Elena knew that this was not the time to go getting a crush on someone. She’d been traumatized, almost killed, whisked out of her old life. She was confused and flustered and in no way could she be trusted to make good decisions.
But it had been a very long time since she’d woken up plastered to a man and she kind of wanted to slam her bedroom door closed, push him down on the bed and bury her face in his neck again. Cedric was fuckable, obviously, the man looked like an action figure. But more than anything, he was huggable. Elena had the feeling that there could be a fire raging around them, killer dinosaurs falling from the sky, zombies scratching at the glass, and she’d still feel safe as long as she had Ced’s arms around her.
And that’s all it was, she told herself. She’d been through a lot and now she was latching on to the first man who made her feel safe. She needed to calm down the sparklers in her belly. No good was going to come of this crush!
Elena spit out her toothpaste and started tying her hair up into a knot on top of her head as she went back into her room.
She blinked in confusion at Cedric standing in the middle of the room. In the middle of her clean room.
“Holy god!” she exclaimed. “You cleaned my entire room in about thirty seconds!”
The clothes were in the hamper, the books were stacked neatly, all of her shoes were paired and his fingers were clamped around the cluster of the water glasses, obviously about to take them down to the dishwasher.
She watched his eyes bounce away from her bare legs and to the newly neatened bed. “Yup. I, uh, don’t like mess.”
The clock on her wall chimed eight and both of them jumped.
“Shift change,” he said, glancing down at his watch. “Have a good day, Elena.”
And then he was gone.
CHAPTER SIX
Elena had never really been a girl-talk type of person, so she strategically waited until Geo’s shift had ended and Atlas’s began before she started digging for details on the questions she wanted answered.
Geo gave the impression of being locked up like a drum. Atlas, on the other hand, was basically a walking, talking pair of loose lips.
“So,” Elena said as she and Atlas played their third game of ping pong that afternoon. “How do you guys maintain your social lives if you’re here all the time?”
“We only go dark like this maybe once a year for a month or two. The rest of the year our schedules are much more workable.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that you pretty much have to go months without dating, though?” She cocked her head to one side. “Or, do you have a girlfriend at home waiting for you?”
“Nah,” Atlas shook his head and scrambled after a wide serve of Elena’s. “I only casually date. And a month of celibacy isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened. Besides, I use all that excess sexual energy to pump iron. I always end up looking like the Rock after we go dark.” He grinned and did a few Chippendale-like poses for Elena that made her laugh and roll her eyes.
Atlas was gorgeous and smiley and cut, but he didn’t have that fuckable/huggable thing going for him the way Ced did.
“Is anyone on the team married?” she asked, in what she hoped was a casual tone of voice. She was certain that Cedric wasn’t married. She knew that he would never go around cuddling a woman if he was promised to another. Cedric just wasn’t built like that. She hoped, though, that if she could get Atlas talking about the team’s love lives, she might be able to dig up a little dirt on Cedric.
She was torturing herself, looking for little seeds of details about Cedric’s life. She told herself that she wanted to learn something that would turn her off about him, stop her crush in its tracks. But what she feared she was doing was that she was looking for seeds to plant, to grow her crush even bigger.
Atlas eyed her for a second and she wondered if he knew exactly what she was doing with this line of questioning, but then he kind of shrugged and hit the ping pong ball back to her. “Rook was married a long time ago. He’s got a kid from that marriage. She’s cool. Thirteen or so. And the rest of us have never been married. I think Geo had a boyfriend a while ago, but she’s pretty tight lipped about that kind of thing.”
Elena nodded and ran across the room, chasing after the ball. She was breathless when she came back; she hoped Atlas would attribute it to the game and not the conversation topic.
“Do you guys go out together when you’re not working?”
“Sometimes, not that often. We don’t really like to do the same things.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well,” Atlas considered and then swore when she zinged the ball past him and won the game. He walked over to the mini-fridge and pulled out two bottles of water. He straightened up, saw her frown, and put the bottles back with a sigh. He trudged over to the sink and filled two cups with water. “You and your phobia of packaging.”
“It’s not a phobia. It’s a desire to not suffocate our planet in plastic and fossil fuels.” She tapped his knee as he sat down on the couch next to her and passed her the tap water. “You were saying?”
“Oh. Right. Swift and I like to go to bars and see the scene a little bit. Chat or dance, play pool. Sequence, that dear brother of mine, likes to sit in a dark room and stick pins under his fingernails. Or whatever. He’s more of a one-and-done hookup kind of guy and doesn’t really do the bar scene.”
“You and Cedric dance when you go out to bars?” She tried to picture it.
“Sure,” he shrugged. “He’s a better dancer than I am. And the ladies really swoon for that shit.”
“So… you and Cedric go to bars and pick up girls.”
Atlas started to open his mouth to answer and it just fell all the way open. A look of dawning comprehension broke over his face. Suddenly, Elena found herself on the pointer end of a very bossy finger. “Oh my GAWD,” Atlas whisper-yelled. “You have a crush on Swift!”
Elena swatted that finger out of her face and glanced around to make sure that they were truly alone. It was true, so she didn’t bother denying it. “Yell it from the rooftops, why don’t you!”
“Haha! Yes.” Atlas threw two victory hands in the air. “This is so. Much. Fun. Best gossip ever.”
“No!” Elena cut her hand through the air. “This is not gossip. Okay? This doesn’t go beyond your brain and my brain, okay? I don’t want him to find out.”
“Why not?” Atlas looked at her like she was insane.
“Because, well, you know how he is. So diligent about his job. So by-the-book. There’s no way that client/guard relationships are condoned and if I told him, he’d just reject me and then get all embarrassed and aw-shucks and uncomfortable around me from now until infinity. So yeah. Pass. Hard pass.”
“Huh.” Some of the light dimmed in Atlas’s eyes. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He leaned his head back on the couch and rolled it to look at Elena. “Bummer for you, though, I’ve heard he’s really good at sex.”
“Christ.” Elena pinched the bridge of her nose and couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s exactly what I needed to hear, Atlas, thanks.”
“Oh. Sorry. You’re probably super horny these days and hearing about Cedric’s sex skills is making it worse, huh?”
“Atlas.” Elena laughed and covered her face with her hands.
Atlas, getting a royal kick out of being such a dick, couldn’t help but keep going. “In that case, you most likely don’t want to hear about the fact that I’ve changed next to him at the gym and the man has a monster co—”
He grunted as Elena launched herself across the couch and slapped her palm over his lips. “Enough, you tease!”
She jammed the fingers of her free hand into Atlas’s ribs and he screamed with ticklish laughter.
“Um.”
Elena and Atlas both froze as Cedric spoke from behind them.
“Hey dude,” Atlas spoke from behind Elena’s hand, still clamped to his mouth.
Elena, knowing that scram
bling away from Atlas would only make them seem guilty of something they definitely were not guilty of, just sort of leaned back from her friend and straightened herself out on the couch.
“What’s… going on?” Cedric asked—a hundred different questions all wrapped up into one.
“Nothin’,” Atlas said easily, his body still lolled to one side on the couch. “Just teasing Elena.”
“About what?”
“Um,” Atlas said, standing up and stretching. “Elena’s on a diet, but all she really wants is a piece of cake. A big, fat slice of cake.”
Elena, not usually easily embarrassed, went bright red. “Christ,” she mumbled into her hand.
“But… you’re vegan,” Cedric said, missing the innuendo. “And you’re already so slender. I really don’t think you should be on a diet.”
“Yeah, Elena,” Atlas said, a big, assholish grin on his face. “I think you should eat. I think Cedric should take you to the kitchen and you should eat your heart out.”
“Bye,” Elena said, standing up and shooting Atlas a dirty look on her way out of the room.
The two men watched her go.
“Why do I feel like that wasn’t about what you say that was about?” Cedric asked, his eyes narrowing on Atlas.
“Because it wasn’t, my man. It wasn’t.” Atlas started to move past him, but he noted the high color on Cedric’s face, the way his eyes flicked back between Atlas’s face and the couch. A piece of the puzzle fell into place for Atlas. He suddenly wondered if Elena’s crush was unrequited or not. Atlas threw a thumb over his shoulder toward the couch. “Don’t worry about that, man. It wasn’t what you think.”
Cedric watched Atlas disappear down the hall. Then he turned on his heel and headed straight for Rook’s office. He didn’t even bother knocking. Which really said something, considering how strictly he generally followed procedure.
Rook, surprised by the intrusion, came instantly to a stand, his hand at the gun holster on his hip.
“Send me out on assignment,” Cedric said in one big huff. He landed in the desk chair and balanced his elbows on his knees, his hands clutching his hair. “I can’t be here.”
Rook sat back down in his chair and folded his hands together. “What happened?”
Cedric leaned back and looked at the ceiling. He was brave enough to tell the truth to his boss, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to see the expression he’d find on his face.
“I cuddled the shit out of her last night and then I walked in on her and Atlas goofing around and I wanted to gut Atlas like a fish.” Cedric fisted one of his hands and knocked it against his forehead. “So. Yeah. I can’t be here. I know we don’t have a ton of information to go on, but send me out on assignment. Put me on the offensive. Let me go after these guys.”
Rook was quiet for a minute before he tossed a folder across the table to Cedric. “Well, aren’t you lucky that Sequence made a major intelligence breakthrough and found a sub-sect of the poaching group in New York.”
For a second, all the noise in Cedric’s head quieted. His personal shit went away. All there was, was the job. Just the way he liked it.
“Poachers? In New York? What the hell are they poaching, subway rats?”
Rook snorted. “No, the sect that’s here is the receiving group. Smugglers. The group back in the Sahel were the poachers, but the smugglers here don’t care what they’re bringing in, as long as it’s black market and as long as it makes them greenbacks.”
“And Elena’s anti-poaching initiative really fucked with their product intake, huh?”
“You got it.”
“You think she’s in danger from these guys? These local guys?”
Rook sighed and scraped a hand over his face. “I don’t know. None of this is sitting right with me. If this group were just sending a message about what happens when you mess with them, then killing Cauley would have been enough, you know?”
“But I don’t think that Cauley’s murder was just about sending a message. I think they were trying to prevent Elena and David from pushing any further anti-poaching measures through congress.”
Rook tipped his head to one side. “Tell me more.”
“Well, you know I’ve been doing a deep dive into her research. Over the last few years, Elena has done a huge impact study on all the ways that poaching negatively affects an area. The wildlife, of course, but also the ecosystem as a whole, and most importantly, the communities that surround the areas that are being poached. It’s obviously an extremely negative practice.”
“Sure.”
“So, the legislature that Elena and David helped write, and lobbied for with Congress and the Senate, was all about the ways to cut off the supply and demand chain of poachers, making it almost impossible to sell their product. In the wake of that legislature passing, the feds also helped shut down a major poaching operation.”
“Are you saying that this attack on David was just retribution?”
“No,” Cedric shook his head. “Part of it was, I’m sure, but mostly this was because of what Elena and David were planning next. The majority of Elena’s recent research has been on how beneficial anti-poaching measures are to communities. It seems to follow that if the communities themselves are actively taking measures to prevent poaching then the quality of life increases. There are more locals who are employed in these governmental anti-poaching positions, the ecosystems of the land recalibrate and people are able to get more from their local natural resources, and tourism increases if the animals are there to come and see. It’s even more of a win.”
“A one-two punch.”
“Exactly. She and David were just starting to work on yet another way to completely eliminate poaching from the Sahel, they’d already gotten their defense in place and now they were just working on their offense.”
Rook was quiet for a minute, his eyes dark and thoughtful. “So if you had to wager a guess…”
“I’d guess that any threat against her is active and aggressive. They aren’t trying to send a message, they’re going to try to prevent her from doing what she and David did before.”
“You don’t think the hit on David was a one-time thing.”
“There’s been nothing to establish a pattern so far, but no. In my gut, I think she’s still in active danger.”
“Then maybe you and Sequence oughtta take a walk for a few days, see what you can’t find out about this group of smugglers he found.” Rook paused meaningfully. “See if focusing on work for a few days doesn’t help clear your head.”
Cedric nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He rose from his chair, his brain already swimming with all the preparation that was necessary for planning a recon mission. It was exactly what he needed. He was barely going to have time to think about his next hamburger, much less all this confusion where Elena was concerned.
“And for the record, Swift,” Rook said, catching Swift at the door. “I don’t give a shit about the cuddling thing. If it calmed you both down, then I don’t see much problem with it.”
Cedric’s brows came down low, surprise and confusion written in every line of his face. There was absolutely no world in which Cedric thought he might be getting the green light from his boss for snuggling a client he was catching feelings for.
“But,” Rook continued. “To be on the safe side, I think it would be a good idea for you to get laid sometime in the next few days. Take the edge off, son.”
Yeah. Yikes.
Terrible.
Cedric nodded once and didn’t stick around to see whether or not Rook had been fucking with him or not.
***
“I’m not an idiot, you know,” Elena told Atlas two days later.
Cedric and Sequence were gone and no one would tell her why.
“No one is saying you’re an idiot. We’re just saying that maybe you don’t need to be privy to every single fact of your case, m’kay?”
Elena huffed and continued scrubbing the potatoes she had in
the sink of the kitchen. The sudden vacuum of edible dinners had been her first clue that Sequence was no longer in residence. Her second clue had been walking in on Geo in the night duty room.
Awkward.
Geo had swiveled in the desk chair, one eyebrow raised and a lightly amused look on her face. “You looking for a bedtime story, sis?”
Elena had been stunned, looking at Geo where Cedric was supposed to be sitting. But she shook her head and just said goodnight, backing out. She could have sworn she’d heard Geo mumbling something about solving the mystery of why Cedric was volunteering for night duty recently.
So, she’d figured that maybe Sequence and Cedric had been given time off at the same time.
But her final clue that something was truly strange was the visit she got from a therapist.
“Elena,” Rook had said after breakfast yesterday. “There’s someone coming to see you in about an hour.”
“A guest?” she had been shocked. She’d been under the explicit impression that absolutely no civilians were allowed in or out of Rook Securities while they were on lockdown. But Rook had nodded.
“Yeah. Dr. Waters. She’s a therapist.”
“You want me to see a therapist.”
“Yes, well, actually Swift was the one who’d thought it would be a good idea.”
“Cedric wants me to see a therapist.” She felt like Rook was telling her the beginning of a riddle, she just, for the life of her, couldn’t figure out the answer.
“He mentioned that your sleep patterns are still fragile after the bombing and he thought that the sudden change in your schedule might alter your quality of sleep for the worse.”
“Change in schedule?”
“Now that Swift is out on assignment and Geo is on night duty.”
Out on assignment?
Elena must have been staring blankly at Rook because eventually he cocked his head and spoke. “He didn’t tell you that he was going to be gone for a week or so on assignment for your case?”
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