I felt distinctly out of place.
I didn’t usually let my past dictate my present; I didn’t hold my past against me. But when surrounded by such finery and luxury, I had a hard time forgetting that I was once the girl who dug through dumpsters for returnable cans so I could afford a single hit of smack.
Puck had been sitting quietly with his eyes closed but he let out a sigh, tracing the stitching in the leather. “I never quite get used to this kind of thing,” he said.
“You must have been reading my mind,” I murmured to him. “I was thinking the same thing.”
He took my hand. “I always feel like I’m gonna get the seat dirty, you know? Like, even if I’m all showered and wearing nice clothes, I still don’t feel like I belong. In my head, deep down, I’m still that kid from Arkansas who grew up in pool halls and poker tournaments, hanging out with strippers and cashing in stolen chips so I could I buy candy. My dad let me run wild, you know? When we weren’t on the road playing poker, I was out in the woods, fending for myself, usually barefoot in a pair of shorts. Literally, I grew up half-naked most of the time, and the rest of the time I was surrounded by hookers, strippers, cardsharps, and bikers. Shit like this”—he gestured around us—“it makes me nervous. I’ll never fit in, is how I feel.”
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 felt like it was over. Had that feeling, you know? Relief mixed with exhaustion, plus a helping of was 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 afford one G650, 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.
“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.
&nb
sp; 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.
“Of course it does. How many houses does the bastard have?” I wondered.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“I wasn’t asking you, kid. Just wondering out loud.”
I stared as the line of vehicles halted in the circle drive, the center of which was an elaborate marble fountain carved to look astonishingly like a Greek goddess version of Kyrie. Roth was out of his car and striding toward the door, greeting a tuxedo-clad older guy.
“Yo, Roth!” I called out, as we approached him.
He paused, glancing back at me. “Yes, Puck?”
“Is that a real-deal butler?”
Roth allowed a ghost of a smile to touch his lips. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Although I think Nigel would prefer the term majordomo.”
“And his name is Nigel, too. That’s fucking awesome.” I eyed the house. “Does this place come with a bat cave, too?”
Roth let out a dignified little breath that I realized was his classy, elegant version of a laugh. “Something like that, yes. I call it the toy box, though. You’ll like it, I’m sure. I’ll show it to you in the morning.” He turned to Nigel. “For now, however, Nigel has arranged for the kitchen to be at the ready. Rooms have been prepared, so it’s up to each of you how you wish to arrange yourselves. The phones have buttons labeled for the kitchen, so all you have to do is call down and put in a request, and your orders will be brought to you. Much like room service, but better and faster. Have a pleasant evening, and let’s plan on reconvening over breakfast for the formal debriefing.”
We entered through the front door and into a marble and dark wood foyer that opened into the kind of room you’d envision this place having: sweeping staircases swirling in grand arcs from the third floor all the way down to the first floor, with hallways running off into three different wings on each level. Hanging in the center of the foyer was a massive chandelier that looked like it was made of thousands of tiny pieces of antique crystal. Nigel paused at the bottom of the staircases, where a squadron of staff members waited in precise formation, each man and woman wearing formal livery. I felt like I’d walked onto the set of Downton Abby, and should be thrown out for ruining the take with my grubby ass.
“I don’t have a full menu prepared, I’m afraid,” Nigel said, sounding exactly like I’d hoped, with an arch, crisp, precise British accent. A walking cliché, which tickled me pink, to the point that I had to restrain myself from dissolving into helpless laughter, but may have just been exhaustion. “Although I’m confident we can accommodate most requests.”
“I’m pretty simple,” I said, my exhaustion eroding my already nonexistent filter. “All I need is a bottle of Scotch and some pizza.”
Nigel didn’t miss a beat. “For Scotch, sir, we have Yamazaki eighteen year, Macallan twenty-seven year, and Johnnie Walker Blue Label King George the Fifth Edition. And sundry lesser varieties as well, of course. As far as pizza goes, I did have the staff start the wood-fired pizza oven, and I believe Chef Thomas has favored a margherita of late, which I would recommend.”
I blinked. “Damn, Nigel, you don’t dick around, do you?”
“Certainly not, sir.”
I clapped him on the shoulder, receiving a slightly disapproving frown in response. “Margherita and Yamazaki sounds perfect. Thanks, buddy.” I glance
d past him at the staff. “Now, which one of these fine people can show me to a bedroom?”
Nigel snapped his fingers, and a young man practically leapt out of formation, bowed at me, and gestured at the staircase. I followed him, stopping when I realized Colbie was still down at the bottom of the stairs, hesitating.
“Colbie, you coming?” I asked, holding out my hand to her.
She hid a smile and swept up the stairs after me.
I was struck again by how beautiful Colbie was—even after all we’d been through, her hair was still in perfect red-brown waves around her slim shoulders, and even though her skirt and blouse were a bit wrinkled, she moved with poise, grace, and elegance, still wearing her three-inch heels. Her face was drawn, with dark circles under her eyes, but she held herself upright and smiled at me as she wrapped her hand around my elbow with the kind of formality that would suggest we were departing for the theah-tah or something. It was a tiny gesture, her hand around my elbow, but it made me feel . . . proud. I dunno how to else to put it. Like, I was proud she’d chosen to walk with me, to be seen with me. I imagined how amazing it would feel to be out with her, to have people watch us walking down the street together. Of course, they’d probably ask why the hell a gorgeous, classy, elegant lady like Colbie was slumming it with a meathead biker dick like me. And that would be an excellent question. One which I wouldn’t have an answer for, other than I didn’t know, but thank fuck she was.
Puck: Alpha One Security Book 4 Page 18