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“He was protecting them,” I surmised. “If shit went sideways they’d all be in the clear. Plausible deniability. Red, Gold, Blue, and now us, were on the up and up. Clean contracts. Oversight. Black is just that, black. From what I understand they’re not mercs, not PMCs, they’re straight up assassins.”
“You’d be correct.”
I had all the fixings for the grilled cheese on the counter and was buttering the bread when Smith continued.
“Nebraska’s a part of that.”
Something in the way Smith said that, like he was trying to break the news to me gently, gave me pause.
“And?”
“Black’s HQ is in Wyoming, brother.”
Okay.
I still wasn’t tracking.
“And?”
“We’re based in Maryland.”
What he was saying finally clicked.
“A little premature for that, don’t you think, brother?”
“Any other woman, I’d agree. With her, no.”
What the fuck?
I set the knife on the counter, turned, and gave Smith my full attention.
“Wanna explain that?”
Obviously Smith did, because he didn’t make me wait.
“I don’t know her, but I do know I like her. But I do know you.”
I wasn’t sure I was happy about the direction this was going.
“Are you saying, you think I’d fuck her—”
“You just did,” he pointed out the obvious. “But, fuck her over, no. Not intentionally. I know you got shit buried, just like the rest of us. Not like Cash—his issues run far deeper. But that doesn’t mean you don’t got issues. And you and her have something in common. Something you both need to be aware of before you jump into this. A different woman might be able to hack it. Nebraska, no way.”
Suddenly I regretted sharing with Smith.
“What issue do you think I have?”
“Commitment with a track record of scraping off any woman who even thinks she might get in there. It’s like you’re Mumbley with that shit; you can sniff the thought percolating in a woman’s head before she can fully suss it out. I get it why you do it and I get you’re upfront with women and what they’re gonna get from you.”
Smith wasn’t wrong but he also wasn’t right. He was confusing my issues with his issue. He was the one who had commitment issues and after her I didn’t blame the guy. He’d been burned and bad. My issue was and always had been my job. Being deployed, then working with the CIA, then going dark for ten years didn’t leave much opportunity to have a woman in my life. None of us had time for that shit in the last decade—a sacrifice we all knew going undercover. At the time I didn’t view the prospect of never getting married or having a family as a loss. I was uninterested.
But now, after giving up those ten years and coming home to work at Z Corps and seeing my other teammates with their wives and children, I was seeing it a loss.
And as far as Cash went, his issues had nothing to do with him committing and more to do with a mother who couldn’t commit to being a mother. Her lack of commitment to the task of caring for her son had led to CPS getting involved and eventually putting him into the system. So really, he didn’t have commitment issues, he had abandonment issues with a healthy dose of trauma tossed in there. It would take an act of God Almighty Himself to get Cash to give a woman a chance to close.
And I saw his point about Nebraska. I couldn’t even get her to commit to twenty-four hours.
“You’re wrong, Smith. I don’t have the issues you think I do. What I had, what we all had, was circumstance. I wasn’t willing to entertain the idea of a relationship while I was active duty. It was a hard pass when I joined the Agency. No woman should have to put up with her man being gone as much as we were, and then there were the lies I’d have to tell and I wasn’t willing to lie to the woman I loved. So you’re right, I scraped off any women who gave me the vibe she hadn’t heeded my warning—fun and nothing more. But you’re a hundred percent correct about Nebraska. She’s not going to commit until she trusts me, and maybe not even then. So again, where her team is located is more than a little premature.”
