2. February 8th

FEbrUARY 8TH

Waters

The woman'seyes were sparkling, and her breathing was elevated after her little tirade. Waters felt like he was back in underwater training, his lungs being crushed and burnt at the same time, as he watched her chest rise and fall, her eyes crackling with irritation. Of all of Tribe Corporations' members, he was the one most collected with clients, so why was he changing his operating style with her?

Damn, she's saucy. If it were just the two of us right now, I would throw her down on this table and—

"What do you think, Waters?" God asked.

He looked at the starfish.

What do I think about what?

He blinked. Then he tried to jumpstart his brain and remember what they'd been talking about because he certainly knew it wasn't about his unwanted, inappropriate thoughts regarding Kai Serrano. Ever since he'd stood across the conference table from her, he'd been willing his face into a state of expressionlessness, his body to be casual, and his dick to stand down. Also things that were unusual for him. Those shiny pink lips and that Monroe beauty mark had him riveted. He wondered if it was real or a Hollywood affectation. He wanted to touch it and find out.

Sweet Christ, what is the matter with me?

Or the long blonde ponytail he wanted to wrap around his fist—

Luckily, at that moment, he remembered that he was being asked if her request was realistic. "I suppose it's possible." He shrugged, unconvinced. "But I need more information. I don't know much about the actors, just recognize a couple of the names." He raised his gaze to Kai. "This would be extremely rough on them. Are they aware, at least somewhat, of what you'll be asking of them?"

She nodded then shifted her focus back to the actor profiles; a light pink tinge crept up her neck and face.

I bet that blush spreads over the rest of her.

She cleared her throat. "Except for our female star, all have extensive action film resumes, and all are in supreme athletic condition. Even though Sookie is new to the business, she used to be a gymnast so she understands demanding training."

God spoke up. "We need to see a script before making a final decision."

"Not a problem."

"Waters will be doing the initial assessment. How long, Waters?"

He shrugged again. "Three days."

"Will that work for you, Ms. Serrano?"

Waters watched her slide a phone out of the front pocket of her backpack and click through to a calendar app. "As long as I know by the eleventh, I'm good. I have a meeting with the producers on the fourteenth and would need to give them confirmation then."

Waters spoke up. "It's going to be a minimum of four weeks of nothing but preparation and training. Six would be better."

"Filming begins April first," Kai said, still sliding through her schedule. "All of the actors are scheduled to arrive for training on February sixteenth if we can obtain your services." She opened an email and attached the folder for Stormfront to it. "What email should I send the files to?"

Waters gave her his direct business account; she entered it and clicked Send. A muffled phone ping came from his back pocket, and he checked the screen to make sure the file came through and that it opened for him.

"Got it."

Kai pulled another flexi-binder out of her backpack, this one considerably thicker, and pushed it across the table to Waters, then began to close up her computer and stuff it back into her backpack amongst what looked like haphazard pieces of paper. Once everything was inside, she donned her ball cap. As she hauled the bag over her shoulder and stood, it swung wide, hitting her back with a thud, causing her to jerk from the pressure.

That bag is bigger than her. She's not wrong when she says it's going to hurt somebody.

"Thank you for your time." She reached to shake Waters' hand, nodded at the starfish, and headed toward the door.

Silently and quickly, Waters was there to open it for her. She snapped her head to look at him, not hearing him come up right next to her. Her eyes were wide and startled, her nostrils flaring just slightly, and a clear pulse point pounded in her neck.

She smelled like lilacs.

Do. Not. Inhale.

Instead, he decided to get in one more tiny prod. "SEAL training, ma'am," he offered quietly in explanation. "Situational awareness is sometimes the difference between living and dying. Always know what's around you."

Her eyes narrowed in challenge. Slowly, she turned so that she faced him eye to eye without wavering. "Camera one is in the upper right-hand corner of the framed Jackson Pollack on the left-hand wall, which I admired when I first came in here. Camera two is the fake lock on the cabinet behind where I sat, where I saw you looking over my shoulder earlier. Camera three is on the center bar of the telescreen so that it looks like a power button. When something is on, it's a blue or green light; when it's off, it's blank, so the red light was a dead giveaway. Camera four is in the digital clock face, hiding as a third dot in the colon between numbers. Colons have two dots, not three. Camera five is the USB stick you had me use to hack into my system. Yeah, plug something foreign into my laptop, and it's not going to look at anything else on my computer. Please. And camera six"—she flicked the lowest button on his Henley—"is in this button right here. The one that's set too closely compared to the others."

She returned her cool gaze to Waters' focused stare. "I think my situational awareness is in a good place. Good day, gentlemen." She turned without a backward glance, exiting toward Cherry's desk.

Waters moved out into the hallway and watched her walk away, the long tails of her belted, oversized blouse covering what was probably a wicked ass to go with the athletic legs in the sexiest boots to ever clack down the hallway away from him.

What. The. Fuck! How the hell…?! She… This is gonna be—

He shook his head. Well, he didn't know what this was going to be. What he did know was that it wouldn't be his problem, which, from his dick's perspective, was a shame, but from his brain's perspective, it was a relief. He was back on full duty in three weeks, so there was no reason to put him on a job that would be anywhere from twelve to fourteen weeks.

Deep in thought, he reentered the conference room, closing the door behind him. Crossing over to the wall of windows, he reached up with his left arm, laying his palm flat against the glass to stretch out the kink that was developing in his shoulder from holding himself so rigidly. He watched her exit the building.

"Did I really hear her call you ‘G.I. Joe'?"

Waters rolled his eyes. "Shut the fuck up."

There was a pause before God said, "You tried to check out her ass in the hallway, didn't you? You've always been an ass man."

Quit baiting me, motherfucker. I'm not gonna fall for it.

"Well, if you're not interested"—God hummed to himself—"Nemo would probably love a chance at that. On the plus side, he's a movie buff—"

"Double shut the fuck up," Waters murmured.

He hung his head, forehead against the glass.

Annnnd you got baited, dumbass.

God started laughing uproariously at his snipe. "Think you can handle her?"

"Not interested."

Liar.

After a moment, Waters turned and looked at the camera in the telescreen bar with a frown of suspicion. "Why would you be worried about me being able to handle her?"

"She needs a consultant. Tag—you're it."

Oh, no, I do not want that drama or the distraction.

"We don't do movie consults. Why the fuck did you even meet with her?"

"Ka-Bar called in Steel's marker."

"I don't care if he called in every favor ever owed to him by anyone. That's not my issue."

"Then what is your issue, Waters?" God growled.

"The issue is I shouldn't have to do this grunt work that any former SEAL could do. I should have my medical clearance in three weeks. I'm needed back in the field."

Was that whining? That sounded like whining.

"Quit your whining." Waters winced. "This will make for a nice, easy transition back into fieldwork. Physical without being under pressure."

There was crinkling in the background as God spoke. Waters shook his head. One of those damn caramel apple suckers. Those things were shit, but God had a two-bag-a-day habit. Cherry ordered them by the thousands.

"You think I can't take the pressure?"

"No, I said this would be a transition without it."

"Forget it. Send Nemo," Waters grumbled at the disembodied voice. But for some reason, it burned him to think it, let alone say it, and he absentmindedly rubbed his chest.

"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. He's still in Cuba with Steel collecting that baseball player and won't be back before this job starts. Even if he were here, he would be available for full field duty in the case of an emergency. You are not."

"You're seriously going to assign me to babysit her and her celebrity minions?"

God's slightly altered speech came out again as he worked around the sticky candy. "Look at it this way. You get to be outside of this damn office, running roughshod over a half-dozen A-listers who probably don't know their left from their right. Work ‘em hard, make ‘em cry like little girls, and enjoy it, for fuck's sake. Even better, get laid by the sassy director." Waters rolled his eyes at the suggestion. "Hey. You're like Betty White without a Snickers when you aren't getting any."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Are you kidding? You've been as celibate as a monk ever since we brought you back from Egypt two years ago and just as cranky, despite all the pretty nurses offering you some extra physical therapy." Waters shrugged, but he remained quiet. God changed tactics. "Besides, watching you eye-fuck Kai Serrano is the best entertainment I've had in months."

Waters sighed in exasperation. "I was not eye-fucking her." God barked out a single-syllable laugh. "I wasn't. You're just making shit up to try and get in my head."

"And it's working, isn't it?"

Waters just shook his head as if to say whatever you think, then clicked the zoom button on the remote and watched Kai on the public parking lot security camera footage as she sat in her car checking her phone. He perched his ass on the edge of the conference room table, one booted foot crossed over the other, his arms crossed in front of his chest, one thumb and forefinger pulling on his bottom lip.

Okay, I was totally eye-fucking her. But so what? He's right that it's been a while. Is it the boots? Because I gotta admit, I really dig the boots.

What intrigued him about Kai Serrano was a weird set of juxtapositions that he could not resolve. Approachable, but prickly. Confident, but defensive. Take charge, but willing to concede. She was a puzzle, and he couldn't resist solving puzzles.

He frowned and tilted his head to the side. Without warning, the corner pieces of a brain jigsaw puzzle laid in place. He straightened his arms and gripped the edge of the conference table. "While convenient, this has nothing to do with a movie consult.''

God snorted. "And the man wins a prize. My shit meter was just outside the danger zone before she even walked in the door."

There was crunching as he pulverized the sucker in his mouth and immediate crinkling as he unwrapped the next sucker while speaking. Immediately unwrapping more of the disgustingly plastic suckers was Waters' clue that his boss was unhappy. And nothing made God more unhappy than not knowing exactly what the hell someone was plotting.

How sad is it that I know his state of mind from his candy-eating habits?

"Did Ka-Bar call in the marker to you or to Steel?"

"Midas forwarded me a video clip Ka-Bar emailed to Steel around thirty-six hours ago, requesting that we take on the job she asked me for. Said to charge her for the work, but he wanted to make sure she had the best." He snorted. "He's asking us to ‘be the best' consulting service on a movie in exchange for a marker he earned? Not fucking likely. And the request comes in as a recording, with no opportunity to ask questions? Why couldn't he call and talk to someone directly? Hell, no, he clearly didn't have time to wait for the office to open, so something else is going on here. Now my shit meter is reading beyond the danger zone."

A sucker stick pinged into the garbage can on the other end of the connection. "What do you know about Ka-Bar?" God asked.

"He was Steel's friend while in Team 5, so he'd be the better one to ask. My knowledge is by reputation only."

"Well, I can't ask Steel now, can I? So tell me what you do know."

Waters sighed.

Now we've reached ‘Jerky with a chance of scattered irritation' status.

"The scuttlebutt goes that some shit went down in South America, and suddenly both Steel and Ka-Bar were exfil targets with Ka-Bar shot so full of holes he could have been a sponge."

"They shouldn't have been anywhere near South America. That's Team 4."

"Exactly. But there they were, claiming they were on leave and got caught in the crossfire of some cartel shootout. However, there were no records of liberty requests for either man. Ka-Bar recovered, was reprimanded, and then was reassigned to Team 8. Steel vanished off the face of the fucking planet until I found his ass crawling out of a sewer drain from a Black Site in Nicaragua. Now Ka-Bar shows up calling in a marker from Steel. I'd bet you my left testicle that the South America incident is why Steel owes Ka-Bar."

"Somehow or other, Ka-Bar wants our eyes on this woman because he can't do it himself."

"That would be my assumption as well."

The telescreen changed over to a series of emails layered one on top of the other. "You should also know that while you were eye-fucking our client"—Waters ignored God's jab and started sorting through the emails by sliding them around the screen with his fingers, placing them into a linear line by date, oldest to most recent— "Our golden-fingered hacker back-channeled his way into her work emails and followed a very interesting thread with her executive producer. It was because no matter the cost, a portion of the budget would be allocated to a rather large consulting fee. They've been fighting over it for several weeks, among other issues. Asshole is verbally, emotionally, and psychologically abusive, and he's holding the funding hostage. And trust me when I say that what's going on here in these emails is not even close to a civil argument. I can't imagine what it's like in person."

Waters switched his focus to the CCTV footage and watched Kai's Corvette finally pull out of the parking lot. "So whatever it is that's going on, you think Ka-Bar's asking us to watch over her."

"I'll see your left testicle and raise you my right testicle on that one. Question is, watch over her from what? His communication was very short and left a whole lot unsaid."

"Maybe the producer's the threat? Maybe Ka-Bar's worried she's in danger due to the animosity between them and thinks the guy will harm her? He sounds like a real douchebag." Waters leaned in closer to read one of the emails in front of him. "I stand corrected. Guy sounds like a real ‘assclown.' I'm stealing that one."

"Shit, our Kubrick wannabe swears like a sailor, and creatively to boot. I curse nonstop, and I've never heard of half the things she's called him. There's another email where she calls him a ‘jizzmop.' Kinda makes my dick hard just how unfiltered and unafraid she is."

"Keep your ‘kinda' hard dick in your pants," Waters warned.

"Warning me off, are we?" God made a tsking noise. "Umm, yeah, ‘not interested,' my ass." He grunted. "But to return to the problem at hand, would he really be concerned about protecting her from a movie producer whom she could expose to the world with a #MeToo tweet? Fuck, no. She seems like a woman who can handle her shit just fine. She'd probably be more likely to kick him in the balls, leave him rolling on the ground for someone else to find, and call the EMTs to take him to the hospital."

"So you're thinking she just works for an asshole, and Ka-Bar feels she needs protection from something else. Since he can't come home now to help her, he's asking us to step in." Waters considered that angle. "Or possibly he's not coming home and hiding because something he's doing is bringing danger to her door, so he's calling us to step in." Both seemed far-fetched to him, but then stranger things had happened. "What's her connection to Ka-Bar?" This was probably the most puzzling question of them all. The two individuals couldn't be farther apart—Future Hollywood Powerhouse Director and Military Golden Boy working special operations.

His woman, maybe? Lucky bastard.

The ping of yet another dead sucker stick hit the garbage can rim and bounced to the bottom. Another wrapper began to be peeled off another sucker. "No fucking clue. King Midas didn't find anything on the first go around. He's working on a deeper dossier dive on both of them. He should have something by this time tomorrow.

"In the meantime, take that script, go through it, and make the corrections she needs. Do it tonight. Get it to Cherry first thing in the morning and tell her to put together the contract for triple the pay of what she's offering. Need to make it look good, at least. According to the emails, they easily have that amount in her budget proposal. Even though she'll think she's hiring us, we're doing this as a favor to Ka-Bar.

"Once the paperwork is complete, call our director girl, Kubrick, and set up another meeting. Let's get her under our surveillance right away. I don't care what you have to do or how you do it, but we need eyes on her fast. This is a priority for you. You stay with Kubrick twenty-four seven. And while you're working with her, you can keep an eye on this slimeball producer, but I'm telling you, something about this Ka-Bar connection is making my gut roll."

"Stop eating all that sugar, then."

God laughed. "Watch it, dickhead. Between her snark and whatever smolder is going on between you two—and yes, I saw her reactions to you, too—I think our Kubrick is going to be a handful. Despite my overloading shit meter, I think I'm really going to enjoy watching you try to handle her."

There was a distinct click and silence.

Assclown. The name works for him, too.

Waters pulled up a still from the CCTV in the parking lot on the telescreen. He zoomed in on a shot from when she was getting out of her car to come into the office and locked it in place. His pointer finger traced down the right side of her face, which was turned to check for traffic before crossing the lot to the door.

I can handle her.

He straightened his shoulders, giving himself a mental shake. Nope. No handling. Per the rules, she was off-limits. Sex? Yes. More than that? No. He wasn't allowed to attach himself to someone, making that person vulnerable. And even if he were allowed to do so, he wouldn't because he couldn't take on any more guilt.