Transformation: The Clandestine Saga Book 1 (22 page)

              The old man looked a bit intimidated at first, but then he remarked, “Yeah if everything you said happened, we wouldn’t be in this situation now, would we?”

              Suddenly, the older man jumped back a few paces. Cadence had no way of knowing what Aaron had said to him over the IAC, but she got the impression he had used a few expletives himself.  Whatever it was, it was enough for Sam to bite his tongue.

              Cadence didn’t understand why Sam and his party were so angry. She had completed a task they had failed at for years. They should be thanking her!  Clearly, she was missing something, however, and since she had promised she wouldn’t say anything, she was glad that Aaron had handled it. Even though he was obviously angry with her, she felt a little better knowing he had stood up for her against the verbal abuse of Cowboy Sam.

Aaron climbed on his bike and gestured for her to get on as well, which she did immediately. If he was giving directives to the rest of the team, he was doing so individually because she saw nothing more from him come across the team IAC.

              He neither said nor sent a word directly to her the entire ride back either. He pushed the motorcycle’s limitation on speed, and she had to hold on tightly to keep from flying, off especially when they went around corners. Under normal circumstances she would have loved the idea of riding his bike with him. But right now, she felt like a small child who had been warned that she would be receiving a spanking when she got home.

              As they pulled into the lot in front of the meeting room, Cadence’s emotions began to get the best of her. She was doing everything she could not to cry.  He parked the bike, waited for her to get off, and then, without a word, walked into the building, clearly expecting her to follow.  He led her down a hallway to a small room near the back of the building. Checking the time, he noted they only had five minutes before the debrief was to start. He would need much more time than that to go over this mess with Cadence. 

              Gesturing towards a chair on the other side of a small table, he said simply, “Sit. I’ll be back.” He slammed the door so hard behind him that the entire room shook.

              Despite having such a small window of time to return for debrief, every single member of the team was punctual. No one dare be late when Aaron was this angry.  The three Independent Hunters were noticeably missing, however, and those who had left the scene last, such as Elliott, knew they had been extremely angry at both Cadence and Aaron and had been mumbling about seeking vengeance.

              Aaron stood at the front of the room with his arms crossed for a few minutes before he began. The same visual supports that were up earlier were up now, a reminder of the mistakes they had made.  This mission had been a disaster from the very second they walked out the door and while Cadence was certainly to blame for taking them off protocol, she wasn’t the only one at fault.  Finally, after a few minutes he began, saying, “Alright guys, let’s start at the beginning.”

              Some of the team members had assumed they should turn Cadence’s vision off, and they had done so. But she could still see from Aaron’s perspective and from Christian’s, so she decided to observe from the latter’s trying to see if she could ascertain whether or not she should just pack up and leave right now or if there was a possibility she might get one more chance.

              Aaron had crossed over to the map of the bar. “Our first problem, in my opinion, started right here.” He gestured at the map and waited to see if anyone said anything. The room was silent. “What is wrong with this picture?” When no one volunteered any comments, he looked directly at Shane and waited.

              Shane cleared his throat. “I had the restroom windows marked incorrectly on the map,” he finally admitted.

              “That’s exactly right,” Aaron said, taking out a marker.  “You had the bathrooms marked on this side of the building, not over here where they should have been. So, our cut-off, Paxton, who was supposed to be watching the bathroom windows, was on the wrong side of the building. Which leads us to another problem. Guys, if you’re supposed to be watching something—a window, a door, a car, a building—and you can’t
see
it, you’ve got to take responsibility for letting me know so I can help reposition you.” He waited to see if anyone was going to say anything, but though they were all nodding, no one did.  “Paxton, did you notice that you were not in front of the bathroom windows? The windows on that side of the building were small and there was no way a full grown man was going to be able to escape through them.”

              Paxton looked at Aaron nervously.  When he finally spoke, it was just above a whisper. “I was confused. I saw that Smith was on the same side of the building as me. We talked about which one of us was out of position, but we didn’t get it settled before everything went down.”

              Aaron nodded his head slowly. “Alright, that’s a start. So, if you are ever in a similar situation again, what do you think you should do?”

              Paxton looked at Smith who was staring at the floor.  After another long pause, he said, “We should let you know and if we don’t have time we should just make a decision.”

              “There you go,” Aaron said, deciding spending any more time on those two was pretty worthless.  “Then, we had another issue. Shane, I could not get ahold of you on IAC. I knew there was a problem. I was trying to get you to fix it and you were not answering. What in the world were you doing?”

              “I’m not exactly sure, to be honest,” he said, scratching his head. “Cadence kept yelling at me about something and it made it really hard for me to hear anything else.”

              “Really?” Aaron asked a sarcastic look on his face. He couldn’t believe Shane was trying to pin this particular problem on Cadence. “That’s what happened? Are you sure about that?  Because I have the recording. We can go over it.”

              Shane thought for a second to see if he could come up with a better answer. “Well, she was trying to tell me something. I don’t know what. And I was trying to listen to what was going on in the building and relay the information to Meagan because she didn’t have access to the IACs in the bar and I wanted her to know what was going on.”

              “You don’t know what Cadence was trying to tell you?” Aaron asked, attempting to give Shane one more chance to come completely clean.

              Shane shook his head no, hoping Aaron would just let it go.  But it wasn’t Aaron who had to call him on it. “She was telling you about the bathroom windows, remember?” Meagan chimed in.  Shane looked at her like he wanted to strangle her, but she kept on talking. “She said that she thought someone was out of position and that the windows were on the wrong side of the map. Don’t you remember that?”

              “Thank you, Meagan,” Aaron said. She smiled, happy she could help.  “What did you say to Cadence when she told you that you had made a mistake?”

              Shane’s first instinct was to lie and try to cover his own ass again, but he realized that, if he did so, Meagan would throw him right back under the bus. “I didn’t say anything,” he admitted. “I just ignored her.”

              Aaron was nodding his head again. “And you ignored me.”

              Shane said nothing more, looking at the floor.

              “Alright, from that point forward, we were in an Emergency Procedure. Clearly we did not plan for Cadence to attempt to chase the Rogue down. I will be speaking to her shortly and determining the consequences for her actions.” He surveyed the room and saw that everyone was staring at the floor, so he continued. “As far as how the rest of you handled the EP situation, I have no complaints. Meagan and Shane, you held your positions as instructed. Paxton and Smith, you took care of the humans at the bar. Christian and Elliott you worked quickly to handle clean up protocol, and everyone else did what was expected, held the perimeter, ready if called. Our three friends who decided they didn’t need to come to this meeting broke protocol as well. I will handle that separately. Are there any questions?”

              “I have a question,” Christian said, raising one figure in the air.

              “Go ahead,” Aaron said crossing his arms across his chest and feeling unbelievably tired for one who needed little to no sleep.

              “I understand that Cadence broke protocol and disobeyed directives, I get that. I know what she did was impulsive and dangerous, perhaps a little insane. But, does she get any credit at all for actually killing the Vampire?”

              Aaron checked the room again and noticed a few heads nodding in agreement. Most of them stopped when they saw him looking directly at them. 

              “You know, that’s something that Cadence and I are going to have to discuss,” he said hoping his tone would convey that this was not a topic he wished to say more about.

              Christian wasn’t done, however. “Good,” he said, nodding his head. “Because, I just feel like, maybe if we were utilizing our people better . . . “

              “Alright Christian, you made your point . . .” Aaron asserted.

              “I mean, maybe we should have let her participate in the first place and then she wouldn’t have had to break protocol.”

              “Yes, I understand what you are saying. All I can say to you is that, sometimes there are circumstance that you don’t understand that require certain procedures.” Aaron was ready for this conversation to be over, but clearly another member of his team had finally found his voice as well.

              “Man that’s just . . .. that’s just screwed up,” Elliot was saying shaking his head at Christian.

              “What?” Christian said, gesturing wildly.

              “You’re going to sit here in a debrief and try to call Aaron out on something you know nothing about?” Elliott continued.

              Aaron waved him off, “Elliott, it’s alright. Just let it go.”

              “She’s not even here. She’s not even here to defend herself,” Christian said, his frustration starting to show in his face.

              “She doesn’t need to be here,” Elliott yelled. “At all! Anymore!”

              Now Aaron was starting to lose his cool.  Over the IAC he sent both of them a directive not to say another word or else there would be dire consequences.  Aloud he said, “Alright, we’re done. Go home.  Everyone needs to review Set-Up Protocols. Leave.”

              The majority of the team members left as quickly as possible. Christian lingered for a second just to make sure Aaron didn’t want to say anything to him in private. He knew he had overstepped his bounds, but he didn’t feel like the situation was handled correctly at all and he was beginning to get frustrated at Aaron’s inflexibility when it came to following protocols. Still, if the conversation were going to continue, he’d rather have it over with. Since Aaron did not look in his direction, he finally decided to exit.

              Elliott was the last one to leave. “I’m sorry, man,” he said.

              “You should be,” Aaron stated with all seriousness. “If I tell you to let something go, you’ve got to let it go.”

              “I know, but man I told you this was going to happen.”

              “No, no this had nothing to do with that,” Aaron said adamantly.

              “You know it did. She thought you’d let her get away with it because she’s your girlfriend. And look what happened.  All the information Henry had, all gone, down the tubes.”

              Aaron said nothing, just shook his head. There was nothing he could say that would change Elliott’s mind, and now he was wondering if it was possible that Elliott was correct.

              “Alright, brother,” Elliott said, patting him on the shoulder as he walked to the door. “Good luck. Man, you’re gonna need it.”

              Of course, Elliott had no idea that Cadence heard every word that he said. He had assumed that Aaron had turned her feed off, but the leader had purposely left her on. Despite his frustration, Aaron wanted her to know how the debrief went, what the others had to say, that he recognized the contributions she had made, and that he realized that others had made errors as well.

              As Elliott made his way out of the building, Aaron walked back to where he had left Cadence. He opened the door but didn’t go in at first. He just stood in the doorway looking at her. He could see she had been crying, but she wasn’t just then.  After a few moments he finally entered, pulled a box of tissue off of a shelf, slammed it on the table and sat down across from her, his arms folded across his chest.

              She looked at the tissues, but not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, she vowed not to use them. She resolved not to touch the box. Though she wanted to speak, to ask him the dozens of questions she had burning in her mind, she waited for him to go first. After all, he was clearly the one in charge here.

              He wasn’t exactly sure where to begin.  After considering his options for what seemed like an eternity, he finally asked, “What in the world possessed you to disobey my directives and give chase to a Vampire on your own?”

              “What does it matter?” she asked. “What’s done is done.”