Page 101 of Good Enough

“Don’t give up hope. If whoever has him doesn’t know that we have Zahra, then the chance he’s still alive is high. They won’t do anything to him until they know he’s not useful to them in terms of information on where she is.”

Kai stood up and continued to pack her backpack. “I’ll be ready to go within the hour.”

He unfolded from his position on the desk and turned to look at her head-on. “Kubrick,” he began, “he’s hurting as badly as you.”

“Don’t!” She held up a hand to stop his words. “I can’t deal with this right now, Demon. I’m still too raw. It’s like it all happened minutes ago, not weeks. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover, but I know I can’t if you give me any sort of platitudes or even honest hope that things can be different. They can’t. I know it. He knows it. And deep down, you know it. It’s just the reality of it. I’m a big girl. I’ll be okay. Eventually.”

“It’s a stupid rule.”

“Stupid or not, it’s how it is.” A tear escaped, despite how hard she tried to stop it. “The rule that matters is the one that says Tribe always wins,” she whispered.

Arriving back in L.A. the next day, Kai was exhausted. She had been unable to sleep on the plane, but it was also too painful to talk to Demon, so they flew back in silence. And really, what was there to say?

Demon grabbed his and Kai’s bags off the carousel, then walked her out to his Jeep in the parking structure. Someone had obviously dropped it off in short-term parking for him that morning. After that, it was a short distance to Kai’s house. He walked her to the door, but before she could cross over the threshold, he laid a hand on her forearm. Turning, she saw a cell phone in his hand, a cheap plastic pay-as-you-go version of no-frills service.

She looked up at him with questioning eyes. “I bought it at the airport, plus a matching one. The numbers are programmed into each other. My work line will be dead to you once I leave you here. All the lines you had access to will be also.”

She understood what he was saying. All communication with Tribe was being severed. Permanently. None of the numbers would work.

“But if you need anything… this will go to me. Not Tribe. Use it if you need it, Kubrick. For anything at all. I mean it.”

Once again, Kai’s eyes filled with tears, but this time, she let them fall as she clutched the man to her. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”

He hugged her tightly. “It was my pleasure. I just wish…”

She put a hand over his mouth and shook her head. When he stepped back to let her go, Kai walked through her door without looking back, then shut it.

39

MAY 2ND

Waters

While sitting at the table in his office, papers spread out all around him, pen in hand, computer open, Waters heard Demon return before he saw him. The man bellowed, “Where the feck is he?” to which Cherry murmured something, and then Waters could almost feel the heavy footsteps stomping in his direction. When Demon arrived, he didn’t even bother to knock, he just threw open the door and glared.

“You’re a fecking arsehole!”

“Welcome home.”

“That woman is dying inside. Fix it!”

“God wants a debriefing in thirty minutes.” He turned his attention back to the paperwork in chaos before him.

“Don’t fecking ignore me, you twat. You can’t tell me it’s not eating you up inside.” Waters continued to ignore him. “Fecking Christ, Waters, letting her go will destroy you. Fall on the sword if you have to. Don’t do this.”

“It’s done, Demon. Let it go.” Even to Waters, his quiet response sounded defeated.

Demon muttered under his breath in Gaelic, and none of it sounded complimentary. He stomped to the door, and when he got there, he wheeled around. Waters was pretty sure he had intended to let loose on him, but something stopped him. Instead, in a voice of chastisement, Demon told him, “Feck the stupid rule. Feck God for making you think you have to follow it. And feck you for being the dumbest man on the planet by holding yourself to it. You better think long and hard about what a fool you’re being. And how you’re going to fecking fix it.”

The door slammed in Demon’s wake. The echo of the slam rang in the air.

“He’s not wrong, Boss,” Midas’ voice gently added through the speakers of Waters’ laptop. The two men had been going over surveillance maps when Demon had burst through the door, not realizing he’d been on a conference call.

“Don’t you start, too, Midas. I’m getting it from every direction. Don’t you all think it’s difficult enough?”

“Maybe that should tell you something.”

“Aren’t you all forgetting that we have a bigger boss that we answer to?”