“Someone must be the voice of reason,” Azami said aloud, “but from the snickers of your fellow teammates, I am uncertain that person is you, sir.”
Jonas gave the others a long, slow, reprimanding glare. “I told every single one of you that you were nuts to go into that bar. The trees surrounding it were bent over, almost in half. I told you they looked like praying mantises about to swoop in on prey. And was I right?”
Tucker laughed. “Damn right, you were.” He nudged Sam. “Those trees came right down on top of that building and took out the wall and part of the roof with us in it.”
“I dropped the Frenchman,” Sam confirmed, laughing. “Right on his ass.”
“The tree smashed the croc barrier and these big mothers come swimming right through the middle of that bar right at us,” Tucker said. “I never saw such big crocodiles. Sam and I were swept underwater by the tree branches and those crocs were loose in the water with all of us.”
“Jonas there,” Ian continued, “he pulls himself inside and sits up top of the windowsill with his knife in his teeth and then does some kind of circus maneuver and the next thing we know he’s hanging upside down from the ceiling and telling us to get the hell out of there, that he’s got us covered.”
“Of course he looked like a chimp swinging on the chandelier, which, by the way, was hanging by one bolt and was nothing more than a couple of lights strung together by a chain,” Sam added, doubling over with laughter. “I’m looking up through the water, this heavy branch across my chest, and I could see Jonas swinging like a madman right over the water.”
“So the damn thing snapped.” Jonas took up the story, as Ian was laughing too hard to continue. “I landed on the Frenchman, who was screaming his guts out. Sam was no help. The crocs were swimming around like they were confused, sort of circling the room. They looked like prehistoric dinosaurs and pretty damn scary.”
Sam felt the energy that could only prelude a GhostWalker. He took up the story quickly, laughing as he did. “Then Gator lets loose and starts yelling like a banshee. He was doing some kind of Cajun ceremonial rain dance or something . . .”
“I knew you were in here swappin’ lies about me,” Gator said. “I could hear you laughin’ two houses over. You’re gonna wake the dead. And, ma’am, don’ believe a single lie these jokers tell you. I saved ’em all that day. It was our darkest hour, with giant crocodiles swimmin’ around the room, water pourin’ in from every direction, trees fallin’ on us, and the bunch of them grabbin’ at the liquor bottles and splashin’ around, bait for the crocs.”
Azami’s low laughter was pure music. Sam was fairly certain he was already addicted to the sound of her voice. That low, alluring tone, so pleasant he could listen to it forever.
“I don’t know what a ceremonial Cajun rain dance is, but why would you perform such a ceremony if it was already raining?” she asked.
“Exactly,” Tucker said. “We all asked him that later and he just insists he saved us by dancing on the bar and performing weird gyrations.”
“I’ve told you all a million times that bar was wet and I was slippin’, not performin’ some rain dance in the middle of a hurricane,” Gator protested. “I don’ even know a rain dance.”
Gator’s statement drew more laughter. Sam wrapped his arm around his stomach, afraid if he didn’t stop soon, his wounds were going to rip open just from pure amusement.
Azami shook her head as she slipped closer to the bed, leaning one slim hip against the frame closest to Sam. “Your mission sounds much more fun than anything I’ve ever done.”
“Fun?” Ian’s eyebrows nearly met his hairline. “Ma’am. You don’t seem to understand the deadly peril I was in there at that bar. The Frenchman was trying to drown me and the crocodiles were circling me, thinking I was their next meal.”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to swim with the crocs?” Sam asked. “We all heard it. And as I recall, Tucker and I were the ones stuck underwater and you were clinging to the side of the wall like a lizard.”
“I wanted to see them,” Ian corrected solemnly, “not swim with them. But you know,” he added, brightening significantly, “the sign did say if you swam with them and survived, you get free drinks for the rest of your life. Technically, that bar owes me free drinks, because I swam with the crocs and survived.”
“Technically, Ian, you didn’t swim with the crocodiles. You barely got your big toe wet once they were loose. That was Sam and me,” Tucker snickered.
“How?” Azami asked. “How in the world did you all make it out of there?”
The men exchanged glances and then laughed again.
“Tom Delaney,” Sam said.
“Tom Delaney,” Tucker and Ian agreed simultaneously.
“We call him Shark,” Gator confided.
“The new guy. We had a new addition to our team and he’d come along to learn the ropes, so to speak,” Sam explained. “He’d been a GhostWalker for some time and had an impressive record, but none of us had worked with him before. We thought it was a get in and get out, no problem mission.”
“Never been on one yet,” Tucker said, “but I’m always hopeful.”
“If it can go wrong,” Jonas added, “it does.”
“So we’ve got this new guy none of us are sure of,” Sam continued. “He’s leery. We’re leery. We all think we just grab this Frenchman and get out of there fast, right? Except the Frenchman starts yelling and fighting. He kicked me. And he bit Tucker.”
Instantly laughter erupted again.