Page 49 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
“Heath, what do you think?” Jez asked. “Click once for go, twice for ‘my boss is batshit crazy.’”
Click.
I waited for the second click, but it didn’t come.
Fuck.
A pinprick of pain, and I slapped at another creature on my arm. Marc was probably getting bitten to death too, and I knew from personal experience that the bug spray wouldn’t help. What if he caught malaria? No pill was one hundred percent effective, and?—
Jez and Emmy were both looking at me.
“Okay, fine. I’ll take the overwatch.”
This was why units like the Choir and Emmy’s Special Projects team existed. The regular military couldn’t do what we did. We were agile, unconventional, and willing to take calculated risks.
Emmy and Jez had returned for one of the rental jeeps, changed out of their custom camo into civilian clothes—shorts and a loose T-shirt for Emmy, wide-legged pants and a tank top for Jez—and now they were trundling slowly along the driveway toward the clearing. I’d burrowed deep into the undergrowth, only the muzzle of my rifle visible as I surveyed their progress through my scope.
Priest and Mimi’s ETA?
Thirty fucking minutes.
Echo had booked the stilt house on Couch2Castle for the same date as today—November tenth—but for next year. Then she’d doctored the confirmation email by altering the date and forwarded it to Jez and Emmy. We knew the procedure—the landlord or their representative was supposed to meet us there with the key on check-in day, and if we wanted the optional maid service, that cost extra. We’d skipped it, just as the hostiles would have done.
The jeep stopped.
Jez climbed out of the driver’s seat and stretched her arms over her head, working the kinks out of her back. Emmy followed suit with a pair of oversized sunglasses covering most of her face.
Logically, I knew this plan should work. The evidence—and Marc himself—suggested Wild Roots weren’t a bunch of bloodthirsty paramilitaries. Containing them should be well within Emmy and Jez’s capabilities. Jez had once taken on an armed gang barefoot in a bikini, and rumour said Emmy destroyed an entire Syrian army base on what should have been a suicide mission. This was a cakewalk.
So why did I feel especially antsy?
Why couldn’t I shake that niggling fear that something was wrong?
Marc.
It had to be because of Marc.
“Wow, it’s real basic.” Now Emmy’s accent was Californian, her pitch an octave higher than usual. “You sure this is the right place?”
“Satnav says it is.”
“Well, damn. I told you we should have gone for the one with the pool.”
“We blew the budget in Thailand, remember?”
Emmy let fly with a high-pitched giggle as the door to the stilt house opened.
“But we had fun, right?”
While we were prepping, KD had returned to Marc twice, once with the bug spray and a second time with the water. Now she emerged again, this time on the heels of an older man. Frank?
We had a likely ID for him too—Frank Mastrado, forty-seven years old from Norfolk, England. He’d lost a lot of weight since he quit working for Big Oil and switched sides.
“Who are you?” he demanded as Emmy put her hands on her hips and looked around with disdain.
“Uh, your new guests?”
“I beg your pardon?”
