Chapter 15 August 21, 2024
Steel
As soon as he closed the door behind him, he wanted to turn around, reopen it, and beg her forgiveness. He actually paused for a moment and considered doing just that, but his feet had other ideas.
Rounding the corner into the main room, he saw that everyone was exactly where they were when the two of them had fled down the hallway.
Frustrated with himself, he headed into the kitchen and proceeded to look through the food that had been stocked for them in the safe house.
He was thrilled to see they had the ingredients for empanadas, or at least basic ones.
He’d just begun mixing the dough on the island when TB walked into the kitchen. He washed his hands, grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, shined it on his shirt, and leaned against the kitchen counter to watch him work.
Despite his casual stance, Steel knew there was nothing casual about what was coming.
TB was their interrogator. He had methods no one could withstand, and they didn’t even involve touching anyone.
Every one of them had a button TB knew how to push with precision. Even his teammates couldn’t resist.
The only noise in the room came from Steel creating the dough mixture and TB crunching the apple.
Once the dough was finished and chilling in the refrigerator, Steel washed down the surface he worked on, then began pulling out the vegetables to chop for the pico de gallo.
He should have known better. He could withstand the silence and the stares.
The extra-loud crunching of the apple? That kind of shit made him want to start throwing sharp knives at his giant head. Sounds were his button, and TB knew it.
Another body came into the kitchen. Demon.
The hair that had been slicked back into a ponytail at the top of his head, over the shaved sides, was now hanging loose and damp from a shower.
He went to the sink, washed his hands, expertly flicked a knife to TB so that he caught it midair, and then stepped up to the island to help.
Silently, the three men worked. TB diced the onions, Demon sliced the tomatoes, and Steel took care of the cilantro, jalapenos, and seasonings.
“So…”
Great. TB was starting the interrogation.
“What’s the current over/under on how soon Midas returns to field work?” TB asked nonchalantly.
He stopped for a split second in his actions, then started back up. That was not what he’d expected from the man.
“Officially, six months. If Mouse has her way, six hours,” Demon replied without emotion.
TB grunted. “Driving her nuts, finally?”
“He’s at that stage of healing where he thinks he’s fecking Superman.
Always overdoing it but pissed as hell when she works on something for more than fifteen minutes.
Now that he’s walking with the cane, apparently he’s decided to get all ‘bossy-boots’—her words, not mine—on her and the girls.
Never pegged him as an alpha male like that, but the other day, he actually made Ona put sunscreen on before going outside to pick up her toys, something that took all of three minutes. ”
What in the world were these two going on about? They stood in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, all domesticated, and gossiping like a bunch of housewives over their friend’s girlfriend.
“If they didn’t have the girls, he wouldn’t be like that. How’s the homeschooling plan going? She enjoying it?”
“Seems to. Although after the first two days, I think nap time is her favorite class of the day.”
Were they seriously interested in this? He knew his friends had been domesticated to a certain degree, but this seemed a bit out of character.
“Heard she had Medusa teaching them archery in the armory in the atrium.”
“Yep. Shakira’s getting really good. Moving targets are going to be her specialty, apparently. God walked out there to talk to Medusa, and Shakira nailed him right in the bollocks. Bet he was thankful it was a foam arrow.”
It took everything in him not to smile at that image, let alone laugh.
He was willing to bet Medusa had arranged that “test” for Shakira.
The woman loved to nettle God nonstop, and Shakira was easily her favorite of the children, if she had a favorite.
One could never tell whether she actually liked someone or not.
Cold didn’t even begin to describe her attitude toward everyone, with perhaps the exception of Mouse, Midas’ girlfriend.
TB finished dicing the first onion and moved on to the second. “Foam or not, nothing prepares you for being hit there.”
Steel absentmindedly wondered if he should get a third. These guys could put away a lot of empanadas and twice the pico. It was a much safer issue to worry about than the one in the main bedroom right now.
“How long do you think before she has Shakira working with real arrows?”
Shrugging, TB started slicing the second onion with a lot more force, the knife clicks on the cutting board much louder than they needed to be. Every click made Steel flinch.
“I’d be more worried about when Cherry gets called in to run the chemistry lab on how to use stable chemicals to dispose of a body.”
A shiver went up his spine. It was never discussed, but everyone knew that Demon’s other half, their handler, had skills they really didn’t want to think about.
Normally, the sharks ate well when he and TB disposed of the pieces left over after an interrogation.
Unfortunately, once in a while, she had to get involved when they weren’t around or when there were too many bodies to dispose of.
When that happened, there was nothing left for the sharks.
Demon scraped the tomatoes into the big mixing bowl and grabbed another. This time, he began to thinly peel it like an apple, flicking the skin in Steel’s direction.
“I think it would be fun if Kubrick came in and gave language lessons,” TB joked.
“Or how about Gem teaching them to crawl through the ventilation shafts to ambush people?”
Steel felt his eyes narrowing. He figured it out. TB was ignoring the elephant in the room, and Demon was assisting. They were hoping to push him into cracking by drowning him in inane discussion because they knew how much that shit pissed him off.
“Um… think she and Nemo might already be doing that. Watch yourself in enclosed spaces. The other day, I sat at my desk, and Catalina attacked me with a fun noodle from underneath while Liliana got me with silly string from the cupboard above my head.”
He realized he was gritting his teeth. His jaw was already hurting.
“Feck. Nowhere’s going to be safe from those little monsters.” The smile on the man’s face belied the words.
A sharp pain poked him in the back of his eyeball.
“Those kids are going to grow up to be assassins, you just watch. Every single one of us is contributing to their delinquency. Caught Axel playing with the string things on his playpen the other day. I’ll have him tying knots by the time he’s two.”
“Nice.”
Okay. He could handle this. They’d run out of material eventually.
“Did you hear that Flame’s already planning a book series based on the kids? Each one’s going to be a different type of shifter, combined with assassin techniques. She wants to try something more romantasy genre-based—”
“Holy hell, horseshoes, and hand grenades!” Steel broke out, using his favorite swear phrase from Kubrick. “Just ask me already!”
Yeah, what was the saying? He folded like a cheap suit.
TB threw his knife with force into the cutting board, then leaned on the island with his arms locked. “It took three fucking onions to get to him. Do you know how hard it is not to cry chopping that shit? Pay up, motherfucker.”
Demon glanced at his watch, then brought a slice of tomato up to his mouth on the edge of the blade. “Damn. I figured he’d give by the time Kubrick was mentioned.”
“You two seriously suck,” he muttered under his breath. “You don’t need to use your interrogation techniques on me. Just ask the fucking question. I’ll either answer it or shove a sharp stick in your eye if I don’t want to tell you.”
“I was trying to avoid the stick part,” TB told him. “Besides, I’ve been feeling rusty. Haven’t had a chance to interrogate anyone lately. Everyone I need to ask a question of does something stupid and ends up getting himself killed before I can even get a word in.”
“Well, we all have our little problems, then, don’t we?” he sniped.
“Your ‘problem’ is more interesting.”
Demon snagged a full jalapeno off the cutting board and popped it into his mouth. “What he said,” Demon agreed from around the pepper.
“Guys, we really should be focusing on Waters—”
“Stop deflecting. I don’t like his situation any more than you do, but we can’t do anything about it right now.
We have to stay the course, hard as it is to not rush into that shithole and grab him.
He knows what he’s doing. We can’t afford to fuck it up.
Nerdboy out there will call us if we’re needed. ”
Hot anger. Fear. Frustration. In all of his life, he’d never felt this out of control. He wanted to throw something. Hurt someone. Scream.
Demon reached into the sheath at his hip, withdrew his knife, and handed it to him.
A second later, a roar emitted from the depths of him, and the knife went flying past TB’s ear and into the wood cabinet behind him.
Chest heaving, breath powering in and out, he stared at it.
TB, to his credit, didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. “Feel better?”
“No,” he ground out.
“Now do you see why Waters followed you out into the jungle that night? You don’t lose control. Ever. You’re ready to erupt, and it’s not going to be pretty. So fucking start talking.”
“Talking is not going to solve this shit show.”
“Nope, it isn’t,” TB agreed. “But we’ll know what’s going on, and that means we’ll know how to handle it.”
“You already know everything.” He could feel the anger rolling back. It was still present, but the blood no longer rushed in his ears, and his breathing was calming down.