“Uhm, is there a reason you’re making like a baby?” Kristen asked. “I can help you up if you need a hand.”
Oh, no. She was going to crawl every inch of the way. She wasn’t going to give her Master any reason to say she didn’t comply. It would have been so easy for him to give her a good couple of slaps to the ass, but he’d chosen this. “The Master wants me to crawl to the locker rooms. I am doing my Master’s bidding.”
“Shit. Wow. Well, I’m coming with you because we have a few things to work out. Can you crawl faster?”
Eve turned her head up, frowning at the redhead before restarting her slow crawl without saying a word. She pushed through the backside of the kitchen and into the quiet hall that led back to the lockers.
“This is dumb.” Kristen got to her knees beside Eve, crawling in time.
“You could just go and wait for me.”
Kristen’s voice went low. “Was that Jacob Dean?”
Eve nodded. “Yes. Alex brought him in for the day.”
“And I wasn’t told.”
“Neither was I. I don’t think informing us was high on Alex’s list of priorities.”
“This is my op, damn it. I laid out some ground rules, the chief one being that I approved every member of the team.” Kristen whispered the words, but there was no way to mistake the fact that she was angry. She bit the words out through clenched teeth. She stopped in the middle of the hallway. “This floor is really gross. Is Master A trying to give you Ebola? I think I see some just to the left of you.”
Thank god, she was at the door to the locker room. She got up and entered, walking straight to the sink because while she was pretty sure the floor was hemorrhagic fever free, she couldn’t say the same thing of staph. She washed her hands. Thoroughly.
Kristen walked around the locker room, checking the stalls before coming back and joining her at the sink. “We can talk. I already did my daily bug check and we’re alone now, so it’s safe. I want to know why your husband is trying to fuck me over?”
It was an interesting reaction. Kristen seemed so calm, so very patient, but Jake’s appearance had her rattled. “I don’t think he’s trying to do anything to you. This is his op.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s mine. I mean it’s my story. I brought you all in to this.”
She didn’t understand the way they worked, and this was so much more than a story for Alex. “And Alex has been hunting for this man for years. He’s trained. We all are. You have to understand that Alex is responsible for us. You aren’t.”
“I’m not going to let anyone get hurt. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to get my ducks in a row? And then Alex McKay waltzes in like he owns the place.”
“You did make him the Dom in Residence. He kind of has to act that way. Do you have a specific problem with Jacob?” It didn’t make a lot of sense. Kristen had come to them. She’d known they were a team. Why was she trying to pick and choose now?
Kristen dried her hands, her face closing off. “I just don’t like surprises. That’s all. Who’s going to show up next? Is Taggart going to be at my doorstep when we get home?”
“Ian’s stuck in Dallas.” He’d called late last night. “There’s some kind of issue with our bank accounts. He’s pretty sure it’s Eli Nelson. Some very large accounts got frozen. Ian’s having to jump through a bunch of hoops to bring them back online.”
Kristen’s face was turned away, her voice a little distant. “That’s terrible. This Nelson person, who is he?”
Eve shrugged a little. “He’s kind of like Ian’s nemesis. Let’s just say they’re on opposite ends of the professional spectrum.”
“He should take care of that then. We can handle things here.” Kristen took a step back. “I don’t like surprises, Eve. I’m willing to share information with you. Hell, I’ll open the files I have and let you make copies, but I require the same courtesy.”
“Files?” Alex hadn’t mentioned files.
She wrinkled her nose a little, looking like a kid who had gotten caught with her hands in the cookie jar. “Yeah. I might have hacked into the feds database and gotten all the files they have on Evans.”
“Seriously?” It wasn’t the easiest thing to hack into a government database.
It was Kristen’s turn to shrug. “It’s a hobby. I thought you might like to look at the new stuff and see if you could maybe update your profile. But I get that you’re just here for Alex now.”