Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Yeah, no, I’m fine. What are we doing?” They both look at me like you look at a person who is clearly lying. “What?” I ask, with wide-eyed emphasis.
There’s a good, long beat that absorbs the moment. Finally, Danny says, “Nothing. Just… nothing. Let’s get our shit together.”
He reaches past me for the door handle and turns it, opens the door and, as he’s walking by… he strokes my cheek and winks. It’s not at all a weird thing to do, and yet super fucking weird at the same time.
I don’t know why. It just is.
But I like it. When he winks at me. It makes me feel something funny deep in the pit of my stomach. I get a tiny chill through my body.
I think maybe it’s possible I’m feeling a little vulnerable right now.
He enters the room, holding the door open for us to follow him. Alec is still staring at me.
“What?” I repeat. “Stop looking at me all… the way you’re looking at me.”
Alec cocks his head to the side, slides his eyes to Danny and then back to me.
“What?” I say for a third time.
And, finally, Alec answers with… well. I just… I wasn’t expecting it, I guess.
“I love you both. Very much,” he says.
It hangs there for a moment. I start to respond. Start to say something like, “Okay.” Or, “What the fuck is going on right now?” Or, “You guys wanna just blow this whole thing off and go get sandwiches?” Or… I don’t know what. But it doesn’t matter because before I get anything out, Alec says…
“All right, then.” And walks past me, past Danny, and heads to the back of the suite, stripping off his overcoat as he goes.
I don’t move for a second, finding suddenly that my breathing is oddly harder to control than I’d like. After two or three shallow gulps of air I turn to see Danny still holding the door open, waiting for me to come in.
“Does something feel weird to you?” I blurt out.
Danny shakes his head, then says, “Compared to what?”
And then, despite myself, I laugh a tiny laugh. I nod my head up and down, up and down, and say, “This is real life, huh?”
Danny stops shaking his head and his look turns into something more like sympathy as he responds, “I dunno. But it’s our life.”
I take one, final, much deeper breath. Centering myself. I glance over my shoulder back down the hall toward Eliza’s door, then turn back toward the place where Alec and Danny are waiting for me to enter and say, “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go kill some people.”
As I walk past him, I rub his arm, squeezing it with a little more force than is necessary, and he closes the door to the suite, shutting out everyone in the world who isn’t the three of us.
CHAPTER NINE
“Copy that. We’ll be there soon.”
I hang up with Brenden (or Charlie—I couldn’t care less) and turn to Alec and Christine. “They’ve moved the boys. They left their cell phones in the warehouse. If Brasil heads straight there, he’ll have to call us to find out where we all are now. So…” I look at my watch. “We’ve probably got an hour or so. How are we feeling?”
“Like old times,” Alec says, slapping a clip into a pistol and tossing it into a huge, black duffle bag which sits on the bed alongside another huge, black duffle bag, both filled with guns and explosives and… Jesus. The image would be sort of funny if this weren’t all so goddamn tragic. I take it all in, chuckle anyway, despite the tragedy of the situation, and shake my head.
“What?” Christine asks. “What’s funny?”
“I mean… nothing. Really. At all. I was just thinking… How are we not all dead? Or in jail somewhere? Seriously? How the fuck are we still alive?”
“Because, Danny,” Alec responds, “fortune favors the bold.”
He’s shirtless. That’s his thing. He always takes his shirt off when we’re readying for a mission, or heist, or death wish or whatever. And then he puts it on last once he feels ready. I used to think it was about vanity, but over the years I’ve come to believe it’s that he wants to feel primal. Like, somehow it reminds him that he’s a human animal, made of flesh, blood, and bone. All of which can be taken away in a breath and all trace of him will disappear.
Or maybe he just likes it when Christine and I stare at his chest. I dunno.
“Let’s hope,” I say, sighing as I look down at the instruments of destruction we all play so well, before heading off to the bathroom.
“Where are you going?” Christine asks.
“Take a leak.”
It’s true, but I also just… need a minute. I’m tired. And sad for some reason. And that’s a bad mind state to be in when in the middle of a war. Inevitable, probably. But not helpful, ultimately. I gotta get my shit together to do what needs to be done.