepathy, she had to consciously break the wall down in order to push her power out into the cacophony of billions of minds in the world.
Her brain could handle the stress of her mental power; theirs couldn’t.
“I think that’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Jamie said slowly. “How often would you have to rebuild our shields?”
“Every couple of days.”
“Then we go with Sean’s story of a new defensive tool the DOD authorized, and we hope your shields are there when we need them.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m always sure of my second-in-command.”
The faint smile Katie gave him was enough of a sign that she might have forgiven him for his assholery, at least for the moment. No telling what the future would bring.
Someone rapped on the door just then before opening it up. Liam stuck his head inside and narrowed his eyes at them. “Is it safe?”
“Come in and find out,” Katie told him.
“Didn’t want to get in the middle of a row between you two. I’m delighted to see no one needs a medic,” Liam replied as he stepped inside.
“We’re just finishing up. Is it time for you guys to leave already?”
“Nearly. We have reservations at the Dorchester at 1300 sharp, so let’s be off, Jamie. I’m famished.”
“The Dorchester,” Jamie said, rolling his eyes. “You couldn’t have picked a more pretentious spot if you tried.”
“Could’ve had tea with the queen, but then the spies wouldn’t get an eyeful.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Grab Kyle, would you, Jamie?” Katie said as she pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “I’ll build your shields before you go.”
“I’ll get some paracetamol for the both of you,” Liam said, holding the door open for them.
“Better make sure you get some for yourself. I’m shielding your mind as well.”
Jamie chuckled at Liam’s exaggerated wince at that announcement. “If I have to suffer, you have to suffer.”
“Your NCOs are hard as nails,” Liam sighed.
“That’s how I like them.”
It didn’t take Katie very long to shield everyone who was leaving.
Donovan and Madison were acting as driver and bodyguard today and couldn’t escape having Katie muck around in their minds.
The experience left Jamie with a faint headache that went away a lot quicker than everyone else’s save for Kyle’s. Jamie’s durability helped with that.
“Go eat your fancy lunch,” Katie said as she walked them out to the SUV parked on the front drive. “If they have any tiny jam jars, steal some for me.”
Jamie laughed, giving her a brief sideways hug that she returned without hesitation. “All right. Jam it is.”
They would be okay. The mission might drive them all crazy by the time it finished and they headed back to DC, but hopefully, they’d get through it whole. The sooner Jamie could shake off the ghost of who he used to be, the better he would feel.
* * *
Alexei, as a rule, didn’t like spies.
Growing up in a refugee city in a contested area, where getting ahead in the queue was tied to who you knew and who you could bribe, spies were everywhere, and their allegiances varied.
Everyone from the European Alliance’s Security Intelligence Service to the CIA to both Russia’s domestic intelligence arm, the Federal Security Service, and its military one, the Main Intelligence Directorate, and many others, all had their sticky fingers in the disrupted areas of the world.
When he was with Strike Force, Alexei had held deep reservations about being seconded to the CIA during some of their missions.
He’d worked with the agency because he wasn’t one to disobey orders, but after Geneva and Cora Everly’s betrayal, Alexei only had severe distrust for anyone with ties to any intelligence agency—and that included the MDF.
He knew the MDF had its own arm of intelligence operatives, people whose jobs were to focus their attention on the shadows in the world that concerned metahumans and the Splice chemical that killed too many, leaving far too few survivors.
Last summer had proven to Alexei, once again, that spies couldn’t be trusted.
Which was why he was drinking his coffee across the dining room table from Sean, watching the other man work. Alexei was only thirteen months younger than Sean, but he liked to believe he was wiser. He hadn’t made a career out of lying to people the way spies did, after all.
“Are you going to sit there and watch me work all day?” Sean asked, not looking up from his laptop.
The computer had been separated into its functional parts, with the screen lying flat in the middle of the table to project multiple windows of information into the air while Sean tapped away at the lit-up outline of a keyboard on the opaque surface of the control pad.
Alexei eyed Sean through the multiple holoscreens situated between them and took a sip of coffee.
Real coffee, Alexei had come to discover, was amazing.
Alexei was going to make Kyle sneak some beans out of the condo his brother shared with Jamie so that he could hoard them at his own apartment.
He’d gotten over his need to hoard food after joining the Army, but old habits were hard to break in certain circumstances.
Alexei would gladly unearth it again if it meant he got more of this drink after the mission was over.
“Maybe,” Alexei finally said. “What you care?”
“I don’t,” Sean said calmly. “It’s just going to be boring for you. I’m reviewing what the UMG gave us last night on the Reborn IRA, and it’s going to take hours. Only place I’d be other than right here would be the bathroom.”
“Fine.”
Sean looked through the holoscreens rather than at them, meeting Alexei’s gaze with exasperated brown eyes. “You’re not seriously thinking about watching me take a piss, are you?”