Rare Vigilance (Whitethorn Agency)

ar in park before Cristian scooped up the bag and headed for the car, waving a goodbye to the other man, who quickly slipped inside the building.

“What’s going on?” Atlas asked when Cristian got in the back with the bag.

His attempt to keep his voice neutral must have failed, since Cristian rested a hand protectively over the bag and said lightly, “Nothing you need to concern yourself with. To Rapture, Mr. Kinkaid.”

A closer look at the loading bay as he pulled the car back around toward the front of the building didn’t give him any obvious clues, other than his observation of a worrying lack of security cameras. The bag itself was a dime-a-dozen duffel, simple and cheap. The fact that it was packed full of something was what set Atlas on edge.

His nerves didn’t fade as they drove farther into town. As if he sensed the weakness, Cristian asked, “Something on your mind?”

Atlas wasn’t expecting it and fumbled to come up with a response. The best he could manage was a pointless, “How was the meeting?”

“Boring,” Cristian said. “But I think you already knew that.”

His abrasive response reminded Atlas of someone. It took him a few intersections before he could remember. Kurt. That’s who it was. Kurt had acted in a similar way, a learned behavior from a life spent in and out of relatives’ homes and foster care before he signed up to serve. It took years of hard-assed COs and several life or death missions with Atlas and his platoon before Kurt had finally started to trust his brothers in arms. And then he’d been ripped apart on the way back to base after a fucking peacekeeping support mission—

“What do you really want to know, Mr. Kinkaid?” Cristian’s challenge was a godsend, a perfect diversion from the snapshots of memories.

Atlas forced his fingers to ease their grip on the steering wheel. “You’re the one who started the conversation, Mr. Slava. Maybe it’s not me who has something on his mind.”

Silence. He’d blown it. If he was lucky, Cristian would let it go. If he was unlucky...well, they weren’t to the club yet and Cristian would have plenty of time to dig in and find yet another way to get under his skin.

“Maybe I do,” Cristian mused, shocking Atlas wholly. “I’m not used to your...persistence. You treat this job as more than a payday. Your predecessors did not.”

“And that bothers you.” He didn’t ask it as a question, not when he knew it was true.

“It confuses me,” Cristian clarified. “I know you don’t like me. Why do you stick around?”

There was too much to unpack in that, so Atlas focused on the most basic truth. “Because I have to pay rent on my apartment,” he replied shortly.

“Father offered you employee housing. Why didn’t you take him up on it?”

Atlas grunted in lieu of a real response. There was no way to explain why living on Decebal’s property was a horrible idea, in spite of the plush accommodations. Besides, it had been a polite, empty gesture. Decebal had extended it, and Helias walked back on it the moment he and Atlas left the study. Helias’s concerns had been surprisingly practical and focused on Atlas’s needs, rather than logistical ease. After learning how many people stayed in the subterranean living quarters, Atlas doubted the pace of the house ever slowed down. His insomnia was bad enough and, with his sensory overload, he’d never be able to get to sleep if people walked past his room. Worse, if he did, waking up from one of his nightmares to unfamiliar surroundings, to unfamiliar faces coming to see what was wrong, would cause other problems. Just the thought of it made his skin crawl.

“Most of Father’s employees stay with us,” Cristian pressed.

“Well, I’m not most of them.”

“Where do you live?” Cristian asked.

Atlas slowed to a stop at a red light. He gestured down one of the crossing side streets. “Down that way.”

Cristian leaned toward the window to take in the awkward sprawl of Scarsdale’s suburban neighborhoods. Atlas knew what Cristian would see, but he staunchly reminded himself to not feel shame. It wasn’t easy.

The townhouses and apartment buildings were testaments to the city’s hope of becoming a bustling center of enterprise, a hope that disappeared when the logging and manufacturing industries collapsed and no tech companies could be coaxed to set up campuses in the semirural location. Some of the neighborhoods were completely devoid of life, used by squatters and avoided by everyone else. Others, like the area Atlas lived in, tried their best to limp along with some sense of community, but it wasn’t enough to erase the growing sense of limbo, as the gentrification of downtown Scarsdale crept closer and closer to their area. The medical personnel moving in now—wealthy or young, and sometimes both—wanted comfortable, nostalgic neighborhoods with modern amenities. The cost of housing kept rising, driven by the desire for a slice of suburban paradise within easy commuting distance to work.

He doubted Cristian, living in his bubble of wealth, would understand the impact his father’s business dealings were having on the financially strapped working class of Scarsdale, who couldn’t afford the newly flipped houses in nicer neighborhoods. He doubted he could explain it well enough to make Cristian care.

No, Cristian would simply see the surface picture of the area and its obvious neglect. Cracked sidewalks and overgrown planters that used to be maintained made the fading paint of the buildings look even shabbier. Small neighborhood businesses used their worn Christmas lights and flickering neon signs to illuminate the pools of darkness left from burned out streetlights.

“You’d rather live in some shitbox apartment than our house?” Atlas didn’t have to look in the mirror to see Cristian’s sneer. His incredulity colored every word.

Cristian had no right to know the conditions Atlas had grown up in. He had no right to know that Atlas was used to this kind of life, confident in his understanding of how to survive it. No, Cristian had no right to any of that, so Atlas scrounged around for some other excuse. The one he landed on was dumb, but maybe it would distract Cristian. “Snafu needs a place to live.”

“Snafu?”

“My succulent.” Well, dying succulent, but he didn’t need to share that. After his involuntary discharge, his therapist had suggested he buy the damn plant in an effort to “normalize his civilian life” and “take on low-level responsibilities” to help him feel more grounded. After funding for his visits to the VA changed, therapy hadn’t stuck, but the stupid plant had.

Atlas had never been able to give up on lost causes. So, yeah, the plant needed a place to stay.