The next morning, I gently eased my aching body into a chair and joined the rest of the team for breakfast. Ethan was questioning Ezra on his bruised face while Ezra remained stone-faced and silent. When Ethan recognized that Ezra wasn’t going to answer any questions he switched to a lecture about self-preservation and actions that put the rest of the team in danger. It was clear to me that Ezra had not divulged any details about last night, including my involvement. I didn’t know why I had expected anything different. It wasn’t like I was a real member of this team.
Ethan’s monolog was interrupted by an enthusiastic Oliver rushing down the stairs yelling, “I figured it out! I found our spy! They have been communicating through a series of burner phones that I couldn’t trace but I finally got into the cellular network and traced a call that one of the burner phones called in a residential area. And the relator records show that the house is owned by one Jorge Salvador.”
“That name doesn’t sound familiar,” Ethan stated. “Does he work at ChemGen?”
It was Christopher that replied, “No but Ivet Salvador does. She is the personal assistant to the V.P. of Development and my personal guess on who was behind all of this.” I thought that he sounded smug about being proven correct.
“Hey. You stole all my thunder,” Oliver directed at his brother. “I have been up all-night sorting through call logs. I wanted to give the big reveal.”
“Relax baby brother,” Christopher told him as he rose and clapped Oliver on the shoulder in a placating gesture. “All that matters is that we have got our spy.”
I did not agree. Oliver had worked his ass off for the last six weeks to become part of this team and now he wanted to prove that he was able to contribute. Christopher had just belittled Oliver’s contribution and I didn’t think he even realized he did it. Between last night and this morning I was beginning to wonder why anyone would want to work this close to other people. All they seemed to do was piss each other off.
Ethan took over the conversation, detailing the next steps that we would take in trapping Ivet Salvador. He sent Ezra, Liam, and Christopher into ChemGen to work their covers and maintain appearances as they finished this job. He then tasked Oliver and me to work up a full dossier on Ivet. He wanted to know every detail of her life so that nothing took them by surprise later on. Oliver slumped his shoulders and walked back up the stairs. I was about to join him when Ezra paused by my chair and asked to talk to me. I reluctantly nodded and followed him outside.
After closing the door and walking into the yard Ezra turned and spoke without looking me in the eye. “I wanted to thank you for last night. I had no idea that things would get so out of hand. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t gotten me out of there.” I was exhausted, in pain, and not in any mood to soothe his bruised ego this morning.
“You should have left with me when I asked before the fight, Ezra. What were you playing at in that ring? Did you think I would be impressed by your ability to stand there and take a fist to the face?”
“No I…” he paused to swallow down the emotion building in his voice before continuing, “I didn’t think it would go down that way. Listen, if Ethan finds out how bad it got last night, he is going to kick me off the team.” Ezra finally lifted his head to look at me and I saw the pleading in his eyes.
I took a step back as if he had physically slapped me. After everything I had done for him last night he thought I would rat him out. Ezra didn’t care that he had scared the living shit out of me in that ring. He only cared if I would keep my mouth shut. This time it was me that looked away from his gaze as I told him, “Don’t worry. Ethan won’t learn anything from me.”
I turned to walk back into the house only to run into Christopher in the doorway. “Hey, are you okay there Payton?” he asked as he grasped my shoulders in the same way he had the day before in the bathroom. What was it with this man and his need to always intrude on my personal space?
I tore out of Christopher’s grasp and retorted in voice filled with the anger and hurt that Ezra had filled me with. “Everything will be fine when you learn to keep your damn hands off of me.”
“Whoa, what have I done to make you not like me this much?” Christopher asked with disbelief in his voice. He had no idea did he. No idea what Oliver is willing to do, and has done, just to feel accepted by this man. I decided it was time to explain it to him.
“You must have gone through the Whistler training program, which means that you know what happens to people that don’t fit the mold there. How could you let Oliver go there without any protection or preparation?” When Christopher just stood there and shook his head at me I asked, “Do you know how much he looks up to you Christopher? That he wants to be like you so much that he willing to change who he is to do it. Oliver is one of the most incredible people I have ever met. Why is he not enough for you?”
Christopher’s face turned red as my words hit home and he stepped forward to hiss out, “I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t know anything about my relationship with my brother. And from what I hear, you don’t even have a family, so you know fuck-all about family loyalty or the unconditional love that we have. So, fuck-off Payton and never talk to me about Oliver again.” He was right in my face when he delivered his words but backed up to storm out the door.
Christopher never physically touched me, but the air left my lungs as I reeled from his words. How did he know that I didn’t have a family? And he was right. I did know fuck-all about family loyalty, not to mention that unconditional love was a completely foreign concept to me. I had betrayed every single person I knew. Betrayed the entire Family. How could I be mad at him for not protecting Oliver against a little bullying when I was personally responsible for so much pain and misery.
I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath. I used the resulting pain from my ribs to refocus on the present. Right now, Oliver needed help on the Ivet dossier. After we had finished with that I could reevaluate and decide if I should listen to my inner voice telling me that I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t become part of this team.
I walked up to Oliver’s room and found him hunched over his desk with his head on his arms while snoring slightly. I gave his sleeping form a small smile and then grabbed his computer. I pulled up the information he had gathered on the Salvador residence and started digging into the details that made up Ivet’s life. I worked quietly while Oliver slept for five hours and then I surrendered to my own falling eyelids. I was startled awake sometime later when Oliver tried to remove the laptop from my hands. When I tried to get up Oliver shook his head and told me to get some more rest. I decided to listen to him and turned to a more comfortable position on his bed.
A loud knocking woke me up the second time and I turned to find Oliver had left the room and Christopher leaning in the door with a sneer on his face. “Sleeping on the job?” he asked in a leer. I had clearly been sleeping but I refused to explain my late night or the hours of work I had put in and just held his gaze. He eventually scoffed and backed out of the room while stating that we were having a team meeting down stairs.
I slowly stood and took stock. I felt weary and battered to the bone. I knew that I had lived through worse injuries than a couple of cracked ribs, but I never remembered feeling this worn down. I considered the possibility that while I used to physical abuse, I had rarely allowed myself to become emotionally involved in anything in my life before Whistler. Lowering my defenses enough to let Oliver in was causing some serious emotional backlash and I didn’t know how or what to feel.
I joined the rest of the team downstairs where Oliver handed out packets of the Ivet dosser to everyone. He was explicit in his explanation that I had put together the dosser and he couldn’t have done a better job. I gave him a small smile. At least someone here appreciated my work and remained on my side. I carefully did not look in Christopher’s direction after Oliver gave me credit. I did not need validation from Christopher Paxton.
The rest of the meeting was spent discussing how we were going to turn Ivet Salvador into both their client and the authorities. Oliver was going to write a computer program that would record any information that Ivet accessed via her work computer. Christopher was going to install this program onto the ChemGen computer because their network was off-line. Then we were going take turns keeping Ivet under twenty-four-hour surveillance. We needed photographic proof of her handing the information off to her contact along with the identification of said contact.
Ethan paired us off and assigned each team an eight-hour shift that we would maintain until the job was finished. I was relieved when Ethan paired me with Liam. I didn’t know if I could stand to be in close proximity with either Ezra or Christopher right now. Those two happened to be paired together and had the first shift while Liam and I would take the second thus giving Oliver time to design the tracing program.
For the next six days I sat in a car with Liam as we followed Ivet between the hours of 3:00 PM and 11:00 PM. Liam was a willing teacher and spoke to me about the ideal distance to follow a car on a side street versus as highway and showed me how to set up the sound amplifier, so we could listen in and record conversations that we observed. But other than conversations relating to the job we rarely spoke to one another, preferring instead to maintain a comfortable silence.
Liam was an unassuming companion and I found myself relaxing in his presence. Each day that passed lessened the fear I held for the big man and turned it into a growing respect. I was also finally able to get some much needed rest during our 16-hour off time, and by the sixth day I almost felt back up to my normal strength. Between my silent shifts with Liam and being on different shifts than Oliver, I didn’t talk much. I was actively avoiding Christopher, while it seemed that Ezra was doing the same to me.
I didn’t feel threatened like I had at the Whistler compound during training, but I also didn’t feel like a real member of this team. There was nothing that I contributed to this mission that Oliver couldn’t have done. And if I was already having avoidance issues with two members of a five membered team, maybe that was an indication that this was not the right team for me. I still wasn’t convinced that Whistler in general was going to work out for me. Maybe I needed to find some way to help people without working within a team environment.
On the seventh day of the round-the-clock surveillance Ezra and Christopher followed Ivet to a location where she dead dropped a package. They switched the package and then waited for her contact to do the pick-up. After everything was said and done, I found the ending of the job to be anti-climactic. We didn’t do anything to Ivet or her contact. We just assembled all our findings, including proof that Ivet had sold privileged information, and handed it over to the ChemGen contact. Ethan told me that ChemGen would fire Ivet and press charges.
Again, this wasn’t what I thought working for Whistler would be like. I thought that I would be protecting children from kidnapping or stopping assassinations. I didn’t feel any sort of accomplishment or purpose when the job was declared done.
Ethan said that he had planned for this job to take more time and they did not have the next one set up yet. That meant that the team was off duty and got to take some time off. Ethan guessed it would be about a week before he contacted them to regroup. Christopher groaned when he heard this news.
“Oli, this means that we don’t have any excuse not to go Maggie’s wedding.”
“Noooo,” Oliver intoned in a whiny voice. “I hate cousin Maggie. She is always so bossy”
“Mom has been on us to go for months now,” Christopher replied. “I have been holding her off by telling her we had a job but if she were to find out we had time off and didn’t go she would skin us alive.”
“I know, I know.” Oliver was frowning until he looked over and met my eyes. “Hey Payton, you should come! We can sit in the back and comment on how ugly the bride’s maids look in the dresses that Maggie is forcing them to wear. It won’t be as bad if I have my wing-women with me.” He looked at me with clear hope in his eyes, but this time I was going to let him down. I needed some time alone to think about my future and to finish healing. And spending the next week with Christopher glaring daggers at me didn’t sound like a good healing environment.
“While you make it sound like so much fun Oliver, I am going to have to pass.”
His face fell back into the earlier frown and a spike of guilt shot through my system. Fuck, I didn’t like dissapointing Oliver. “What are you going to do instead?”
“This is my first time out of the country,” I admitted to him. “I think I will stay and explore Cuba some.”
Ezra spoke up, “That’s what Liam always does if we have time in between jobs. Stays and does the tourist thing.”
The big man just shrugged in response and said, “What’s the point of all the travel we do if you don’t stop and enjoy the places?”
“You mean enjoy the women,” Ezra quipped back. Liam smiled back, and it was the first time I had seen the happy expression on his face. It transformed his sacred serious face into something lighter, and I could see how he would get said women on his time off.
I was curious enough to venture, “How about you Ezra? How do you spend your time off?” He seemed surprised that I had spoken to him and I realized it was the first time we had spoken directly since the day after the fight club thing.
“I always go back to my family’s place in Nevada. My Mom is sick and I try to help out when I can.” Ezra replied in a soft voice. I saw that his words surprised Christopher and I wondered at the significance behind them. I sensed that this was a touchy subject and I gave Ezra my full attention as he continued. “My Dad is a real piece of work, which is why I picked work that would allow me to leave. But I always go back to see my Mom.”
Ezra was opening up to me. Telling me something that he clearly didn’t like talking about. I understood this was his way of apologizing for what happened at the fight club. I nodded at him to let him know that we were okay before he turned to go pack up his room. Maybe all I needed was time to build a relationship with each of the members of the team.
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