“Baby girl, what are you doing?”The screen on the other side was pushed back giving Ambra a wider view of the room. Rock stood with his fingers pinched into the bridge of his nose as he looked at someone off camera.
“I’s teaching Nathan abouts glitter wars.”A small child’s voice answered. Castello recognized the voice as belonging to Lexi, Rock’s daughter, whom they met in Texas a couple of months ago, when they had gone to collect Rourke.
“Where is your momma, you’re supposed to be making cookies.”
Rock plucked the dart from Cade’s cheek and held it out, a small hand appeared on screen and took it from Rock’s huge one. Holy shit, Rock with a daughter was fucking priceless.
“She’s pukin adain,”The girl answered,“said we was to go play.”
“I sorry, Sir.”Another voice piped up,“I didn’t means to hit you.”
“It’s good, Nate,”Cade grinned at the kids.
“That’s my nephew.” Sawyer shouldered his way to the front of the pack. “Nathan,” he called, “It’s Uncle Sawyer.”
“Uncle Saw-Saw?”A tiny hand lifted Cade’s arm and the little boy, Micah, Hawk and Creed had adopted after his father, Speaker McCall, was killed, appeared on screen.“I gots to meet Grammy K.”He dropped the dart on the keyboard, his hand coming up to meet Sawyer’s in a virtual high five.
“You did, huh?” Sawyer grinned at the screen. One of these days he was going to spend some time at Forward Operating Base Panther in Texas and get to know his new nephew in real life rather than over the freaking airwaves. “Did you like her?”
“Yeah, did.”Nate nodded,“did you know she lives at the airport?”
he asked.“When we wants her, we can just go get her. Then, when we'redone having her sleeps over, we gets to take her back to the airport?”
Sawyer could hear the others struggling to hold in their laughter at the four-year old’s logic. Hitting out with his elbows, he hit the nearest two in the ribs, warning them to keep their mouths shut. “I’ll bet that’s fun.” he said to the screen. Damn that kid was adorable.
“Uncle Saw-Saw, did you know mosquitoes chase you withflashlights here?”Nate asked.
On screen they could see Cade spewing his coffee all over the screen.
Rock’s large hand hammered on his back to help him clear the coffee he had swallowed down the wrong pipe, while trying not to choke.
“No, I didn’t know that.” Sawyer said, “Things are weird in Texas huh?”
“Yeah.”
“They were lighten bugs, silly.”Lexi pushed in next to Nate, her face pressed up against the screen, ensuring the Ambra team members got a close up of her eyeballs.
“Uh, Rock?” Castello had no problem bitching, even though he got that they had kids and stuff. But apparently, he needed this intel enough that Rock had called him and risked a video call. Now they were delaying for kiddo chat? “Can we get this shi—you cannot swear in front of the kids—um—
show on the road?”
“Yup,”Rock’s voice answered from off screen,“I’ll take the kiddos towhere they are supposed to be. Cade will fill ya in.”
“Roger that.”Cade ruffled Nate’s hair and pulled Lexi’s pigtail,“I’llsee you two hooligans at dinner.”
“Bye Cade.”Lexi’s face disappeared from the screen.
“Bye, Sir.”Nate whispered, his face moved off screen for a second before appearing again, “Bye, Uncle Saw-Saw.”
“Bye, kiddo.” Sawyer winked at his nephew, and then Nate was gone again. Within seconds the sounds of the kids high-pitched voices and Rock’s rumbling growl faded until the sound of a door shutting cut them off completely.
“As you can see it’s pretty lively around here.”They could see Cade pick up and place the pink plastic arrow on the top of his keyboard, no doubt saving it to return to Lexi and Nathan later.
“Roll it, Sage.” Castello grumbled, “we got shit to do.”
“You got it.” Sage hit play on the video Cade had sent him.
“Like I said earlier,”Cade waited until they had watched the footage before he spoke,“It's security camera feed from the scene of a doublehomicide in Miami two days ago. Three masked guys invaded the rentalof two people with suspected ties to a mob family, killed both, and stole alarge sum of money.”
