Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(4)
Hmm? That’s all he had to say? Just…hmm?
Apparently so, because for a couple of eternal ticks of the clock, they all just stood there. Her looking at them. Them looking at her. The baby burbling and the meat sizzling on the grill. Somewhere on the river behind the outer wall a tour boat passed by, the guide regaling the passengers with stories of Baby Face Nelson and Al Capone.
Finally, Becky waved a hand through the air and laughed. “Whew! Is it just me? Or did this barbecue turn into a tension convention? Penni”—she crunched down on the sucker, chewing noisily—“you don’t have to tell this big lug anything.” She nudged Boss with her elbow, making him grunt. “Because the truth is, Dan’s not here.”
“He’s not? Where is he?” Penni should have known better than to ask that question. All she received in answer were shuttered stares. “Uh-huh.” She nodded. “Sure, I get it.” When she caught herself rubbing a finger over the little bump on the bridge of her nose, she quickly dropped her hand and tightened her fingers into a fist. “Can you at least tell me when he’ll be back?”
Becky looked up at Boss. She obviously saw acquiescence in his face—although Penni couldn’t make out anything behind his intense scowl—because she admitted, “We don’t know. Could be days. Could be months.”
“Months!” Penni squawked, her heart plummeting so fast she was surprised she didn’t see it lying on the pavers at her feet. And those shoulders she’d just squared? Despite her best efforts, they drooped dejectedly. She’d screwed up her courage and come all this way…
“I think we should tell her where he is,” Michelle murmured, the first thing she’d said since the introductions.
Penni looked up to find the woman bouncing the baby and eyeing her intently. She blinked and considered digging a finger into her ear because she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
Obviously Boss was having the same problem. He shook his head. “Excuse me, Shell? What the hell did you just say?”
“Yes.” Michelle nodded, still looking at Penni. “I definitely think we should tell her where to find him.”
Chapter One
Cusco, Peru
Friday, 4:55 p.m.
“You eat another bite of that damned guinea pig and I swear the next thing you’ll see is my Technicolor yawn.”
Dan “The Man” Currington glanced over at his friend and teammate and lifted a brow. In the two days they’d been in the little city nestled in a high valley of the Andes Mountains, Dagan Zoelner had yet to sample the local delicacy. And since it was an unwritten rule among operators—and men in general, come to think of it—that outgrossing each other rated just under out-insulting, outshooting, and outfighting each other, he reached into the tinfoil-wrapped snack he’d purchased from a street vendor, pulled off a drumstick, and sucked the juicy grilled meat from the bone. The devil in him insisted he chew slowly and make nom-nom noises.
Zoelner’s upper lip curled back. He shuddered and scooted to the opposite end of the bench, tucking his chin into his scarf.
Mark one for the Dan Man! Dan put a checkmark in the W column of his imaginary scoreboard of life.
“For the record,” he said, licking his fingers and absently noting the way the cool, dry air whispered down from the mountaintops, interrupting the rhythmic burble of the fountain at their backs and teasing the ends of his hair, “I’ve eaten way worse. Undercooked, day-old goat meat in the Qandil Mountains of Iraq comes to mind. That shit’ll grow some pretty radical hair on your chest. I guarantee.”
Although they were lounging lazily on a park bench in the big square in the center of the city, Dan’s eyes clocked the movements of every tourist that passed by him. Cusco was bustling with travelers hoping to make it down to Machu Picchu before the rainy season set in and the area around the ancient Incan ruins turned soupy. But it was one particular face he was looking to find, the same face he’d been looking to find for what was beginning to seem like an eternity. Fuckin’-A.
“Also for the record,” he continued conversationally, keeping up the appearance that he and Zoelner were just part of the crowd, sightseers out enjoying the day, “they don’t call it guinea pig. They call it cuy. And it’s kinda g—”
“Since apparently we’re putting things on the record today,” Zoelner interrupted, “I’d like to add that, for the record, it’s a rodent.”
“So’s a rabbit. A guy like you musta eaten a rabbit at some point, right?”
“Wrong.” Zoelner shot him an emphatic look. “When it comes to meat, I’m a fan of the big three. Beef, chicken, and pork. The holy trifecta of barnyard animals. And what the hell do you mean by a guy like me?”
Dan stuck his tongue in his cheek. Zoelner had been pricklier than a porcupine the last forty-eight hours. And Dan would have chalked up his bad mood to the fact that they’d yet to complete their assignment to capture and exfiltrate hombre numero uno on Uncle Sam’s shit list, except that Chelsea Duvall had joined their little clandestine venture two days ago. And that had made their dynamic duo a tension-filled trio and—
“He means that besides being a grumpy Gus pain-in-the-butt, you’re a guy with a job that requires you to go on missions to the ass-ends of the earth, where the holy trifecta of barnyard animals sometimes isn’t on the menu.” A rusty-sounding female voice echoed through their tiny earpieces.