45. Jude
45
JUDE
I spent fifteen minutes on the phone with Gage in the basement office, then turned to Nolan, who was trying to connect the tail numbers of charter planes into Athens over the past three months to their owners.
“Gage has something from the hard drive,” I said.
Nolan swiveled his chair to look at me. “Did he say what it was?”
I shook my head. “His exact words were ‘come get this fucking hard drive in the next twenty-four hours or I’m dropping it in the bay and blocking your number.’”
“Wow,” Nolan said. “Sounds promising.”
I laughed.
The alarm on his phone beeped and he shut it off, then turned back to the computer.
“You’re not going to take your insulin?”
“I will,” he said. “As soon as I’m done with this.”
I scowled. I didn’t think it was my imagination that he’d been playing fast and loose with his meds lately. “Why are you fucking around?”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m just busy. It’s not an exact thing. I’ve got a window.”
“Don’t give me that fucking window bullshit. Not after Sanaa.” His insulin window had almost put him into a diabetic coma during a mission in Yemen. We’d been humping for days across rough terrain on the way into the city and the difference in time zones plus the nearly sleepless nights had been disorienting.
He’d almost been kicked out after that. He’d only gotten into the military with a dispensation and the mandate to serve as a medic. He’d put all of us at risk by forgetting his insulin, but his exemplary service to that point and the excessive strain of the mission had bought him an allowance with the commander.
This time he didn’t have an excuse.
He sighed and swiveled in his chair to look at me again. “This is nothing like Sanaa. My insulin is right upstairs. I can take it anytime.”
“So go fucking take it,” I said.
He was falling into the mystery of the missing girls. We all were.
Because of Lilah.
It wasn’t that we wouldn’t have cared without her, but her determination had gotten under our skin. Lilah was desperate to find them, to find out who’d taken them, especially Rain Adakai, and that made us desperate too, because whatever Lilah wanted, Lilah got, even if we had to move heaven and earth to make it happen.
“I will,” he said, glaring at me. “Stop infantilizing me.”
I stood, annoyed. “Telling you to take your meds so we don’t have to haul your ass into the emergency room isn’t infantilizing you. We’re a team, remember?”
I walked out because he was annoying the shit out of me and it was so rare for Nolan to annoy the shit out of me that I didn’t really know what to do with the feeling.
“We’ll leave for the beach in an hour,” I said without looking back.
I stalked through the garage, past the cars and bikes, and ascended the stairs to the house. It was quiet, and I went upstairs to look for Rafe and Lilah to tell them about Gage.
Except they weren’t up there. They weren’t in the living room or kitchen either, and I realized they must be in the gym, although it was hard to imagine Lilah and Rafe working out side by side without wanting to bash each other’s heads in with twenty-pound dumbbells.
Well, Lilah anyway.
I headed downstairs. The lights in the sauna at the end of the hall were off, so Rafe and Lilah were definitely in the gym, although I guessed it was possible Rafe was in the equipment room or outside.
I’d try Lilah first. She’d definitely be in the gym.
I saw that the lights were on even before I reached the room, but when I finally got there, it was pretty fucking obvious she wasn’t working out, not the way I’d expected: she was ass-naked and facing the wall of mirrors, her tits pressed up against the glass, head turned sideways.
And she wasn’t alone. Rafe was behind her, his ass on full display as he pressed himself against Lilah’s body.
Lilah caught my gaze in the mirror and made a little squeak, then turned around in Rafe’s arms.
He stood there, his arms braced on either side of her body as he looked over his shoulder at me. “Do you mind?”
“Thank fucking god,” I said, because now that they’d finally fucked maybe they could stop figuratively pacing around each other like caged animals. “Get your dick out of Lilah. Gage has something for us about the hard drive.”