She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. Miguel covered his laugh with a cough. “You compared me to a fuckingelephant?” she asked, scowling at me as she opened her eyes.
I immediately shook my head. “No! I knew you wouldn’t like it. And it didn’t fit anyway. You’re super fucking tiny, and elephants are thousands of pounds.”
Her expression darkened. “You’re digging yourself a hole,” Miguel whispered.
“You, shut-up,” Noah snapped, pointing a slender finger at him. Miguel held up his hands in surrender and clamped his lips shut tight. She narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t know whether you’re being serious or you’re trying to be funny.”
I wiggled my phone in her direction, exasperated. “I was being serious. An elephant doesn’t suit you. And the stupid AI’s answer was a fucking dog or a horse.”
She sighed heavily and shook her head before turning and walking away from us. “Sometimes, Blayke, I think your brain came out of a slow-cooker.”
Miguel couldn’t even hold in his laugh. I grinned at her back. “It turns me on when you insult me, mama!” I called after her.
She just lifted her middle finger over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner.
11
Blayke
Ilooked up from my laptop, where I’d been looking over some files Geek had come across while he’d been busy tracking Halo and Gidget. He’d managed to hack into the Russian Pakhan’s old database, but everything on it was months old, and so far, I wasn’t finding anything useful. Absolutely nothing to tell us where he might be now, which was goddamn frustrating. And though I knew in my gut this would be yet another dead end, I scoured every damn thing Geek sent me anyway.
No stone unturned and all that, even if it was proving to be a waste of my time.
Halo stepped into the sitting room first and immediately flopped onto the couch with an overdramatic groan. Gidget followed in behind him and took a seat next to him, much more silent than Halo. But that was Gidget. He hardly ever spoke. Hell, he barely ever made a sound. Made me wonder how he felt being stuck with talkative-Halo all day.
“Anything?” I asked, though I already knew nothing had happened. Geek had been tracking them all day, but as far as wewere aware, Gidget and Halo had made zero headway in finding the Russians’ location. We were still at square fucking one.
“Nothing,” Halo told me as he leaned his head on the back of the couch. “Not a peep. Not a fucking soul. My suggestion is to widen the search tomorrow. Gidget and I?—”
“Noah and I will take the search tomorrow,” I interrupted him. “We’ll take turns so we each have turns to rest until we uncoversomething.” Theyhadto be near. They were just fucking good at hiding, that was all. But that was okay because I knew sooner or later, we’d uncover them.Eventually, we had to cross paths with at leastoneof the members. If we could just get our hands on one person, we could torture them for information and go from there.
It’d be better than nothing.
“Noah’s going to do what?”
Speak of the Devil, and she shall appear.
I looked over to the stairs, where Noah was descending. She’d showered, her hair hanging down around her face, and she’d changed into clean, baggy sweatpants and a crop top that showed off her flat belly and a silver belly button piercing that I wanted to get intimate with. Her nipples were pressing against her shirt, and my body reacted to the sight of them like a twelve-year-old boy seeing tits for the first time.
This woman had no real idea how fucking gone over her I was.
“You and I will take over the search tomorrow, mama,” I informed her as I focused back on my laptop. As much as I wanted to play with her, I needed to finish looking through all of this. I couldn’t rely on Geek to do everything, and besides, it wasn’t fair to do so. He might be the best tech geek I’d ever come across, but he was still human and needed rest and help. Delegation was important and something Johnston harped onso he didn’t overwork himself. Because if needed, Geek wouldneverget sleep.
“With you?” Noah asked, scrunching her nose in distaste as she took a seat on the couch behind me. I turned my head, looking at her over my shoulder. “Is there no one else I can work with?”
I smirked. “Don’t pretend you don’t like me, mama,” I teased.
She leaned forward, squinting at my computer screen. Surprising me, she dropped onto the floor beside me and turned my laptop toward her before scrolling back up a little. Then, she turned my screen back to me and pointed to a charge on a bank statement I’d been looking over. “There,” she said, looking at me. Frowning, I read over it, noting the town name with the store. “That’s what—an hour from here?”
“Been noting what’s around us?” I asked, honestly surprised she’d done some homework of her own as I typed the info into my Google search bar to see the distance. And she was right. It was a few minutes less than an hour from our current location. I whistled low. “Well, goddamn, mama. You’re on to something.” I looked at her, truly impressed. “I could fucking kiss you.”
She shot me an annoyed look. “Kiss me and I’ll rip your balls off and feed them to you.”
Halo barked a laugh. I only winked at her. “Don’t tempt me with a good time, mama.”
She huffed, rolled her eyes, then fluidly rose from the floor to sit on the couch again. I snapped a picture of the charge on my burner phone, then sent it off to Geek so he could dig deeper into that location specifically. “You wouldn’t know a good time if it slapped you in the fucking face, Blayke.”
I leaned closer to her, offering my cheek. “Slap me and find out.”
