Page 50 of Gryphon

“Never tried that myself,” his half smile told her that he wasn’t quite as done and gone as he thought he was. Except that wasn’t the key topic of the moment.

“How do we find out what’s going on?”

“Well, I thought that you’d take care of that.”

“Me? Sure, mate, I’ll just gather up my sexual wiles and bat my eyelashes—in ways you’re so fond of pointing out—at that NATO two-star. I’ll make him give me the nuclear launch codes while I’m at it.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t have the connections you do.”

“He doesn’t?” But then she remembered.

Maybe he didn’t.

She pulled out her phone.

Mike patted her on the knee, then kissed her on the forehead before returning to the cockpit. Not half as done with her as he thought—at least she hoped that’s what it meant.

38

Pizza? Frozen Stouffer’s Meat Lovers Lasagna? A bag of Doritos with some plasticized fake guacamole dip?

Harry faced the refrigerator that Heidi had overstocked before she left.

His willpower always turned to crap the minute Heidi was gone farther than the office. With the best of intentions, he kept looking at Heidi’s standard crackers, cheese, and carrot sticks with hummus lunch, and had no idea how she lived on that. Lunch was about salami sandwiches, which had become turkey ones. A foot-long loaded chili dog, which had become a bowl of chili. At least when he had a hack on, she let him hit the pizza hard—though even he could no longer face the meat-a-saur specials he used to live on. Just so damn heavy on the gut.

Of course, it wasn’t lunchtime. It was barely seven a.m. So, he’d go for the cold pizza and some of last night’s leftover spaghetti. Except he didn’t see that anywhere. Oh, right, he’d finished both of those after Heidi’s two a.m. opiate reminder call.

Wait? What was all the crap food doing here?

Oh, damn. He sniffled. Heidi knew he had no willpower and was coddling him while he was laid up. Damn but that woman was awesome.

Still, the pang for junk lay there in his gut. Or was it just panic eating? His reputation felt like it was sliding down the drain. He hadn’t uncovered trace one of Jeremy’s copilot sleeper agent. Clean prints. No facial recognition anywhere before already being in place in Italy. Like he’d materialized out of thin air, which maybe he had.

If you didn’t have a Star Trek transporter, what did you need to happen to make that your superpower? Not kryptonite or a radioactive spider. Not Doctor Strange’s magic or being struck by Flash’s lightning. Maybe— Maybe he needed more sleep.

His phone rang and he slammed the refrigerator closed, barely making good his escape, and crutched his way back to the bed, grabbing the phone before the last ring.

“Yo!”

“Yo, yourself, mate. I need to place a call.”

“This isn’t AT&T.” Then he caught up with who was on the phone. “Holly?” She never called him. But she was also the only woman who CIA Director Clarissa Reese feared. That placed her just one thin notch below Heidi on his list of seriously cool people.

“That’s who you’re talking to.”

“And you need to place a call?”

“Might’ve said something like that.”

“Must be one hell of a call if you’re pinging me.”

“I’ll be on the ground in thirty minutes. By that time I need an untraceable pipe, untraceable in either direction. No one can ever be allowed to know it existed—ever. I don’t want even you to be able to see it. That tight.”

He laughed.

Holly didn’t.

Harry sobered. “What the hell?”

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