Chapter 9
Gabe wrapped a stray shirt around his waist and yanked open the door.
Dressed in blue jeans and a short, fitted jacket, Eddy Edwards looked hopelessly fresh and ridiculously young.
“I thought we were in a hurry,” she said and stepped forward, ponytail bouncing as she moved past him.
“So you’re really in?” he asked.
“You a lightweight drinker and hard of hearing?”
Relief flooded him in a tidal wave of gratitude, but he nodded, going for casual. “All right. I still have some loose ends to tie up, though, so you’re excused to pack whatever you’ll need for the next couple weeks while I—”
“My bag’s in the car.”
He tried to remember not to blink at her like a stupefied steer. Didn’t she need…tampons or hair barrettes or something?
She raised a brow at him and broke the silence. “What needs to be done on your end before we leave?”
It occurred to him that her take-no-prisoners attitude shouldn’t surprise him. He’d been raised by a woman who could command a squadron of rank recruits while doing one-armed pushups, but Sarge Ostroot Durrand didn’t look like she’d just been plucked off the streets of Disneyland, while this girl… He mentally bumped himself back to the business at hand. “We need airline tickets. I have to pick up some meds, and there are a few people I’m going to interrogate this morning.”
Her brows jumped. “Interrogate?”
“Talk to,” he corrected. He’d been told on more than one occasion that most of his conversations could be called interrogations. It wasn’t necessarily meant as a compliment.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll purchase the tickets while you get dressed.” Dropping her pack from her shoulder, she pulled some sort of unknown electronic device from a side pocket.
He glared at her, but she was already completely focused on the gadget.
“You are going to dress, aren’t you?” she asked and glanced up.
The quizzical expression on her happy-pixie face almost made him crumble, almost made him admit how damned much he appreciated her taking a chance on him. But he wasn’t a dumbass about women like Shep was. And now seemed like a good time to prove just that.
“I think we’d better get something straight first,” he said.
“What’s that?” she asked, but her lightning-fast fingers never slowed on the miniscule keyboard.
“I’m CO on this mission.” He narrowed his eyes. Hers were as round as marbles. “What I say goes. No questions asked, no discussion needed.”
Her brows lowered the slightest degree. “Are you afraid of strong women, Durrand?”
He snorted, considered trying to convince her that such a thing was ridiculous, but was pulled irresistibly toward honesty instead. “Damn straight.”
She didn’t try to hide her surprise, and for reasons entirely unknown that only increased his sense of gratitude. And her appeal.
“If you knew Sarge, you would be, too,” he added.
“Sarge?” She shook her head a little. “Your commanding officer?”
“My mother,” he corrected.
Her cotton candy lips quirked up just the slightest degree. “Get dressed,” she repeated.
He would have liked to argue, but he was getting chilly, and although he admittedly didn’t know jack shit about women, he was pretty sure goosebumps weren’t considered particularly virile.
“What’s with the pink sock?” she asked.
Gabe glanced around the room. Three pairs of jeans and a crumpled dress shirt were laying kittywampus across the arm of a nearby chair. Maybe he should have had housekeeping do their thing, but obviously, he hadn’t. It was anybody’s guess why he was phobic about people touching his stuff. Shepherd, of course, had all sorts of hypotheses. Generally, Gabe had to threaten him with dismemberment to make him quit guessing.
“Can’t seem to find the other one,” he said, remembering the topic.
“The other what?”
He skimmed the nightstand where the bright colors of a paperback novel lay waiting and tried not to wince. “Sock,” he explained.
“That’s probably for the best. From what I hear, they can be a little homophobic south of the border.”
“The socks come with me,” he said.
Her brows rose slightly, but her fingers never paused. “Whatever you say, Lieutenant.”
He nodded. Good job, Durrand, he thought. Make an ass of yourself over a pair of pink socks. He took a step forward, effectively blocking her view of his reading material. And where was he supposed to dress? Scuttling into the bathroom like a blushing debutante seemed a little girly, but he wasn’t all that thrilled about baring himself with Miss Ponytail sitting three feet away. Not that he wasn’t one hell of a man…but he’d never been terribly fond of pity, and the scar that snaked halfway around his thigh wasn’t exactly babe bait.
“You okay with a window seat?”
Her question brought him out of his quandary. He glanced at the back of her head. She didn’t turn toward him. Hell, she didn’t even seem tempted to turn toward him. He dropped his shirt over the book on the nightstand like a challenge.
“Durrand?” she said, fingers still tapping.
“That’s fine,” he said and snatching up the closest pair of jeans.
She nodded through the exchange then skimmed her gaze down the tiny screen. “You feel comfortable sitting in an exit aisle even in case of an in-air emergency?”
He snorted and hopped a little as he tugged on his jeans, favoring his injured thigh. “You need my birthday?”
“June third, 1982,” she said.
He scowled at her knowledge. It wasn’t until that moment that she turned around. He zipped his jeans with rapid-fire haste. Not that he had anything to hide. Well…he had a lot to hide. But it wasn’t as if he were embarrassed or anything.
“I assume you know I have some computer skills,” she said.
He lowered his brows. Okay, so her marksmanship was on par with his, her intel was superior, and her memory was disturbingly accurate. Didn’t mean he had to challenge her to a wrestling match or anything.
“Can we be ready for the five o’clock flight?” she asked.
“Ready or not…we pop smoke at 0500.”
She nodded and tapped a few more keys. “What else do we have to accomplish before we leave?”
He tried not to act impressed even though it generally took him half a day to make flight reservations. He and technology had declared a temporary ceasefire, but they weren’t exactly ready to share a foxhole.
“I’ll gather info from the remainder of Miller’s squad before we leave.”
“Names?”
He searched the room again and finally saw a knitted pink toe peeking out from under the bed. “I don’t know how many shipped out. But Woody Hilt, Emery Tellman, and Ken Jacobs returned.” Pulling off his lone sock, he snagged the other one, stowed them away in a special compartment of his pack and glanced around for more appropriate footwear.
She watched him, brows raised.
But it was best if she learned right now that he didn’t owe her any explanations.
The room was as silent as a tomb.
He paced to the far side. She still didn’t speak.
“My niece made them,” he snapped finally. Finding a crumpled shirt, he yanked it over his head, glared past the ribbed neckline and challenged her to make an issue of it.
“Okay.”
“It’s important for kids to get validation for their skills. Where the hell are my black socks?”
Without taking her gaze off him, she pulled a pair from under her curvy left butt cheek and handed them over.
“So…Tellman’s in the psych ward?” she asked.
Durrand took the socks and tried like hell not to be impressed by her intel. It was bad enough she had sock-finding talents. Computer skills were overkill. “Has been since they got stateside.” It was possible, he realized, that he sounded a little petulant.
“You think it’s wise to question him?”
“They only gave me a couple minutes with him before. I’m going to try again today.”
“It looks like Hilt is still in the hospital. I’ll talk to him.”
Gabe pulled on his left sock. It wasn’t nearly as fuzzy as Zoey’s. “You can talk all you want. He won’t talk back.”
She glanced at him.
“He’s still in a coma.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat, and goddamn, was she actually embarrassed about her lack of knowledge? “Then I’ll take Jacobs and you can—”
“No!” He’d said the word more forcefully than he intended. Zoey would call it his grizzly bear tone. Her mother, Kelsey, wouldn’t be quite so pc.
“Why not?” As for Eddy, she was already stiffening with anger, making it seem like a bad idea to tell her the true reason for his refusal. Ken Jacobs was a loose cannon with a bad attitude and a degree of loyalty to Miller that bordered on suicidal. Last time they had spoken, things hadn’t gone well, but Gabe was going to try again. A little persuasion might be called for this time.
“I need you to get all the intel you can about Putumayo,” he said.
She glanced at him. He could feel her attention like the heat of the sun. Was that a good sign?
“Best guess says that’s the area where we’ll find Shep. Also, learn everything you can about current kidnappings.”
“You think he’s been kidnapped?”
Gabe’s stomach coiled tightly, but he ignored the gastric gymnastics as best he could. “I think someone else was kidnapped, and they went in to get him out.” It was the kind of stunt Linus Shepherd would pull: risking his life for some dumb-ass kid who had skipped into Colombia for a shoebox full of cheap weed. “Get any vaccinations you need: tetanus, malaria. Whatever. Make sure you have clothes that’ll stand up to the jungle climate, and take care of any necessary last-minute details on your end.”
“Is that all?” If she was being facetious, he couldn’t tell it by her tone. Shepherd would have been whining like a lazy hound after half that list.
“That’ll do for now.”
“Okay,” she said and slipping her electronic device back into its hiding spot, rose to her feet. “I’d better get to it. And ahh…” She skimmed her gaze toward the nightstand.
He darkened his scowl. “What is it?”
“You don’t have anything to be ashamed of; my grandmother liked those bodice ripper novels, too.”