"Really good fish," he said.
"You want to be seen," I guessed. "People are going to notice four people walking around town, who aren't usually here. Word is going to get out quickly."
He turned away from the painting. "I'm counting on it."
"I can't decide if you're the only sane one here, or the craziest," I told him. "We couldn't just raise a flag on top of the roof, with the words 'Here we are, come and get us,' written on it?"
"Are you going to climb onto the roof?" He raised an eyebrow at me.
"Hell no. What I'd like is to be able to walk around without thinking someone is going to try and kill me. I don't know aboutyou, but that sounds like a better way to spend the rest of the day."
After a long drive, I was ready to sit back and relax with a beer and Sable's mouth around my cock. Not in that order. Her mouth was top of the list.
"We can do that when all of this is over," he said.
I leaned my shoulder against the wall. "I liked it better when we were sneaking around, slicing throats. This whole being a sitting duck thing, it's not as much fun as it sounds."
"I know," he conceded. "This isn't the way we usually do things. If I knew who was behind the auction and taking Savannah, that's what we'd be doing right now. Sneaking, slicing."
"Maybe a little dicing," I said, since it rhymed. Also, because dicing would be a priority, along with the sneaking and slicing.
"That too," he agreed. He lowered his voice and added, "I hate feeling like we're running away."
That wasn't the kind of admission he'd usually make. I was surprised as hell to hear it from him.
"I thought the idea was to have a quiet holiday? Regroup and shit."
"It is, but we could have gone to the Hamptons instead. We could have turned up to survey the debris. We could have been ready for whatever they had there for us."
"Your instinct told you otherwise." I wasn't usually into this woo-woo stuff, but he'd kept us alive for this long, based on knowledge and observation as well as instinct.
"It told me to stay away from there," he said. "Whatever they set up, we weren't ready for it." He curled his hand into a fist and tapped it against his lower lip. "We'll be ready for them to come after us here. We have to be."
"Yeah, we do," I said. "Otherwise we'll be nice and dead. I have a personal preference for staying alive for a while longer. Along fucking while. You have something else in mind other than parading up and down Main Street, waiting for people to take potshots?"
"They won't be that overt," he said. "This place might look rustic, but the security system is as good as the one on my apartment. Better. We can see outside, in every direction. No one will be able to sneak up on us without us seeing them coming a mile away. In the meantime, we play it cool. Pretend we don't know what happened in the Hamptons."
"Let them think they wasted their time," I said.
He nodded slowly. "Exactly."
"That fish better be exceptional, because this whole thing feels like it could turn into a shit show real quick."
"We won't let it turn into a shit show," he insisted. "We've been through worse and walked away unscathed."
"Yeah?" I asked in disbelief. "When? I don't remember a bigger shit show than what this could turn out to be."
"The auction, for one," he said. "We got through that. This will be a walk on the beach in comparison. Literally."
I glanced down toward the floor. "I wouldn't say we got through that unscathed."
He didn't respond for so long, I looked up to see if he was still there. He was regarding me, his brow creased in a frown.
"You said the senator didn't touch Sable."
"That's right," I said. I didn't quite meet his eyes.
His frown deepened. "He didn't do anything to you, did he?"
