“Roger that, Boss.” Sawyer slammed the door of the helo shut as Sage retied their prisoner to the seat he had sat in previously.
“You all are fucking insane.” Kony muttered.
“Yup.” Castello agreed, “We are.”
“One, this is Two, can you sit your ass down or brace for landing?”
Zack’s voice in his headset put off anything else Castello may have said to Axel. Because how the fuck did you tell one of the sexiest men you had ever met, that his sister had been sold to a former police officer who was Mexico's most wanted man, or tell him the bounty for his capture? A cool $10m.
Castello squeezed his fingers into his eyes. Fuck!
After landing the helicopter and transferring to a plane at an airstrip in the middle of nowhere, Castello, his team, Axel, and the fucker changed planes two more times until they landed in Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti. Here was where they would hand over their prisoner and while they should get new orders, Castello was going to ask about any jobs which might take him and his guys to Mexico. Jeez, you’ve known the man two freaking days, mostof that spent on what was essentially a mission.His brain tried valiantly to be the voice of reason, but Castello pushed all of it aside. He knew better than to let personal shit get in the way, had learned it with his ex-wife. Learned it was better to push the part of himself that needed into a fucking box and ignore it. He couldn’t allow the pull he felt toward Axel Shaw to be a factor in anything he did or in any plans he made. But he was going to be a dumbass
and do it anyway.
***
Axel stayed to the back of the group when they landed. He hated freaking orders, unless they came on paper with a blueprint of a design he had agreed on with a client. Those orders he could deal with, those orders came with a paycheck after he sent an invoice. Now he was the one with the tab, he was the one who owed someone, multiple someones something.
Castello and his men had found him another lead. Mexico. How the fuck was he meant to get from Djibouti to freaking Mexico?
“You’re staring.”
“Fuck.” Axel jerked back from the voice in his ear. “What?”
The corner of Zack’s lip curved upward in an almost smile, the only indication he gave that he was amused to have made Axel jump. “You’re staring at the Boss.”
“Does it bother you?” Axel was curious, he had a vague recollection of one of the guys commenting that Castello was probably bi-sexual when the man had kissed him to shut him up. He just wasn’t sure if he had heard right or not. His brain had been otherwise occupied.Yup, kissing CaptainAmerica’s hotter, sexier, older brother.
“Nope.” Zack studied him, “Should it?”
Ah, what the hell did he say to that? Axel was confused, he had always thought the military didn’t like people who had an orientation that wasn’t straight. It had both shocked and intrigued the hell out of him when Castello had kissed him to shut him up after his rescue. “Umm.”
Zack obviously saw something or made up his mind about something he saw in Axel’s face, because he spoke again, “Boss is complex, deep.” He scratched the back of his neck, clearly he was uncomfortable talking about Castello. It went against everything he had been taught. Talking about any of them was. But Castello had never acted like this about anyone before. At least not that Zack had seen. His eyes scanned the landing zone, Castello stood talking to the base commander, no doubt organizing for them to have a room or space in the barracks to sleep until their ride outta here was organized by the people in CID. For his Boss to jump off a helo and not let the guy on the ground help the one in trouble, insisting on doing it himself, that was unusual. Unusual enough for Zack to be curious. Not to mention that kiss. Totally out of character for the Boss; hell, he was sure even Sage, who had been on his Delta Team, had never seen Castello kiss his ex-wife, never
mind a man.
“You are telling me this why?”
“Because your eyes follow him, as much as his follow you.”
Axel honestly didn’t know how to respond, so he shrugged. He might be attracted to the arrogant fuck, but it didn’t mean he was going to do anything about it. Instead, he changed the subject. “What happens now?”
“Now, the Boss makes sure the prisoner is squared away, then we’ll be assigned a hooch until we go wheels up to go home or get orders for the next job,” Zack shrugged, “Depends on which happens first.”
Home, America, fuck how do I get there?“I don’t have my passport?”
“Don’t worry about that, Castello is good at fixing shit like that.” Zack told him. He nodded to where Castello had been talking to an officer across the landing zone. “Grab some gear, stay in the middle, and follow us.”
“Uh, sure.” That, he could do. Axel didn’t have a clue what the hell a hooch was, but he figured he was about to find out.
***
Castello lay in his bunk, half-awake with an ear tuned to the radio in the next hooch, a few feet down the hallway. Even though they were in a US
base, he never really went into a deep sleep while they were overseas, and that was before the added complication that was Axel Shaw. In the predawn darkness, he listened to the other men’s breathing. He could tell by the silence and lack of snoring that more than one of them was awake. Any second now, someone would ask the question he had been waiting on since they finished dinner.
Sure enough, like clockwork, there it was: “Hey, Boss, uh . . . can we sleep in a pile?”
