“It hurts like a—”
“I have some painkillers,” Hope broke in as she left her position by the window and squatted down to drag a bag out from under the bed.
“That would be good.” Joel pointed at Jeff. “You’re next.”
The guy stopped mid-pace. “I wasn’t hit.”
“I meant answers.”
Hope frowned at Joel. Took a second and shot most of the men in the room a frown, even Cam, and he wasn’t looking at her. “Now might not be the time for a chat.”
This topic was not up for debate. Joel’s patience had expired. So had his willingness to sit around and wait to become a target. “Someone is shooting at us and we have two unskilled men missing in this miserable weather. So if Jeff here knows something, it’s time to speak up.”
“I don’t.”
Hope got to her feet and grabbed a water bottle on her way over to Lance. Her gaze never left Jeff. “Why did you fight with Mark?”
“It has nothing to do with...” Jeff exhaled as he ran a hand through his wet hair. “Look, it was a work issue.”
That got Lance’s attention. “What was it?”
Whatever Jeff heard in Lance’s voice or saw on his face had his shoulders slumping. “He had these private meetings with Tony—”
“Who?” Cam asked.
“Tony Prather, Baxter’s CEO.” Jeff kept up the steady stream of sighing. “It felt like Mark was making a play. Going around my back.”
“Doesn’t Mark rank above you in the corporate scheme?” Hope asked. “He’s the vice president, not you.”
Leave it to her to point that out. Joel wished he had. “Exactly my question. Jeff?”
“I had some ideas about positioning the company moving forward. One of the divisions had a down quarter but seemed to be bouncing back, and I wanted to capitalize on the upswing.” Jeff leaned against the wall and let his head fall back. “I give Mark some notes, he studies them and all of a sudden he’s having private meetings with our boss.”
Joel could see it all playing out. Jeff, with his oversized ego, wouldn’t accept being pushed out. He’d want every ounce of credit he could squeeze out of an idea. “That ticked you off.”
Jeff looked around the room. “Wouldn’t it do the same to you?”
“Don’t know since I’ve never worked in an office,” Cam said.
Joel reached into the specialized first aid kit for another bandage roll as he turned over Jeff’s comments in his mind. The man had just handed them a motive. Not a compelling reason to kill in Joel’s view, but for Jeff’s type it could be. Always looking for an angle, expecting to rise in the ranks at record speed, wanting the perks and big title. Watching someone grab that away could be a brutal ego blow for someone like Jeff.
Reading people was not his strength. Joel glanced at Hope, looking for her take on the situation. She had good instincts. But because she stood right at Cam’s shoulder, looking out the window instead of at Jeff, Joel couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
Now Joel wanted to know what had caught her attention and held it so long. “Cam, can you take over for a second?”
“Sure.”
The men passed each other in the middle of the room, exchanging gun for bandage. By the time Joel got to the window, Hope stood right in front of it. Talk about becoming a target. With her damp, freshly showered hair pulled in a ponytail and clean white shirt, she stuck out among the group.
Without making a big deal of it, he shifted her out of the direct firing line through the window and lowered his voice. “You okay?”
“You’re very handy with a first aid kit.”
He noticed she skipped his question, but he decided to let it slide. “One of the many skills demanded by my father.”
“He brought about so much bad, but every now and then there’s something positive.”
“I think you’re reaching for a silver lining.”
Joel remembered every minute of the last day as a family—protective services ripping his sisters away, the standoff with the police, the shot his dad fired that finally landed him in jail—so he knew the truth. Nothing good happened. Joel couldn’t point to one decent thing about the way he grew up either before or after the final takedown of the Kidd family.
She bit her lower lip. “I keep hoping to find something positive about your upbringing.”
“That’s not an easy task.”
She clearly tried to get it. She listened and shook her head at all the right places.
The pain in her eyes as he relayed the facts, some of them anyway, was genuine. It bordered on pity, and Joel hated that. Knew it was human nature but still despised it. Connor and Cam and the few other people in his life who knew bits and pieces also tried to reason it out, but Joel knew that without living it you could never really understand.