I get out of bed and head for the bathroom to take a leak, but someone’s in there, and I’m annoyed already. Four dudes sharing a tiny room and a tiny bathroom is not ideal and not something we wanna be doing in the US. It’s fine when we’re out for a tour or missions, but once we hit the free land, we want all the luxuries too.
Dawson hands me a piece of pizza. Pepperoni. I used to eat pepperoni pizza, but after having sudzuk—a spicy sausage—in Beirut—I get bacon bits and sausage in the States to try to replicate the great taste. I shake my head no, then see they brought enough to last us for three meals. Senator comes out of the bathroom, and I go in to take a leak and think through mynext steps. Decision-making comes easy, and I settle on a choice for the night, exit, and grab my jacket.
“Wooo, Cap. Where’re you going?”
“Tammy’s.” Dawson and Senator exchange looks. I roll my eyes. “What?”
“We saw the homes. Took pictures.” Dawson hands me his phone, and I scroll until I get to my house, which is tucked away on a corner lot alone and looking like the million I paid for it from my last cut of the mercenary work. Big job with bad people, but fuck, they paid well.
Tammy’s gonna give me a baby when she sees this. “Nice,” I say and hand him back the phone.
“What’s the problem?”
“The Suit got a better offer.”
Fuck. “The Suit from the diner right?”
“Yeah, blue suit, nice haircut.”
“Navy-blue suit,” Senator comments.
We ignore him because nobody gives a crap about that much detail but him.
“Do we have a name?”
“Blake Adams. Runs out of Chicago.” He wags his eyebrows because he knows what I’m thinking. We have influential ties in Chicago that can change his mind.
“And the buyer’s name?”
“Not yet, and Senator is working on it because it’s not a paper trail.”
“Wait, he got a better offer on all our houses or some?”
“Just yours.”
“My luck.”
“Yeah, well, we’re gonna pull out if he sells yours so that’s another card we could play. So I’m gonna see about meeting with him after I call the Chicago contact.”
The Chicago contact is a woman named Ivana who hired us for an extraction job overseas and that girl knows everything that happens in Chicago. It is my opinion she controls most of what happens and how it plays out.
If the Suit is from Chicago, she’d know him as they’d likely roll in the same circles. Luxury, prestige, five-hundred-dollar haircuts. I can go to Garry’s down the street for twenty and a shave if he’s feeling generous. The rich just like to throw money away.
“Did you get the keys from him?”
“None of us would take the keys until your house’s key is in the basket. Right now, it’s not.”
“Oh, he’ll sell me that house. I’ll sit down with him.”
“Cap, let me talk to him,” Senator says.
“Nah, I got this.”
“Remember that we’re gonna be living here, so we can’t work like we would out in the wild. Just because she’s waiting on him, it doesn’t mean she’s crushing on him or vice versa. Just wanna point that out.”
No comment. I shrug on my jacket.
“He’s connected in Chicago,” Mason says.
