Contracted Defense

by Piper J. Drake

  Tegan stopped snoring and opened one eye to regard Adam. Apparently the dog was not going to enable his need to go hover around his lady. Fine. He didn’t need an excuse to go find her. He might even confess why he’d gone out to her.

  “I had a chat with your friend Jay.” Victoria entered the study and stopped to study Tegan.

  For his part, the corgi grunted and stretched his forepaws in her direction.

  Well, Adam had known she was a direct sort of person but this bordered on psychic. “I saw.”

  “Good job with the drone, by the way.” She stepped farther into the study and leaned her hip against the deck. “He didn’t show any signs of having seen it, and I didn’t hear it either.”

  “Thanks.” Adam eyed her, cautious. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her expression was closed off. He was learning it meant her mind was working faster than the words coming out of her mouth. “Jay say anything interesting?”

  “To a certain extent. It’s fairly certain he doesn’t consider you a close friend.” She put an interesting inflection on the word.

  He scratched his chin. “Man doesn’t have to be a friend to work with him. I’ve been trying to give everyone the chance I hope they’ll give me.”

  She shook her head. “If he were in a burning building, would you go after him?”

  “Yes.” He regarded her solemnly. “But not because I know him.”

  Her ice-blue gaze settled on him and held him. “If he ran into a burning building to recover money or valuables, would you have his back?”

  Ah, well that was a different question. “Can’t stop idiots from their own idiocy.”

  She nodded. “That clears up a few things, then.”

  “Where are you headed with this?” He didn’t mind questions. They were getting to know each other as they went, but this was feeling like an interrogation.

  She sighed and dropped her arms, reaching out to snag a sticky note from the desk supplies. “He was baiting me with what he knew about you. If you didn’t know before, you should know if you were drowning, he wouldn’t throw you a rope.”

  Adam hadn’t known it was that bad. He’d have given Jay credit for being a decent human being. Based on Victoria’s impression, it’d be a bad idea to give Jay his back.

  A knot started twisting in Adam’s gut. “I want to ask you what he said, but I probably should have a talk with him directly.”

  What Jay had said could wait for later. What Victoria thought of Adam mattered to him more at the moment.

  “You could.” Victoria began to fold the sticky note into triangles. “He doesn’t come across to me as the sort who would discuss his issues with you to your face. He’s not direct.”

  It was Adam’s turn to sigh. “No. He’s not. You’re right.”

  Even years ago, Jay had been a passive-aggressive motherfucker. It’d been like pulling teeth trying to get him to say what he was thinking. More often than not, Adam or their other teammates would hear it from someone else. It was Jay’s way. Confront him and he’d find a way to make it look like he’d been attacked instead of constructively working things out.

  “I appreciate you talking to me about it.” Adam wasn’t sure how to pose the question to Victoria, but she was direct. She would give him a straight answer even if it triggered more discussion. “What do you think of me after talking to him?”

  Tegan chose the moment between Adam’s question and her answer to roll to his feet. He let out a big doggie yawn, looked from Adam to Victoria and padded away. Heading out of the study, Tegan approached the wall in the dining room and stared at...nothing. The wall, maybe?

  Victoria placed her folded sticky note on the desk, now in the shape of a small fox face. The movement was slow and precise, as if the paper fox was a delicate thing. Her gaze met his again, serious. “I didn’t ask you for details about your last mission. I understand there are some details you can’t share. I need to know if you changed the plan of action without warning during the mission, though. I also need to know if you would do it again without telling me.”

  Ah. The knot doubled in Adam’s gut and his stomach churned. He thought hard about what she’d asked. Even now, she was respecting his need to maintain confidentiality on the mission. Most others wouldn’t. But she needed his honesty.

  “Yes. I changed the plan of action in the middle of the mission. I felt it was the right decision to make to counter situational decisions that were made at the time. They were made in split seconds. No time to consult anyone.” A solid team could communicate almost instantaneously and still there hadn’t been time. “I acted in the best interest of the team. Some, like Jay, didn’t agree. People died.”

  Old guilt rose up in a wave. Adam tried to give her as much as he could without breaking his word. But how to give perspective without being able to tell her the details of what happened? It was the same problem, and he hadn’t been able to explain well enough to his father, his family, the people who’d known him all his life.

  “There isn’t a day or night that goes by that I don’t think of those people. They died. I didn’t. It was still the only way to get the rest of the team out of there.”

  “You acted on your own.” Her tone was hard and flat. “Would you do it again?”

  He didn’t look away from her gaze. “It was the right thing to do. In the future, if I had to, I’d do it again.”

  The slowly building trust between them broke, tangibly, with his honesty.

  There hadn’t been any other choice.

  Her lips pressed into a flat line. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Yeah.” It really, really was.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Victoria scowled as she walked the grounds again. The sun was going down and with it, the evening chill was coming in off the bay. The growing shadows created voids where there weren’t any earlier in the day.

  The obvious time for any attack would be night, but sometimes it was best to strike in uncertain light like the magic hours of dawn and dusk. It wasn’t quite dark enough for night vision to be effective and not light enough to eliminate the places where shadows allowed people to hide. So it made absolute sense for her to be out here. Again.

  Or at least, she’d use the explanation if Roland or one of Dante’s security team asked. To herself, and probably to Adam, she’d admit she was walking off temper and disappointment.

  To be fair, he’d been honest.

  She didn’t know how to reconcile herself with his answer.

  “You get the measurements you need or can we lend a hand?” Ray raised his hand in greeting as he and Brian approached. They were still a ways away, but Ray had pitched his voice to carry. Brian lifted his chin in greeting.

  She smiled. No need to acknowledge her purpose outside. If they could tell by observing her, that was fine. It’d be more interesting if they’d noticed the drone earlier too, but she wasn’t going to ask.

  “This time of day changes the lay of the land.” She offered the easy excuse instead.

  Ray nodded, looking out over the property. Neither he nor Brian spent more than a glance on her, their gazes constantly sweeping the perimeter. It was their job. “True. It’d be easier with different landscaping. Any plans to clear some of this stuff up?”

  “We’ve made the recommendation to Roland.” A landscaping team would be in later in the week to remove the worst trees and shrubs. She made a mental note to leave a note with Dante so he and his team could expect it as part of the daily schedule.

  “All right.” Ray simply accepted her comment, no follow-up questions. He was genial enough but not overly friendly.

  “Can I ask you a few questions?” It was an impulse and not like her at all.

  Ray looked at her straight on for a moment. “Sure.”

  “If you two wer
e to move on from this posting, would you look for jobs as a team?” She’d noticed their last two jobs had been together. Two was interesting, a third place of work together would’ve been trend.

  Ray barked out a laugh. “Think so. We’re brothers.”

  Victoria studied them. Brotherhood could be claimed in a number of ways. Considering their ethnic background, they weren’t brothers by genetics. “Since childhood? Or through your work?”

  Brian gave her a wide smile. It was slightly unnerving, perhaps he didn’t smile often. This might’ve been the first time she’d seen him try the expression.

  “We grew up in the same neighborhood.” Ray gave her the answer. “My father used to call us One-y and Two-ey. We went to college together, didn’t bother finishing, and started focusing on private security. We know how to work together. We might not play as well with others.”

  It explained why the two of them didn’t work with a larger organization. This kind of work allowed them the freedom to work the way they did best.

  “Either of you could have opportunities elsewhere.” She wondered if she would’ve considered them in her past work. Possibly. They were both solid, dependable. They’d been conscientious about their job, despite the repetition of their patrols. Neither had relaxed their vigilance even if they’d paused to talk with her. In fact, they’d tacitly continued on their patrol. It was she who’d fallen into step with them.

  “Yeah we could.” Ray chuckled. “But it’s not worth being miserable in your job to get higher pay or whatever. This suits us.”

  “How do you manage your differences?” She assumed they had them. “Ever fight over a lady, food, a work decision?”

  The questions sounded idiotic to her, once she let them out. But she truly hadn’t ever asked anyone. It had always seemed to be a given in the past that a mature adult could work through those things. But she was zero and two when it came to resolving things with a partner, both her personal life and her professional life seemed to have fails in those respects.

  Brian laughed.

  It was Ray who answered. “Sure. If it’s ever over a lady, it’s because one of us is making a big mistake. Otherwise, we generally let things fall out as they will. We don’t have the same taste in women, so it’s never over the same. To be real, though, we’ll throw down over the last soup dumpling.”

  She smiled. “I’d put up a fight over a soup dumpling too.”

  “When it comes to business, that happens less often. Dante is a decent lead.” Ray considered for a minute. “Generally we don’t disagree so much as hold each other’s ass accountable for when we screw up.”

  “That’s fair.” She thought back to hundreds of times when Marc had made mistakes, more recently Adam. She did a lot of the holding accountable. She was detail oriented and demanding, requiring her partner meet the same high standards she maintained for herself. The idea of ever being caught unprepared or vulnerable was abhorrent to her, so she tended to check and double-check to be sure whoever was working with her never left her open to either of those things. Both Marc and Adam were good colleagues. Yet she couldn’t remember Marc ever truly making her consider where she’d made the wrong decision. She wasn’t infallible. It was Adam who’d called her out, made her reconsider, talked her into adjusting her planned course of action.

  It’d been for the better.

  “We try for fair. Sometimes shit happens. If you go for a long stretch where you’re never wrong though? You may want to check yourself.” Ray rolled his shoulders. “We’ve worked with those types before, and it doesn’t matter what level of excellence a person maintains, it’s hella tiring to deal with them every minute of every day when they’re always finding a way to twist things so they’re right all the damned time. It’s like being forever trapped in a statistics seminar.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The numbers are all there, points of fact, but you can torture the data to prove anything you want if you keep at it. Working with someone like that day to day wears on you, steals your soul.”

  The bottom dropped out of Victoria’s stomach. Her ex had done it all the time, for years. In recent years, she’d lost her patience, her desire to make things work with him, and she’d gotten very good at turning the logic back on him.

  The behavior was hers now. She’d taken into herself, and she’d probably worn Marc down with it.

  “Work or personal, relationships are between two people.” Brian’s voice was a deep baritone, gruff and gravely from disuse. “Relationships aren’t static either. You want to build a relationship, make sure it grows with you, then it’s the decisions of both people to evolve along with it over time. You both have to decide what you’re willing to change as you go and whether you’re still you as you do it.”

  She stared at the man with his sleepy expression, his lids half closed and accentuating the effect of the epicanthic folds over dark eyes. It was like suddenly standing in the middle of some science-fiction movie when the wise teacher archetype imparted a piece of wisdom, then sent the protagonist plunging into chaos.

  The ground was unsteady under her feet, and she gave each of them a thanks, a nod, before heading back to the main house to think hard.

  * * *

  Adam was still working with the drone programming when Victoria returned. She paused on her way to the study to glance at Tegan. The dog was lying on his side along the dining room wall in the middle of another nap.

  “Seems like an odd place to nap all the time.” Her comment wasn’t directed at anyone in particular.

  Since Adam was the only human in the area, he decided to answer her anyway. “He’s generally there if he’s not following one of us.”

  It’d torn him up to watch her go out earlier. It’d felt too much like her walking away. He’d wanted to call after her, take back what he’d said and promise her anything she wanted to hear to keep whatever this was between them going for even a little bit longer.

  Instead, he’d kept his mouth shut and let her go work out her thoughts on her own. Better to have given her the truth than to have broken her trust later. Besides, if all he could ever give her was what she wanted to hear, they weren’t going to be right for each other as professional partners or something more.

  She entered the study and leaned against the desk, outside of arm’s reach. Not the best of signs. “He has a dog bed in the kitchen. It looks new and comfortable.”

  He glanced up at her, but there was no smile hovering around her lips. Her jaw was clenching and unclenching as if she was literally chewing on the deep thoughts she’d taken out with her earlier. “There are other factors. Maybe he wanted to pick a place where he could open his eyes and see the humans in the household. He can see us in the study and see the top of the stairs from there.”

  She huffed. “He could just as easily be in the dining room waiting for the next meal. He’s always ready for a treat even if he’s not allowed them.”

  “Also a possibility.” Adam tried to sound as agreeable as possible.

  “He likes you well enough.” She leaned forward enough to crane her neck and look back at the sleeping corgi. “He was right at your feet this morning.”

  “Jealous?” He’d meant it as a tease.

  The corners of her mouth dropped and her eyes filled with sadness. “I wouldn’t expect him to warm up to me.”

  Something deep in his chest twinged. “Why not? You like him. He can tell.”

  “Can he?” She spoke as if her thoughts were far away and present at the same time. Wistful. “I’m not particularly friendly toward him. I’m not even sure I like him. He’s a dog. He sheds. But he’s always looking like he’s got a smile for everyone. Walking the grounds is more tedious when he’s not out and about to catch everyone’s attention.”

  They were definitely talking about more than the dog. Adam didn’t m
ind though. It seemed to him that Victoria didn’t have a lot of practice opening up directly to people.

  “You don’t have to tell him for him to know. Dogs know when you appreciate their companionship. They decide on their own if they’re going to accompany you.” Adam leaned back in his chair. One of Tegan’s big ears twitched and the dog cracked an eye open. “That dog is probably the only absolutely truthful creature on this property. He lets you know what he wants as best he can, and you will know if he doesn’t give two shits about you. He’s probably also the best judge of character here.”

  “That’s not a comfort.” Victoria crossed her arms under her chest.

  Distractions were bad, but Adam couldn’t help but appreciate the lifting effect the motion had on her breasts. She was unconsciously beautiful and alluring, little effort required.

  “It should be. He allows you into his territory without waking. That’s some trust.” Adam was reaching the end of his understanding of canine psychology, so he wasn’t sure how much farther he was going to be able to take this theoretical conversation. He was hoping Victoria would come around, and soon. Otherwise, he was going to have to resort to kissing her into a better mood. Or pissing her off.

  She sucked in a breath through parted lips. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  Adam snorted. “Dog jumps up and lands on all four paws, barking whenever Dante or any of the security team comes in. You just walked in without a twitch from him. Obviously, you’re one of his.”

  “What happens if I have to yell at him? Kick him out of the study if he gets underfoot?” She was stretching the metaphor far, really far.

  “I guess it depends on whether you let him know you still want to be friends after you finish dealing with whatever was important enough to hurt him in the first place.” He figured this was where his own needs could dovetail with the dog’s. “It’s not always about apologies and who is right or wrong. Sometimes it’s about knowing there’s a next time to work through.”