14
Drew stood out of the way and watched silently while Joe stockpiled an increasingly larger selection of weaponry and equipment to take on their extraction mission. He thought the C-4 and antiaircraft missile were verging on overkill, but he didn’t say anything. Joe seemed to need them along with everything else, maybe to reassure himself that he had every tool he could possibly need to free Finn from his captors.
On one level, Drew understood. He was scared shitless about what Finn was going through at this very moment, about the condition they’d find him in, about whether they’d find him before it was too late, about whether they’d be able to find himat all.
On another level, however, the word “obsessive” was starting to pop up in Drew’s mind more often, and he didn’t think concern about Finn was the only factor behind Joe’s behavior. But at least Joe’s fury was cold, focused, and calculated, so Drew wasn’t worried about him falling apart during the mission. After the mission ended… well, that was a different story. Maybe he didn’t know Joe well enough to make such assessments, but he’d seen similar behavior in men under his command at Lawson & Greer, and he thought he knew the signs of someone on the verge of cracking well enough.
If Joe trusted him—if Joe even liked him a little—Drew might have said something, might have suggested getting some professional help for whatever was eating him alive, but Joe neither trusted nor liked him. Drew figured Joe would interpret anything he said along those lines as an attack or an attempt at sabotaging him.
Drew had no desire to undermine Joe on a professional or personal level. On the contrary, he wished he knew how to bridge the gulf yawning between them, and not just for Finn’s sake. Had they met under different circumstances, he thought they could have been friends, maybe more.
“Just about done?” he asked, watching as Joe stacked several boxes of ammo on the plain metal table set up in the middle of the Hercules Security weapons vault, which would have put any bank vault to shame in terms of both size and security.
Joe paused, looking over his stockpile with a critical eye. “Almost,” he said and then reached for a tranquilizer gun and a clip of darts. “That should do it. Now we just have to head south and hope Pixel picks up something that will give us a location.”
It had become readily apparent that Finn’s captors must have figured he was tagged with GPS locators, since they hadn’t had so much as a blip out of them. Either they were being jammed, or they had been removed and destroyed. Either way, it was bad news when it came to getting a fix on Finn.
“I’m sure he will,” Drew said, to reassure himself as much as Joe. Pixel seemed like the kind of brilliant tech expert Drew had seen in movies. In fact, he’d heard Pixel was even scouting with drones, and he hoped the tech had as much success in overcoming the obstacles as his fictional counterparts did. Unfortunately, real life was usually more difficult. “Want some help loading this stuff up?”
Joe glanced over at him, his expression unreadable—at least it was to Drew. Joe had a hell of a poker face. “All right. I also recommend you get some body armor. There are plate carriers and such in the locker over there, if you haven’t had a custom set made yet.”
“I’ve got my set from Lawson & Greer. I’ll pick it up before we leave.”
Needing body armor was a clue that Joe wasn’t ruling out the possibility of a fire fight. He might be hoping for one, given his state of mind.
“All right.” Joe picked up several of the gun cases. “I had Lexy sign out an executive protection SUV for me. It’s got armor, run flat tires, and a reinforced front. We can plow through a house if necessary.”
“Good to know.” Drew picked up as much of the equipment as he could carry and followed Joe out. “I take it this is a no-holds-barred mission?”
Joe smiled grimly. “I want at least one of them alive, if we can arrange it. Personally, I have no stomach for torture, but D-Day….”
Drew had worked with the infamous merc on enough missions that Joe didn’t need to elaborate. D-Day was a tough, ruthless son-of-a-bitch whose personal line in the sand was carved out several feet away from most people’s. If Joe intended to turn over their captive to Daryl for interrogation, Drew almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.
Almost.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Drew said. “Anything else I should know before going in?”
Joe stopped at the entrance to the company’s garage and turned to look at Drew. “Finn comes out alive. That’s all that matters. Anyone and anything that gets in my way is history. And if I have to play Horatius at the bridge for you to get Finn out, I’ll do it.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Drew said, regarding Joe somberly. This wasn’t the first time Joe had mentioned being willing to die for Finn, and while he admired the sentiment and the intensity of emotion behind it, he also had to wonder if Joe was developing a death wish. “I plan to do my best to make sure weallget out alive.”
Joe simply shrugged and hit the powered opener for the door. He headed toward one side of the huge garage, which was filled with vans, limousines, sedans, motorcycles, and even a couple of boats on trailers. They passed most of the smaller vehicles. Joe stopped beside a massive, old-school Hummer that could probably have taken on a freight train and held its own. “Here’s our ride. I would have gotten us a Bradley, but apparently D-Day took both of them to South America.”
Drew shook his head, amused despite the seriousness of the situation. Of course Daryl would take military-grade fighting vehicles that were maybe one step below a tank to protect his husband.
“Sometimes I’m not sure if ‘go big or go home’ was inspired by D-Day or if he heard it once and adopted it as his life’s motto.”
“It could go either way,” Joe acknowledged, something that wasn’t quite a smile curving his lips. It was barely there, but it was still the least grim he’d looked since the minute Finn was taken. Probably having a plan of action and getting into a mission mindset was helping to settle him somewhat, which was good. True professionals in any area functioned better when they had a task and purpose. It was true even if their purpose was killing.
They loaded their cargo into the Hummer, but before they headed back inside for more, Drew stopped Joe with a hand on his shoulder.
“Look, Morrissey… Joe,” he said, watching Joe’s face intently. “I get you have no reason to trust me, but I’m telling you anyway. I’ve got your back. I’m on team Burn It To The Ground And Salt The Earth when it comes to getting Finn back, so however you want to do this, I’m with you. No questions asked.”
Joe went very, very still beneath Drew’s hand, but Drew could feel the tension in Joe’s muscles, the instinctive coiling as though Joe were expecting an attack and was prepared to strike back without thought. There was a flash of something on Joe’s face, there and gone so quickly Drew couldn’t be sure what he was seeing, before Joe’s expression settled once again into the nonexpression Drew usually got. “For Finn’s sake, I’ll accept that. Now let’s finish loading and get on the road.”
“You got it.” Drew nodded as he withdrew his hand, satisfied with the response.
This was as close to a truce as he was going to get with Joe. For now, it was enough.
