“What?”
“Yeah.” The voice snorted. “He broke the glass he was holding because he squeezed it too tight. One moment, please.”
“Who is this? And tell Colt or Talon to smack him hard for being stupid.”
Give me strength. Does he really think I’d jump into bed with his brother the second his back is turned?
“It’s Zorro, Ma’am. We can all hear you, as the comms keeps us all connected,” he explained, then yelled something which clearly wasn’t meant for her. “Yo, Radar, bash Grizzlyon the head, will ya? F. Tock’s orders. Colt broke his comms unit, so I had to yell, as he’s closest to the boss.”
“First, F-Tock? Explain?”
“Female Tactical Operations Center or Command.”
Military men and their freaking anagrams. “If you keep making crap up, I’m going to need a dictionary with the codes so I understand what the heck you are saying.” Her snarky reply earned a round of laughter from the others in her ear.
“You said first,” Tyrone prompted. “What’s the second?”
“Tell…” even though he’d used Colt’s code name a second ago, she double-checked her list just to be sure she had the correct one, “Radar, that he owes Zipper a case of Monster for breaking his equipment.”
“Second, turn off your earpieces—all of them—except Grizzly’s.” She didn’t need to look up his name; it was already transcribed in her soul. “He is still wearing his, right?”
“No, Ma’am, it’s on the table in front of him.”
Give me strength, because I need to have a conversation with his momma about having raised an idiot.
“Ask him to put it back on, please.” She was probably overstepping more than a couple of boundaries here, but she would not allow him to keep thinking she would betray him. She heard Tyrone passing on the message and murmuring from Gunnar, then a pause where everything went silent in her head.
Is this thing even on anymore?
She glanced at the screen over the top of Remi’s head and noted a green dot next to Gunnar’s call sign. All the others were red, which meant at least his was still active.
“Gunnar?”
“Yup.”
Is he only going to give me one-word answers? Wonderful.
“I’m not sure if I misspoke or you misunderstood, or a mix of both.” She decided straight out was the best way to handle this. “But if you think me dumping your almost comatose brother on his couch is a problem, then I can just leave him to stay sleeping on his keyboard. But you get to listen to his whining about it all day tomorrow.”
Remi helpfully gave a loud snore as if to emphasize her point. Jorja narrowed her eyes at him and leaned over to see his face. To her, he appeared to be sleeping, but that snore was freaking suspicious.
Is he faking being asleep?
“Okay.”
“Gunnar, look, I know you have been hanging around with the one-word response brigade for hours, but in my world, this isn’t how a conversation works.” Even she could hear her frustration in her voice. “Please talk to me, and don’t shut down.” She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “I am not her. Don’t put me in the same league as her.” She heard him sigh, and then the sound of a chair scraping in the background.
“Gimme a minute.”
“Of course.” It was more than one word. They’d graduated to three. She’d take it. She’d heard the term once bitten, twice shy from her mom more times than she could count. Especially when she’d asked her why she’d never tried to find someone else to love. But this was the first time she was dealing with it.
God, I hope I don’t screw this up.
“I’m here,” Gunnar said softly. “I had an audience, and I don’t think I want one for this.”
Jorja glanced at where Remi still lay, either asleep or pretending to be asleep at the computer. “I’m still in the war-room, and Remi is sleeping.”
“The comms signal will reach to the bench outside the door,” he told her. “I’ve used it out there a couple of times.”
