5. Edu

5

EDU

"Go," Cash barked, refusing to look at me.

"But—"

"You burned down my building."

I looked at the still-smoldering mess and winced. Maybe it was the explosives IRIS had used or what was surrounding the building. Either way, that fire did not want to go out. It had been a day, but his attitude hadn't changed a single bit toward me. Not that I expected him to forgive me overnight, but as we stood there staring at the wreckage, he acted like it had happened just minutes ago.

"Technically, only part of it. The silo is still intact."

He slowly turned to me, his face angry and unyielding. I could probably understand his position. Sure, I had gone to drastic lengths, which he was still unaware of my reasoning, but I hadn't meant to take things quite this far. I blamed IRIS for that. I suggested a simple explosion, but he didn't feel that was quite the right way to go.

Bigger is better, he said.

And I agreed because I was desperate for a job. After the shit that just happened, we needed a simple job. Maybe an heiress in need of a bodyguard or a woman running from her bastard husband who only wanted her fortune. That was easy shit we could deal with. But Cash was only interested in dealing with The Syndicate and delivering the final blow to the organization.

"What I can't understand is why you thought it was a good idea to blow up my building."

"Well…"

His eyes narrowed and I began to sweat. Nobody had said a word to Cash since the funeral. They didn't want to push things with him, but someone had to say what was on everyone's mind. If I didn't take this chance, no one would.

"Boss, the thing is, you're stuck in a rut."

"Is that right?" His tone was biting. I could practically hear him telling me what a fucking idiot I was through only his eyes. It was terrifying.

"See, since Rafe's death, you're only focused on The Syndicate."

"The group that was responsible for his death."

"Exactly."

"His death—where he was lit on fire and burned at the stake like they did five hundred years ago."

I swallowed hard. "Well?—"

"The same torturous death they set aside for people who went against the Crown or people who were persecuted for their religious beliefs."

When he put it that way… "Boss, all I'm saying?—"

"The very death that I had to watch," he continued.

"And that was hard."

"Where I had to watch my brother—my twin —suffer an agonizing death in which I was powerless to stop or help in any way."

"You did put him out of his misery," I tried, failing miserably.

"You're right. I killed my own brother. I put a bullet in his head and ended his life." He turned to face me fully. It felt like he grew five feet just with that single move. "I pulled the trigger to ensure he wouldn't feel the fire killing every nerve ending in his body. I used my training from the military against my own flesh and blood."

Man, this really wasn't going the way I planned.

"I watched his head snap back and the life leave his eyes. "

Okay, I may have miscalculated how this whole thing was going to go.

"And you think a week later, I need to move on?"

My nose twitched as I felt a sneeze coming on. It tended to happen at the worst times. Somehow, I made it through the military with not a single sneeze interfering with my duties, but five minutes with my boss, and I was ready to go into a huge sneezing fit.

I opened my mouth, but found it difficult to actually say anything. I looked up, avoiding eye contact as I tried to come up with something I could say to get myself out of the shitstorm I'd started.

"You know, moving on is an odd concept," I went with.

"Odd, like this conversation?" he asked.

"You could say that."

"Edu, I'm gonna need you to explain something to me."

Here it came. "Sure, boss."

"What exactly were you trying to achieve by lighting my office on fire?"

My eyes flicked to IRIS who was standing a few feet away, staring proudly at his work. "Boss, I'm gonna lay it on the line for you. We need some jobs. I know you want a good fight, and you want that fight to be with The Syndicate, but meanwhile, there are jobs waiting for us. And if we keep turning them down, we're not going to have the resources to keep fighting."

"It's been a fucking week."

"A week of no teams going on jobs," I pointed out. "What's going to happen next week? Are we going to turn down even more? Because the fact is, we may not get another shot at The Syndicate. The government is dismantling them as we speak. The leaders are running like crazy."

"And as they run, someone needs to go after them and make sure they never get a chance to set up shop anywhere else around the world."

"You know that'll happen again. Boss, it may not be the same men, but this will all start again. For every bad guy we take down, another pops up."

"So, we just stop fighting? "

"No, we fight the battles we know we can win," I argued. "You have a family, boss. Remember that. Look at what happened to Rafe. Libby left during the funeral. She was so pissed at him?—"

"Because he gave his life to save my sister," he snapped.

I took a deep breath and said the words he desperately needed to hear. "Because he chose a greater cause over her. It was admirable. No one's denying that. But if you follow the same road as Rafe, what's going to happen to your own family? Do you think Eva will stick by you if you devote your life to chasing Rafe's ghost?"

Cash's face shuttered at my words. I may have gone too far too soon, but I wanted to shut this down before he was so far gone that no one could rescue him.

"Boss…Rafe may be gone, but your family isn't."

I watched as he considered my words. His eyes filled with tears, and I really fucking hated that I had to say any of this to him. Maybe the others were right in waiting to talk to him. Maybe it was too soon to talk about this stuff, but I never believed in pulling punches to avoid hurting someone's feelings—not when the whole idea was to prevent harm.

"Maybe you're right."

Relief flooded through me at his words. I might have gone the wrong way in dealing with him, but at least I knew I was getting through to him.

"I'm glad you see it that way, boss."

"I appreciate you standing up to me. It took a lot of guts."

"Well, more like burning down your building. Which, by the way, I totally didn't mean to do. That was all IRIS."

A faint smile tilted his lips. It was the first time I'd seen him smile since this whole business with Rafe started. "Edu, I want you to do something for me."

"Anything, boss."

"I think it's time we celebrated Rafe's life. Maybe you could run to the store and grab some food and drinks."

Now, that I could get on board with. "Sure thing, boss."

I grabbed the Funyuns out of Fox's hand and put them back on the shelf. "We don't need Funyuns."

"Uh, I beg to differ. Any good party has a bowl of Funyuns," he said, snatching them back.

"Not this party," I said, grabbing them from him and replacing them on the shelf. "Besides, if you really want them, you have like forty bags in the silo."

His eyes widened in horror. "That's my emergency stash."

"And they'll go bad if you don't eat them," I argued.

"Nu-uh. Those things last forever."

I pinched the bridge of my nose as I tried to reason with him. "Fox, how the hell do you go from eating clean to not caring that the crap you're putting in your body has so many preservatives that you could eat Funyuns four years past the expiration date and be totally fine?"

"Easy. They're a delicious treat. And I'm not raiding my stash." This time, he grabbed five bags and plopped them in the cart.

"You are!" I took them back and stuffed them on the shelf. "We are not getting any more!"

"It's a vital necessity!" he snapped.

"It's a health hazard!"

"It's a delicious treat, and you can't make me stop getting them!" He grabbed the cart out of my hands and wheeled it back to the shelf. Using his arm, he swiped the entire shelf into the cart and stuck out his tongue at me. Bags were overflowing in the cart, making it impossible to fit anything other than the yellow bags of fake snacks that made his breath smell like onions.

Rolling my eyes, I stomped to the front of the store and grabbed another cart. With any luck, Fox would go to the checkout line and leave me in peace. I didn't know why I was the one stuck with Fox when it was IRIS who set off the explosives.

I wandered through the produce section, grabbing a few things I wanted. I was just about to head to the meat department when Fox caught up with me again, peering into my cart.

"What are you getting?"

Sighing heavily, I waited as he reached in and checked out every single piece of fruit. "You worry about your Funyuns. "

"Ooh, that's not a possibility. See, while Funyuns may last forever, this fruit will not," he said, holding up a plum. "I'm not even sure why you chose this one."

"Because it's soft."

"Right. Maybe a little too soft. If you don't eat this in the next four hours, it'll go bad."

"Four hours. You have that timed?" He nodded. "Are you a plum farmer?"

"No, but I do my research on fruit, and this is not one you want to get. Neither are those unless you plan on eating all four plums by tomorrow." He slapped me on the back and started putting them back, grabbing the ones he thought were better for me. "Aren't you glad I'm with you?"

"Thrilled," I deadpanned.

"And you shouldn't load up your cart with only fruit. You should focus on other things, too," he said, wandering over to another table.

"Like Funyuns?"

He tossed his head back and laughed. "That too, but I was thinking about vegetables. You should really work more of those into your diet."

I glanced at a nearby table and picked up an avocado. "How about this?"

His eyes widened as he did a double-take, snatching it from my hand. "An avocado," he said in awe. "This…this is the epitome of amazing fruit."

I stared at it in question. "It's green. And it's a vegetable."

"Oh, how wrong you are, sir. This…this, my friend, is a fruit. It is because of their reproductive origins that we know this. See, the tree produces flowers, which in turn become the fruit we so love and admire."

I wasn't sure about anyone else at OPS, but I definitely did not love and admire avocados. "I think you're taking this too far."

He stopped staring at the fruit and shot me a side-long glance. "Do you have any idea what is going on in the world right now?"

It seemed like a stupid question, but I'd bite. "World hunger, wars over land, genocide, cartels…How long of a list did you want? "

"I'm not talking about any of those. I'm talking about the avocado wars."

I looked at the fruit and then back to him. "People actually go to war over this?"

"It started back when a Mexican farmer couldn't pay the taxes on exporting his avocados. His daughter was attacked—raped and murdered."

"Over avocado taxes? How much are we talking?"

"Sixty an acre."

"Sixty thousand?" I exclaimed.

He frowned at me. "No, sixty dollars. Anyway, that was when the avocado wars started. But since then, the violence against these avocado farmers has exploded. This little fruit is causing quite the stir in Mexico."

"Wow," I said, hardly believing I stood and listened to that. "I really don't know what to say."

"You say…we need to get these avocados," he said, scooping them by the armful into the cart.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking all the avocados."

First, all the Funyuns. Now the avocados? "Fox, we don't need all these."

He snorted at me. "Right. That's what the cartels say. You don't need all that money. I'll relieve you of some."

"I hardly think you can compare cartels stealing money to whether I get one avocado or five."

"And that's where it all starts," Fox sighed. "The problem is, nobody really thinks it could happen to them. But mark my words," he said, shaking an avocado at me, "one of these days, the avocados will be missing, and you'll wish you had taken my advice."

I watched as he continued to take every single avocado from the stand. The pile started to tumble as he pulled each one and put it in the cart. I looked at the price and flinched. There was no fucking way I was paying for all that.

He had a lot more to take, so I walked to the front for a second time and grabbed another cart, completely avoiding him until I made it to the checkout lane. He was walking up and down the walkway in front of the registers, searching for me. I ducked down, holding my hand up to my face to block his view.

"Oh, it's you again!"

I barely heard the woman behind the counter. I was too focused on avoiding Fox. There was no way I wanted to be seen with him and his carts of Funyuns and avocados.

"Can we be quick?" I asked.

"Of course. I understand you want to avoid this," she chuckled.

I finally looked at her, confused by her words. "Avoid what?"

"You know," she winked. "The whole…recognition thing. I would pretend I didn't know me either."

Okay, now I was really lost. "I'm not pretending. I really don't know you."

"Okay," she said mockingly.

"Am I missing something? Did we sleep together?"

"I wish," she huffed. "No, but wouldn't that be nice."

Far stranger than Fox was the woman in front of me, playing mind games with me as she rang up my purchase. "Okay…um…I'm just gonna pay."

"In sexual favors?" she teased.

I very carefully held out my card for her. "No, with this shiny, plastic credit card. It strictly pays for purchases. Not at strip clubs," I added.

She looked at me funnily. "That's weird." She took the card from me and examined it. "Why wouldn't it work at a strip club?"

"Because they usually work in cash," I explained.

"Oh, right," she laughed. Then, as if she finally got the joke, she nodded. "It doesn't work at strip clubs because you don't go to them. I just got that."

"Right," I said, glancing behind me. When I turned back, she was staring off into space, completely ignoring the fact that she was in the middle of ringing me up. "Hello?" When she didn't answer, I waved my hand in front of her face. I still got no response. Did that mean I didn't have to pay for the food?