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She shivers and elbows me. I laugh and step away, not wanting Cooper to read into our relationship too much. Not with the others behind him, anyway.
“Really, we won’t be long,” Cooper reassures her as Zig steps up close to him. Cooper looks up at him and frowns. “What?”
“I don’t remember you being this gray.”
Cooper rolls his eyes before huffing. “This is what happens when your friends get lost in the fucking jungle,” he snaps, making me grin.
Zig steps up to Salem, keeping his back to the others as he crowds her against me. So much for them not reading much into our relationship. When she tenses, I look down and see his hand slide up under the baggy T-shirt—stolen from me—to cup her ass. Her eyes widen before Zig coughs and pulls his hand free with a smirk.
I want to punch him in the face. “Time and place, my man. Time and place,” I say out of the side of my mouth.
He bends down and presses a kiss to her forehead before pulling back. “You know, it might be nice to at least get something decent to eat here. Something other than scorpions, oranges, and more scorpions.”
I look at his face but withhold my frown, wondering if I’ve lost a few more brain cells since I’ve been in the jungle. I know it’s a joke because we didn’t eat scorpions or oranges, but I’m not getting it. I must look as confused as I feel because Zig shoves me out of the way before winking at Salem and yanking me over to Cooper.
“You all seem…close,” he comments as he leads us outside. Denny and Mark take up positions outside the doors.
“Hard not to when we’ve all lived together for the last few months,” I tell him, still frowning at Zig.
Cooper leads us down a corridor toward the end and opens the door for us before ushering us inside. “I guess that’s true. Did she tell you anything interesting while she was with you? Anything about why the government wanted her so badly?”
I take in the room and see a row of hospital beds to the far left with a cart beside each of them, though I can’t see what the carts are holding. In the middle of the room are a handful of chairs, as if the space has been used for informal meetings like AA or something.
“No. She denied all knowledge of working with them. Said she was a real estate agent that was grabbed while on vacation in Cancun,” Zig tells him.
I’m not sure what the hell is going on, but it would be nice to know what script we should be fucking reading from.
“Take a seat,” Cooper orders.
Zig and I move to the two seats closest to each other and sit in them.
“What about you, Oz? She say anything to you?”
“Nope. She was just scared and wanted out of the jungle. We all did. Why? What do you know that we don’t?”
A knock at the door has us all looking toward it as it opens. Dillon and Skinner walk in. Skinner hands a file to Cooper before taking the seat directly in front of Zig, while Dillon takes the one in front of me. Cooper paces back and forth with the file in his hand.
“Nothing. That’s just it. We can’t find anything. I was hoping she told you guys something, at least. Whatever she’s into almost destroyed Apex. All our jobs have been compromised, our men have been threatened, and we’re being watched at all times. I swear they could tell when the last time someone back home farted down to the date and time. We swept for bugs and checked for cameras, and there was nothing. But somehow, they are still there, in our system, with access to all our files. We can’t leave all our clients dangling in the wind for this woman. We don’t know what she’s done or what they want with her.”
Neither Zig nor I say anything. I watch the usually unrufflable Cooper start to lose his shit.
Zig leans forward. “We just need to relocate her and lay down a false trail. That way, whoever is after her—”
I look at Zig like he has a set of boobs. “I thought we were playing dumb,” I whisper-hiss at him.
“What’s the point? It’s Cooper. He knows anyway.”
“Knows what?” Cooper asks, looking confused.
Yeah, well, that makes the two of us, buddy.
“That Alejandro is after her. I don’t know what she has on him, but he won’t let her go.”
Cooper takes a deep breath. “That’s not for us to deal with. The government can hide her. Hell, they can put her in WITSEC if necessary.”
“That’s not going to happen. Seems the agency has a mole. That’s why the Feds were waiting to ambush us the day we flew out.” Zig sighs, shrugging his shoulders in a can-you-believe-it gesture.
“What the fuck are you talking about? That’s the way it has to be. She’s too valuable for them to just give up.”
