50. Jezebel

CHAPTER 50

JEZEBEL

“ Y our house is so pretty,” Barbie exclaimed when we arrived at Cole’s home after the week from hell. It felt like forever since we’d left. “Look at the view.”

Dice ignored the view and sank into a chair in the living room. “I need a drink.”

Tulsa draped an arm across my shoulders. “So you found the holy grail?” Leave it to her to tackle the elephant in the room. “A man who tolerates your job as well as being hot, hot, hot?”

We’d done the introductions on the boat, out of earshot of Dr. Blaylock and the prisoners, and Cole had graciously offered everyone room and board for the night. He might regret it in the morning.

“You realise he’s right here in the room with us?”

She totally ignored that. “The two of you are so cute together.”

“I am not cute.”

“When Echo found you on the beach at the drug island, we were all rooting for you.”

Oh, fuck. “How much did you see? ”

Tulsa leaned in close. “Well, we know Cole is circumcised, but man, he looks like a fun ride.”

“You’re a bunch of perverts.”

“What?” Cole asked, coming to slide an arm around my waist. “Who’s a pervert?”

If we were going to do this relationship thing, it wasn’t just me he’d have to put up with.

“While we were fishing for sea cucumbers, these reprobates were counting the veins on your cock.”

Tulsa snorted. “Fishing for sea cucumbers? Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“Shut up.”

Cole’s brow creased. “Counting veins? Is that some kind of girl metaphor?”

“No, it means they’re a bunch of nosy sluts, and they got out their magnifying glasses.”

“Magnifying glasses?” Tulsa had been taking eye-rolling lessons from Demelza. “What is this, the eighteenth century? We were zooming in on the satellite photos.”

“Please, you’re going to scare him off.”

“Sweetie, if he’s still here after you yeeted six men into the afterlife, he’s not going anywhere.”

Cole glanced at his crotch. “Are satellites really that good?”

Tulsa went for melodramatic. “I could tell you that, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Some of them might be,” I said, “but we don’t like to talk about it.”

Tulsa stopped ribbing Cole long enough to cook dinner—by virtue of being a latchkey kid since the age of ten, she was the best cook out of all of us, Marcel excepted. Tomorrow, we’d have to deal with more questions about everything we’d been through over the past few days, but tomorrow was another day.

After a dinner of grilled fish, accompanied by several embarrassing stories and way too much liquor, the girls finally went to bed, leaving me on the terrace with just Cole and the stars for company.

“They can be a lot,” I said apologetically.

“I’m glad you have friends like them. People who have your back.”

“I always felt a bit lost until our paths crossed. Even when our team was new, we slotted into each other’s lives like pieces in a jigsaw.”

“Was the jigsaw a picture of an AK-47?” Cole joked.

“No, a Sig P226. A handgun,” I clarified. “We prefer those.”

Cole leaned in and brushed his lips across mine. “Tulsa said you’d found the holy grail, but she got that wrong. I found the holy grail, the treasure at the end of the rainbow, and the pirates’ gold, all in one month.”

“You’re so sweet you make my teeth hurt.” But I returned the kiss. “And now they have your back too. We all do.”

“It’s like finding a family,” he said. “A woman to love and a whole bunch of sisters.”

Yes, it was. And in the morning, I’d squeeze the details of the Galaxy investigation out of them. We still had that loose end to tie up, and I wanted to get it done ASAP.

“How do you feel about going back to Vegas?” I asked.

“Happier than I did before. I just need to tidy up my house so I can rent it out for a while, and then I’ll book a flight.”

“Are you renting it out for the money? Or because you don’t want it to sit empty?”

“For the money. I actually hate the thought of strangers living in it, but the Galaxy can’t afford to pay me a salary.”

“I have money, and I also like the idea of taking a vacation here every now and again. An actual vacation, no firearms involved. ”

“I don’t want to use you as a cash machine. I know how that feels.”

“You’re not using me for anything. I’m offering. And if you don’t want my money, then I’d suggest getting your uncle’s wine collection valued.”

“Huh?”

“The bottle I threw at one of the intruders was worth seven hundred bucks. Don’t worry, we replaced it.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. And I’m guessing that if your uncle was in financial difficulties, he didn’t realise how much it was worth either. Most of the bottles were pretty dusty. But valuations take time, so for now, I’ll buy your groceries. If we’re going to do this thing, this relationship, we need to learn how to compromise, and we need to learn how to share.”

“Compromise? I didn’t think you knew the meaning of the word.”

“It’s not a concept I’m overly familiar with, no. But for you, I’ll try.”

Cole pulled me tighter against him. “I love you for that, and I love you for being so unapologetically you. We can head back to Vegas whenever you’re ready. You want to go with the others?”

“You’re okay with that?”

“I am.”

“Our plane is at the airport in Ilha Grande. Apparently, the pilot is out partying with the locals, so I don’t suppose we’ll be leaving too early.”

“You have a plane?”

“Having our carry-on bags searched every time we fly gets awkward, and it’s hard to fit a grenade launcher in a diplomatic pouch.”

“Is that a joke? ”

“Yes?” No. “Anyhow, there’s something called a ‘Shack Attack’ involved. Do you know what that is?”

Cole groaned. “Unfortunately.”

“Can you tell me? Because the message didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“The Shack is a gay bar near the airport. Is Marcel your pilot? He’s gay, right?”

“If Marcel was our pilot, we’d all be dead. Storm is our pilot, and no, she’s not gay, but she is bi.”

“Then I guess she’s taking her shots a different way tonight.”

“Explain.”

“Shack Attack is their club night. Think loud music, little clothing, and limbo dancing.”

“Limbo dancing?”

“If you knock the pole, you have to do a shot out of a twink’s bellybutton.”

“What happens if you don’t knock the pole?”

“Two shots.”

“You’ve been there?”

“With Frankie.”

“Man, Storm’s gonna be unconscious. I mean, she’s pretty flexible, and she used to be a gymnast.”

“Want me to ask Frankie to pick her up?”

Storm was the most sensible member of the team, but honestly, that wasn’t saying much. She probably wouldn’t die of alcohol poisoning, but flying with a hangover wasn’t a great idea. Not if we had to listen to her bitching for four thousand miles.

“You think she’d mind?”

“I’ll call her.”

“Hell, have they come to arrest us?” Cole muttered.

Whoever was outside hammered on the door again. I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand and checked for missed calls.

“No.”

If there were a legal problem, Demelza would have warned me.

“Are you sure?”

“You have to stop asking that. If there was uncertainty, I’d make it clear.”

I’d slept in one of his T-shirts, so I jogged out the door while he was fishing around for his boxer briefs. Tulsa fell into step behind and followed me down the stairs.

“Expecting anyone?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Do you have a gun?”

“Of course. You don’t?”

“I decided speed was more important than underwear, and I knew you’d have my back.”

Tulsa stood out of sight as I cracked the door open, then pulled it wide. Storm looked like shit. She’d teamed shorts with a bikini top, and her pale blonde hair was pulled away from her face in a lopsided bun. Fifty bucks said her eyes were bloodshot under the Ray-Bans. As for Frankie, she was way too perky for this time in the morning. She took Storm by the hand and tugged her past me.

“Where’s Cole? How did the research trip go?”

“Cole’s upstairs. There were some interesting finds.”

She kissed Storm on the lips and grinned. “I’ll make coffee. You look as if you need caffeine.”

Oh, man. When Cole asked Frankie to pick up Storm last night, had he explained exactly what he meant?

“Did you two…?” I asked Storm when Frankie was out of earshot.

Storm shrugged and took off her sunglasses to reveal red eyes. Called it .

“She has a girlfriend,” I whispered. Storm had some morals.

“They broke up. Relax, it’s just rebound sex. It doesn’t mean anything.” She yawned. “I need Tylenol.”

“I’ll get it,” Tulsa offered. “You look like death.”

“First you live, and then you die. Is that a couch? I need a couch.” Storm looked over my shoulder. “Hey, hot dude.”

“Hey, hangover lady. How was the limbo dancing?”

“I have regrets.”

“Next time, get Frankie to take you to Navies.”

“Why? Is the music quieter?”

“No, but they water down the drinks so you won’t get so much of a headache. Should I get you a pillow?”

She gave him a sheepish smile. “Yes.”

Before he headed upstairs, Cole held out my phone. “Someone tried to call. I thought about answering, but I figured it might be top-secret national security stuff.”

I glanced at the screen. Demelza. “Yeah, thanks. It was.”

Sighing, I stepped outside. It was too early for a conversation with my boss’s boss. How bad would this be?

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

Why did people keep asking that?

“The bad news. Get it over with.”

“The bad news is that the San Gallician government couldn’t organise an assassination on a firing range, but the good news is that they’ve come around to our way of thinking and they understand you did them a favour. There won’t be any fallout from your extracurricular activities, but they do want you to walk them through what happened on Skeleton Cay.”

Demelza could be an absolute ball-breaker, but she was our ball-breaker, and she’d defend our interests over those of any foreign government whose work we’d ended up doing.

“Do I have to go back there? ”

“Only for a few hours.”

“And Cole?” He’d witnessed more horror than any civilian should see in a lifetime.

“I cast him as more of a bystander. If he doesn’t want to return to Skeleton Cay, he doesn’t have to. I’m also holding back the location of the Spanish Dancer until we see them sticking to their side of the bargain. Do you think either of the men in custody will talk?”

“I don’t think so. We had words before the police picked them up. Jon is too scared to spill any details, and I swear Clint still thinks he can walk away and salvage the rest of the treasure. I saw it in his eyes.”

“That isn’t going to happen.”

“I know.”

“How about Dr. Blaylock?”

“He hopes that everyone will forget about the gold so the conchs can live happily ever after. Could we add a condition that says the government has to preserve the ecology of the area during any salvage work? I dived down there with Dr. Blaylock, and the reef is beautiful.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Be aware that on the ground, we’re keeping the two cases separate. Only a handful of people at the top of the food chain know you were involved with both the drug find and the discovery of the wreck.”

“Understood.”

Dice and Tulsa came with me to Skeleton Cay, but not for any operational reason. More because they were curious. Getting into the harbour was the first challenge. Cole insisted on coming too, and I had to agree because he’d borrowed his neighbour’s Mako for the trip. We skimmed over the submerged rocks to the south of the island and then tried not to laugh as a coastguard boat drove into one of them. Thankfully, it was going slow enough to avoid serious damage. We had two detectives with us—an old-timer named Robinson and a younger guy, Fernandez—as well as a contingent from the paramilitary wing of the San Gallicano Department of Emergency Services.

The bodies were decomposing nicely now, aided by the warm weather, and I was damn glad it wasn’t my job to wrangle human soup into body bags. A couple of crime scene techs got that honour while the higher-ups congregated in the cellblock. The chief of police himself joined us, and I heard him on a satellite phone telling whoever was arranging the press conference that they needed more tables because he wanted piles of that shit on display for the public to see.

“You did all this?” Detective Fernandez asked in a quiet moment. “How? I get that we’re not supposed to ask, but…”

“I’m not at liberty to divulge the operating capabilities of the US military.”

“Right. Do you think that’s the whole gang? Those six, I mean.”

“Who knows? Finding out is your job.”

I was done with this strange little island.