Chapter 13
It took fifteen minutes to get in the air.
Fifteen fucking minutes, including negotiations and fueling, to go from “hey there, we’re interested in chartering a plane” to “leave the keys in the glovebox when you get to Cape Charles, boys!” Will was used to things changing quickly, but this… this was fast even for him.
The plane Cole had negotiated so rapidly for was a Cessna Skyhawk from the mid-seventies.
It was a workhorse of a machine, small but mighty, the kind of thing Davey flew on the regular.
Will knew enough to get it into the air and keep it there, but he had to admit there was something nice about being able to sit back and let someone else do the hard work for once.
Actually…
He frowned as he stared at the skyline ahead of them. The sun was about to set, and they weren’t going to be over Virginia for another half an hour, so he had time for a good muse. And the question of the hour was, just what the fuck was he thinking letting Cole take the lead right now?
Money talks.
Yeah, it did, but when it came right down to it Will had plenty of money at his disposal, certainly enough to rent a plane to nowhere. He’d let Cole do the driving, too.
It was his car.
Sure, but when had that ever stopped Will from taking the wheel?
He might need backup when it came to running the technical side of jobs, but in the “doing” department he was perfectly capable of being a one-man show.
He liked it that way, in fact. When he acted alone, the only person he had to worry about taking care of was himself.
Worrying about other people in the moment was too stressful, and if this little fucking escapade had taught him anything, it was that no one in the business gave a fuck whether or not you went out on a limb to save their life.
Their little interlude with Justin had shown him that.
I saved that fucker from getting shot five years ago, then tried to keep his ass alive up in the Tower, and how does he repay me? Almost dragging me out a fucking window.
And then Cole had helped keep Will from falling.
“What?”
The plane was noisy enough they needed to speak over their headsets to be heard. Not that they had been; this was the first time Cole had broken the silence in the hour since he’d last talked through takeoff with the air traffic controller back at the tiny airport.
“What, what?” Will replied intelligently.
“You’re staring.”
Oh. Yeah, he was. To be fair, it was a nice view, and it wasn’t like he had his phone right now.
The last thing Will did before he’d dumped his burner along with Cole’s was text Reed and his brother to let them know he’d be in touch tomorrow.
Reed was busy looking into Alders and how serious he was about having them tailed, and Davey had just responded with a kissy face, which…
Fine. Will hadn’t stayed alive in a den of snakes for as long as he had by lying to himself.
Cole was… attractive. Hot. An asshole, too, but Will didn’t mind that sort of attitude as long as there was skill to back it up, and unfortunately the more he found out about Cole, the more evident that skill became.
“Just wondering if you want me to spell you.”
Just wondering if you want me to blow you.
Cole shook his head. “It’s not a hard flight. Besides, we’ll be landing soon, and I have it on good authority that you suck at landings.”
Will snorted. “Goes to show what you know. I’m actually brilliant at landings.” He gestured to himself. “Case in point, no formal training and yet, I live.”
“The fact that you’re still breathing isn’t proof of brilliance.”
“Call it my top-tier survival instinct, then.”
Cole smirked. “Like a cockroach?”
“Say what you like about ‘em, but there’s a reason them and me will be the ones living our best lives in post-apocalyptic bunkers while people like you work yourselves into a heart attack because your cat-shit coffee isn’t available anymore.”
That got him a deliciously scandalized look. “Excuse me?”
“Wait, they’re not cats, are they?” He pretended to think about it. “Sorry, palm civet-shit coffee.”
“I don’t drink kopi luwak.”
“The point stands,” Will insisted. “You’re a rich boy with rich boy tastes.
I’m sure your family has a very nice end-of-the-world bunker out there somewhere”— most of the billionaires did, after all— “but even caviar is going to start tasting like shit after a while when you’re used to being able to buy anything and everything.
Whereas I will be perfectly happy spearing rats and roasting them over an open fire. ”
Cole looked as close to dumbfounded as Will had ever seen him. It was a delicious expression to see on his face. “How did we even get on this subject?”
“You were importuning my character.”
“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Darcy,” Cole snarked as he checked the altitude gauge. “I didn’t realize that pointing out my superior skill at landing a plane was the equivalent of a personal attack.”
The funny thing was that Will could almost believe that. People who had been given the world often didn’t realize how hard it could be to actually live in it.
He could almost hear Ellie’s voice in his ear.
You gotta play nice, Uncle Will. Picking a fight about privilege with the man he was trying to hunt down the Puffin with wasn’t the wisest course of action, and Will knew it.
At this point, staying together might not be the wisest course of action either—it would be easier to just give the Puffin up for lost and drop off the grid for a while until things calmed down. And yet…
That was something Will could do. Not Cole.
Nobody gave a damn about Will’s family or friends, not that they’d be able to find them.
Cole’s were right out there in the open, and as antagonistic as his relationship with his parents seemed, that didn’t mean he wanted them in the line of fire.
And Alders could bring a lot of firepower to bear in a situation like this, not to mention the damage that Marcus was doing to both their reputations by sending them on a wild goose chase and then miring them in the wrong kind of attention.
No, they needed to finish this in a way that sent a message to anyone who might start thinking they were easy marks. They needed the Puffin and Marcus needed to pay.
“Do you always get distracted so easily?”
Will was a little surprised at the huffy undertone in Cole’s voice. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we were in the middle of a conversation and the next thing I know, you’re staring out the window like it’s answering the secrets of the universe.”
Will replayed their last exchange in his head—he might be distractable, but he had a damn good sense of recall. “The argument was over. You won,” he added generously.
“That wasn’t an argument, it was just a conversation.”
“Fine. Then you won the conversation.”
“You can’t win at conversations.”
Well, that was just a lie. “I know you’re fucking with me right now,” Will said.
“Because I’ve seen you talk to people at parties like the one that kicked off this shitshow, and almost every single conversation you got into was a battle.
Just because you’re not slapping somebody across the face by the end of it doesn’t mean you ain’t trying to win it.
Hell, your mother bulldozed over a dozen people into listening to her talk about cubism for half an hour; that’s a win if ever I saw one. ”
“Fine,” Cole snapped. “But that’s different.”
“How so?”
“Because those people aren’t like you.”
Will gave himself a second to parse out the meaning behind a statement that could very easily be taken as an insult.
Once he got it, though, he grinned at Cole.
“Aww, honeybee,” he cooed. “You can just say you like talkin’ to me, you know.
You don’t have to hide your sweetness behind your stinger all the time. ”
Was that an eye roll? It was hard to tell in the dark. “Can you stop it with the pet names already?”
“Mm, I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you,” Will replied honestly.
“Why?”
Because it’s one of the only ways I can tease you that doesn’t make you go on the offensive.
And Will was enjoying the hell out of teasing Cole.
He always had, to be fair; there was just something satisfying about rumpling a person who prided himself on being so put-together.
But this time around in particular, Will couldn’t seem to stop himself from pushing to see just how far he could take things before Cole snapped his teeth and Will had to retreat.
Not that he could say all that to Cole.
“It’s how I show affection,” he settled on as the plane began its descent. The local airport was too small to have a manned tower this late at night, but the center controller was broadcasting automated information to help guide them in close.
“How you drive people crazy, maybe.”
“Oh, that too,” Will agreed. “You should have heard Baby Boy ream me up one side and down the other for being late with check-in.” He tilted his head. “You two kind of remind me of each other, actually.”
Cole glanced at him. “How could I possibly remind you of your brother?”
“You both put up a harsh front in the face of emotional distress,” Will replied instantly.
“Which, now that I think of it, makes a lot of sense given how you were raised, constantly having to prove yourself to somewhat distant parents, never being able to rely on a confidant other than yourselves…” Yeah, there were some startling similarities between the two, actually.
“I thought you grew up together.”