“Maddox says this.”
“Maddox did that.”
“Maddox smoked a guy so hard he puked.”
“Maddox knows real operators.”
I noticed Maddox before Mason waved me over.
He sat at the far end of the table with his back to the wall.
Not drunk.
Not loud.
Not relaxed.
His right hand stayed near his glass, but his eyes kept scanning the room in a rhythm so practiced it was almost invisible.
Door.
Window.
Hallway.
Hands.
Door again.
He was maybe thirty-six, with close-cropped sandy hair, a hard jaw, and one of those faces that looked carved down by heat, sleep deprivation, and men screaming in radios.
Three younger Marines sat with him.
Mason was in the middle like he owned the place.
When he saw me, he lifted both arms.
“There she is,” he announced. “Harper Reed. Queen of classified printer paper.”
The table laughed.
I smiled just enough to be polite.
