the snark a tad. Like you said, we all need to work together, so I'll do my part to get along with everyone… grumpy dickheads included.”
1
Nash
By the time we tracked Shane to a hut deep in the Bolivian jungle, my respect for Gil had done a complete one-eighty. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I regretted all the barbs and snipes I’d leveled at him over the years. Any snark was well-deserved since the brat and his brood of ninja buddies had a history of either stealing jobs from my family or showing us up.
But damn. Seeing him in action was quite the eye-opener. So much so, in fact, I'd warned Dan and Clay to knock off the shit talk—at least for the duration of this mission. Gil wasn’t simply hard-working; the man was a dynamo. I wasn’t sure I bought his myth of a brood so large it spanned continents and how pretty much every rabbit shifter in the world was either a Blythe or related somehow. But I had to admit it did seem more believable now.
By the time my brothers and I made it to the airfield about an hour after our meeting with Morty, Gil had his team mobilized, loaded, and waiting on the plane. During the nearly ten-hour flight, Gil only left his laptop long enough to hit the head. He didn’t even look up from the screen whenever he ate a snack or took a drink from his water bottle.
As impressed as I was, I also felt impotent. I'd offered my help, but there was nothing for me to do. Gil spent the entire flight either arranging transportation, checking satellite images, or chatting with the hackers tracing Shane's digital footprint. And from what I could tell, he did it all at the same time, swapping back and forth between the open tabs on his screen.
When we arrived in La Paz, we were introduced to our driver—naturally, another cousin and member of Gil's far-flung brood. Luis was a third cousin, twice removed… whatever that meant. The old ramshackle, rainbow-colored bus Luis drove seemed to be put together with bailing wire, duct tape, and mud. Eyeing the bus, I wasn’t quite sure how we’d make it work. Altogether, there were about twenty of us, along with our assorted bags and weapons. My guess was some of us would have to wait with the plane. And yet we all managed to fit, although we were crammed in like sardines.
Luis was friendly enough, but I quickly discovered three things as we traversed a bumpy, one-lane dirt road hugging the mountain's hairpin turns. First, Luis had no concept of physics. Second, he had an obvious death wish. But third—and most important to note—Luis was a crazy-assed motherfucker who had no business riding a bicycle, let alone driving a bus on a road surely designed by Satan himself after a three-day bender.
When we finally arrived in the small village where Shane was last seen, I'm not too proud to admit I stumbled off the bus and dropped to my knees to kiss the ground. Nobody teased me either. A few of the guys seemed like they were tempted to join me. In fact, even the wildest of the brood members looked paler than usual.
We found Shane's trail thanks to one of the locals Gil and his brood interviewed in the town square. Despite Gil’s satellite photos of a large group of men camped less than a mile away, none of the villagers were willing to talk at first. A small crowd gathered around, with several people offering us baskets of fresh fruit to purchase, but they knew nothing about any outsiders.
Nobody had seen or heard a thing. That is, until a young girl stepped forward and smiled shyly at Gil. Then she’d turned to her townspeople and reminded them of the Americanos who had come here for food and supplies. Even then, I doubt any of them would've talked if the girl hadn't kept going. She’d blushed and stammered, yet never taken her eyes off Gil.
She reported seeing two of the Americanos load a sleeping wolf into the back of one of their jeeps while she'd been fishing nearby with some of her friends. I smiled at the excuse. Fishing… sure. That seemed legit. Hell, I knew how it worked in isolated communities like this one. A group of Americanos camped outside the village would've been quite the event.
I would bet my left nut the villagers had taken