She forced a smile onto her face. Cold, and fragile, but it held.

“Do you want to know what else Ledger did?” she asked, impressed at how reasonable her voice now sounded. She reached down and tapped the knee brace she wore. “He put his gun to my knee while I was helpless and shot me. I’m going to have the entire knee replaced, and at my age, that means it’ll wear out in maybe ten years and I’ll have to get another, and another, another. So it’ll be like him shooting me over and over again.”

One of the men—Spiro—breathed, “Damn.”

The Fixer who’d made the comment about Santoro straightened. “Tell you what, Miss Eve, you point me in his direction, and I’ll cut his balls off and have them put in one of those acrylic paperweights and give that to you gift wrapped. How’s that?”

She walked over to him. The man was easily eleven inches taller than she was, so she had to reach up to pat his cheek. One pat, another, and then a sharp crack of a slap. But she smiled as she slapped him, and he understood. He grinned down at her.

Eve turned to look at them all.

“We have a lot of footage of Joe Ledger in combat. We know what kinds of martial arts he’s studied. We know he prefers a Wilson Rapid Release folding knife, and we know he’s a much better shot with a handgun than a long gun. We know that one of his most dangerous skills is a rare and complete lack of hesitation. We know he isn’t fancy, no moves that are there for style rather than effect. That makes him an apex predator in our line of work.” She paused. “You twelve were picked because you have similar backgrounds and skill sets. However, you need to up the game and tilt the odds in your favor by becoming completely familiar with him. His body, his movements, his speed and power. Know him. Become him so that if you ever meet him, he’ll be facing his own skill set and yours. That, boys, is the edge.”

They nodded. One or two looked mildly apprehensive or skeptical, and Eve took note of that. The rest looked merely ready to learn.

“One last thing,” she said. “From this moment on, you’re going to stop being who you were, and you’ll become my team. I’ll give you new combat call signs, and you’ll use them 24–7 from now on. Spiro, you’re Cain. Bobby, you’re Abel.” She gave them each a biblical first name. “You answer to me and only me. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am!” they shouted.

“That means you’ll do whatever I say whenever I say it. No arguments, no complaints, no questions. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am!”