CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
South Island, South Carolina
December 11
Steady toed open the lockless, knobless front door of the beach house, a case of Coors Light under each arm and a plastic grocery bag filled with chips in his teeth. Ren and Chat followed him in with a whiteboard and a box of office supplies swiped from Bishop Security. Herc was next in line with folding chairs and a card table he had borrowed from Maggie and Charlie Bishop's garage, knowing his grandmother wouldn’t mind. Tox was picking up pizza. Twitch was on her way. Nathan had opted to go home to his family. Despite his evident concern, his wife's looming due date was an unavoidable distraction.
Steady had initially invited the guys over to strip the floors and do some demo, but with the op a go, the rehab project became a plan and brainstorm project. Steady figured the odds were pretty good one or more of them would punch a hole in the drywall by the end of the night, so the demo would get started.
Tox came through the door holding eight large pizza boxes. He set the food on the kitchen counter, snagged two slices, and joined the group. Ren and Chat entered through the open front door and moved to help Steady pull the plywood from what was once a series of sliding glass doors. The missing fourth wall opened the living area to what was left of the deck and the ocean beyond.
Tox was already grabbing another couple of slices at the counter. “Hey, Steady, why don’t you just leave it like that? It’d be sort of like camping on the beach every night.”
“Because camping has such fond memories for me,” Steady countered.
Tox laughed around his pizza, immediately recalling a disastrous subzero night perched on a narrow cliff in the Hindu Kush. “You got me there.”
“I was kicking around the idea of attaching the nose cone of a Hornet to the opening. How cool would that be? Watch the sunrise from the cockpit?”
Steady had the extremely rare distinction of being both a naval aviator and a SEAL. He had grown up flying small aircraft and had trained in Pensacola for two years, flying multiple missions before switching over to the SEALs as an officer. Like the SEAL acronym: Sea, Air, Land, if it moved, Steady could fly it, fix it, or drive it.
Tox nearly jumped for joy. “Dude, you have to do it. I call shotgun.”
Steady laughed, “My dad already had a heart attack. I can’t give my mom one too.”
Chat and Steady were sitting at the rickety card table organizing the additional, heavily redacted files Sofria had provided when Steady looked over his shoulder to the front of the house.
Twitch knocked on the open door and stepped into the house.
“What took so long?” Steady asked, handing her a can of soda.
“I was next door,” Twitch explained.
“What were you doing next door?” Steady asked, a little too interested.
“Visiting Very. We went to college together.”
“Very?”
Twitch confirmed. “Very. Her real name is Verity, but everyone calls her Very. It suits her. She is very, very.”
Steady concentrated on listening to Twitch and trying to control the blood flow in his body. God, why was the notion of this Very woman such a turn-on? All he knew about her at this point was that she went to college with Twitch, had bright pink hair, and liked The Ramones—all big pluses but still, not much to go on.
Twitch continued, “She just moved here to work for a lab in Ridgefield. She's a chemist.”
“What lab in Ridgefield?” Ren cocked his head.
“Exactly.” Twitch winked.
Behind her, Finn McIntyre appeared in the doorway. The mood in the room shifted. Dressed in faded jeans, a hoodie, and trainers, darkness loomed around him like an additional garment. The hood of his sweatshirt shadowed the scars on the right side of his face, but even the casual observer would have sensed they were there. It was as if the injury had subsumed his entire aura. Finn had grown comfortable in his cocoon of grief and rage, a state of being that unfortunately aided his “legend” when he was on assignment. Like Cam, Finn was a NOC officer with the CIA. Unlike Cam, he seemed to have lost his center. Nevertheless, his team was his family; when they needed him, he showed up.
Finn walked to the pizza boxes. Tox, the man who had rescued him from that cave three years ago, slapped him on the back. Then he left his big hand on Finn's shoulder as if he too sensed the shift in his best friend. Finn shrugged it off.
“Have we learned anything new?” Finn asked.
“Just diving in.” Ren held up a stack of files. “Your employer is not the most forthcoming when it comes to information sharing.”
“Former employer,” Finn corrected.