Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(73)
She made a face. “Hello? When you put it like that…”
“Good.” He nodded, throwing an arm around her shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world. She ignored what his fingers brushing against the bare skin on her arm did to her stomach. “It’s decided then. Leo?” He turned toward the man. “While you and the boys go superhero yourselves a rescue, Penni and I are gonna attempt to track down the hotel’s security director. See if he can answer some questions that have been troubling us about this whole goddamned clusterf*ck from the very beginning.”
“Ten-four.” Leo dipped his chin and shoved his smartphone into the breast pocket of his military-grade T-shirt. “It’ll take us…” He looked down at the thick, plastic watch on his trim wrist, then over at the swarthy, flirtatious man aptly nicknamed Romeo. “What do you figure, Delgado? Sixty minutes, give or take, to make the flight?”
“I’d say more like seventy or seventy-five,” Romeo replied, punching a finger onto the screen of his own cell phone before sliding it into the hip pocket of his jungle fatigues. His expression was so serious it was hard to fathom he was the same man who’d been grinning so cheerily while slinging insults at his teammates not more than ten minutes ago. “We have to swing by the airport and refuel the helo before heading out, so we’ll be at the mercy of the Malay ground crew there. But according to JSOC”—Joint Special Operations Command—“they know we’re coming and are ready for us. It should be a quick turnaround.”
“Hooah then, boys.” Dan lifted his free hand to bump knuckles with the SEALs as they filed past him toward the door. “Keep your heads on swivel out there.”
“Or as we say in Brooklyn,” she added, “keep chicky.”
“We never do it any other way,” Leo said as he slid by them.
And then, just like that, Penni was once again alone with Dan. Uh-oh. Well…and Irdina. Whew. Which reminded her. “What are we going to do about her?” She frowned toward the woman who sat slouched in the chair, no longer attempting to meet their eyes.
“Hell’s bells.” Dan ran a hand back through his hair again.
“I guess we could always turn her over to the local authorities,” she suggested.
“Negative.” Dan shook his head. “I say we get her some food, some water, make sure someone from the social services department—if there’s an equivalent department here, that is—looks after Jaya. And leave her here until someone from our side decides what to do with her. I don’t trust the locals. They’ll either let her get away scot-free or else brutally punish her for bringing this international goatf*ck down on their heads. And I’m thinking something more in the middle of those two would be better suited to the crime.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
“In the meantime, you and I need to find the manager and get whatever information he has on that security director. Starting with a home address.” Again she nodded. “And Penni?”
“What?”
“If you wanna talk about what happened back in the bathr—”
She shook her head, ducking out from under the comforting, distracting weight of his arm. “No. Let’s chalk it up to grief mixed with exhaustion and idiocy, and leave it at that. At least for right now.”
For a moment he just stood there, so tall, so strong, his hard expression unreadable. Then he shrugged, nodding, and she blew out a relieved breath.
She’d said at least for right now. But if she had her way, they’d never speak of it. Though…Christ on the cross, she’d always remember what she’d so foolishly asked him to do…
*
“The rain has washed away their tracks,” Noordin complained, his whining tone traveling from the end of Umar’s spine up his vertebral column to detonate at the base of his skull. When he turned, he found Noordin’s face was still dripping from the hard deluge they had trudged through for nearly an hour. Then again, it was possible that was not rain but sweat. With the passing of the storm and the baking of the sun, the humidity in the air was almost palpable. Those who were unused to the oppressiveness of the jungle, like Noordin, tended to disintegrate into soggy, disgusting messes.
“We should wait for the others to arrive,” Noordin continued, swatting at a mosquito. The man was too miserable to heed the warning glinting in Umar’s eyes. The fool. “During the last call on the satellite phone, they said they are only thirty minutes behind us. If we delay until there are more of us, then we can spread out to search. It will be easier than fumbling around in circles in the middle of this hot—”
“Do you value your life?” Umar asked, tilting his head. Although the expression he donned was curious, the edge in his voice alerted Noordin to the precariousness of his situation. Umar could tolerate many things. Bellyaching, as the American’s called it, was not one of them.
Noordin gulped as a muscle near his eye twitched fitfully. “Of course.”
“Then you will close your mouth and refrain from speaking until I give you leave to do so. Do you understand?”
Noordin nodded vigorously, the other two men carefully keeping their eyes trained on the narrow jungle path lest they incur any residual spillover from his wrath.
“Good then.” He turned to point out a bush with a couple of crushed leaves near its base. “And, yes, the rain did obscure their path. But only if you do not know what to look for. You see there?”