Page 23 of Gamma
He hangs up and pockets the phone. “Okay, change of plans. I guess Lear’s old lady Cuddy has a stash spot here in Lisbon, so we’re gonna raid that for some gear, and an old friend named Alexei is going to meet us there.”
“A stash spot?”
His phone dings, and he pulls it back out, glances at it, and puts it away. “Gonna need a cab—it’s on the other side of the city.” He leads us away from the dead-end alley we’ve been in and to the main road, where we hail a cab; after Duke gives the driver the address, he answers my question. “A stash spot is a safe house. A little flat or apartment where we keep extra gear. Guns, ammo, cash, extra passports, shit like that. I’ve got ’em in a few cities across the globe, just not in Lisbon.”
“And who is Alexei?”
“He used to work for A1S, back in the day. He helped us with the whole Cain situation. After that cleared up, he took a job over here somewhere, working for a friend of Harris’s. I guess there was some tiff between him and Sasha, I dunno. Family squabbles, whatever, right? He’s been over here—meaning Europe somewhere. He still contracts for us when we need him. He’s a bad dude, and I mean that in the best possible way. If I can’t have Thresh or Puck with me in the shit, I’ll take those crazy-ass Georgians any day.”
The cab winds through Lisbon traffic.
“Which is why I’ve never met him, I guess.”
He nods. “Yeah, he and Sasha made a helluva team together. Last time I remember directly working with him was when Cain snatched Lear and we had to shoot our way out of…where the fuck was it? Riga?”
I snicker. “Where the hell is Riga?”
“Latvia. Beautiful city. You and Apollo should go, once this is over.”
“You seem certain it’s going to end well for us.”
Duke regarded me with a cold expression. “I get you don’t know firsthand what it is we do. You grew up in a peaceable stretch of years. And I’m damn glad of it. But we, meaning we of Alpha One Security,do notfucking lose people. I say this with certainty. Your mother got snatched, we got her back. Layla got snatched, we got her back. Fucking all of us at one point or another have been off-grid and pursued if not in the hands of enemies, including your father and yours truly. We have never fuckingeverlost someone. And we are not about to start now. Apollo is a smart, canny motherfucker. Tough, too. I don’t know how much you know about that vigilante sting operation he ran against the traffickers, but that shit was gnarly as fuck.”
“I only know what he told me, and what Uncle Harry confirmed—he and a…friend, I guess, took out some human traffickers.”
A snort. “Ah, here we are.”
The cab stops, let us out at a long low building, the door of which opens directly on the street; there’s a keypad above the door handle, and Duke consults his phone and then enters a code, which unlocks the door. Stairs up greet us on the other side of the door, which takes us to a loft-style flat, a single open room. There’s a kitchenette in one corner and a bathroom behind a free-standing wall of frosted glass. The rest is simply open space—occupied entirely by racks of gear.
My mind boggles. “You could outfit an entire fucking army, Uncle Duke.”
He stands in the center of the room, rubbing his hands together with an eager expression on his face. “Yes, you could. Our girl Cuddy does not fuck around.” His phone rings, and he answers it. “Yeah, hello? No fuckin’ way! Alexei, my man, good to hear your voice…yeah we’re in Lisbon, waiting for word from Lear on tracking a ship. Look, filling you in any more should probably happen in person, because even secure lines ain’t exactly secure, you know? When can you get here? Well, that’s the issue—we don’tknowwhere we’re going next, because we’re still trying to get a lock on our target. Malta? Hmmm. It is pretty central to where we’re thinking the ship is heading. Okay, yeah, that’ll work—we’ll head there. I’ll hit you up when we touch down. Cool, see ya.” He ends the call, shoves the phone back in his pocket, and goes over to a rack of ultra-compact submachine guns.
“So, we’re going to Malta?”
“He’s in Rome right now, on a personal holiday, but he agreed to cut it short and meet us in Malta. Which is—”
I glare at him, cutting him off. “I know where Malta is, Duke.”
“You didn’t know where Riga was,” he points out, smirking at me.
“Excuse me for not knowing too much about Latvia. I’m kind of a sheltered brat, in case you weren’t aware.”
“Sheltered, sure, brat, not really. You’re the daughter of one of the wealthiest men on the planet, in the history of mankind, so being a little sheltered is excusable.” He winks at me to tell me he’s still teasing. “Not knowing basic European geography? Less so.”
“Oh shut up. Let’s get what we need and get going.”
Duke runs his hands over the butts of the various firearms. “Let’s do the HK…” He selects a weapon, slings it by the strap from a shoulder, and then moves to the rack of pistols. “I need a couple backups. Beretta? Glock? How about a Glock. Or two.” He’s murmuring under his breath. “Spare mags for both…”
He glances at me. “You know how to shoot?”
I shrug. “Some. I’ve done time in the shooting range back home. Mom and Dad’s, I mean. I can generally hit the target, and I certainly know which end to, like, hold on to, at least.”
“Good enough.” He grabs a pistol from the rack, and a holster with a complicated webbing of straps. “Blazer off.”
I never changed out of my power suit, so I’m wearing white tailored slacks and a matching blazer, with a mint green silk blouse underneath, and white Louboutin wedges. I shuck the blazer off, and Uncle Duke guides the straps over my arms; it actually fits much like a second bra, clasping in front under my breasts, with the weapon itself sitting along my ribcage midway down my left side. After I put the blazer back on, you can’t even tell I’m wearing it, unless you know what to look for.
Duke flicks a finger at me. “Draw.”