Deacon felt the panic of those words prickle beneath his skin. "Just stay away from Tess," he growled. "Can we please get some work done here, ladies?"
Deacon had decided that if Tess's bathroom ever had a hope of being finished he was going to have to recruit some help. So after they finished training for the day, Elias and Axel had grabbed their tools and followed him up to the mess.
They were supposed to be on a rigorous training schedule-after all, that was their actual job, not working for the funeral home. So they had spent the afternoon first at the range, each of them put through the rigorous target drills and then eventually progressing to the moving targets. Their speed and accuracy were required to be twice as fast as any other agency's. They were all exceptional shots-better than exceptional-but Elias was fucking phenomenal with a weapon in his hand, and it was a beautiful thing to watch.
After they'd finished at the range, they drove out to what had once been a small three-story hospital. It had been built in anticipation of the population boom in Last Stop, but the bypass had taken care of that and they'd left it unfinished and never inhabited. It was a great location to run scenario training. All they had to do was pick a random scenario and upload it to the VR goggles. They could work anything from a terrorist scene to an active shooter to biological weapons and run it through start to finish, using Simunition weapons to make it as real as possible.
Today's scenario had been particularly rough-it always was when it involved children-and Colin had ended up with a deep gash across his cheek when he'd rappelled into a window that had a broken shard of glass still attached. He was lucky he hadn't lost an eye, and Dante had taken him to get stitched up once the scenario had been completed.
Manual labor or sex were the two best ways to work off the adrenaline after a particularly high-rush training session or an actual op. Since sex wasn't on the menu, manual labor was the best option. And Axel and Elias had jumped at the opportunity to help Deacon since they were in the same situation.
"So when you say major problems," Elias said, "you pretty much mean everything, right? Because this is not even a shell of a bathroom. If we weren't on the third floor, I'd tell you to knock the whole thing down and start over."
"Eve should've taken care of this during the renovations," Deacon said. "There was no reason not to other than she just wanted to make her usual power play. She knows Tess's psychology well enough to know that she won't complain about the conditions, and she was already living here anyway. But she always likes to see how far she can push people, how bad she can make their circumstances, before they'll break. It's the same reason she had Levi go ahead and do the psych evaluation, even though he was still orienting himself after waking up, and his body was still weak."
"Yeah, she's a bitch. We all know that," Elias said.
"How's Levi doing?" Axel asked.
"He's holding on, which I'm sure she knew he'd be able to. He was Kidon Mossad, so she'd know he can withstand torture at an elevated level."
"Just because she knows he'll succeed doesn't make her any less of a bitch," Elias said. "It's a harsh thing to do to put someone through that when your head is pounding and you have flashes of complete memory loss. Or flashes of too many memories."
Deacon finally got the water shut off and flung his head to the side, tossing wet hair out of his eyes. He looked down at his scraped knuckles that were oozing blood.
"You got the Dumpster?" Axel asked.
"Yeah, they delivered it this morning," Deacon said. "It's right outside."
Axel walked into Tess's suite and toward the window and looked down at the lawn. "Looks like a perfect shot to me," he said, grinning. "Elias, help me lift that toilet. Might as well start with a bang."
"It's a good thing Tess isn't here to see this," Deacon said, bothered by the sight of dusty boot prints messing up her bedroom.
"Don't worry, it won't be long before she hears about it," Elias said with a chuckle.
Up until now, Deacon had been the only one to invade her personal space, and he didn't like the idea of other men seeing where she slept and dressed. How they casually looked at her belongings and photographs, or moved her things around to make a path to the window. The territorial instinct was strong, and his adrenaline was still high. He had to talk himself down from those basic, gut reactions.
They laid plastic across the floor to keep the wheelbarrow from leaving marks, and then Deacon picked up the sledgehammer and decided the best way to take out his frustration was on the shower and what was left of the walls.