Page 62 of Good Enough

“Hey,” he returned, foreheads touching. “Sleep well?”

“Mm-hmm.” Her eyes closed with a deep inhale, and they reopened on the exhale. “I thought I woke up, and you were gone, but I must have dreamt it.”

“No”—he kissed her lips—“I did leave for a couple of minutes. I needed to check in with the boss.”

Kubrick leaned up, pulling the pillow tight to her chest to prop herself up. “Something wrong? You look sort of… uncomfortable.”

“I am,” he admitted.

She lowered her head to lie on the scrunched-up pillow but kept her eyes turned up to his. “Everything okay?”

He looked at the door over her shoulder, not really seeing it, thinking hard before he spoke. Then he decided to just rip the duct tape off in one quick swipe.

“It’s about your brother.” He returned his gaze to hers, drawing his index finger up and down her bicep.

“Ah. I wondered when he might come up.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I’m not stupid.” He opened his mouth to deny he thought so, but she beat him to the comment. “I’m not saying you think I am. I’m just saying that I know more about you and your company than you likely believe I do, and I know that he sent me to you not just because there were SEALs working at Tribe. He’s an overprotective ass, and as soon as I heard he called ahead, I figured something must be going on that he wanted me under someone’s watchful eye; otherwise, he would have been my consultant.”

“So you’re not mad?”

“About what?” He gestured between the two of them. “Did this happen as some sort of interrogation ploy because you need to ask me about whatever’s going on with my dumbass brother?”

“This afternoon? No.”

“Then, no, I’m not mad.”

Thank fuck.

He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding inside. “Not what I was expecting. But… I still need to ask you a couple of things.”

“It’s not good, is it?”

“I honestly don’t know, Kubrick.” He grabbed her hand closest to him and held it tight. “He’s missing. Midas has been looking for him since he called in Steel’s marker. There’s nothing, and even if he were on a mission, for my teammate to find nothing… the odds are similar to being struck by lightning three times in one’s lifetime. Is there anywhere he might go if he thought he was in trouble?”

Kubrick appeared to turn her thoughts inward, her face screwing up in concentration. After a few moments, she replied, “The last I knew, he was stationed in Egypt. He had just returned from an assignment, and he emailed me about the package. A day or two later, there was another email, but it was just a two sentence thing with Tribe’s phone number.”

“Think hard. What did it say?”

“Just something like ‘Call Tribe. They don’t normally do consultations, but you’re short on time, so they can help you with what you need.’”

“‘Short on time? Help you with what you need?’ Those were his words?”

“Yes. Something to that effect.” He saw the exact moment she caught where he was going with his question. “You’re thinking that he didn’t mean the movie.”

Waters swore under his breath. Kubrick was definitely in trouble. “No, baby, but he used that as your ticket in the door to us to prevent you from panicking. He used a marker from Steel, so we were pretty sure he was asking us to protect you. The fact that he didn’t outright ask? That’s even more concerning. That means he couldn’t. He probably thought somebody was watching him.”

“But I know nothing about what my brother does. He tells me nothing about his work—not even what he had for lunch that day. He’s fanatical about it.” She squeezed Waters’ hand. “I’m dead serious. Not a smidgen of information.”

“But you’ve visited him overseas, so you could have easily been seen with him if he were being watched. They might not know your exact relationship; they could even think you’re lovers and not siblings. There’s no official paper trail showing your connection, so it wouldn’t have been obvious whom you were to each other without digging deep. And they wouldn’t be able to be sure what you know and what you don’t, so they might not be willing to take the chance.”

“Who’re ‘they’?”

“Whomever he might have pissed off.”

“So, he didn’t come home to help me because he’s out in the field. You think someone took him.”

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