Page 60 of Puck
I couldn’t and didn’t try to resist the need to rest my head on his shoulder. “Exactly how I feel. I’m sitting here thinking, I was the girl who would dumpster-dive for returnables so I could buy smack, or sit outside subway turnstiles begging for change so I could buy a burger. I’m always going to be that girl, no matter how far away I try to get from her, no matter where I live or what I do to escape her.”
“That’s not us anymore, though,” Puck said. “May have been who we were, but it’s not who we are now. We belong wherever we decide we want to go.”
I clung to his arm. “It’s hard to forget, though.”
“That’s the damn truth.”
Silence. I wasn’t even aware of having taken off, but the screens displayed a darkening sky full of stars above with intermittent shreds of grayish-white clouds, city lights glowing in golden webs below.
“What happens next, Puck?” I whispered.
He squeezed my thigh. “I take you to the nearest hotel and fuck your brains out.”
“Puck,” I sighed. “I’m being serious.”
He lifted an eyebrow at me. “So am I.” He held the expression for a moment, and then winked at me, cracking into a grin. “But for real though, I don’t know what’s next.”
9: Kiss With A Capital K
It feltlike it was over. Had that feeling, you know? Relief mixed with exhaustion, plus a helping ofwas I totally sure it was over?
The plane landed at some private airfield owned by Roth—in upstate New York, if I had to guess, and we were met by Harris’s A1S Strike Team Beta. That was to say, a dozen hard-eyed kids fresh off combat deployment, decked out in black paramilitary BDUs and body armor, each wielding an MP5SD and a personal sidearm. I knew for a fact there was at least one sniper out there, somewhere, and probably someone with a SAW—Harris didn’t fuck around. The B-team was arrayed in a box formation, rifles at the ready.
Harris, Duke, Thresh, and Roth all stood together in a cluster inside the box, each looked more pissed off than the last. A line of shiny black Mercedes-Maybach G650s stood idling nose to tail, five of them, which represented something like $2.75 million—chump change for Roth, a not so small fortune for the rest of us, even though we five core A1S got paid stupid amounts of money for what we did—corporate exec money, low seven digits a year. I could affordoneG650, but it would set me back a nice chunk. Five? I mean, no. But Roth, as I overheard Kyrie say, could buy entire islands from a cell phone. This wasn’t him rolling out the red carpet, this was just Roth providing his idea of decent transportation.
LOL, as the kids said these days.
I could tell Colbie was unnerved and impressed though. I meant, it was an impressive sight. The B-team kids were chosen as much for looks, physique, and intimidation value as their combat record and résumé, meaning, they were all six-feet-plus and built like gods, with ridiculously chiseled features and chins you could use as anvils. Harris used the B-team when he wanted to send a visual message—do NOT fuck with me.They weren’t eye-candy, though, they were all seasoned warriors who could and would pull the trigger. But in this case, it was meant to communicate that he took this seriously.
Although, I knew the real work of sorting out the situation was done by the two notably absent members of A1S, Anselm and Lear. With any luck, Lear would track Cain down, and Anselm would put a .50 Cal slug through his fucking skull, and that would be that.
The women, led by Layla, exited the plane in a jog, and reunited with their men in a welter of joyful shrieks and happy crying and wet kissing.
Colbie and I were the last ones to descend the steps, and she leaned close and nudged me. “Hey,” she whispered, “who are all the men?”
“The guys in formation with the machine guns are the B-team, and I don’t know any of their names. Harris has probably assigned them stupid codenames like Honcho and Ripper and Comanche and shit. Don’t know, don’t care. They’re here to make sure nothing goes FUBAR at the last second. The dudes in the center are my boys. I’m sure you’ve heard the names by now.” We were face to face with the crew, so I turned it into introductions, pointing at each in turn. “Duke Silver, the ginger pretty boy; Thresh is the one who looks like the love child of Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger; Harris, the boss; and last but not least, Valentine Roth, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist—wait, that’s Tony Stark. Roth is just a billionaire philanthropist, seeing as he gave up his playboy ways to marry Kyrie and, last I checked, he’s not a certified genius.”
Roth actually laughed. “Has anyone ever told you your mouth is going to get you in trouble?”
“All the time,” I said, “but that’s what makes me so much fun.”
Roth grabbed me by the shoulder and squeezed hard. “I have to say, listening to Harris and trusting you and Ivar to bring my wife home was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If it had been up to me, I’d have sent in a mercenary army.”
I nodded and clapped his arm. “You couldn’t have gotten anything together fast enough to make a difference. I was the best bet, and Ivar . . . well, he was indispensable. We literally wouldn’t be here without him.” I frowned. “Speaking of Ivar, I owe him a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle.”
Colbie stood quietly by and seemed a little awestruck, to be honest. And I got it. Duke was blindingly pretty on top of being a burly brute of a man, and Thresh was bigger than fucking Godzilla and almost as good looking as Duke, and Harris wasn’t far behind either of them in terms of build or looks, and Valentine Roth was almost as famous for being hot as he was rich and mysterious, and I said that as a totally straight male who loved tits and ass and pussy with an almost rabid intensity. So yeah, to the uninitiated, I could see how all those big, ripped, good-looking dudes in one place might be a little hard to handle at first.
“I think if you guys did a shirtless calendar, all the ovaries in the country might combust at once,” Colbie said.
Which got a lot of laughter, from the other women especially.
“Hey, dickbag, who’s the hot new girl?” Duke asked.
I realized I’d only done half the introductions. “Oh, right. Guys, this is Colbie Danvers. She was one of the women abducted by Cain’s shitheads.”
“And here she is,” Harris said, “all cuddled up next to you.”
Colbie was tucked against my side, my arm around her protectively, but then when Harris cracked his joke, she straightened away from me.