Page 16 of Bad Enough

LOBO: Think about it.

Another pause.

LOBO: Goodnight, princess.

6

APRIL 13TH

TB

THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP-THWAP!

The sound of leather on leather filled the room. Each sound was punctuated by a male grunt at the expended effort, and a spray of sweat traveled from TB toward the bag. The bag jerked on its chain, but it didn’t swing more than a few centimeters as it was being held in place by another set of hands encased in sparring gloves.

“C’mon, the boss never lets me get away from that fuckin’ box. Pretty soon, I’m going to be stroking off to Siri’s voice and sending out birth announcements for our daughter, Alexa. I gotta live vicariously through you.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

He worked hard to portray a sense of nonchalance and prayed that his sparring partner didn’t go digging through his chats on a whim. In a moment of weakness, he had casually shared his invite to his “research buddy” job with his teammate, Midas, and now was wondering if he should be concerned that he had. Midas was an excellent hacker, and he could probably easily get into TB’s private system and read what had really happened two nights ago.

And just remembering what we did, there goes my dick again.

“Well, what did she say to your invite?” the spotter asked.

“Nothing.” A smack and a grunt. “I logged off.” A series of quick jabs and grunts followed as TB let loose a succession of hits.

“No hint of yes or no?”

TB pulled up from his fighting stance and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. “I just told you, I logged off. There wasn’t a chance for a declaration of intent.”

Letting go of the bag, the spotter rolled his eyes, putting his hands on his hips. “I didn’t ask for a declaration. I just asked if you had a sense of if she would agree to go or not.”

Walking over to the lockers along the wall, he threw over his shoulder, “Midas. Listen to what I’m saying. I. Logged. Off. I didn’t hang around to see what she’d say.”

“You really do live by your nickname. You are a Total Bastard today. Almost as bad as Waters.”

“Waters has no one to blame for that shitshow but himself.”

Midas snickered. “Yeah. The supervisor of Operation Shitshow.” He sobered quickly. “Demon texted me and said that Kubrick actually overslept yesterday. She’s kept it together in public, but he’s pretty sure he’s heard her tossing and turning all night. Yesterday, she looked like she’d been crying. Said she’s barely eaten since he left. Had to force her to at least eat a Zinger.”

TB’s gaze bounced to Midas’ in surprise. “She loves chocolate. Like, she loves it better than sex.”

“I don’t know about that part. I’ve seen some shit on the surveillance video I can’t unsee. Shows how gone the guy is that he forgot to give the signal to turn the cameras off. Let’s just say our team leader is… thorough, and she’s reaping the benefits.” Midas shifted uncomfortably. “Anyway, when Demon handed her the Zinger, she burst into tears again. What a mess.”

Both men walked over to the gym lockers, built extra-wide to hold bags of gear, extra changes of clothes, and other individual items specific to the team members’ workouts. Midas pulled off TB's gloves, then threw them in the bin for sanitizing. Both men unwrapped the tape around their knuckles. Midas sighed in exasperation. “I still don’t get it. Why did he leave her? It’s not like we’re leaving tomorrow for Egypt. We don’t have enough information to do that yet. I told God I still have a lot of research to gather before we can do that.”

TB grunted in agreement and sat down on the bench to untie his shoes.

Midas froze mid-unwrapping, his eyes open, but his mind was obviously somewhere other than where his sight pointed.

TB looked at the cyber-geek with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

Midas looked at him, then let his muscles relax with a shake of his head. He continued to unwrap his hands. “Nothing, really. I just wondered if maybe it was a test. You know, the boss ordered him back. To see how serious Waters was about Kubrick.”

TB snorted. “I doubt the boss has the time, or the inclination, for that kind of game playing.”

Opening the metal door of his locker, Midas reached past the huge gym bag hanging up and grabbed a white towel. After a quick rub down of his skull, trying to take off the worst of the sprayed sweat from TB out of the barely-there brown hair, as well as what he had accumulated himself from working diligently to keep the bag from swinging, he reached into the back of the locker again, grabbing a second towel.

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