Chapter 41 Wesley
Wesley
A truce that comes with snacks
Madison’s eyes narrow when she sees the black bag in my hand.
“You’re heading out to the meeting with Felix?
” she asks, knowing the answer before I nod in confirmation.
She moves into the open doorway, blocking my path with all five feet nothing of her, arms crossed and toe tapping in irritation.
“If you think you’re going anywhere without me, you are coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs because he’s my Tío, and I was the one who set up this meeting—”
I close the space between us, looming over her, and she cuts herself short when I circle her throat with my hand. “Shut up and get in the van, traviesita,” I jerk my chin towards the vehicle in the driveway behind her. “I’ll brief you on the way.”
Her grin turns into a laugh that bobs against my palm. I tighten my fingers, holding her still as I lean down to brush my lips over hers.
“Are you guys gonna rip your clothes off and have crazy hot nerd sex all over your laptops again?” Mac asks dryly behind me. We’re blocking his path.
“How dare you?” Madison shoots back. “I’d never have sex on a laptop. That’s how you get an STV.”
His brows snap down, not getting the joke.
I bark a laugh. “Sexually transmitted virus.”
Madison joins my laughter, and Mac shakes his head as he squeezes past us, muttering about how we’ve got a secret language. He’s halfway to the van when he stops and hoots into the air. “Oh! Like a computer virus! Ha! Good one, Mads.”
Once we’re finished loading a few more things in, Mac and Dimitri climb into the front while Madison and I step into the back.
I take my usual seat. I’ve already put another stool in and created some space for her at the wall of monitors so she can plug in her laptop.
Not that we need that today—just future planning.
“You and I are going in,” I explain to her as Dimitri putters down the driveway—the slowest, steadiest driver among us.
“You’re not in the van?” Mac asks, surprise in his tone.
“Not today—Dimitri is taking over. I showed him how to operate the equipment this morning.”
“Hey, look at you! You angling to be the new Short Round?” Mac asks, elbowing Dimitri.
“This nickname makes even less sense for me than it does for Wesley,” he replies dryly, leaning forward to check before making a turn onto the main road.
“That’s why it’s funny,” Mac replies easily.
“Then why is it not funny for George to be named Small Dog?” Dimitri demands, like they’ve had this argument before. If they did, I wasn’t there—a damn shame.
“Dunno,” Mac shrugs. “Maybe it’s too…”
“Blunt?” Madison suggests. “I mean, for the record, I don’t really think Mac’s nickname is all that funny either—”
“Thanks for that.”
“—but jokes need to have layers. You can’t just blatantly call a thing something it’s not—people will think you just misunderstand. Like, for example, Short Round is a pop culture reference, too.”
“Hmm,” Dimitri replies, digesting this newest insight into how humor works.
“Anyway…” I reach behind me for the silver hard-sided case and set it onto the limited tabletop space on the fold-down desk.
I snap open the clasps and relish in her swift intake of breath, seeing the devices nestled in the foam cutouts.
Her eyes follow as I point to each in turn.
“I’ve got your standard secret agent package.
Watch with a biometric scanner. New ID’s—license, et cetera. Earpieces with built-in microphones.”
She lifts one of the earpieces gently and whistles as she inspects it, cushioning it between thumb and pointer finger and gently tilting it to see all sides. “Built-in microphone? It’s so tiny! Bone conduction?”
Not even surprised she’s familiar with the tech, I nod. “Long tap to turn on and off, short tap to mute or unmute yourself, double tap to mute or unmute these guys. I usually put Mac and Dimitri on different channels so I can have one in each ear because they tend to try to talk over each other.”
She collects her new IDs and replaces the ones in her wallet, handing them to me for safekeeping. Then, she puts in the earpieces.
“One more thing,” I say with a grin, pulling a box out of my back pocket.
“What the fuck, Wes?” Mac interjects, eyes on me in the rearview. His tone is high with alarm. “Are you… are you fuckin’ proposing back there?!”
Madison hears Mac’s question and whips her head around, eyes wide.
There’s excitement there, but there’s also a bit of fear.
It nearly makes me laugh. “No, we’re not quite there, yet,” I tell her, chuckling when she heaves a sigh and relaxes in response.
I lean closer and lower my voice. “But it is sparkly.”
Her gasp as she lifts the cover makes my chest warm.
I let her take the necklace out of the box so she can examine it.
It’s the Tiffany’s equivalent of what I won her at the arcade—a buttery soft leather choker with a gold heart pendant.
The heart has a single diamond offset in one of the curves that winks at us intensely, even in the low light in the back of the van.
Her eyes lift to mine, and she clears out some thickness in the back of her throat. “You just had that in your pocket, huh?”
“The rest of the tech comes back to the case when we’re done—but not this. This is yours. It’s a personal tracking device, so I’ll always be able to find you.”
Her smile lights up her face, competing with the diamond.
“Put it on,” she whispers, handing it back to me, spinning on her stool, and lifting her hair out of the way.
The buckle makes a very faint tinkling noise as I slide the prong home, and she shivers as I brush my fingers against the nape of her neck.
She spins back around, fingering the gold, and moves her hand out of the way so I can see how it settles against her throat. “Stunning,” I say, meeting her eye so she knows I mean the whole package.
“I fucking love it,” she beams, radiant.
“Let’s see, Mads,” Mac says.
Eyes on me, she turns her torso and stretches up so Mac can see it in the mirror.
I know he’s seen it when he sighs and grumbles, “Showoff. Thanks a lot, man. Making me look bad. Eleanor’s gonna want one of those now.
It’s gonna be all how come my tracker isn’t made of diamonds? Am I right?” he elbows D.
Dimitri grunts. “Nicole does not wear jewelry. Her tracker is something discreet that clips to her bra, which is far more practical. It looks like one of those devices that count your steps.”
“Step counter? Pedometer,” Mac offers with a snap as he thinks of the word.
“That is what I said.” Dimitri waves him off. “And you should simply tell Eleanor that hers is inferior because Wesley is in charge of making the trackers and obviously he is saving the best ones for his own woman.”
Madison giggles in delight, clutching the heart around her neck. “Being in the van with you guys is so much fun.”
Pulling us off to the side so we’re out of sight of the rearview mirror, I hook a finger under the collar and tug her in. Her pupils dilate, eyes flashing with heat as her chair rolls forward with her body, her knees fitting perfectly between my own spread legs.
“Do you know what this collar means, my love?”
She pretends to think. “That you think I look good in diamonds? I agree.”
I hover over her lips, close enough to feel her warmth. “Try again.”
“That it’ll be way easier for you to stalk me?”
I shake my head. “One more time.”
“That I’m yours?” she guesses, tilting her head up and saying it against my mouth.
“There it is.”
She fists my shirt and tugs me down. As we kiss, we ignore the hooting and groaning from the front of the cab, pulling apart before either of us can really get too involved. It won’t do to meet Felix with a hard-on.
Playing with the pendant, Madison studies the spy case. “Going all out for this, huh?”
“It’s all just a precaution. And Mac and Dimitri are simply backup—we know better than to do this sort of thing on our own by now, even though it’s a white-flag ceasefire. We’re helping him; he’s helping us. We have the same goal. We’re sharing information.”
Dimitri huffs but doesn’t disagree. Even though Nicole sanctioned this forgiveness, he holds a grudge.
“And that’s why he’s in the van,” I mutter to Madison, who giggles.
Mama B’s Tamales is just as delicious-smelling and bright as I remember. The short, elderly woman seated at the first table behind the host stand shouts in Spanish when she sees Madison, hauling herself to her feet and opening her arms for a hug with a warm, deeply lined smile.
They start speaking to each other too rapidly for me to follow reliably, and as soon as I hear the heavy pounding of boots against travertine tile, my attention is on the door anyway. Felix emerges from the back room with a large man shadowing him.
Madison and Mama B turn when he enters. Mama B hisses at him, admonishing him for his empty hands when there are guests.
With a deep sigh and a roll of his eyes in response to her chiding, he turns on his heel and disappears.
When he returns, he’s got a plastic basket of tortilla chips and a cup of salsa.
A truce that comes with snacks? I could get used to this.
We all settle at a table of Felix’s choosing, on the other side of the restaurant from where Mama B is humming to herself as she runs a wet cloth across the plastic faces of the menus.
The large man next to Felix looks comical trying to shove himself into the booth.
His jacket flap opens briefly, displaying the handle of his piece.
I suppose it makes sense that they’d come armed, though it makes my stomach twist uncomfortably.
Or perhaps that’s just the flat expression of the man’s stony face—he’s a killer. No doubt about it.
Madison waves at him and makes a motion with her hands that takes me a second to recognize as ASL—one language sadly not in my repertoire.