Page 161 of The Sound of Him

I look up from my plate.

Matt is sitting across from me, his eyebrows tightly knitted together. I smile. I think I smile. Itryto smile. Or, well, I think about trying to smile, at the very least.

He lifts a hand, but just flutters it nervously before dropping it again.

“Ace, are you listening?”

I blink at Matt.

He is very pretty. Like, the shape of his face? And the way all his features are, like, arranged? His hair is growing out, too. It’sgoing to be messy when it’s long enough for the coils to curl. I bet it’ll be soft.

Pretty and soft, all sunshine and-

“Ace.”

It’s loud enough to make Matt jump. I don’t have the energy to jump, but I look over - to the left again, the direction of which the words actually came this time.

Maison ducks his head to meet my eyes, frowning. “You need to sleep.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m telling you, as your team leader, that you need to sleep.”

I look at him. He is a very good team leader. I’m glad it was him I got to work with.

“I’m telling you,” I say slowly, trying not to lose track of the thought as I do. “If I sleep right now, I won’t be awake in 3 hours. I will be fucking useless.”

He stares at me for a long time.

Then he squeezes the back of my neck and says, “6698.”

I blink at him, my head all foggy and wrong.

He looks away from me, guilty, maybe even ashamed, and adds, “Deacon.”

It clicks then.

The code to Deacon’s drug safe.

“Only what you need,” he mutters.

I’m already out of my seat.

If I remember later, I’m going to be giving him a big ass present.

I debated for a while before deciding to only give myself half of my usual benzo dose alongside the upper. I need to be functional, not in happy-land. I would skip the benzo all together, but being triggered to high heaven isn’t functional either.

I should have taken the whole dose of the benzo.

The taskforce is going to breach Borris Pasternak’s private plane in 12 minutes and I can’t fucking breathe.

Carter and Casey want to watch the rescue alongside us operatives, which seems only fair. I set things up in my office, planning to display the live footage from Keaton’s body camera on the main monitor and everything else on the smaller ones. I’m hoping they’ll focus mostly on that feed, just to keep their eyes off of Keaton. Not that he hasn’t taken precautions, covering part of his face and changing his voice for the character he’s pretending to be. He’s done what he can to keep his cover from getting blown by anyone there or any of the men watching in my office.

If his cover isn’t already blown by me, that is.

I can’t help but think of Matt then. Just a there-and-gone flicker before I force him out of my mind. I don’t have the mental or emotional capacity for that situation right now. I have to be focused. Travis, Jake, and Maison might think that I’m illegally hacking into these security feeds for us to spy on the sting operation, but that’s not the truth. Keaton’s presence there changes the stakes entirely for me. I’m a part of this, they just don’t know.

Keaton’s body camera is activated, but not showing anything other than the dash of a vehicle for now. That’ll change soon. I glance at my watch. 7 minutes.