Mac cocked his head, confused. “Baby? As in his ride? What the fuck does his hot rod have to do with anything?”
“Rawls was obsessed with that damn car. Every chance he got he was out there in the driveway washing or waxing her,” Cosky told him with a shrewd look in his eye, as though he knew Mac was protesting a bit too vehemently. “He looks at Faith the way he used to look at that old Camaro of his—before those bastards blew it up.”
An icy mask slammed down over Cosky’s face as he mentioned the car. Mac couldn’t blame him. The same bomb that had incinerated Rawls’s “Baby” had also destroyed every possession that Cosky had owned. Leaving him homeless, carless, weaponless, and running for his life.
“You know, Commander,” Zane suddenly said, amusement glittering in his green gaze. “It’s not nearly as terrifying as you seem to think.”
Mac took a cautious step backward, every instinct he possessed shouting that he wasn’t going to like the new direction this conversation had taken. “What the fuck are you talking about, jackass?”
“Falling in love.” Zane cocked his head, the gleam in those grass-green eyes brightening.
“Yeah.” Another slow step back. “I’ll leave that to you pussies.”
Cosky snorted. “Don’t think we haven’t noticed how you look at her, Mac. Fuck—you look at her the same way Rawls looks at his doctor.”
What the holy fuck!
A hurricane of denial flooded him. “I don’t know what you jackasses think you’re seeing. But let me nip it in the bud. I am not in love with Amy.”
Goddamn it, I’m not.
It wasn’t until their uproarious laughter filled the hangar that Mac realized he’d been the one to put a name to the emotion.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
* * *
ERIC ROLLED OVER, reaching for the phone vibrating against the nightstand. He groaned beneath his breath upon recognizing the number flashing across his cell’s front display. A call from Coulson never boded well for the quality of the day.
“Who in the world would call you at such an ungodly hour?” Esme’s groggy voice asked from the pillow beside him. She sat up, craning her neck to see the flashing number, before collapsing back onto the Vividus mattress with a tsk-tsk. “David Coulson. I should have known.” She sighed, snuggling back into her pillow and closing her eyes. “Well, answer it. The sooner you tell him to go to hell, the sooner we can go back to sleep.”
Sitting up and bracing his back against the Parnian headboard that fanned out across the wall behind him, he slid his finger across the green arrow to accept the call.
“Bugger you, asshole,” he said sourly into the phone. “It’s three a.m., for bloody sake.”
A snort greeted that complaint.
“Your English is showing.” There was a distinct sneer in the American’s voice.
Eric bit back his retort. Like most Americans of his acquaintance, Coulson was far too proud of his heritage and country. “What do you want?”
“You know, I can actually tell you come from stiff-lipped, upper-crust, pansy-assed aristocracy this morning. Most of the time your accent is so subtle it’s barely there.”
“What do you want?” Eric measured the words out, ignoring the comment about his speech.
The lack of an accent had been deliberate and hard won. A universal accent meant universal acceptance. One could avoid the stereotypical stranger suspicion if one sounded like the people you were conversing with.
A pause sounded and then Coulson continued. “We’ve had an interesting development arise.”
Eric waited. Bloody hell, the man liked to drag things out.
“Our friendly SEALs showed up at our San Jose facility.”
Eric jackknifed up against the headboard. “The hell you say! How did they connect that property to us?”
“No idea. But they were there, and they weren’t alone. A Shadow Mountain team was with them.”
Eric stopped breathing. Literally. “They’ve teamed up with Shadow Mountain?”
“Apparently so.” But anticipation throbbed in Coulson’s voice, rather than foreboding.
What the hell did Coulson know that he didn’t? Shadow Mountain was no bloody joke. The council didn’t know much about their old enemies other than they hailed from a place called Shadow Mountain and for every step the council took to shove their agenda forward, those damn Indians managed a counterstep to shove the agenda back. For decades they’d been caught in this frustrating dance of one step forward and then one step back.
“What did they get?” He ran stiff fingers through his hair. They’d been rebuilding the prototype at that facility. It had been borderline operational. To lose it now, so close to the finish line . . .
Bloody hell . . .
It would set their time line back by months.