Page 55 of Never Enough

At six o’clock sharp, everyone was back in the conference room, but this time, they all sat around the table. Scheherazade lay across Haskell’s feet. Waters wasn’t quite as high-strung as he had been when he’d blown out of the room earlier. Considering he was wearing a different shirt than the one when he’d left and had slightly damp hair, Haskell figured that this Kubrick, whoever she was, had used the one thing guaranteed to calm down most men who were about to lose their shit.

Those thoughts immediately made her think of sex with Nemo, and she felt her face flush. Eyes wide, her gaze flew to where the man in question sat next to her. As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, there was a smile on his face, and his eyes seemed to light up with laughter at catching her.

Rolling her eyes, she shifted her gaze back to Waters and worked very hard to ignore Nemo.

“Midas, what do we have?”

“Not a lot. I did manage to track down Loki and company. I’ll patch them through in just a minute. Be advised. They’ve got a friend with them.”

She noticed the word “friend” had some edge to it. There were two people it could be, and only one was plausible.

The telescreen flashed to life. In a large rectangle across the top half sat the three Mythos members—Loki, Gilgamesh, and Medusa. The bottom half of the screen was a long rectangle. One revealed a single male with auburn hair, black horn-rimmed glasses, and vivid blue eyes—someone Haskell knew well.

“Loki,” Waters began. “As you can see, we’ve found your contractor.”

Haskell gave a cheeky finger wave at the screen.

Loki flashed a smile. “Glad to see you haven’t used up all of those nine lives, kitten.”

There was a rumble of irritation from next to her.

“Nice to have them all intact, Loki,” she replied. She flashed a look at Nemo sitting next to her, who now had a scowl on his face. “What’s your problem?”

“He called you ‘kitten.’”

“Yeah. You call me kitty cat. So?”

“You need a new nickname.”

“Fine. You can call me ‘goodbye.’ As in, you can go away.”

“Not from me. From him. He needs a new nickname for you. No one calls you ‘kitten’ but me.”

“Maybe,” she piped up, “we could just call me ‘Haskell’ and ignore the nicknames altogether.”

A resounding “No!” came from everyone except the solo man on the screen.

Waters explained, “Nicknames keep you as anonymous as possible, which means safety if we need to talk about you overcomms. No sense drawing attention to you by using your real name if anyone is listening in.” Haskell noticed the slight edge of panic that Waters and everyone else in the room let creep in. Then, after his explanation and a calming breath, it ebbed out like the tide. “As entertaining as this all is,” he continued, “we really do have shit to do. Nemo. Loki. You two can piss on your territory later when we’re done with real-world problems.” Waters took a long, hard look at the guest they brought with them. “Who are you?”

Before he could answer, Loki made the introduction. “Midas informed me of your situation earlier today. I thought you all should meet. This is Cerberus.”

With the exception of Haskell, everyone on Tribe’s end of the call eyed the newcomer with even more suspicion.

“Cerberus, these are Tribe’s deadmen. Waters, the team leader. Midas, their cyber specialist. TB, their interrogator. Steel, their overwatch. Demon, their doctor. And the pretty boy over there shaking his tail feathers at Haskell is Nemo. He’s in… acquisitions.”

Cerberus seemed to look at Nemo just a shade longer than the others before he nodded his head at the group in general. “Loki said you had some work done near you with my signature on it. I’ve been in Sri Lanka for the past two months, so it’s not my work. However, I am interested in what occurred and how you think it’s mine.”

Waters relayed their adventurous morning. “A pressure-plate bomb was engaged at a coffee café this morning. Haskell initiated its protocol when she sat down. We were able to observe it before it went boom.”

In anticipation of Waters’ order, Midas put the photos of it from Nemo’s phone on the screen. “As you can see, we also managed to keep it from taking out the women, as well as any other café patrons. We have not been able to secure any forensicssince we’re not exactly on the up-and-up with the blue line.”

Cerberus made a few clicks on his computer screen, his eyes scrunching up as he looked at the array of photos that had been taken. “It’s a really good copy, but it’s not mine. See the bottom left dewclaw? All the other claws are present. If it’s mine, this one will be missing on the signature.” He pulled up a sample of his work on the screen so that Tribe could see the differences between the two devices.

“Why?”

Cerberus flashed his left hand at the screen, where everyone could clearly see his thumb on his right hand. “Art imitates life. Massive scarring from my early years. Still, even if the signature had been accurate, it would never have been my work.”

“Because…?”

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