Quadruple Duty
Page 5
“No again.”
“Boyfriend?”
I laughed. “A
fter that kiss? What do you think?”
Sammara laughed and shrugged. “Shit, I’m stumped. It must be really complicated then.” She rolled her eyes dramatically while wiggling her fingers. “And mysterious!”
“You’re making fun of me aren’t you?”
“A little.”
“Fine, just for that I’ll tell you.”
I looked back at her, and saw her staring at me intently. So intently, I couldn’t resist.
“My lover was kidnapped by Colombian antiquities smugglers,” I said simply. “And if I don’t return a giant emerald we stole from a cave in the jungle, they’re gonna feed her to alligators.”
Sammara nodded, albeit very slowly. “Ah… Sounds like you have Romancing the Stone problems.”
I was completely stunned. “Whoa. You actually know that movie?”
“Sure I know the movie. And they’re crocodiles, not alligators.”
I blinked three or four times in rapid succession. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah. Actually I’m surprised you know it, being a romance movie and all that.”
“Well Michael Douglas was badass,” I explained. “He killed an allig— I mean crocodile — with his bare hands, and then made boots out of it.”
“That is pretty badass,” Sammara admitted. “Especially for a non-Army Ranger.”
She squeezed my hand. Pulling it into her lap, she used the fingers of her other hand to force me to face her.
“Okay now tell me why,” she said, without even the hint of a smile. “But for real this time.”
For real…
I nodded reluctantly. Pulled out my phone…
And showed her.
Three
SAMMARA
“No… seriously?”
I squinted down at the phone’s glowing screen, carefully re-reading the several lines of text. Astonishingly enough, they said the same thing the second time around.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me, right?”
Kyle shook his head. “Afraid not.”
“You mean you’re actually serious?” I looked up at him. “You’d actually go through with this?”
The big soldier on the other side of the bench shrugged. “If it were the right girl?” he mused. “Yes. In a New York minute.”