Chapter Twelve
Ryland
“Ryland! Over here!”
I rolled my eyes and pivoted to search the crowd of people milling around the luggage carousels at the airport.
So William had decided to send Max to pick me up?
The guy was great with finance, but his social skills were iffy at best. Max could talk for hours without saying much of anything.
Probably in retaliation for calling him Billy the last time we’d talked.
William hated to be called Billy. It seemed to offend his British sensibilities, which in turn made it so tempting for the rest of us to use it whenever we wanted to get under his skin.
Spotting Max wasn’t difficult. A six-and-a-half-foot tall, wide-shouldered guy with red hair and a beard to match tended to stand out in a crowd. Hefting the duffel bag to my shoulder, I worked my way through the swarm of people between us.
Reaching him, I raised an eyebrow. “So how come you pulled chauffeur duty? William punishing you for something or just tired of listening to you talk?”
Max slapped me on the back hard enough to send a normal man staggering across the concourse.
“Nice to see you too. And when I talk, it’s to impart useful information to those of you lesser men who don’t pay attention to the world news.
I communicate thoughtful observations in a witty dialogue meant to entertain and enlighten. ”
I grinned. “And sometimes lull us to sleep.”
Max grabbed the duffel bag from my shoulder.
“Important guy like you shouldn’t be carrying his own bags.
That’s what the chauffeur is for. So how come you dumped the poacher chase on Sam and Noah this late in the game?
Billy said some young thing got you so het up you forgot how much you hated the poachers. ”
I contemplated retrieving my duffel bag and decided against it.
Max would be happy to wrestle me in the middle of the airport, but security might not take such a kind view of it and getting arrested would delay us and piss off William.
Better to let him do the hauling for me.
We extricated ourselves from the crowd and headed down the concourse toward the parking garage.
“Her name is Kimberly, and she’s not some hot young thing. She’s the woman I intend to marry just as soon as I manage to convince her I’m good for more than a one-night stand. She’s a little gun shy.”
“Hah! I knew you’d fall hard when you fell.” Max snickered before addressing me. “She thinks you’re a bad bet for a lifer? Smart girl. When do I get to meet her?”
I favored him with a look that would have felled a lesser man. “You don’t. Not until we’ve been safely married for at least ten years. I’m trying to convince her I’m a mature, stable partner, and you do nothing for my case.”
Max put on an exaggerated pout, his bottom lip sticking out. “I am crushed. Here I assumed you thought of all of us as your brothers -- brethren, so to speak -- and now you don’t want me to meet the future mother of my godchild? That hurts.”
We reached the elevator leading to the parking garage and Max pushed the up arrow. The doors opened immediately and we entered.
“Future mother of your godchild? I haven’t managed to convince her to consider me as a steady boyfriend and you’re looking ahead to children?”
“Well, someone has to push things along.” Max shook his head in mock sadness as the elevator doors closed with a quiet swish. “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
“True.” I held out a hand as if inspecting it for wrinkles. “How long till I hit retirement age? Three decades? Four?”
“Exactly!” Max smiled as the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors slid open to reveal rows of parked cars. “You need to get a move on it, or it’ll be too late.”
I followed him, shaking my head. “You’re incorrigible, but rest assured I will invite all of you to the wedding.” I paused, picturing how many of the guests would show up on motorcycles. “If you promise to behave yourselves.”
“We always behave.” A hundred-watt grin lit Max’s face. “Sometimes we behave like civilized people, sometimes we behave like wild animals, but we always behave.”
“I give up.” I rolled my eyes. Good thing these guys were on my side. “Where’s the car?”
* * *
The drive to the Operations Center was relatively uneventful, unlike the last time I’d travelled in a vehicle with Max.
There were no exaggerated hand gestures, creatively honking horns, or sudden swerving and lurching to cut in front of other drivers.
Interesting. Max must be more disturbed by recent events than I’d realized.
We pulled up to the gate of the compound, the car idling as the high-tech security system verified the vehicle and occupants. Once the gates swung open it took mere minutes to navigate to the front door of the large brick building.
“You’re the last one here, so you might want to grab something from the kitchen on the way past. Billy boy isn’t wasting any time on this one, so all the usual British niceties will be noticeably absent.
” Max turned to give me an evil grin. “And it looks like the leak came from your area. You might want to think up a defense for that one.”
“My area?” That caught me off guard. As far as I knew, the poachers hadn’t even been aware of me tailing them or my presence on that damned island, so how could the leak be traced back to me?
Unless Kimberly had let some info slip, but to whom?
Her social circle definitely didn’t include anyone with a penchant for transatlantic hops.
She barely had one. She’d probably filled in my sister, but I was willing to bet that was it, especially after I’d made such a big issue about not telling the cops anything.
No, Kimberly wasn’t the source of any leaks.
The operations room resembled the NASA command centers I’d seen in Hollywood movies.
Rows of computer banks flashed numbers and letters up so fast it would take a cyborg to be able to read them.
A large oval table the guys liked to refer to as their own little version of the round table occupied the center of the room, surrounded by seven leather executive chairs.
If we were going to spend our time working for the greater good, we intended to do it in comfort… at least in the planning stages.
The Brotherhood of the Wild had had a less than spectacular start to it.
About a decade back, I’d been at loose ends and decided to embark on a camera safari.
Noah and Sam had been working as guides for an outfit out of Arusha and I’d known them from the SEALs so I’d hired them to take me to photograph rhinoceroses.
The twins were very good at what they did, and the trip had gone smoothly at the start.
The three of us had become friendly, talking about what we did after mustering out.
In a bizarre coincidence, they too had made a fortune after leaving the SEALs, in their case on a lucky stock trade.
They didn’t need to work, but they were too young to stay home with their feet up, so they’d decided to hire out as guides in Africa, a place they knew well from earlier expeditions.
I’d gotten some excellent shots of various animals on the Serengeti and enjoyed the luxurious tents and food the twins had arranged for.
We hadn’t managed to find any rhinos though, and the twins promised to take me to an area known for its herds of rhinos in the hopes of getting some good shots before the end of my stay.
The day had started out well enough, but by noon we found ourselves surrounded by a group of poachers intent on killing the rhinos for their horns.
The poachers had taken down a magnificent specimen, a male in his prime.
Both outnumbered and outgunned, the twins and I had hunkered down in the bush, hiding from what we feared would be certain death if the poachers detected our presence.
Then, like a shootout scene from an old western, a group of Interpol agents appeared with guns blazing.
The twins and I had cheered when the Interpol agents won the day, but reality set in when we found out the poachers wouldn’t suffer anything more than deportation.
The disgruntled agents explained that as citizens of a nation friendly to Tanzania, they would not be prosecuted or held responsible.
The worst they’d suffer was the loss of the rhino they’d taken down.
Sometimes, law and justice were two entirely different concepts.
That was when the Brotherhood of the Wild had been born.
Using the money Jacques and I had made in software, the four of us bought a large chunk of land in the Montana mountains and set up the Operations compound.
We recruited William, a former MI5 operative with a flair for organization, to keep things running smoothly.
He supplied a wealth of knowledge on tactics to help track down the poachers.
Eventually we were joined by Danny, a young marine biologist whose specialty was the Great Barrier Reef.
Max, a self-confessed lover of spreadsheets, had joined us later as our numbers guy.
He managed the Brotherhood’s finances and made sure we could afford to do what we did.
If we needed more boots on the ground, we called in the guys from the Riptide MC.
We’d served with them and trusted them not to betray our secrets, just as they trusted us not to take the legal aspects of anything too seriously.