Page 46 of Never Enough

“Drawing what?” TB ground out.

“She’s drawn a lot of different things. Five plus pages of junk, near as I can tell. Cartoon cats. Diamonds. Air vents. Batman clouds, coffee cups?—”

“Batman clouds? What the hell are Batman clouds?” TB interrupted.

“Those stupid things on the television show with the words inside them.” There was silence in the room. “Christ, even we had that in Johannesburg. Please don’t tell me you people have never watchedBatman. You know… Zip! Bam! Boom! Kapow!”

“I get it, I get it,” TB admitted.

“The most recent page looks like some sort of shape arrangement. I can’t tell.”

Exasperated, Waters pushed for an answer. “Nemo, we don’t have time to analyze her artwork like a Rorschach inkblot.”

Without waiting for an order, Nemo left the viewing room and walked next door to the conference room with everyone in his wake. As soon as the door opened, Scheherazade trotted over to Haskell and put her head in the girl’s lap. When he reached her side, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Tiny?” His voice was soft. “I need you to start talking.”

She nodded. “Cherry should be here, too, I think.”

Nemo looked up as the men filed into the room. “Demon, we need Cherry.”

The medic turned on his heel and went to collect their handler. Since Haskell had selected what was normallyNemo’s seat, he simply stood at her side. By the time Demon returned with Cherry, the men had all taken their usual seats, leaving her no choice but the empty seat to his right.

Waters reached for the starfish controller and depressed the red button. Instantly, the windows tinted so that they were impenetrable to light, sound, or view. The monitors changed screens to show an alarmed map of the building, with the lighting in the room moving from white to red. A deafening thunk signaled the doors had gone into lockdown mode. “Haskell, I think you better walk us through this from the beginning. You clearly know things we don’t, and I, for one, am tired of being in the dark.”

Haskell shared a glance with Cherry before looking around the table.

“I’m not sure what Nemo’s already told you about how we met.”

Nemo assured her, “Midas is the only one who knows any details, and he only knows what he overheard on the headset. Most of our time together, I could hear him if needed, but we were muted from him.”

Relief passed quickly over her features. With a comforting caress to Scheherazade’s head, Haskell uncurled from the confines of the high-backed chair and sat up straight. “Right. I first met Nemo in 2016 when both of us broke into the same museum in Valencia. When I unexpectedly crashed through an air duct, we were forced to improvise our exit together.”

Haskell looked down the table at the handler, who nodded at her in encouragement.

“A few months later, Cherry found me in Paris. She extended me a folder with a job offer, informing me that if I opened the folder and then changed my mind, I would disappear. I had serious obligations at home, so I declined to open the offer, and we parted ways. The next day,she found me again, only this time, she gave me her number. Said if I changed my mind, I should call her.

“In October of 2018, just a few months after Nemo and I ran into each other again in Riquewihr, my personal circumstances changed. I felt that I needed out of England. That was when I found myself working for an underground group called Mythos, whose focus was on rescuing victims of sex trafficking.”

“How does that work for a jewel thief?” TB asked.

“My breaking and entering skills were helpful in collecting reconnaissance on locations where victims were kept. Sometimes, if it was just one or two individuals, I would lead them to safety. Larger groups were handled by Loki, Gilgamesh, and Medusa.

“Six weeks ago, Mythos sent me to Zimbabwe to investigate a rumor about an uptick in diamonds coming from the fields around the Mzingwane Mine. I managed to get inside, but unfortunately, I was made within a couple of hours. I saw something completely unexpected, and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. In order to escape, I needed a quick exit, but Mythos was halfway across the globe and couldn’t get to me in time to help. My only option was to call Cherry.

“It took some time, but with her exit contacts, I was able to work my way to Nairobi and catch a flight to Los Angeles. When I arrived, Cherry picked me up from the airport.”

“And Cerberus?” Even Nemo heard the edge in his voice.

“He contracts for Mythos on occasion when they need… distractions of a loud and destructive type.” Her gaze went down to her pad of paper and the drawing there. “Obviously, this bomb placement was deliberate. A pressure plate underneath a chair means it’s supposed to be triggered by a person. It just wasn’t meant formeto trigger it.”

“How do you know that?” Nemo asked.

“When I was listening in on the earbud at the café, you guys were talking about the stamp on the bomb belonging to Cerberus. That’s impossible.”

Nemo observed her face as it heated up under his scrutiny. “And you know this because…?”

He watched her eyes shy away from his. “I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known you.”

Oh, hell no!

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