11
Eric
Iwalk through Jo’s double-story home and take note of everywhere we need to set up a security feed. I make marks in my notebook, mentally calculate distances just to get a rough idea, and in my peripherals, Kane and Jay move through the home ahead of me.
“What’s her budget?” Kane stops in the large kitchen and turns. “How much are we looking at?”
I shrug. “Reasonable, but she’s not rich. She wants it done for around two grand if we can manage it.”
Nodding, he walks across the tiled room and peeks into the walk-in pantry. “Why’s she getting set up? Ex-boyfriend troubles, or just precaution?”
“Precaution.” I mark distances in my notes and make a plan to come back through with the laser measurer. “She didn’t mention man trouble, but she’s a single mom. Her kid is getting on and looking at colleges, so she wants to be set up before he goes.”
“Set her up with the Griffin Gladiator package.” Jay opens the back door and peeks out into the yard. “Inside and out, and a double-locked panic room, just in case.”
“That’s a thirty-k system, Bish. You forget to turn your listening ears on? She’s working with a budget.”
“And she’s also a single mom trying to prepare for being all alone.” His dark eyes meet mine. “Set it up. Bill her for the Secure80, but we install the Gladiator system and lie to her. I’ll spot the rest, and I’ll watch her feed myself, so it’s not coming out of company budget.”
“You can’t save all the girls.” Kane closes the pantry and turns back to us with a smile. “You don’t get to beeveryone’shero, ya know? You gotta save some of the spotlight for the rest of us.”
“I wanna help the chick out,” Jay replies. “She’s asking for help; she told us what she could afford. Now I’m saying I’ll spot the rest, and we won’t tell her about it. Everybody is happy.”
“Except your bank account.”
He makes anehnoise. “I’ll get more. There are bad fuckers everywhere, and Soph isn’t done draining them dry, so that well won’t ever empty. For as long as there are bad motherfuckers in this world, we’re gonna keep stealing from them and pissing them off.”
“You think your name is Robin Hood?” I keep walking through the three-bedroom home and readjust my thoughts to make room for a Gladiator package. More cameras. More locks. More everything. “You steal from the dirty, give to the victims. Does it help you sleep at night?”
“Nope, I still only get two hours. It’s been almost a year now, and I’m not getting tired.” He turns to his brother. “You’re gonna wish someone popped you in the head and rewarded you with two hours a night when your kid arrives.”
He thinks joking of his near-fatal injuries is funny, when the rest of us practically cross our hearts and thank the universe for giving him back.
“You’ll wish you could live like me,” he continues. “Your mini-monster will make you cry within the first week, I guarantee it.” Tugging a protein bar from his back pocket, he tears the wrapper open and shoves half in. “But also, I’m not sorry for stealing from bad fuckers. They had it coming the second they hurt an innocent.”
“Speaking of,” Kane says more quietly, his eyes darkening as he speaks. “Did you hear anything on that girl? Nora. Where is she?”
“Sorta.” I shrug. “I don’thearanything, but I check in every now and then. Soph’s helping me keep watch, but now that Colum’s gone, Nora’s not being protected anymore.” I continue through Jo’s home, peeking behind closed doors and scouting out spaces for installation. “The clubs are shut down, and the only people who’d be interested in keeping her quiet are already dead. So she’s basically just holed up at home with her folks while she processes how fucked up her life is now.”
“Is…” Kane’s voice cracks. “Is she okay?”
Not really.“I’m keeping tabs, but she isn’t doing much. She’s inside her house most of the time, leaves only for therapy. She has a home tutor now, so I guess it’s a good sign that she’s trying to finish high school, at least. That’s about as social as she gets. She’s really fucked up about it.”
“I feel bad,” he murmurs. “I’m part of her nightmares, Cap. I scared the fuck out of her that night.”
“Bullshit.” I close the spare bedroom door and turn back to my friend. “You were fed a bad batch of cocaine, thrust into a party room with a pretty girl, and told to fuck her out of your system. You were pinging off the walls, stoned out of your head and basically dying, but you still got her out. You fought the system and saved her life. Maybe you did it with rough hands, maybe you swore a lot and got a little sloppy, but she still got out alive. You didn’t hurt her, Bish, so you need to acknowledge your part in that. She’s still breathing, when many others aren’t.”
“But breathing when it feels like you’re suffocating with fear isn’t really breathing at all,” he argues. “She’s only sixteen. She’s just a baby, and traumatized beyond anything I could comprehend. I know I didn’t purposely hurt her, but I guarantee I’m still part of her nightmares. I bet if we ran into each other at the store, she’d probably fall apart.”
“You can’t change it.” Together, we move through the hall and work our way to the bedroom that clearly belongs to the teen boy. We don’t step in. We just poke our heads in, then keep moving. “Maybe we’ll approach her folks and integrate you into her healing at some point. Let her face her demons, realize you’re her savior. That sorta shit.”
He brushes my suggestion off with a dissatisfied grunt. “How’s Soph doing on the current stuff? She’s not really a sharer, is she?”
Jay lets himself into Jo’s bedroom and walks through to the master bathroom. “I was sleeping with Soph, and shestilldidn’t tell me her job. You give her a mission, she’ll work it until her fingers bleed, but she isn’t going to gossip with you about it over donuts.”
“So…?”
He shrugs. “So she’s working it. There are a lot of layers to work through, and since Colum has been put down, word’s spreading, and the soldiers are scrambling. Nobody knows who Soph is, but they feel her breathing on the backs of their necks. We just gotta bide our time for now while she works her thing. When it’s time to jump, she’ll give us our mission. But until then…” He shrugs.