AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I kept my mouth shut and decided I’d let him stew, at least until we got back to the suite. His brain was probably processing data a mile a minute like mine was, assessing the situation while keeping an eye out for threats…
Which had to be why we nearly missed the opportunity of a lifetime standing to one side of the lobby.
“Omigod.” When I gasped and yanked Hux to a halt, he immediately spun around, ready to confront whatever new danger threatened. But I merely pointed, wide-eyed, at the man on the far side of the lobby.
“That… that’s Buck Nutter, Huxley! The Buck Nutter, inventor of the Horn of Glory. Holy crap. Do you think he’d sign my T-shirt?”
18
HUX
I slow-panned to Kev. Was he messing with me? Buck Nutter was the cause of this entire clusterfuck. In the time it took me to register Kev’s obvious hero worship, I realized he was being serious.
Buck Nutter—the original inventor of the Horn Of Glory game, a former unwilling guest of cartel leader Gustavo Santiago, and the man who’d smuggled cartel data out of Venezuela in the unlikely form of a gaming device—was standing in the lobby of the hotel, decked out in purple jeggings that clung to his skinny frame, a green Hawaiian-print shirt, a Horn of Glory fanny pack, and bright red cowboy boots with sparkles on them. As we watched, he nodded thoughtfully at the man beside him and smoothed down the corners of his sandy mustache.
I stood and stared like a fool until my brain kicked into action and my muscles tightened. “Fucking Christ,” I muttered, pulling out my phone to call Champ. “Do not take your eyes off him, Kev. Better yet, maybe you should try to place a tracker on him. He’d recognize me, but he probably doesn’t know you.”
“Tracker? What… oh. Ohhh.” I could tell Kev had forgotten all about Buck Nutter’s role in this operation. To be fair, Kev hadn’t been working with the team back when Buck Nutter had disappeared. Kev had been on comms with us when we got Carter, Riggs, and Buck out of Venezuela, but he hadn’t been on the scene. And afterward, he’d gone back to his regular life while we, Champion Security, had lost our asset.
Buck Nutter had left his Horn with a money-hungry ex-girlfriend and bolted to parts unknown. From the tanned skin and wrinkled Hawaiian shirt, I could assume it had at least been a tropical unknown part.
“Champ,” my boss barked in my ear.
“You’re not gonna believe this, boss, but I have eyes on Buck Nutter.”
The silence over the line was reassuring. At least I wasn’t the only one to freeze upon receipt of this unexpected windfall.
“You shitting me?”
I snapped a quick pic with my phone and sent it to him. “Nope. And unless you say otherwise, he’s about to become a guest of Champion Security’s hotel suite whether he likes it or not.”
“Do not take your eyes off that wily fucker,” Champ growled. “I’m on my way.”
“Permission to take him in?” I begged.
“Do what you have to do. I trust you.”
More proof that what Kev had said was true. Champ respected my ability to get the job done. To do the right thing.
I turned to Kev. “Do you think you can drop the tracker on him?”
Kev was pale and nervous. I wasn’t sure if it was leftover from the interaction with Anomaly or fear of what I’d asked him to do with Buck. Before I could pull my request back, he stood taller and pushed his shoulders back. “Yes.”
I blinked at his manufactured bravery, his willingness to try. His dedication to the mission and his team.
I’m in love with you.
The words fell into my mind like Thor’s Hammer striking the ground. The resulting vibrations unsettled my stomach and jangled my heart. This wasn’t the time for incredible, life-changing realizations. I didn’t have room in my mission plan for this.
Instead of saying the words out loud, I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him toward me, crashing my lips on his with a ride-or-die kind of desperation. He needed to know, to feel the intensity of this moment even if I couldn’t explain it in words right now.
Kev’s eyes widened comically, and he nearly fell over when I released him. His fingertip jabbed the center of his glasses to shove them back up his nose while he stammered. “Oh. Well. Okay, then. So…”
“You are…” I scrambled to think of something other than the declaration of love echoing loudly in my mind. “Mine.”
Lame. What I should have said was that I was his. That I wanted us to be each other’s.
But Kev didn’t seem to mind.
His goofy grin set my heart rate back to a steady rhythm. This was my familiar and beloved Kevin. My partner in this crazy op and the man I trusted most with my heart. And when this mission was over, I was going to tell him all my truths and then ask, beg, for him to be my partner in everything.
