Society: After It Happened Book 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

a shot and suddenly realised how thoughtless he was being. He started to apologise to Rich who stopped him.
    "It's fine. I can choose to drink or not. Today isn't really a celebration day for me, so I won't be having one. But thanks"
    Dan raised his glass to him anyway and took a sip.
    "I wanted to ask you something" he started.
    "I'm fine. I went into a bit of autopilot and I was scared. Really scared actually" he said, fiddling with the extended magazine from the Uzi.
    "I was actually going to ask what made you leave the post you were given" Dan said quietly.
    Rich stopped fiddling and looked at him coldly.
    "That came out wrong" Dan said, backtracking "what I meant was, how did you know to reinforce the rear?"
    Rich calmed down immediately, having momentarily thought he had been accused of desertion by Dan not being careful with his words.
    "Two civvies out back, three trained out front. Judgement call" He said almost grudgingly.
    Dan took a sip of his drink "You did bloody well. You saved lives, possibly all of ours. I need you to understand that this isn't the military; there's no chain of command with orders to obey, not really. I don’t have the monopoly on good ideas and I appreciate having people around me who can think independently.  What matters to me is that you get the job done. You saw a leak and you plugged it. Not only that, you dropped four people who looked like they hadn't even seen you"
    "They hadn't" Rich said, smiling wickedly out of the scarred corner of his mouth.
    Dan raised the glass to him again. "What about our resident child assassin? Did you hear what she did in the back of my truck?"
    He hadn't. Dan filled him in on the details. Rich laughed heartily as he imagined Leah going ‘full ninja’ as he put it.
    "I honestly don't know what to make of her sometimes” he said “She doesn't show any signs I'd recognise of anything being wrong. Maybe she's just adapted to it?"
    Dan took another drink, draining the glass.
    “Maybe” he said “I just sometimes wish she’d refuse to get out of bed or something.  You know, be a normal teenager?”
    “You can’t expect her to be normal” explained Rich “We don’t live in a normal world anymore”
    “True” said Dan “Anyway, I’m officially bloody impressed with your work.  Are you looking to get out and about?” he was offering him a shot at being a Ranger, and Rich surprised him.
    “Not yet, no” he said “I’ve honestly spent enough of my life creeping along waiting to get shot at.  I’d like to stay as Quartermaster and look at the defences for this place if I can?”
    Dan was happy with that.  “What about special occasions?  Can we dust you off for the odd one?”
    He laughed “Dawn raid, guest starring me?”
    “Yeah” said Dan.  Rich nodded his agreement, and offered him his congratulations on a successful day.  Dan shook his maimed hand as he left.
    He looked for Leah and found her walking with Marie to her office, each carrying a hot chocolate from a large batch made up by Nina.  Dan went back to Ops and poured himself another one as Ash whined nervously at Satan’s reincarnation.  The cat had been dislodged from its normal perch as Rich had sorted out the ammunition properly so it now chose to lounge on a shelf with its legs hanging down.  It avoided the shopping basket bed and preferred the height advantage from which to tease the dogs.  Steve sat reading a book with his feet up by the window which looked along the drive.  The CB set to his right was silent and the coffee to his left looked cold.
    He looked up from his book long enough to give a friendly nod.  He liked that about Steve; he could do comfortable silences.
    He wandered out to find Cedric and thank him for saving his life.  He also planned to ask him if would kindly not mention to Marie how close he was to getting his head blown off.

THE LAIR
     
    Dan did not entirely trust Ash’s friend that the whole group had come in force to take over