The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(30)

Cruz grunted, and for a moment I was afraid he would still just ignore me, or worse, challenge me to a fight. But then he looked up, and there was fire in his eyes.

“Of course I will do it better,” he said grandly. “Mark my words, Croft—I, Anello Cruz, will make you forget you ever doubted me. You’ll realize that you need my help in no time!”

“Uh, good,” I said, relaxing a little as I realized my ploy had worked… as weird as it was. “Thanks for understanding. Now, I gotta go back in.”

As Cruz still stood there, nodding gleefully, I tried to nudge his attention toward the hall. “The kitchen will be open after the meeting,” I told him, hoping he got the hint. Then, not having time for any more of the argument, I simply slipped away and left him standing, staring, in the hall.

I came back into the meeting to the sight of Ms. Dale shifting through some papers in front of her, then clearing her throat. “Have we received any update from Tiffany?”

“Yes,” said Thomas, “but just a text message, and a short one at that. It reads, ‘Riots in city, relocating to safe place. Will contact ASAP.’”

“Riots?” said Amber, her eyes growing wide. “That’s good news, right? It means the message got out there.”

“It could be good news,” chimed in Ms. Dale, “but until Tiffany contacts us with more details, we’ll hold off on classifying it. Let’s have our scouts keep an eye out for any refugees out of the city, though. We might get good information out of them. We also need to consider moving our base. Especially with winter coming, we need to find better shelter for people, and that will mean breaking our forces up into smaller groups and working in cells.”

“How much time do you need to scout?” I asked, leaning forward.

“Probably about a day or two,” Ms. Dale replied. “We can’t really use the heloship, as it’s running low on fuel.”

“King Maxen will probably know a good place to check for the kind of fuel we need,” said Amber. “We actually don’t need much. Unlike cars, the heloship actually runs on a specialized cell, one that requires a very small amount of propellant to operate. But regular gas won’t work—only T-136.”

“I’ll have someone ask him, though all but two of the depots we searched today had been emptied, so I wouldn’t expect much. On that note, we did recover eight vehicles, fifty barrels of gasoline…”

Ms. Dale droned on, going over her report. Then the topic changed, discussing the move and areas in which to search. It was toward the end that Dr. Tierney wandered in, heading over to the fire to grab a pot of coffee. We were still operating on minimal electricity for the house, which meant we only had the communal coffee pot over the fire, and it was in use practically twenty-four hours a day.

“All right, that’s all I can think of right now,” Ms. Dale said. “We’ll reconvene tonight and update each other on where we are with organizing our teams and equipment.”

The meeting finished, and we all milled around discussing the various other chores we had overlooked, letting the conversations run into the general brainstorming session we regularly had after a meeting. I was listening to a discussion between Ms. Dale and Violet regarding possibly modifying the two remaining drones, when I noticed Cruz slip into the room, look around, and then make his way over to Dr. Tierney. Curious, I took a step back, shamelessly eavesdropping on their conversation, but feeling completely justified by the fact that Cruz was supposed to be impressing me—he knew I was going to have eyes on him, so why not start now?

“Pardon me,” he said as he approached Dr. Tierney, his tone husky. I rolled my eyes. “Madam, it is a pleasure to see such radiance thriving, in spite of these primitive conditions. May I have the honor of your name?”

Dr. Tierney cocked her head at him, an incredulous look on her face. “No,” she said decisively. “Absolutely not.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing as the small doctor stepped around Cruz and walked out, still cradling her mug of coffee. I should’ve known better than to doubt even for a second Dr. Tierney’s ability to handle unwanted attention from a male. As for Cruz, well… I hadn’t exactly expected better from him.

Moving back closer to Violet, I watched as the man left, my smile growing as he approached the door, then deepening when I saw Jeff standing on the other side, about to come in. He stepped out of Cruz’s way to enter the kitchen, bustling over to both of us.

“Oh, Violet, I’m so glad to see you’re okay!” he said, interrupting Ms. Dale. He must have been truly emotional about it—I’d never seen Jeff interrupt anybody before unless he had to.

Ms. Dale just grinned at the intrusion and leaned over to Violet to finish her thought. “I think you might be onto something. Bring it up at tonight’s meeting, and maybe find time to talk to Thomas about it.” With that, she left.

“Hi, Jeff,” Violet said, reaching up to hug the taller man. He hugged her as if she were a fragile thing, and then quickly let her go.

“How ever did you survive?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Actually, I was saved by that weird elevator that led to your room. It allowed me to sneak out from under Desmond and get the drop on her.”

Jeff’s mustache twitched and he took a step back, his cheeks flushing. “I see.”