CHAPTER EIGHT
How the hell was this happening? Why on earth was she stuck in a jungle, crouching under brambles and bushes to evade someone else, probably terrorists, who were in the area? Oh, yes, because her father sent her to collect freaking papers for him, that was why.
They better be really freaking important papers, dang it. Because if this is for a memo, Imma going to be so pissed and ask Mrs. Mac to put him on a vegetarian kick for his health or something.
Something was stabbing into her arm. Its thorns were more of an irritant than painful, but soon she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from scratching. Which would make noise, and considering every single creature which called this part of hell home had vacated their premises or at least locked the doors and were peering out to see what strangers were in the area, making noise would draw attention to where she and the others were taking cover. She would not be the person who gave away their hiding place.
Don’t think about it.
Think about something else.
Drave—
Shut up. Not him. Do not think about Draven Kilkenny.
She swallowed down the noise of frustration which threatened to erupt from her mouth. Waiting was necessary, but a pain in the rear end. She could hear the murmur of voices from the other side of the bushes which concealed them but couldn’t make out the language they spoke in no matter how hard she strained her ears.
When Draven nudged her in the side, she could have cheerfully murdered him. If he expected her to keep quiet, then he shouldn’t be trying to make her yelp. She frowned at his finger when he made a jabbing motion past her, and it took a couple of seconds for her brain to connect the dots and figure out what he wanted. Indy nodded in response and tapped the man in front of her twice on the arm. The man turned his head toward her and frowned darkly.
Yeah, buddy. I’m not trying to give us away to whoever is out there. But the idiot behind me wants your attention.
She moved her head as much as she dared toward Draven, silently telling his teammate that this was on Draven, not her. Hopefully, he believed her, because he didn’t look like anyone she’d want to piss off.
Draven and his teammate had a silent conversation with their hands, and the one whose name she didn’t know nodded, then turned around, tapped the man ahead of him on the shoulder, and had a similar hand spoken conversation with him. The leader of the team was next in line, and he was clearly irritated when he turned around. But a couple of seconds later, he glanced past, and she felt Draven’s nod against her shoulder. The team leader clearly gave a silent order which she didn’t understand as Draven cleared his throat loudly.
She cocked her head to one side. Had all this been for nothing, and the people who had been out there had kept on moving and were already too far ahead to hear the noise Draven had made? She’d no sooner had the thought when the bushes over her and Draven’s heads parted and the muzzles of multiple weapons pointed directly at their heads. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Draven lift his open hands in a don’t shoot motion, but was aware that the rest of the team with them took aim at the new arrivals.
“If you shoot me, Wolf, Nemesis is going to be pissed at the paperwork it causes him,” Draven said dryly, with a hint of amusement.
She’d met Nemesis once, when he’d rescued her after the field office she’d been working in had been targeted. He certainly didn’t strike her as someone who particularly enjoyed paperwork. But then who did?
The man standing over them stared for a heartbeat before he cursed softly then muttered, “What the heck are you doing here, Kilkenny?”
“My—India—” he jerked his chin toward her “—needed a ride home. We came to pick her up.” Draven got to his feet. Clearly, he knew these men, and Indy took the hand Draven offered her and stood next to him.
His India?
Where the heck does he get off calling me his? He refused to have me be his anything.
Despite her silent thoughts, she focused on what was going on around her. The dynamics of these two teams was more interesting than a rerun of her favorite TV show.
“Wolf Steel, Ma’am.” The new arrival’s gaze darted toward her. “These men with me are my team.”
As if I couldn’t have figured that last bit out by myself.
She clamped down hard on the snarky thought. Just because she was irritated with Draven didn’t mean she had to take it out on this man. She took his hand, giving it a swift shake before withdrawing again. “India Fox.”
“For a remote part of Africa,” the man on the other side of Draven muttered, “it’s getting rather crowded in here.” He got to his feet in an easy movement, grinned wide, then punched Wolf on the shoulder. “Good to see you, Wolf.”
The team leader’s eyes flashed with something which bordered on surprise before his expression blanked again. “You too, Wolfe.” They smirked before moving at the same time to smack each other on the shoulders in a bro hug, all the while dishing out insults.
“I don’t understand,” Indy whispered to Draven. “They are both called Wolf?”
“Steel’s is a nickname.” Draven rummaged in his ruck. “The other is Lucian’s surname,” he explained. “Don’t ask me how they know each other, because I don’t know for sure. But they’re about the same age, so probably are Green Brothers.”
She turned that information over in her head and assigned the name Lucian to the man on Draven’s team, carefully cataloguing that he had a thin scar which ran from the corner of his eye and disappeared under his helmet near his ear. She’d heard that term, ‘Green Brothers’ before, back at Langley when she was doing some field training with Ground Branch. A new member had been there and one of Ground Branch’s team instructors had come through BUD/S around the same time. Both had been assigned to Green Team before getting onto an official SEAL team.
All around her, introductions were made and she tried to file away the names. She hadn’t a hope of being able to match them to faces later. Unless she had time to figure out a facial or body feature to attach to each, then she was going to forget each one in about five seconds flat. Some of them gave nicknames, some call signs, and some she assumed were their real names. At least Benny and Abe sounded like real names to her. Because if they were otherwise, it was all kinds of strange.
“What are you doing here?” the leader of Draven’s team, who she now knew was Hunt, asked. “Fishing?”
“Snatch and grab,” Wolf replied. “If we can find him. Have you come across any warlords in your travels?”
“Depends on who you are looking for,” Hunt replied. “We had a run-in a couple of hours ago. Did the usual data collection during the aftermath.” He grabbed his intel packet and waved Wolf over. “See if your guy is in here.”
“Thanks.”
“Here, put this on.” Draven nudged her arm. “It’s got to be better than the one you are wearing.” He handed her a bullet-proof vest similar in style to the one they all wore.
“I have plates in this one.”
“Double or single?”
Did he think she was an idiot? “Of course, I have double plates in my vest.” She refrained from calling him names as she would have when they were kids. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Hah.” He snorted. “There is one thing I’d never, ever put in the same sentence as you and that’s stupid.” If he’d stopped there, he’d have been fine… perfectly fine. But oh no, he had to open his mouth and stuff not one but both of his boots in there. “I might be lying, but what can you do?”
She stared at him in shock for a couple of seconds, not quite believing the drivel he was saying. Did he not notice all the other men exchanging glances and stepping back? “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I—uh—”
Stumble and stutter about it all you want .
“Well?”
“Nothing.” He stepped back, or at least attempted to, but stepped back onto Hunt’s boot. Hunt helpfully pushed him back toward her, keeping him within arm’s reach. “I can beat him, right?” she asked nobody in particular. “Calling me stupid is grounds for beating him without me getting in trouble, right?”
“I’d say so, Ma’am.” Wolf glanced up from where he was looking at intel the team with Draven had collected. “My wife wouldn’t let me get away with that one either.”
“You’re not helping here, Steel.” Draven sounded like a little boy who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar before dinner. She steeled herself against how freaking adorable it was. “Do you think I’m stupid, Draven?” He better think freaking carefully before answering.
“No.” Draven scrubbed one hand down his face. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry. My brain sometimes still forgets to engage before my mouth opens and words fall out.”
She huffed. But how could she stay mad at him? He’d come halfway around the globe to rescue her just because she’d texted him.
“I’m sorry, Indy. Truly sorry.”
She huffed again and figured she could come up with a way to make him regret his life choices later. If he ever bothered his backside to come to California and visit them. “Okay. You’re forgiven.”
“Hah, I can see why you disappeared from the wedding without saying a word to anyone,” one of Wolf’s men said. “Even Tex remarked on it.”
Wedding? What wedding?
“It wasn’t my wedding, and Kentucky and Becky had already left.” He sounded defensive. “Besides, Nem and Trev knew I was leaving.”
“They got one of our dudes.” Wolf paused in flipping through the images on one of the wrist-held computers. “I gotta put a call into command.” He turned away, then paused and glanced back at her. “Do you think you can refrain from punching him until I’m done?” He nodded to her hands.
Men, they were all the same. Thinking the woman couldn’t control her temper. She figured she might as well give them something which reminded them who they were dealing with. She slowly uncurled her fingers from the fists they were in. “I can try. No promises.”
Make of that what you will, Sir.
“I like her,” the one who’d been just ahead of her as they’d walked whispered. “She’s got spunk, and it sounds like she has big enough balls to keep Kilkenny on his toes.”
“You have got to give me some names to go on.” She nudged Draven with her elbow. “All this head hopping all over the place is driving me nuts.” It was like watching a freaking tennis match without knowing who the players or ball guys were.
“You won’t remember the names,” Draven reminded her. “Every single time I’ve introduced you to someone, you’ve forgotten their names before the end of the conversation.”
That’s what he remembers? Seriously?
“I’m not that bad anymore. I cannot keep saying, ‘hey you or him’ every time I need to mention someone’s name. I caught some of them when you guys were introducing yourselves.” She pointed to Wolf. “That’s Wolf One.” Then she turned and pointed to the other one. “That’s Wolf Two. That one is Hunt, which I’m assuming is a surname, and you are dumbass.” She quirked up one eyebrow. “How am I doing on the name front there, hotshot?”
“You can tell her our names, man,” one of Wolf’s team interrupted. “Her clearance has just been verified. Hey, I’m Abe.”
“Be straight up and direct with him,” a man with a gnarly scar on his face which the camo paint didn’t quite hide said. “We call him honest Abe.”
That made sense in her head, and she nodded. “Be direct, got it.”
“Yup.” He pointed to his chest. “I’m Mozart. Just don’t ask me to start playing music and crap, because I couldn’t fit the piano in my ruck.”
“Hah.” From the way he mostly kept the scarred side of his face turned away from her, she was guessing he was self-conscious about it. But didn’t he know a scar wasn’t anything to be self-conscious about? It was a badge of honor which proved you fought the battle and came out alive.
“The one over there…” Mozart pointed a little to the right, “…that’s Cookie. If we need to swim, you latch onto him, as he’s our best swimmer.”
“No swimming, please.” She waved at Cookie. “But noted.”
“And Mozart is our medic,” Abe called softly over his shoulder. “You’ll let him look at that cut on your neck, right?”
“Draven patched it up.” Trust an operator to have spotted the bandage. “It’s only a scratch. Draven would have been carrying me as if I’d broken my leg if it was worse.”
“Smart man,” Mozart interjected. “You should listen to him.”
“Listening to him has been the bane of my existence since I was a kid,” she whispered. “Please don’t encourage him.”
“No promises,” Mozart said mildly. “We protect women, and your Draven better do the same or he’ll answer to us.”
Her Draven? Hah, if only they knew he’d slammed the door on that idea years ago.
“Dude is our explosives guy.” Mozart pointed to another one of the men who acknowledged with a wave of one hand. “You’ll recognize him by the good looks, and he’ll give you the bird with only one hand.” Mozart lowered his voice. “The other has some chewed up fingers from saving our asses.”
“Another medal of honor.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Like you have on your face.”
“I—uh—”
“She’s got you there, bro,” Dude interjected. “If you deny it, I’m telling Ice and Summer.”
“Asshole.”
She could tell there was no heat behind the reprimand. She briefly wondered if Ice and Summer were other operators or their significant others. She kinda hoped they were these men’s wives. Men like these deserved to have someone waiting at home for them.
Mozart flipped Dude off and pointed to the last man on the team. “That’s Benny. If you’re in a jam and need someone to pick a lock, he’s your guy.”
“Awesome. Hi, Benny.”
He acknowledged her with a short nod and went back to scanning the area with his night vision.
“Pop quiz time,” Draven quipped. “Who is—oopf.” He thankfully shut up when she elbowed him hard in the belly, giving her time to put names to the faces and hopefully remember them.
Mozart… the pretty one.
Wolf… the growly one.
Abe… the honest one.
Dude… the boom-boom one.
Benny… the escape artist.
Cookie… the fishy one.
She could totally remember them. She hoped.