Page 7 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
Instead, the perky blonde news anchor leaned forward an inch, as if she couldn’t quite believe the words on the teleprompter.
“We have more dramatic footage from the Indonesian island of Malati, where armed gunmen earlier burst onto the set of the Whispers in Willowbrook overseas special.” Armed gunmen? What other kind were there? The screen cut to shaky video of a beach, a slice of paradise overrun with black-clad figures wearing green sashes and waving AK-47s. Wait a second… The set? Whispers in Willowbrook? A guy carrying a Steadicam sprinted past, too fast for the scene to have been scripted. “Among the missing is everyone’s favourite action hero, actor Marc di Gregorio, who hasn’t been seen since the dramatic events of this morning. Ted, have we heard anything from the local police yet?”
“No, Ellen, we haven’t. Our man on the ground tells us they seem inexperienced when it comes to handling an event like this one. On the line, we have Tony Morales, who worked as…”
I tuned out the TV as dread pooled in my gut. Marc was missing? My Marc? No, no, no, not my Marc, not for the past decade. But once, he had been. For years, we’d been inseparable, before stubbornness and ambition got the better of both of us. In the quiet times, in those moments when I watched Jez curled up on the couch with Cole, or Echo blushing on the phone with her extraordinarily patient country boy, I still missed him. And now he was gone? From Indonesia? Who had taken him? The only group I knew of who wore green sashes was al-Mukhtar out of Somalia, and they were bad news. Even the other terrorist groups shunned them. They had a particular beef with the Bahrain-based al-Mukhtar Brigades, with both groups claiming they’d picked the name first, and the Bahrainis deeming the Somali group sakhif majnun, which roughly translated as “fucking crazy.”
But this was Indonesia, not Somalia.
Could al-Mukhtar have decided to film their own overseas Thanksgiving special?
Time to find out.
“Who’s coming with me?”
Jez raised her hand first, followed by Tulsa. Storm got hers halfway before Priest grabbed her wrist.
“Not so fast. Nobody’s steaming into Indonesia and causing a diplomatic incident.”
Tulsa patted him on the cheek. “That’s why we have you and Demelza.”
Priest ran our team, while Demelza sat in a shadowy corner of the Pentagon, clinging to the purse strings and fighting in our corner in Washington. Part of their role was to smooth the path so we didn’t get blowback for any of our more unusual jobs. Our brief was simple—safeguard the world in general and Americans in particular—and we had a reasonable amount of leeway when it came to achieving our goals. Especially under the current president—James Harrison was former military, and rumour said he wasn’t averse to bending a few rules himself.
“I’m not going to stop you from going.” Priest blew out a breath. “Given the situation with Marc di Gregorio, I realise that’s impossible, but we need a plan.”
For fuck’s sake. “We’ll make the plan in the air. Or have you forgotten we’re a rapid reaction force trained to literally think on the fly?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten that. But there’s a complication.”
“What complication?”
“One of Marc’s costars is also missing—Serena Carlisle.” Oh, her. Okay, yes, she was engaged to a nerd now, but I was under no illusion that Marc had stayed celibate for the past decade. I mean, I hadn’t either; I just got drunk and regretted my actions after every liaison. “And her brother is heading for the airport.”
“So? I imagine Marc’s publicist is on the way there too, but I’m sure I can manage to avoid her.”
“Serena’s brother is former special forces, and he works for Blackwood Security.”
My head was mentally inventorying the contents of the armoury as my mouth groaned. “Tell me this isn’t a joint op?”
“Two members of Blackwood’s APAC team are scheduled to arrive in Sorong in approximately six hours, ten hours ahead of us. They’ll start the advance work. Black already has a backchannel open with the Indonesian government, and Emmy will keep President Harrison in line.”
“She’s unpredictable,” I grumbled.
“That’s rich coming from a woman who—and this is in no way a criticism, my dear—killed a man with a swarm of bees last week.”
“He was allergic. That was an entirely logical course of action.”
Once I’d gotten a look at his medical records, all I had to do was remove the EpiPens from his house, jam his phone signal, and release several hundred honeybees into his bedroom. Of course, he’d panicked, and the result had been anything but unexpected. “I heard Emmy keeps a man’s balls in a jar on her desk.”
“On a shelf behind her desk, and don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing if the opportunity arose.”
“I wouldn’t.”
But only because Marcel would faint, and okay, fine, I’d accidentally seen a picture of Emmy in dumbass socialite mode looking cosy with Marc at a fundraiser earlier in the year, and I didn’t like it. It was a well-known fact that she’d screwed around on her husband for the first decade of their marriage, and who was to say she wasn’t still fucking every hot millionaire who crossed her path? Echo said Emmy Black had a type—rich, smooth, and dangerous. Marc might not be a spy, but he played one in the movies, and on the surface, he fit the rest of her criteria.
But Marc wasn’t really slick. He used that Teflon coating as a mask, the same way I did with amiability. Most people never looked deeper than the surface anyway.
“Given the chance, Dusk would just drink her morning coffee from the skulls of her enemies,” Tulsa said. “Right, babe?”
