Safe Heart (Dreamspun Desires Book 102)

by Amy Lane

“Poker?” Cash asked.

  “Rummy,” Glen told him. “Who plays poker with two people?”

  “Rummy,” Cash agreed. His mouth thinned into a sarcastic smile. “Sounds unforgettable.”

  “Nothing about you is forgettable,” Glen said, stone-cold sober. “That’s why we’re playing rummy.”

  Cash turned to walk some more, but he stayed close to Glen, like they were friends, or even lovers.

  And he kept tight hold of Glen’s hand the entire time.

  They went back to the hotel and played rummy until Spencer and Damien knocked on their door to let them know they’d gotten back.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Damien said with a yawn. “Time for all good boys to go to bed.”

  Spencer grunted and Damien shoulder-bumped him.

  “That’s you too. No going out and getting laid—we have to be up early.”

  Spencer looked bored, but he acquiesced on a burp. “I’ve got some gas anyway. Damned burritos. Tasted great, but seriously—one of those could blow up a concert hall.”

  Glen and Damien stared at him.

  “I can’t even believe…,” Damien began.

  “Who would bang this guy?” Glen asked in awe.

  “You assholes only wish you knew,” Spencer muttered. “Night, killjoys. No banging your boyfriends either. If I have to suffer, we all have to suffer.”

  And with that he stalked off, leaving Damien to shut the door behind him and Glen and Cash to look at each other and laugh.

  They went to bed not long after that, wearing sweats because the room was chilly. Cash scooted close enough for them to whisper, and Glen thought that he sure was pretty. It hadn’t been the first thing he’d noticed about Cash Harper, but once the stubborn chin and the big velvet eyes landed their punch, that sting wasn’t going away.

  “I know how Spence gets guys,” Cash whispered.

  “Do I want to know this?” Glen had seen the parade of men through Spencer’s room. Little blond twinks, big hairy bears—the variety was endless, and Glen was seriously in awe.

  “You do,” Cash said, peeking up through his impossibly long lashes. “It’s the same way you got me.”

  “They talk him into it?” That did not sound right at all.

  Cash laughed. “No.” He pressed his palm against Glen’s chest and spread his fingers flat. “This right here. And if you say your pecs, I’ll deck you. His heart. It’s as good as yours. But I only want yours.”

  Glen found a wicked smile twisting the corners of his mouth. “Good. ’Cause I might have to cook his up and eat it for breakfast if you suddenly went another way with that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Cash said, not taking the bait. “You’d get all sad and noble and maybe move out and maybe drink a whole lot you shouldn’t. But you wouldn’t hurt your friend. And that’s why you. Why we’re not banging tonight. Why we’re waiting until we get Brielle safe and then it’s just you and me and reckoning. Because your heart is good. And you wouldn’t hurt your friend, even though you care for me too.”

  Augh! “You had to make this serious,” Glen complained. “It is bad luck to go out on an op with your heart all tangled around your feet.”

  Cash kissed him. Gentle. Soft. Not asking for any more than a taste. Glen parted his lips and accepted, partly out of surprise, but truth was, Glen knew what he was doing.

  Cash’s tongue flirted in, tasted briefly, and then flickered out. “Night, flyboy,” Cash murmured. He rolled over and backed up against Glen, who was logically the big spoon, probably. After a moment of indecision, Glen wrapped his arm around Cash’s chest and pulled close, burying his face against the back of Cash’s neck, smelling everything from his grooming products to the tang of salt air to the faint musk of sweat.

  Heady and male, all of it.

  “Night, Cash,” Glen said gruffly.

  It wasn’t until he heard Cash’s happy sigh that he realized he’d forgotten to say it—there was no “kid” or “boy” hanging over them, not now.

  Yeah, fine. He was dealing with a man in his arms, in his bed. So what?

  So everything.

  He closed his eyes, comforted in spite of himself.

  Everything.

  THE next morning found them, showered and dressed, in Preston and Damien’s room, eating doughnuts and looking over the map that Damien had prepped after last night’s recon.

  “Good doughnuts, Spence,” Glen said, giving credit.

  “It’s a gift,” Spencer acknowledged. “Damie, tell him the bad.”

  Damien grimaced. “Speaking of gifts.”

  But Spencer was unimpressed. “No, seriously. Tell him the bad.”

  Damien looked at Preston’s dog. “Preacher, kill.”

  Preacher smiled back at Damien, tongue lolling, like these were his best people here and he was going to enjoy every word. Preston himself wasn’t engaged in conversation. He was sitting in a corner of the room, a plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast in front of him. He ate distractedly while playing simple games on a charging computer tablet, his brow furrowed in concentration. Glen, his mother, his grandmother, and even Damien, had all put their heads together as Preston’s world got bigger than his home, trying to come up with a way for Preston to disengage from people when he was in an alien place and easily overwhelmed. The tablet was the best thing, but sudoku could do in a pinch. The simplicity of math games helped Preston arrange his thoughts neatly, and that let him deal with people, who were not always so neat.

  “That dog loves me,” Spencer said, not batting an eyelash. “Damien, he’s going to have to know—”

  “Gun towers,” Damien said, glaring at Spencer. “And I was getting to them.”

  “There’s more than that,” Spencer said grimly. “At least I think so.”

  They all looked to him for clarification.

  “So we took a basic fishing boat—shallow, but it could hold our gear, right?”

  They all nodded.

  “Now, there’s an obvious place to land—it’s a big cove, straight walk up to the house. The sides have some foliage, and we figured we could hide in there, right?”

  Everybody nodded, and Spencer continued.

  “So, we got about fifty feet from the island—swimming distance—and we feel something scraping up against the bottom of the boat. There’s man-made reefs out in the Sea of Cortez—some of the islands used to be processing centers for fish and fake pearls, and environmentalists repurposed the stuff that wouldn’t poison the water.”

  “Smart,” Glen said, approving. He and Damien had needed to make repurposing an art form when they’d started their own business—last year’s parachute became this year’s flight bag with a heavy-duty sewing machine and some creativity.

  “Yeah, well, for a minute we thought we’d run aground or something like that—but then….”

  Damien shuddered. “Then whatever it was underneath us gave a violent fucking heave, like it was spring loaded, and a goddamned wall shot out of the water.”

  “A what?” Glen asked, both impressed and appalled.

  “I swear to God it was like a Bond movie,” Damien muttered. “If we’d been in anything bigger—hell, anything with a motor, or even a goddamned cigarette boat or Zodiac—we would have been in trouble. This thing had an edge at the top to puncture something like a Zodiac, and it was thick enough to lift a bigger boat out of the water. We were in a tinyassed fishing boat, and it just slid off, but it scared the hell out of us.”

  “Wait—slid off?” Glen’s heart was pumping, and he wanted to smack them both. “You didn’t think to mention this to us last night?”

  Damien bared all his teeth. “There was no reason to mention it last night,” he said.

  “Also he didn’t want to worry me,” Preston said. His tablet was plugged in, but he’d stood up and given Preacher and Colonel the last of the sausage on his plate. Glen knew the look his brother had when he was recharged and ready to people again, and this was it.

 
; “That is true,” Damien said, nodding his head earnestly, which probably meant that Preston was about to get pissed.

  “Which is why he didn’t tell me last night,” Preston said, brows knitted. “But it also explains the big fucking bruises on his arms, probably from when the boat crashed down and you got thrown against the side. Ass. Hole.”

  Damien grimaced. “That is also true.”

  Spencer let out a snicker. “You thought that would work, did you?”

  “Shut up,” Damien told him.

  “That he wouldn’t get mad at you.”

  “Shut up.”

  “’Cause you people like to tell me what an asshole I am, but I could have told you—”

  “Shut up!” That came from Preston. “You’re both stupid, but I can be mad at Damien and I can’t be mad at you. So you have to let me deal with this.”

  Damien smirked at Spence. “See.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” Preston growled. “Now tell us more about the bad.”

  “It’s only on the mainland side of the island,” Damien said, sending Spencer a resentful glare. “The gun towers are on the peninsula side—and I have no idea why. The only thing they’re overlooking is a bunch of wildlife and a rocky shore. Sea lions, yes. Drug dealers, no. That side of the island is almost impossible to access, so either he’s super paranoid, or he just wanted to wave his big gun-dick around and show off to everybody.”

  “Or he’s afraid of someone swimming away,” Spencer said. “Because it would be possible to get to the peninsula from there. Not sure they could make it through the sea lions to get to civilization, but it would certainly freak people out enough to make them not want to try.”

  “But you guys got onto the island?” Glen asked, hating everything about this.

  “Yeah. After the wall sprang up, the boat slid back, away from the island, and it had some speed. So we lay flat against the bottom, and when the spotlight came up to hit the wall, it missed us completely.”

  “How big was the wall?” Obviously you couldn’t put something like this around the entire island—that would be impossible. The upkeep of the apparatus alone would be stupid expensive—salt water corrodes!

  “Ten by four over the water,” Spencer said. “Ten feet across, four feet tall, maybe six inches of what looked like repurposed fiberglass and old boat hulls. The shore close to the island had been mucked up with construction debris—we would have gutted the boat and ourselves if we’d hugged the shore. That was probably done on purpose, driving us to the center where the wall would come as a surprise.”

  “Surprise!” Damien said brightly, doing jazz hands.

  “I am very surprised,” Preston said darkly.

  “You knew it would be dangerous, baby,” Damien soothed, but Preston shook his head. Glen wasn’t too worried, though—Damien was damned near irresistible when he turned on the charm, and he loved Glen’s brother with a ferocity that was only surprising to people who didn’t know him.

  “Which is why you should have told me last night,” Preston growled.

  Damien lowered his head. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m still mad,” Preston said.

  “I know.”

  “But I’ll still kiss you goodbye because I worry.”

  Damien gave him a glowing smile. “That’s good. I was hoping for that.”

  Spencer made a gagging motion, and Cash smirked. Glen joined them both, but inside he was a little jealous. Preston and Damien had a true partnership—very rarely spotted in the wild and much coveted by people wise enough to know what they saw.

  “And can we get back to the recon?” Glen asked after a polite moment to let the two of them eyehump. “Because I’m wondering how we get on this island in the middle of the day.”

  “O ye of little faith,” Spencer hummed. “Seriously—do you think we took a dump in our pants after the wall, then came back to the hotel to clean burritos out of our skivvies?”

  “He gets laid?” Damien asked.

  “I am saying!” Glen wasn’t buying Cash’s theory about the big heart—anybody with that mouth had to be living off a long dry spell.

  “Heh heh heh heh….” Spencer preened for a moment and then got down to business. “Okay, my sex life is entertaining, but we’ve got shit to sort. They mucked up the cove and put that fucking ridiculous spring-loaded wall in the natural landing spot—but it’s an island, and they don’t have unlimited resources.” Spencer pointed at the blown-up picture that Glen’s friend had gotten from the air. It was—like a lot of islands—amoeba shaped, with one side a little deeper indented to create a natural cove, which Spencer had marked as their original landing spot. “See this part here? The little divot? From the outside, it looks like a no-go. There’s some foliage that looks pretty damned dense, and nobody wants to fuck with it. But as Damien and I were skidding by, propelled by the damned wall, two things happened.”

  “The first was that we leaned starboard,” Damien interjected. “So we didn’t get close enough to that shit by the shoreline, but we did hug the shape of the island. It helped when the second part happened.”

  “What’s the second part?” Glen asked.

  “They pulled the fucking wall back down.” Spencer shook his head, obviously baffled.

  “How?” Cash wanted to know, and Spencer shrugged.

  “Rope? Magic? Don’t care. It lowered, and the backwash pushed us into a gap between what looked like two solid outcroppings but was really a small cove. It’s like one of those trick paintings—once you see it you can’t unsee it, but until someone points it out to you….” He gestured with his hands.

  “Invisible,” Glen said.

  “Bingo. So there was a wave surge, and then an actual wave, and then the wall sank—it was like a perfect storm, considering we were practically on the other side of the island. Anyway, we got backwashed between these two stone outcroppings into a gap that was—maybe—ten feet. The section of beach was literally the size of a prison cell. Don’t ask me how I know.”

  “Now I gotta,” Cash said, staring at him in horrified fascination.

  “I said don’t ask,” Spencer returned smartly. “Anyway, we dragged the boat up onto the shore, and sure enough there’s a narrow fissure between the rock walls that looks like it’s big enough to walk through—”

  “And now tell them about the other bad,” Damien said grimly.

  Spencer grunted. “There was… fauna.”

  Glen’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and Cash and Preston weren’t far behind. “Fauna?” Glen asked carefully.

  “Fauna,” Damien confirmed. “Of the crawling variety. We had Maglites ’cause we’re not idiots, and we hit the crevice with all we had. Most of the fauna slithered and/or skittered away. Now we’re both wearing boots, so there should be no problem, but….” He grimaced, and he and Spencer gave a collective shiver.

  “What?” Preston asked.

  “A snake,” Damien said, and Glen almost laughed.

  “Well, thank God it was something scary,” he said. “Did you move it?”

  “It’s over ten feet long,” Spencer muttered. “I swear to God, if it was an inch—”

  “A rattler?” Rattlesnakes could be dangerous, sure, but they almost always rattled before they struck.

  “Oh you wish,” Damien told him. “No, it was a fuckin’ fer-de-lance—”

  “It was not! They stay on the eastern side of Mexico!” Glen was truly surprised. “And they don’t get that big!” Eight feet was about maximum—yeah, Glen and Damien did enough business in Mexico to know the things to watch out for. Gators in Florida, cottonmouths in North and South Carolina, and rattlesnakes in all places south and west. Mostly, they didn’t like to kill things—they’d taken some snake-wrangling pointers from a friend who lived near Redding so they didn’t crash through all the things and leave blood and destruction in their wake, but they both knew how to kill a beastie if it wasn’t going to leave them alone.

  A fer
-de-lance had some of the most complex venom of any of the creatures in Mexico, and like a rattler, it had the camouflage to blend in to the desert topography. Unlike a rattlesnake, it didn’t have a warning system, and that was worrisome—particularly in one that big!

  “I can’t wait for you to see it,” Damien told him. “It’s ten feet if it’s an inch, and I’ll be surprised if it’s not twelve. I’m serious, Glen, she was a big mean bitch. She had a fucking rabbit in her teeth, otherwise she would have taken off—or gone for our jugulars because you never know with those nervous fuckers. It could go either way.”

  “What in the royal fuck is a fer-de-lance doing on an island in Baja?” Glen asked, not able to get over this.

  “I don’t know, Glen,” Damien told him, throwing his hands up. “Maybe she got picked up by a bird and then dropped there when she bit the bird and it fell out of the sky. Maybe someone flushed her down a toilet in Venezuela, and the sewer line popped her up here. Or maybe she’s a pet of what’s his face fuckhead who likes brainwashing kids into licking his toes. Who cares why the goddamned snake was wedged in a crack of the island’s ass. All we’re saying is that in order to kill it, we would have had to shoot it, because it was in too-close quarters for us to chop off its bloody head!”

  Spencer gave that low, evil chuckle. “I would have totally brought that thing back on a pike, too, man, ’cause that is some serious man versus nature shit right there.”

  “You have sick fantasies and should see a doctor,” Preston said, and because he was completely serious, with no irony whatsoever, he sent Glen and Damien into paroxysms of laughter.

  “See?” Damien howled. “I told you!”

  “I am not arguing!” Glen chuckled back. “Oh my God, Spencer, my brother’s going to ship you away to have your head examined if you don’t stop grossing us out!” The laugh was cleansing, and Glen wiped tears at the corner of his eyes before continuing. “But about the snake—did you get to the rest of the island?”

  “Yeah,” Spencer said. “We didn’t go through the crevice. We climbed the rock face and belly crawled over the small mesa. Fortunately the middle of the island has some vegetation on it, which acted as a cover.”