Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(11)
“Keepin’ him?”
“Yep.”
“Sonofa—”
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
“Shut up, you little bastard, before I turn you into fried chicken!” Leo shouted. Taking a quick sip of the coffee, he winced at its bitterness and swished the liquid through his furry teeth and over his fuzzy tongue before spitting it on the ground. Fuck a duck. Thank God he didn’t have a mirror. Because he didn’t think he’d like to see the thing staring back at him.
Raking in a deep breath, he steeled his woozy stomach against what was about to enter it before he upended the mug and downed the remaining contents, welcoming the burn in his throat because it distracted him from his other maladies. His uncle liked to brag that his coffee was strong enough to walk into a cup all on its own, and Leo figured that pretty much hit the nail on the head. Come on, caffeine. Work your wonders.
“And that’s what I’ve decided to call him, by the way,” Uncle John added.
Again, Leo went with the spectacularly witty rebuttal of “Huh?”
“Li’l Bastard. That’s what you and the others are always hollerin’ at him, so I reckon that should be his name.”
Leo once again lowered his gaze to the rooster. The annoying bird was obviously ready to let loose with another one of its ear-piercing crows. “Don’t you even think about it,” Leo snarled, stomping his foot in the sand. The rooster flapped its wings and let out a resentful squawk.
Woof! Woof! Woof!
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud. I’m goin’ to need a lot more coffee,” he warned his uncle. And as bad as he felt, he didn’t hesitate to take the half-empty mug when it was offered to him. Chugging what was left of his uncle’s coffee, he handed over both earthenware cups before squatting next to Meat. He’d promised Mason he’d look after the mutt. And even though scooping foul-smelling dog food from the sack they kept under the kitchen counter was something he looked forward to with about as much enthusiasm as a root canal, he was nothing if not a man of his word.
Besides, he knew one way to shut the silly dog up was to give him something to put in his mouth. “Are you hungry?” he asked the big, furry lunkhead, scratching the row of fat wrinkles that passed for Meat’s neck.
The bulldog immediately licked his chops, brown eyes sparkling with zealous canine fervor.
“Yeah? So what else is new?” Because as far as Leo could figure, Meat had three stomachs. The first was used for kibble. The second was used for Milk-Bones and the occasional morsel of human food the cunning mongrel managed to steal. And the third was used for any rank-ass smelly thing Meat happened to come across. In Leo’s estimation, each stomach had a limitless capacity.
“Come on, then,” he told the dog as he shuffled toward the house. The bracing effects of the coffee were beginning to take hold, making him feel almost human again. In fact, if the growling of his stomach was anything to go by, he might just be able to keep down some breakfast.
“What do you say to banana pancakes?” he asked his uncle as they trudged up the stairs leading to the pine-plank porch that wrapped around the bottom half of the old house. The whole structure needed a fresh coat of paint, but that was way down on Leo’s list of Shit That Needs Doin’. If it ever got done, that is, considering there was no real financial incentive to pretty up the place.
“You cookin’?” his uncle inquired.
Leo shot him a look as he reached into the breast pocket of his T-shirt. Snagging his pack of Big Red and quickly unwrapping a single stick, he folded the piece of cinnamon-flavored chewing gum into his mouth and said, “Are you tellin’ me you don’t know how to make banana pancakes?”
“It ain’t a matter of knowin’ how.” Uncle John shook his shaggy head. A lock of stark white hair flopped over his brow. “It’s a matter of effort versus pleasure. Is the pleasure I’m goin’ to get from eatin’ the pancakes worth the effort of me standin’ over a hot stove and flippin’ the suckers? I suspect not.”
Slack-ass hippie, indeed…
“Fine.” Leo opened the screen door, wincing when the hinges screamed in rusty agony. Item number one million and one on The List: oil the hinges. That one he would get around to eventually, if for no other reason than to mitigate any unnecessary noise on mornings like this. And on the subject of unnecessary noise, Meat raced by him, doggy nails scrabbling on the waxed wooden floor in his mad dash toward the kitchen. “I’ll cook. But only if you promise to turn that shit off, or else find some new music to torment us—”
His words were cut off when he heard the low buzz of the Canadian-built de Havilland Otter floatplane that was Romeo’s pride and joy. Romeo had purchased the single-engine, propeller-drive aircraft under the auspices of we need a faster way than the catamaran to get back and forth to Key West. But Leo figured Romeo just flat-out wanted the aircraft, considering his time behind the throttle was cut short due to the fact that they were now, you know, C-words. And even though it hadn’t really been in the budget, who was Leo to tell a guy he couldn’t spend his hard-earned cash the way he wanted? Plus, the plane had come in handy more than a time or two.
Of course, it had irked Romeo to no end that Wolf—the only other guy in their group with a pilot’s license—had gleefully requisitioned the aircraft for transportation preceding and following the trip to Seville. When Romeo objected, Wolf had simply said, his black eyes flashing, “Letting me take the Otter just makes plain good sense, and arguing about it is as useful as wrestling with shadows.”