11. What…?
What…?
Vedder
Our Ukrainian menace held her cigarette as far from the front door as possible when she opened it and yelled for everyone inside to “Get out here! You’re not going to want to miss this.”
Daria Savchenko was in skinny jeans, high-heeled, snakeskin booties, and a peplum top that matched her signature red lips. She walked back to the railing and leaned one shoulder on a freshly painted, woodland-green pillar.
Top darkened the front door as I jumped out of the truck and walked to the passenger side.
“…Car trouble?” Daria said with that laugh, gazing at the damage on my new-to-me but still old-as-dirt orange Ford.
“Had a bit of a TIC on the way up here,” I announced as I helped Melody down from the passenger side.
“TIC?” Daria asked.
“Troops in contact,” Top told her, then he let out a low whistle. “Sure you didn’t run into an IED?”
Top stepped down from the porch, running his massive hand through his longer-than-regulation copper hair that was becoming more white with age. The gravel crunched under his boots as he came up to the side of my truck, inspecting at the glass.
“Hey Mel,” he said casually, eyes staying the damage. “You’ll need new tires.”
“I think that’s the least of my problems.” I slowly wrapped an arm around Melody as she shivered, feeling my softened leather jacket mold to her with my touch.
“You two alright?” That was Charlotte, or Mamma Mack, as we called her.
“We’re okay,” I called up to her. “Truck’s dead, though.”
“I see that.” She looked at Melody. “You alright, sweetheart?”
Melody only curled into me tighter.
“Small arms fire, huh?” Taz stepped out next in her biker boots, decked head to toe in denim and leather. She stopped by Daria and bumped her shoulder.
“Who dun it?” Goose asked, joining the group.
His long hair had grown out in the last year, and it was now pulled back into a ponytail.
It gave him a rather severe appearance tempered only by the bushy moustache and his blue button-down shirt covered in kittens—a shirt designed to embarrass his two tweenagers.
“We don’t know who dun it, right?” Taz said. “Please tell me we don’t, because that’ll be so much more fun.”
“Hey Taz, sometimes you can keep thoughts in your head, you know?” I snapped.
If it were just me, it’d have been alright. Hilarious, even. But the sweetheart in my arms did not deserve this, and I was terrified for her.
“Don’t talk to her like that.” And there he fucking was.
Kai Griffith.
I should have known the moment I saw Daria; the two were work partners. One was rarely without the other.
“The fuck you guys get into?” He jumped down the steps too, walking up to the truck and inspecting it himself.
I was not in the mood for this. I did not need to brawl with Griff, and no matter how little time we spent with each other, that was always in the cards, wasn’t it?
“What are we gonna do about this?” Griff crossed his arms.
It always struck me how he and I both had a slight southern drawl but still sounded so damn different from each other.
He was of the Virginian variety. The rich kind of Virginian surrounded by acreage and golf courses and had political ties to the first colonialists.
I was the kind of southern who splashed in potholes and fished for their dinner.
“Team meeting?” Goose asked, looking far too happy for my liking. This shit was serious. They were having too much fun.
“Your dates are such a disaster.” Griff shook his head, giving me a pointed look. “At least you were sober for this one.”
I hadn’t been drunk in over five years, but that didn’t matter, did it? It never fucking mattered. Nothing changed. He didn’t, and neither did I.
Even now, it was all about jabbing me with his backhanded comments.
“I’ll head home,” Melody whispered, her watery eyes glistening in the early setting sun. “I want to get there before they’re home from school.”
“Sure, sweetheart.” I looked up at the faces on the porch and at my truck. Mack squatted by my tires while Griff was at the bed, lightly touching the edges of the windshield frame. “Can I borrow a car?”
“Yup,” Mack said, waving at the front door. “You don’t gotta ask. You know where the keys are.”
“Honey, you look a little shaken.” Mamma Mack’s chestnut hair grazed her shoulders as she shook her head, coming down the steps.
Melody gave me a terrified look, eyes pleading for me to tell her what to do.
“Man, this truck is done for.” Taz leaped from the top of the porch, landing on bent knees before joining Top and Griff to inspect the damage.
She wasn’t there for my health, though. She just loved to see the wreckage. If she didn’t have a thing against water, she’d be one of those people spending a fortune to dive to the Titanic.
“Oh man, I can’t wait to see what a disaster your suspension’s become.” Taz was almost singing with joy. “It’s gonna take a month of Sundays to get this thing road-worthy again.”
“Fact!” Goose chirped.
“I gotta get her home to the kids,” I called out on Melody’s behalf, taking the porch steps two at a time to grab the keys off the hooks just past the front door.
“Alright. I’m going to wrap you up with something to eat.” Mamma Mack wiped her hands on her apron and disappeared inside.
I looked over my shoulder at Melody in the middle of the drive near the wrecked truck, arms around herself and absolutely engulfed in my leather jacket.
She looked small and terrified. She had every right to be.
Not only because of what had just happened, but because this team—Lucky 13—and my crackpot friends were a lot to handle on the best of days.
Dramatic, busy-bodied, nosy, entitled pricks.
Every single one of us. The product of living on top of each other through so many deployments was that nothing was off limits. Not now, not ever.
I had to get her home, or at least to somewhere quiet, before she broke down or had a second laughing fit. She didn’t need this crew’s teasing while she cracked.
“Were they after you or her?” Griff, about as subtle as a battering ram to the backside, yelled over his shoulder.
I froze, reaching for the key on the hook, then massaged the line between my brows as a headache threatened my frontal lobe.
“We can talk about it later.” I stomped down the porch steps towards Melody. “Come on, sweetheart.”
“No, we can talk about it now,” Griff shot back. “Don’t be a dumbass, VD. If they’re after you, then you need to keep far away from that chick—”
“Her name is Melody. She’s not some chick.”
“Sure, VD, sure. Whatever. But if whoever did this is after you, then you need to stay far away from her.”
Not a fucking chance.
“If they’re after her, then we need to establish security now, because they’re going to come in again. You fucking know this shit, you asshole. So quit thinking with your dick for once and—”
“They’re after me.” Griff and I both whirled to look at Melody.
“You sure about that?” Taz asked. She was gentler about it, but I didn’t miss the way my sweet girl’s shoulders lifted, her head lowering, as if she wasn’t sure. “I’m only asking because…I dunno, none of us would be surprised if someone wanted to kill VD.”
Taz shouldn’t have questioned her. She knew Melody. She’d parked her trailer on Melody’s land until she moved into the cabin.
Melody looked at me as if asking me for confirmation.
“She’s sure.” Wrapping an arm around her, I held her to me so her cheek naturally lay on my chest. I put my chin on her head, taking in the feel of her soft, wavy hair on the exposed part of my neck. “And I’m not kidding. I’m going to get her home, and we will talk about this later.”
Fucking hell. For people who once held top secret clearances, they couldn’t keep their mouths shut about a damn thing.
“We should talk about it now if—”
Griff is an absolute stub toe of a human.
“Leave it, son.” Top stopped him. “If it’s her problem, she needs her own solution. Not our monkey. Not our circus.”
Griff grunted.
Melody was not a monkey. Nor was her situation a fucking circus.
“Hmm,” Daria said loudly. “Wait! Before you go, I need you to show me around the barn. I’m not sleeping in the cabin with these two anymore.” She pointed at the newlyweds, Griff and Taz. “Too depressing! And she screams.”
“Hey!” Taz slapped her arm.
“It’s true.”
“I didn’t need to know that.” I wiped my face.
Growing up, my mother didn’t allow us to speak to the heathens and devil worshipers outside our gates, so until I got on the bus to Basic, the only people I knew were my blood relatives.
It had meant I’d thankfully skipped the unique experience of my family making me look like a complete asshole in front of the girl I liked.
Unfortunately, it seemed my friends—the closest thing I had to family—were making sure I didn’t miss out.
“She’s just jealous.” Taz shot back. Oh, boy. This was getting juicy. Even Melody lifted her head to watch the verbal brawl. “We ran into Riley today, and she about face-planted outside the bar.”
“Riley Lyons?” Melody asked me. I nodded. I didn’t know any other Riley.
“I don’t know who you mean.” Daria’s cute Ukrainian accent made me snicker.
“Why the hell were you talking to Riley?” Griff strode to his wife, pulled her into him with a look like he was ready to devour her, then gave her a deep, wet and disgustingly slobbery kiss.
I tried not to gag; It was like watching my brother and sister make out.
When Taz finally pulled away and caught her breath, she looked at her possessive husband and laughed. “We were getting lunch, and he just happened to be there.”
“Happened to be there?”
Oh, right… “I forgot that he and Taz went on a few dates.”
Melody’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know that!”
“We had dinner a couple of times!” Taz said defensively.
“He’s a really good guy. I’ve known him since elementary school. He was a sixth grader when I was in first.”
“Is that right?” Suddenly, I was the one getting jealous. “Anything ever happen between you two?”