because he was about to reveal something about her, but because he was about to talk about a nasty operation they'd been on together in the Arctic Circle. Not a place your average DEA agent went. And Dani had no doubt Ty would pick up on that fact.
“Let's just say I get mean and could out-swear even the nastiest sailor.” Dani remembered the operation. They had sat in sub-zero temperatures for ten days before the men they'd been waiting for decided to show up. She had been frozen for every minute of every one of those long days. It'd made her cranky and tired, and being tired had made her even crankier. She'd lost a lot of weight, which had made her body feel fatigued, which, shockingly, had made her even more cranky. But when the time had come, she'd single-handedly taken out nine of the ten heavily-armed men. “Of course, I also shoot really well when I'm cranky, so maybe being cold has its perks.”
* * *
Ty walked into the big house and, for once, it was quiet. Marmie was at her computer, but she was reading. A book. Not a report or a computer printout. He didn't know where everyone else was, but it was almost disquieting.
“Hi Marmie,” Ty spoke as he approached her. “It's quiet here this afternoon. Where is everyone?”
Marmie smiled and put her book down. Ty glanced at the title but couldn't make it out since it looked to be written in some sort of script.
“Cotter is out with his men and Jay, doing some more training. Adam's in Miami, the rest of my team is downstairs. Dani is up in her room reviewing some files and Drew is in the library,” she recited with her usual friendly but perfunctory manner.
“And Spanky?”
Marmie shrugged but didn't answer. There was no way Marmie didn't know where he was, she just wasn't going to say.
“Dani might be in a good mood by now if you want to go check on what she's up to,” Marmie suggested with surprising casualness.
“Any reason she was in a bad mood?” he asked, mulling over Marmie's curious change of approach toward him. He liked the older woman, but he'd always sensed a sort of protectiveness in her when it came to Dani. She sort of circled him like a mother lion trying to figure out if he was a threat to her cub.
“The cold. She hates it. She took a two-hour hot shower when they all got back. She claimed she was feeling human again a little bit ago when she came down for some coffee.”
The information dump on Dani in those few sentences was more than he'd ever gotten from Marmie in all their previous interactions. Maybe she'd decided he wasn't a threat—at least not the kind she was looking out for. Dani, on the other hand, well, there was no doubt that she still saw him as a threat. But he'd wear her down.
But not right this minute. Right now he had something to discuss with Drew.
He excused himself from Marmie and made his way through the cavernous house toward the library, smiling all the way. He couldn't help it, something about the house always amused him. It was such a lavish place, filled with beautiful expensive things. But not filled the way a designer would fill a house. It was chock-full of stuff that looked like it was purchased merely because the purchaser liked it. There was no rhyme or reason, no matching pieces, no theme rooms, no continuous style. It was stuff that, though mismatched, seemed to go together. Probably because the person buying it, and Ty assumed it was Dani's sister Sam, had a strong personality and it came through in the things she surrounded herself with. Dani might think she and her sister weren't alike, but he suspected they were more alike than Dani would ever imagine.
“Come in,” Drew called from behind the closed library door after Ty knocked. He walked in and closed the door behind him. If Drew was surprised to see him, he didn't show it. He gestured to a leather wingback chair and Ty took a seat—debating how to bring up the subject he wanted to address.
“It didn't go well this morning,” Ty spoke, deciding on the abrupt, straightforward approach. Drew raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything, so Ty continued. “You know what I'm talking about. Your team is good and they dive better than ninety-five percent of the divers I know.