Chapter Seven
Thursday, July 23
6:23 p.m.
Trinity Sands Resort Lobby
La Trinité, Martinique
The training exercise in the jungles of Suriname had been the most exciting four days of Connor Warrick’s life. He was tired, achy, hungry, in desperate need of a shower, and covered in a couple zillion mosquito bites…but also weirdly happy about the entire thing. For a little while, he had been able to throw himself into a real-life Call of Duty game and forget that his mother no longer wanted him and his father didn’t have the first clue how to be a father.
He’d…well, he’d liked he whole experience. Really liked it. More than he’d liked anything in a long time.
The way Dad had taken charge and made things happen had been kinda awesome. The men respected him. They listened to him like he was someone important and not just some cowboy redneck from Wyoming. It was completely kick-ass. Not that he’d admit that out loud to anyone, least of all his father.
And now he got to spend the weekend here, in a crazy fancy hotel on a pristine Caribbean island. Yeah. Best week ever. Maybe there was something to this soldiering thing after all.
Across the hotel foyer, he saw Lanie drag her bags through the front door. He wasn’t sure what to think about her. He liked her, he supposed, but he didn’t know how to feel about her with his dad. They were totally fucking. Or if not yet, they wanted to—even though they’d spent the last week pretending the other didn’t exist.
Lanie got her room key and left by the revolving door in the wall of windows that fronted the lobby. She cast only the briefest of glances in Dad’s direction. He definitely saw her, but continued talking with the rest of the team, acting as if she hadn’t just stripped him with her eyes.
What was this, middle school? Geez.
Another woman entered as Lanie left and several men in the lobby took notice. He studied her, too. She had shoulder-length blond hair and eyes as blue as the ocean outside the panoramic windows. She walked like a woman on a mission and she was dressed in a businesswoman sort of way, all neat and proper. Not a stunner, so why all the attention?
Curious, he glanced around at the men who’d taken notice. A couple of the older trainees, and Schumacher, the asshole. Which was just plain wrong since the woman looked to be at least ten years older than him.
Jean-Luc Cavalier also noticed her and broke away from the group. He sidled up to her and turned on a megawatt smile that Connor was sure would work.
The blonde gave him a critical up-down with her blue eyes and then scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
As she walked away, Jean-Luc’s jaw dropped open. Closed again. Opened. Closed. He spun to face the group, a look of genuine puzzlement on his face. “What just happened?”
“You, my man, were shot down.” Danny Giancarelli, the FBI agent who had spent the week training with HORNET, mimicked a gun with his hand. “Point. Blank.”
“Non.” Jean-Luc scowled after the woman. “No way. I don’t get shot down, mon ami.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” Marcus Deangelo clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to the world of us mere mortal men. Stings, doesn’t it?”
“It’s the cunja,” Jean-Luc muttered. “Merde. I didn’t get rid of it.”
“Dude. Not this again.” If Marcus rolled his eyes any harder, he’d sprain them. “You’re not cursed.”
“What curse?” Connor asked.
Dad did a double take in his direction and his brows cranked down. “Nothing.”
Yeah, sure. There was a story here and going on the last week he’d spent with these guys, he bet it was a funny one. “What curse?” he asked again, studiously ignoring his father’s glare.
Marcus scrubbed a hand over his face. “Uh…”
Danny G jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the registration desk. “I’ll, uh, get our room keys.” And he made tracks.
“Hey, you’re the one with a gaggle of kids,” Marcus called after him. “You should know how to field this.”
Danny turned, still backing away, and held up his hands. “Not my circus, not my monkey. I still have at least five years before I have to give any of my monkeys The Talk. This is all on Jesse.”
Connor rolled his eyes at them. These were grown-ass, kick-ass men, and they were scattering like a bunch of rabbits instead of just coming out and telling him they were talking about sex.
Ugh. Adults. Sometimes he really hoped he never turned into one.
“I know what The Talk is,” he informed them. “I’ve had Sex Ed.” And he’d even made it to second base with his girlfriend before he’d been forced to leave Las Vegas, but they didn’t need to know that.
“Jesus Christ,” Jesse muttered.
“What? Like you didn’t know what sex was at my age? I’m almost sixteen, Dad.”
“I don’t…” He shook his head and pointed across the room to where the recruits had gathered. “Go find Jeremiah Wolfe. You’ll be rooming with him this weekend.”
Aaand dismissed.
Steaming with annoyance, Connor walked toward the recruits, but as soon as his dad and the others turned their backs, he about-faced and circled around to the other side of the room’s giant waterfall centerpiece. Out of sight, but not out of hearing distance.
So call him nosy.
Over the rush of falling water, he could just hear his dad ask, “Curse? What the hell are you two goin’ on about?”
“Oh, Cajun thinks a voodoo priestess cursed him on Mardi Gras,” Marcus said and thumped Jean-Luc solidly on the back. “He hit on her and wouldn’t give up when she told him to get lost, so now he’s cursed.”
Jesse snorted.
“Hey, voodoo isn’t a laughing matter,” Jean-Luc said. “I am cursed, f’sure.” He pronounced it fuh shore. “And she was powerful,” he muttered and pulled a small leather pouch on a well-worn cord from his pocket. He stared at it with a frown. “Even my gris-gris didn’t protect me.”
Marcus eyed the pouch. “Dude, you ask me, the curse is a good thing. Seems like your cock drags you into trouble more often than not. About time someone put a muzzle on it.”
Jean-Luc gave him the finger. “Beck moi tchew.”
Connor mentally flipped through the little bit of Cajun French Jean-Luc had taught him earlier in the week and came up with what he thought was the right translation: bite my ass.
Marcus grinned. “Sorry, pal. Already ate.”
Jean-Luc muttered something else in another language. The guy knew fifteen—and counting—different languages. How did he have that much room in his brain?
A flash of color to his left caught Connor’s attention, and he turned toward it. Schumacher ducked into the alcove by the lobby bathrooms, but not without first glancing toward Dad and the other men by the registration desk. Like he didn’t want them to see him go in.
Why not?
Connor waited several beats, then walked over to the men’s room door and leaned an ear against it. He didn’t hear anything inside. The door was solid, gleaming wood, too thick to allow noise to pass through. So he’d have to open it. He flattened his hands out on the wood and very gently, very slowly pushed it until a crack appeared between the jambs.
Schumacher’s voice floated out. “…and she’s here.” A pause. He must have been on the phone because no other voice responded to him. “No, you’re not listening, Briggs. I wouldn’t risk calling if it wasn’t a fucking problem. We’re not prepared to go to war yet—especially not here. You need to pull out and plan B this shit or it’s not going to end well for—”
The door creaked under Connor’s hands. Schumacher broke off and footsteps echoed on the bathroom tile, coming closer.
Shit. Shit. Shitty shit shit.
He considered his options and came up with nothing good. So he went with his gut and shoved the door open, nearly banging into Schumacher on the other side.
Schumacher’s lip curled. “What are you doing here, you little fucktard? Were you listening?”
“To what? You take a dump?” He was surprised at how even his voice was, considering his heart was threatening to bungee out of his chest. “Nasty.”
“What are you doing?”
“Since when do I need your permission to take a piss?”
“Maybe not mine, but sure you don’t want to ask Daddy? He might want to hold your hand. He does everything else for you.”
“Fuck off.” He felt Schumacher’s eyes drilling into his back as he crossed to the urinal and started to unzip. The guy wasn’t moving, wasn’t leaving, and he really didn’t have to pee. Now what?
He glared over his shoulder. “You gonna watch, you perv? I’m underage. All I gotta do is go tell a cop you touched me in the bad place…” He let his voice trail off.
Schumacher snarled, and it was almost feral. “You’re gonna get yours, Daddy’s Boy. Just wait.”
A second later the door creaked again as it opened. It didn’t slam. It was on some kind of soft-close system, which took some of the umph out of Schumacher’s exit.
Oh man.
Connor slumped forward in relief, bracing his arm against the wall over the urinal and pressing his forehead to his forearm.
That was close.
He straightened and zipped up, then checked the stalls to make sure Schumacher really had been alone. All empty. So definitely a phone call, but who had been on the other end?
And what war were they talking about?