Data…

Mali threw open the door and it slammed into the workbench beside it, causing the whole damn side of the building to shudder. Dray scowled and Dragon smirked and I just hung my head.

“Always like that, brother?” Trig asked gently.

“I think she’s gotten a little more fire, maybe it’s the stress.”

“She tell you much?” Dray demanded and I shook my head.

“Not a lot, not yet.”

Trigger sighed and Ghost stared at the big man, asking the question, “Who we gotta kill?”

“Nobody, if I have anything to say about it,” I answered.

“Eh?” Dragon asked.

“I’m not bringing them here, not with all of you and your families. This one I can handle,” I said, wandering over to a chair and dropping into it. I looked around and my shoulders dropped again. “Thanks, you guys… this is going to be a long operation.”

“What do you have in mind?” Dray asked and I never expected to see him shift nervously.

“Whoever is after Mali, I have the feeling is some kind of criminal organization.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much a given,” Trigger said.

“So, I do my thing. I figure out who, piddle around on the dark web, pick them apart and make the pigs do my dirty work for me.”

“I don’t even want to know how you plan on accomplishing that, do I?” Dray asked with a sardonic smile.

“You wouldn’t understand it even if I explained it to you,” I confessed.

“Did you just call me stupid?” he demanded, his brow crushing down into a frown.

“Compared to the lot of us he’s a goddamned genius, boy. He’s not being disrespectful, he’s just telling the fuckin’ truth,” Dragon grumbled and I put up my hands and nodded. He was right. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, I just seriously doubted I could explain what I had planned in layman terms well enough to not generate more questions than answers.

“As long as he keeps Em and our boy out of it, we’re good,” he said shoving off the edge of the workbench he was leaning against.

“Where you going?” Dragon demanded.

“Home to my woman and my kid, since I’m too stupid to know what the fuck he’s talking about, anyway.”

“Dude, Dray, don’t be like that,” I said.

“Relax, homeboy. I didn’t mean that the way it came out. My boy isn’t sleeping through the night yet, and I’m fuckin’ tired.”

“Oh, gotcha.”

“We’ll talk another day about why you never told us about her.”

I shook my head and answered him now, “I couldn’t. Not being able to find her has been my biggest failure…”

He looked me up and down and nodded, “Can’t be good at everything, you know.” He smiled and turned around and walked out the door. I caught a glimpse of Mali whirling and looking through the portal, concern mixed with the anger on her face and I felt an echoing smile in my heart, even if it didn’t quite make it to my face.

“He’s going to make a good Pres someday,” I heard myself say but then I had to sigh. “Never thought I would ever hear myself say that.”

“Just needed a good woman was all.” Dragon said, but I could hear the shine of pride in his voice. I turned back, tearing my eyes from the battered metal door and the woman I knew lay beyond it to essentially face the music.

“Look, guys, I’m sorry… but there wasn’t anything any of you could do about it. I mean –“

Dragon waved me off, “Hell if you couldn’t find her, there wasn’t no way we were gonna. The problem is what do we fuckin’ do now?”

“Can’t neutralize the threat without a fuckin’ target,” Trigger stated. Ghost grunted in agreement.

“I need to go fish. Pick Mali’s brain, gather the information and find the proverbial man behind the curtain,” I said. “Then I should, in theory, be able to neutralize the threat before it gets inside a hundred miles from here.”

“It’d be nice,” Ghost said and I nodded, the worry plain in his eyes.

“Let me do this my way, we’ll stay here until it’s in the bag, I’ll keep you updated every step of the way.”

“You’re fuckin’ right you will,” Dragon grunted.

“How deep am I in with the rest of the guys?” I asked.

“Not as deep as you’d think,” Trig answered.

“Every man’s got his secrets,” Dragon agreed. “We just never figured yours was this big.”

“Go big or go home, right?”

He chuckled and nodded, “What’re you gonna need out here?” he asked.

I sighed, “Hot water would be a good start.”

Trigger grinned, “Ain’t pretty but we got you covered.”

“I appreciate it, more than you guys can know…” I bowed my head and pressed fingers into the base of my skull in a shitty bid to relieve a tension headache that was brewing.

“What’re brothers for?” Dragon asked.

The silence stretched between the three of us for a long moment, a silence that was finally broken by Trig when he said: “You know it’s not going to be easy, right?”

“What part of any of this has been easy up to this point?” I asked, knowing, likely, where he was headed.

“True enough, she was gone, but now she’s here but everything is different… She’s going to be different.”

I nodded, “You don’t have to be gentle about it, man. I know.”

“I don’t know that you quite get what he’s driving at,” Ghost said uneasily, and I nodded.

“I do, I may have been born at night but I wasn’t born last night… she’s high-strung, been looking over her shoulder for seventeen years. It will probably take seventeen more and she still might not come back from habits that deeply ingrained. You don’t have to tiptoe around the subject, brothers… I know PTSD when I see it.”

Trigger, Ghost, and even Dragon looked relieved and I sighed. “And before you even ask, no, I don’t know how I am going to handle it except a step at a time. Mali is stronger than you think, though, so it’ll be tough and take some doing but I have to believe that ultimately she’s gonna be fine.”

“First things first, gotta know what’s doggin’ her steps and put a stop to it before she can put any kind of healin’ on her.”

“True, that… some sleep and I’ll work on that but we only just got here and I know I’m tired and I’m used to rides like that. She isn’t.”

“Rest up tonight, find out what you can about who’s after her ass and why, and we’ll get on it.”

“I know the ‘why’: she killed somebody to save her dad. The problem is the who… No idea on that front, but he must have been some kind of important to someone somewhere in the underground.”

“Well, we’ll figure it out in the mornin’,” Dragon said and bowed his head, scraping a boot against the cement in front of him; I nodded.

“Thanks for that, P.”

“Hell, you’ve helped us bury enough bodies, I figure turnabout is fair play.” I nodded again and we all let out closely timed big sighs.

“Should probably go save her from Reaver,” Ghost said with a grin and I smiled.

“Screw Mali once, shame on you. Fuck her twice and you’ll be the saddest motherfucker on the block. She doesn’t like to lose.”

“Good thing I took her shiny cap gun away,” Dragon muttered.

I shook my head, “When it comes to Amalia Rose, that doesn't mean a thing.”

I told them about our escape from Indigo City and it was met with a mixture of dubious and impressed expressions.

“Well, she ain’t getting this back until we get her some range time,” Trigger said, going over and taking the revolver from Dragon.

“She’s not going to like that,” I said flatly and Dragon huffed a laugh.

“No, I don’t suppose she is,” he said and I could tell, he didn’t give a fuck. I smiled, stuck in the middle was a place I was used to being when it came to Mali. Seems times hadn’t changed all that much after all.