Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(18)
“Clever.” Bran snorted, and Leo watched Olivia’s lips curve into a frown as her eyes glinted with… What was that emotion he saw on her face? Derision? Determination? Or desperation, perhaps?
Well, whatever it was, it made his heart clench and the deep breath he dragged into his lungs burn. Then again, maybe that last part was due more to the fact that the air inside the kitchen smelled strongly of chicory coffee mixed with the rather pungent aroma of the tuna casserole his uncle seemed to live on.
“Anyway,” she continued, “if we pull anchor now, we should arrive at the capsules about the same time the contractors will. Which is good since we have no idea what we’ll be dealing with out there. I’m hoping that if the boat sank, it pulled the terrorists down right along with it. But since Morales can’t take the chance of accessing our satellites to search the area without potentially alerting the moles to our little operation…” She let the sentence dangle, shrugging.
Leo sensed Bran and Mason’s gazes landing on his face. Carefully, feeling as if everything he’d worked so hard for during the last two months was on the line, and that Fate, in the form of one curvaceous female, was slicing at the rope, he said, “So you’re tellin’ me that not only do you want us to dive down and recover your lost capsules, but you also think it’s possible we’ll only be able to do that after a firefight with eight card-carryin’ al-Qaeda militants?”
“It’s not out of the question.” She met his gaze head-on.
Any other time he would have appreciated her no-bullshit approach. Not today. Because today she was attempting to involve him in a mission that would put an indefinite hold on his search for the Santa Cristina. Bad enough. Worse still was the fact that said mission might just be enough to get him and his men…his friends…killed. And that would pretty much obliterate any chance they had of keeping their promise.
Right. The thought sucked so hard he figured there was a hickey on his brain.
Looking around at his crew, Leo made a decision that went against everything he’d stood for since the day he attached his Budweiser, the pin of the Navy SEAL brotherhood, to his dress whites. “I’m afraid you’ve wasted a trip, Olivia,” he said, the words threatening to slip backward from his lips to lodge in his throat. “We weren’t jokin’ when we bugged out. We’re done. Finished. Kaput. Which means this is now a case of not my circus, not my monkeys. I suspect you and Morales can find a team of contractors with divin’ credentials that’ll allow you both to continue to keep this whole thing on the down-low while keepin’ us out of it.”
Olivia’s eyes rounded. Yessir. She hadn’t been expecting that. Leo was even a bit shocked himself. But before she could open her mouth to utter a word of protest, the sound of Wolf pushing back from the table, the legs of his chair scraping against the linoleum floor, interrupted her.
The man stood to his full six-foot, one-inch height and looked Leo square in the eye. “You know I’ve always followed your lead, LT. And this whole thing stinks like a jackass festival, for sure. So even if we hadn’t made that promise—”
“Promise?” Olivia asked. “What promise?”
“I would understand why you’d want no part of it,” Wolf continued, ignoring Olivia’s interruption. “But before you go making any decisions, there’s something you should know.”
Wolf’s words, as well as his troubled expression, had Leo’s stomach dropping to the floor of the kitchen so hard he was surprised he didn’t hear a resounding splat. “What’s that?”
“That historian, or translator, or whatever you want to call him, emailed and said he hadn’t been prepared for the sheer volume of documents we sent his way.” Oh right. The documents from Seville. How could Leo have forgotten about them? Two words—he answered his own question—Olivia Mortier. “If we want him to translate all of them, he says he’ll need another two weeks and another ten grand.”
“Ten grand?” Leo bellowed, causing Meat to hop up from his pillow. In sleepy confusion, the silly mutt let loose with a loud woof!
Cock-a-doodle-doooooooooo!
Leo winced, turning to see the rooster—Li’l Bastard, apparently—perched on the porch railing right outside the kitchen window. The multiple cups of coffee might have taken care of his headache, but that fat chicken’s ridiculous vocal stylings were enough to send a hammer-strike of pain smashing into his skull.
Or perhaps the throb in his temples had less to do with the rooster and more to do with the fact that the universe was seriously screwing him over and leaving him standing there holding double handfuls of shit.
Unable to contain himself a moment longer, Uncle John unzipped the duffel bag, pulling the edges wide. The scriiiiiitching sound of the zipper seemed particularly loud in the sudden silence of the kitchen, but not nearly as loud as his uncle’s exclamation of, “Well, cut off my legs and call me Shorty! Would you look at that!”
And there it was in all its greenback glory. Half a million dollars. Olivia had certainly delivered after blowing their mindholes with her tale.
Leo’s heart was pounding so hard it was a wonder his T-shirt wasn’t fluttering. He turned to her and watched one black brow slowly slide up her smooth forehead.
“So,” she said, jutting out her stubborn, adorable, irresistible chin, “shall we go retrieve my missing chemical weapons, Lieutenant Anderson?”