Page 67 of Omega
“Layla, this is Thresh,” Harris said, pulling his bag of guns out of the back of the Defender. “Thresh is Rambo’s worst nightmare.”
“Well. That’s a fun thought.” I held out my hand. “Nice to meet you, Thresh.”
Thresh took my hand in his and shook it once. His grip was surprisingly gentle, as if he had to consciously focus on the act of not crushing my hand like a pretzel stick. “Glad to see you in one piece,” he rumbled.
He turned away then and took the bag from Harris, brought it inside the house, once again ducking his head and turning slightly sideways to fit through the doorway. Let me reframe this for you. The doorway was average height and width, but Thresh was of a size that he had to not only duck to fit vertically, but had to twist sideways to get his shoulders through the door. The bag, meanwhile, which Harris had carried with visible effort, Thresh dealt with by threading two fingers through the straps. He was carrying it like it was a grocery bag full of bread. I watched his acres of tan muscle and shaggy blond hair vanish into the interior of the house, and then I turned to Harris.
“Where the hell did you find Goliath, there?” I asked.
“I was in the Rangers with him.”
“Is his name really Thresh?”
Harris shrugged. “Wouldyouask him his real name? I know very little about him besides his qualifications, which are pretty self-evident. I mean, sheer size aside, he’s a stone-cold killer. He’s deceptively fast and silent, which should be impossible for a man of his size. I’ve seen him use at least four different kinds of martial arts. He’s a dead shot with a rifle, proficient with explosives, fluent in four languages, good with computers, and is, obviously, the strongest person I’ve ever met.”
“And he’s unquestionably on our side?”
“I trust Thresh with my life.”
“You trust him with your life, but you don’t know his real name?”
“His name is Thresh. That’s all I need to know. His personal life is his business, not mine.”
Thresh returned at that moment, a khaki rucksack on his back. “Perimeter’s clear. Sensors are in place. I’ll have us a ride out of South America by the time you reach Rio.” He handed Harris a set of keys. “This place is good for seventy hours, no more. See you in Rio.”
Harris unlocked the gate, let Thresh through, and locked it behind him. I glanced at Harris as he pocketed the keys, and when I turned back less than two seconds later, Thresh was gone, as if he’d never been there in the first place.
“Where the hell’d he go?”
Harris just shrugged. “Who knows? Man’s a ghost.”
“How can a seven-foot-tall giant just fucking vanish into thin air?”
This earned me a grin. “See why he’s the only one I brought with me to come get you? Now get your ass in the house. We need to keep a low profile.”
I preceded Harris into the house, heard him close the door behind us and turn several locks. The interior was dark and cool, and I noticed the shadow of bars across the windows and the front door. There was a couch under the front bay window, thick tan curtains pulled across the glass. The couch was out of the seventies, lime green fake leather. Everything, in fact, was seventies, I realized as I moved through the tiny house, from the window treatments to the appliances to the wallpaper.
There was a minuscule galley kitchen, a single bathroom not much larger than an RV bathroom, and one bedroom.
I heard Harris prowling around much as I was, peering out of windows, testing locks and windows. When he was satisfied, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped it to unlock the touch screen, tapped an icon, then tapped and swiped at the screen a few times.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He moved to stand beside me, showing me the screen. “Just making sure I’m connected to all the cameras and sensors Thresh installed. See?”
He cycled through several screens, one of the front of the house as seen from the roof across the street, one of each side looking out, and two from the back, one looking out and one looking at the house from some tall structure behind the house. There were also blank screens with “armed” and “clear” written in green letters, which I assumed were motion sensors.
The next thing Harris did was pull weapons out of the bag and hide them in various places around the house: in a box in a cupboard, duct-taped to the wall behind the fridge and behind the toilet, between the mattress and box spring in the bedroom, between the cushions of the couch, a huge assault rifle stood on its stock in the broom closet. He set another handgun on the nightstand beside the bed with two spare clips beside it.
I watched him the whole time. Meeting Thresh had momentarily distracted me from my hyper-sexual awareness of Harris, but now that we were alone again, it came rushing back at me like a runaway freight train. I was aware of the way his sweat-darkened BDU shirt was sticking to his spine; of the way each movement he made seemed to have a specific purpose, no wasted motions, no wasted energy. I was aware of the bulge in the front of his pants, lessened at the moment. I was aware of his corded forearms and chiseled biceps.
I was aware of his gaze as it slid away from his phone and to my eyes.
I was aware of the way he slid the phone back in his pocket and prowled over to me, bulge in his pants getting larger as he approached. I was aware of his eyes on my chest as I breathed, intensity and anticipation and arousal making me short of breath, which meant my breasts swelled with each breath.
“Where’d you get these clothes?” he asked.
“I stole a car from the valet in Vitaly’s hotel. He gave them to me.”