Page 40 of X's and O's

“Stockbroker?”

I sighed. “You really want to know?”

“It’s keeping me up at night. Honestly, it really is.”

This was X all over. I would have put money on his middle name being hyperfixation.

I motioned for him to come closer. “I don’t want the other guys to hear, okay? I’ll tell you, but it has to stay between the two of us. Can you do that?”

He nodded and shifted his chair toward me an inch. “Are you a secret agent? A government spy? Do you work for the CIA?” His eyes were wide with excitement. “Oh! You’re a fixer, aren’t you? You clean up political messes? Holy shit, I know the real-life Olivia Pope.”

I shook my head, voice low. “No, I’m way higher ranked than that, so you have to swear you won’t breathe a word.”

He nodded.

I leaned in and whispered, “I’m a scuba instructor.”

X’s face fell, then morphed into a scowl. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a grumpy old man and no fun?”

I laughed. “I’m having fun. And I’m forty-six. Not that old.” Though the gray in my hair said otherwise. But I’d learned the hard way that aging was a privilege. So I didn’t cover them up.

My gaze bounced around the room, eyeing off Torch and Ace raiding Doc’s fridge, despite the fact he’d laid out food on the counter for us, like he always did. Trigger was the last to arrive. I shook his hand, and he sat on the other side of me.

“Your meeting?”

I shook my head. “Not yours then either.”

“Nah. I’m good.

“It’s mine.” Doc sat opposite me, catching the end of our conversation.

I raised an eyebrow. “Feeling the urge to kill someone?”

The others sniggered, only because we all knew Doc wasn’t like the rest of us. He was Trig’s brother, though they didn’t share the same DNA that allowed Trig to feel no remorse for taking a life. Doc was different. He was a good guy who volunteered his time at the hospital and had a family he loved. We all knew more about him than we probably should have, but when he’d needed our help last year, none of us had questioned breaking the anonymity rules.

Didn’t mean I was going to tell X what I did for work though. Or any other detail of my life. Doc knew things about each of us the others didn’t know. But Doc wasn’t going to stab me in my sleep, so telling him things was a whole lot different to telling X or Trig or the others.

Doc’s forehead was pulled into a mess of tension and frown lines, and he clutched a piece of paper in his hand. “I got some mail today. Not the good kind.”

Ace wandered over with a plate of sandwiches. “Electricity bill?”

I side-eyed the big man. “Do you really think he’d call a meeting for that?”

“I dunno,” X drawled. “The cost of my last one made me want to kill someone.” He glanced at Doc. “I didn’t though. I swear.”

Doc didn’t smile.

Suddenly, I was worried. Doc wasn’t exactly X in terms of cracking jokes, but he wasn’t without humor.

That was more my department. I was basically X’s opposite in every way, which was why we never saw eye to eye on anything.

“Talk to us, Doc.” I nodded at the envelope in his fingers. “What’s wrong? You need help?”

The guys around me all sat a bit straighter. X and I might have had very little in common, but all the guys in this group did share a common interest. And that was Doc.

He passed me the envelope. “Read it for yourself. It was in my mailbox this morning.”

I pulled out the paper inside and read the black type silently.