I dug my fingers into my eyes as I heard matching groans coming from the others. “So you cornered a government official on his day off to ask him questions after we’d already told you to let us handle the communication with him?” I was barely keeping my patience in check.

“I don’t get what the big deal is.”

I was about to explain, but Elias jumped in, looking like he was done holding his tongue with Sam. “The big deal is that you’ve already disrespected Mr. Dawit.” His tone was placid enough, and his voice was not a decibel above proper inside voice, but no one could not mistake the edge in it. “If you cannot mind the social rules and the ways that our people conduct themselves when working with officials, then you are going to impact this project’s development.”

This man was very close to losing his patience. My whole body woke up and took notice because take-charge Elias was hot as fuck.

Sam’s face went from flushed to mottled with an angry red, and I could almost hear the gears in his idiotic head turning. He opened his mouth, but before he did something that he could never take back, I intervened. “There is nothing to say, Sam. You fucked up and now you have to sit this one out.”

He balked at that, but I wasn’t standing by and letting Sam sabotage this entire project because he couldn’t keep his fool mouth shut. I ignored him and turned again to Tsehay and Elias. “How far behind will we get if we only send out two teams this week?” Another yelp came from Sam’s direction, but I didn’t bother looking his way as I waited for an answer.

“It will throw off the schedule completely,” Tsehay answered, and the furrow in her brow told me I didn’t need to point out that kind of setback would be catastrophic for our already-tight deadline.

Elias nodded, already tapping something on his tablet. “We timed it so we’d be done here and at the new sites just as they were gearing up for their quarterly health checks with the families. We can’t get delayed.”

“That’s right. Dammit,” I said, this time turning to glare at Sam. “You need to figure out how to make amends with Mr. Davit so you can get back to work. For now we need to stay on task. What do you suggest, Elias?”

He gave me a funny look like he didn’t expect me to ask him what to do, but as far as I could tell, he and Tsehay were the ones that knew what we needed to do to stay on our timeline.

Tsehay spoke while he mulled the question over. “Eli can lead Sam’s team.”