Page 61 of Puck
“That a problem, boss?” I said, tugging her back against me.
He just shook his head and laughed. “No, it’s just funny.”
Colbie didn’t fight me as I pulled her back into a casual side-hug, but was tense and stiff. “Why is it funny?” she asked.
Harris—flanked by Thresh and Duke—gestured with his thumbs to either side. “I’m just noticing a pattern. Thresh goes down to Florida, and this whole fucking snafu breaks open. Bam, next thing you know, I’m rescuing him from the fucking Everglades with a sexy doctor hanging off him. Then Duke goes AWOL, and he turns up with a hot-ass celebrity. And now Puck vanishes only to reappear with you. Are you a doctor or a celebrity or some shit too?”
She laughed. “No, none of the above.”
“By none of the above, she means she’s a Harvard Business grad and fluent in three languages,” I said.
Thresh made a rumbling sound, which was his cave-troll version of laughter. “Harvard educated, multilingual, and drop-dead gorgeous. I think you’ll fit right in, Colbie Danvers.” He reached out and shook her hand. “Welcome to the Alpha One family.”
Judging by the way she ducked her head and grinned, she was probably blushing, which I noticed she did a lot and easily, despite her tough-girl persona. It was cute. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Don’t give her too much shit about the welcome to the club business,” Layla said. “She’s still not sure about Puck.”
“Hell, I’ve known the man going on ten years, and I’m still not sure about Puck,” Harris said.
“None of you fuckers are being helpful,” I snapped. “Lay off.”
Colbie patted my chest. “Relax, Puck. I told you, I can take a joke.”
Duke snickered. “Ohh shit, we’ve got a live one.” He pointed at Colbie. “Better clean out your porn stash, Puck, you’re gonna want to hang on to this chick.”
“I don’t think they make dumpsters big enough for Puck’s porn collection,” Thresh said.
“Ha fucking ha, dickheads.” I tried to pass it off as another joke. “Very funny.”
“You have a storage unit full of it, Puck,” Duke said. “Who’s being funny?”
Colbie to the rescue, apparently. “Well, at least I’ll have somewhere to store my own collection, then.”
Neither Duke nor Thresh knew how to respond.
“We were . . . um, totally kidding,” Thresh said, going for last second diplomacy.
“That’s weird of you. I wasn’t.” Colbie remained straight-faced.
“You have a porn collection? I wouldn’t have guessed.” Layla peered at Colbie from underneath Harris’s arm. “We’ll have to watch porn and drink some cab sav together sometime.”
Colbie shrugged. “Hey, I’m full of surprises.”
“No shit,” I murmured. Then louder, to the group: “Can we get the fuck out of here already? I’m hungry and I haven’t slept in more than two days.”
“Mount up, folks,” Harris said, his voice cracking through the quiet. “We’re headed to a place Roth has about an hour from here. We’ll have a quick debrief and then everyone can get some R&R.”
The B-team boys spread out, reforming the box in a spaced-out perimeter around the four vehicles. I noticed three blacked-out Suburbans waiting in the shadows, and as we loaded into the pimped-out G-Wagens—one couple per vehicle—the B-team jogged to the Suburbans and piled in, four to a truck. Each G-Wagen had its own uniformed and probably armed RTI driver—Roth Transportation Industries.
Once Colbie and I were buckled into the backseat of our Mercedes, I glanced over at her, and she was drifting off. I was fading myself, and hard. My eyes were burning, and my head was full of cotton. When I said I’d been awake for more than two days that was a conservative estimate. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept, and things had been the opposite of boring in the meantime.
The last thing I remembered was holding Colbie’s hand and leaving the airfield, the caravan of vehicles winding through a quiet, hilly, rural area, a few stands of trees here and there, white fences enclosing rolling pastures, and not a single vehicle anywhere to be seen. And then warm peacefulness as I drifted off.
I woke up about an hour later as we ascended a hill, and a sprawling three-story estate mansion appeared in the distance. We passed through a gate, which I noticed was heavily fortified, monitored, and manned by four A1S boys—a fifteen-foot-high stone block wall extended away from the gate in both directions, cordoning off what had to be a good twenty acres of rolling grass hills, leading to the mansion itself. The house was eye-wateringly huge, yet tasteful and beautiful. It looked like something you’d see in a period-piece movie about seventeenth-century French nobility, all intricate columns and gabled dormers, manicured lawns and topiary shrubbery lining the fine gravel circular driveway.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked out loud, meaning it rhetorically.
“It belongs to Mr. Roth, I believe, sir,” the driver said.