Page 95 of Dash

King gave him the thumbs up.

“Why King and Ferranti?” Guzman grumbled. “Don’t you trust me?”

“It could also be me,” Cooper said. “Or Shaw. We’re capable, you know.”

“I don’t think Bozeman, King, or Ferranti know that.” Guzman faced off with the men sitting across from him. “They think we’re lower than crap because we let Captain Astor die.”

There it was. The reason Tracker Team wasn’t jiving reared its ugly head. The tension simmering beneath the surface broke through. The guys blamed each other for the failures thathad gotten the teams in trouble and Nix killed. Thena had tried to exonerate them from guilt, but neither she nor time had been able to erase the damage. Right now, an “us” versus “them” mentality was running this show.

Hell, I didn’t need the guys squabbling with each other when we had plenty of fight ahead of us. I prayed for patience I didn’t have. Yelling was not gonna solve this problem. Omitting or delaying this discussion wasn’t gonna work either. Best case scenario, the guys were ready to hash this out. I leaned back in my chair, and, crossing my arms, became the silent observer, allowing my crew to tackle the sore subject.

“I don’t see how you can translate opportunity into grievances,” Bozeman offered.

“Since we arrived, you’ve given the good jobs to your old crew,” Guzman accused. “King and Ferranti are the good guys. The rest of us are shit, maybe even charity cases. You’re running this crew as if you people were superior to us.”

Bozeman’s forehead furrowed. “I don’t like your tone.”

Guzman snapped. “Deal with it, Bozoman.”

Granite’s eyes turned into narrow slits. He stood up to his formidable height, and placing his hands flat on the table, leaned forward and spoke slowly. “Call me that again and lose your spleen.”

“You can try.” Guzman pushed out of his chair and, fists clenched, faced off with Bozeman across the table. “Granite cracks, you know.”

The hothead was even more screwed up than I thought if he was foolish enough to challenge Bozeman. Losing Nix had done a number on him. I was beginning to think I was wrong about letting the guys work this out. Still, I bit my tongue and remained silent. Maybe if the steam found an outlet, this locomotive could gain traction instead of crashing and burning.

“Hey, guys?” King intervened just when I thought reasonhad abandoned Tracker Team. “This is not cool. We might be civilians now, but there’s a chain of command here. That puts Bozeman higher in the food chain. We gotta respect that.”

“Respect’s a two-way street.” Cooper rose, parked next to Guzman, and tugged at his beard. “You think we’re deadweight, and yet you lazy bastards were late to the battlefield.”

“Not true!” Ferranti leaped to his feet. “We saved your asses!”

“In your dreams, asshole.” Cooper snorted. “You peacocks saved your own asses and then made sure we looked like shit on paper.”

“If you ask me, we all looked like shit on paper,” King said, just when I thought I was gonna have to dish out some knocks to pull everyone back from the ledge.

“Go back to Hawaii,” Cooper snarled. “Grow a real beard and some cojones, surfer boy.”

In a flash, Ferranti lunged across the table.

King sprang from his chair and held back his teammate. “Rev it down, Ferrari.”

Shaw chose this fucked-up moment to stand up and throw his lot with Cooper and Guzman, his former teammates. An invisible nut cracker fastened around my head. It was midnight at the Tracker Team corral.

Maybe these guys were more broken than I thought. Had I been mad when I thought that these men would get along? How the hell was I gonna build a team out of this?

I ran out of time and patience. “Stop this shit,” I barked before the knuckleheads went to blows. “All of you. And sit the fuck down!”

The men eased back into their seats. Some of them looked angry. Others looked frustrated or embarrassed. All of them appeared as if they wanted to be anywhere but here, facing my wrath. The commotion had the unintended effect of catchingMina and Thena’s attention. Both women abandoned their workstations, crossed the room from opposite directions, then stood together to one side of the table, considering this hothead assembly.

“Is there a grumpy convention in the room?” Mina swept the crew with an incredulous stare. “Or did middle school let out early today?”

“It seems like it.” Thena cocked her eyebrows in admonishment. “Do you smell that?”

Mina turned up her nose and whiffed the air. “Testosterone?”

“By the tons.” Thena fanned a hand under her nostrils. “Should we call the hazmat team to clean up your stench?”

“That won’t be necessary.” I incinerated my crew with a glower. “In this team, we clean up our own fuckups. Listen carefully, all of you, because I won’t repeat this. What happened three years ago marked each one of us. We all have regrets. If you wanna talk about it, I’m here for you. I know what you’ve gone through, and what you’re still going through.”

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