Page 35 of Good Enough

“Avoiding the problem is not going to make it go away.”

“Fine. You wanna go there? Let’s go there. If I couldn’t protect Sarah, my own flesh and blood, my sister, for Christ’s sake, I’m not going to be able to protect Kubrick.”

“And this is where your problem is.”

“Really? Exactly what is my problem?”

Steel shook his head in frustration. “Stop comparing the two women and their situations. Sarah was an operator. Kubrick is not. The situations aren’t even close to the same.”

“Exactly. It’s worse.”

“How so? Explain it to me because I don’t see how.”

“I cared about Sarah; my job made her vulnerable, and she died because of the choices I made. Don’t mistake me; I’d make those same choices again. They were the right choices at the time. But I’ll be damned if I put another woman in that position again. Just being seen with me puts her at risk.”

“Then the same could be said for your entire team. You’re putting all of us at risk, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.”

Waters opened his mouth as if to contradict Steel.

Steel cut him off before he could even utter a sound. “Your sister knew what she was getting into when she came to work for Tribe, same as you. Her job put her at risk, not you. What happened to her is a tragedy, and I wish it hadn’t happened. We all do. Her death changed us all, but for you, it has a stranglehold on your heart. Those traffickers took Sarah. They’re at fault. You didn’t hand her over.

“You used to be impulsive, confident to the point of arrogance. I was always the one to keep you in line. Since Cairo? You’ve been quiet. Reserved. Oh, you make jokes here and there, try to make it look good. It’s like you know what needs doing, yet you hold back, hesitant to commit to any action without overthinking. Sometimes, it feels like you are expecting the worst from us when you should be relying on what you know we are all capable of because you taught us to be who we are. It is not the Waters we knew before Cairo.”

There was silence in the truck as Waters digested Steel’s words.

Steel broke the silence. “Since taking on this job, Midas says you’ve been much less…”—he searched for the word he wanted—“restless. Oh, you piss and moan over the Snickers bar thing, and you threaten when everyone teases you, but you’re… lighter. He said you’ve even smiled once or twice. It’s not lost on us that there’s an obvious reason why. All it took was one handshake over a conference table, and we all knew. You’ve been caught.”

Waters sighed in exasperation. “Even if I was interested in pursuing something, I couldn’t. God decreed that if we wanted to work for Tribe, then we forfeited our real-world lives to prevent the kind of shit we went through over Sarah. And even if God did decide, for some reason, to lift that restriction, it wouldn’t change the risk to Kubrick.

“Besides that, how the hell would my world even begin to mesh with hers? She’s a celebrity on the cusp of becoming a megastar. Hard to be dead when you’re walking a red carpet with a major film director. And we’d never be together. She’d be off filming somewhere, and I’d be halfway around the globe in some hellhole, putting myself at risk. She’d have to give up her whole life to be with me, and she’d never know if I was coming back every time I went out the door. I would never ask that of her.”

“You could give up Tribe for her.”

Waters tilted his head toward Steel and looked over his sunglasses at the man.

“Okay, fine. Ridiculous option. But you’re looking at this the wrong way round. You cannot quantify relationships in absolutes. It’s never a ‘her’ or ‘me’ mentality. That’s why it’s called ‘being a couple.’ And even if her giving up this life was the route chosen, or you giving up this life, that’s not your choice alone to make. You do that together. As for God? Let’s just say his rule about relationships is probably as realistic as Nemo ever growing up to be a real boy.”

They both chuckled at the unlikelihood of that.

Steel went to open the door. “Go home. Get some sleep. I’ll watch over her. TB, Demon, and Nemo will be on the plane with you. Midas and I will cover things here and keep working on locating Ka-Bar and watching Big Bird.”

With that, Steel slunk out of the truck as quickly as he had appeared.

Waters gave one last look at Kubrick’s trailer.

What he wouldn’t give to storm back in, throw her over his shoulder, and take her home until it was time to leave tomorrow morning. To show her just how “good enough” she was. But he couldn’t. While, in theory, Steel might have logical points, it didn’t change the fact she’d be the perfect target. She could be used as leverage, and he couldn’t go through what happened with Sarah again. A second time would kill him for sure.

And yet, it took everything within him to put the truck in reverse and head home to sleep for a few hours rather than act upon what he wanted.

Sleep. He needed sleep and then tomorrow, things would reset. Everything would go back to normal. He was just tired. Not enough sleep was making him think crazy thoughts.

Yup. There ya go. Lie to yourself some more.

13

FEBRUARY 15TH

Waters

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