about having a solid role in this operation.
Forest and Doc Summers leave us to strategize. He hired Sam to lead Guardian HRS. His faith in CJ to lead the Guardian teams, and in Mitzy to lead her technical and intelligence crew, is unshakeable, but damn if it isn’t a shit-ton of pressure. Nobody wants to let Forest down.
He defers to Sam’s expertise, as he should. Sam is a veritable legend when it comes to the black ops community, but Forest is somewhat of a savant.
Where Mitzy doesn’t assume shit, Forest sees the world differently than the rest of us. If he senses there’s a new player in town, there’s definitely somebody out there. I have my work cut out for me. I respect Sam’s leadership, but I trust Forest’s gut.
Not that I care about any of that right now.
All I care about is the doc officially gave me the go-ahead to support my team. I owe her a huge favor and have a feeling she’ll call in that debt.
Eleven
Griff
The flight to New Orleans from the coast of California takes a little over three hours from take-off to landing, but five hours pass before we touch down due to loading and calling Charlie team in for the assist.
I’m a bundle of knee-bouncing nerves during the entire trip. Axel alternates between giving me the eye and shaking his head. He won’t say it—there’s no need—but he thinks it’s long past time I do something about Moira.
Unlike me, he didn’t let rules and regulations get in the way when he made his move on Zoe. Granted, those two have more history than Moira and I share, but I still think he’s an ass. And, he’s having far too much fun at my expense.
“Don’t worry, bud,” he says with a snicker. “I’m going to hug your girl real tight.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Want me to lay a kiss on her, or do you wanna do that yourself?” Axel’s grin is a mile wide.
The guys chuckle as they listen in. Knox and Liam sit across from each other, playing cards. Max kicks back and stretches out. He reclined his seat all the way flat. He’s not asleep, but rather working through the plans we settled on a little while ago.
Those plans are the reason Axel’s being a shit, as they call for an unusual evacuation off the ship. I may, or may not, have had a snit when it came down to who I’d let carry Moira in my absence.
It’s Axel, obviously, we’re tight, and I trust him. Not that I don’t trust the other guys, but Axel is the only one of us in a committed relationship. Therefore, he carries Moira out of harm’s way, and watches over her until she’s back in my arms.
This support role officially sucks.
“Now, you’re just being a little shit.” I give Axel the finger while Knox snickers.
“Stop jerking him around.” Liam lays down a card and either wins or loses that hand. I’ve never been able to figure out what the fuck those two play, and I can’t tell if he’s defending me or mocking me.
“Griff’s in love. L-O-V-E, love.” Knox sings the words. What’s worse is that he ends it by wrapping his arms around himself to pretend he’s making out. Fucker uses sloppy kissing sounds and really goes to town.
“If that’s the way you kiss, slobber horse, no wonder you’re single.” I slap him upside the head and plop down into my seat.
Like Max, I recline all the way until I’m flat on my back. Guardians travel in style and this is a far, far cry from my military days when the best seat in the house was stuck in the middle of a long row of webbed seats lining the fuselage.
We were crammed in tight enough you could sleep sitting up. The floors were cold metal, so cold I once had a water bottle freeze solid less than six hours in the air when I accidentally left it on the floor.
We didn’t have real heat, just a tube of heated air overhead with far too few flaps for vents to let that heat out. It was loud as fuck. Your feet froze and your head sweated. And the webbing on those seats was so stretched out, your ass sat on hard metal bars.
Guardian life is definitely an upgrade. Plush leather chairs, first-class accommodations, a lavatory you can actually turn around in. There’s a minibar stocked with water for the flight out and beer on the way