Page 79 of The San Marco Heist

Jayce chuckled from the seat across the aisle, one leg curled up in front of herself. “I think his words were, ‘I’m pretty sure his finger isn’t on the trigger.’”

“Do you always treat the new guy this way?”

“New guy?” Declan snorted and glanced at Jayce. “Thought you weren’t interested?”

Any team I’d worked with in the past would have abandoned me to the gunman, unless they worried I’d slip up and reveal their identities. Not this team. They were a family. It was irritatingly inspiring. “Temporary guy, then?”

The door to the VIP cabin slid open, and I jumped out of my seat. Rav closed the door behind himself and pulled open the storage compartment above the table to store the large first-aid kit.

I made my way to the aft cabin to join him. “How is she?”

Scarlett had swatted me away when I tried to take some of the glass from her leg. Declan and Rav, acting like more protective big brothers than I suspected Emmett ever had, both yelled at me to leave everything in place. No matter how much pain she was in, the order was clear—wait until they were on the plane and Rav would clean it up.

Had he been a medic? Or just familiar with combat injuries?

He latched the cabinet closed and turned slowly to look at me. “She’s fine. She’s a tough cookie.”

Tough, but there had been such vulnerability, such fear in her eyes when the man’s gun was on me.

When did Scarlett Reynolds get to be a woman?

Probably not until we had her brother back safe and sound, if nothing else.

The stoicism may not have been pummeled into her quite the same way it had been with me, but the result was the same. A parent with expectations that were so high, we spent our entire lives under that shadow. She nearly crumbled underneath it, isolating herself; while I’d fought so hard against it, I was a stranger to my own father.

“I’m going to—”

Rav’s hand was on my chest before I made it a half step. “She needs rest. We all do.” He jutted his chin toward Declan and Jayce, raising his voice. “That means you two as well. We only have two and a half hours on the flight to Venice, and we’ve been up all day. We don’t know what’s going to happen when we get to the meet, so we need everyone prepared.”

Declan nodded. “How do we prepare when we don’t know who we’re meeting or what’s going to happen? All we have is one phone call with an address in Venice and a time.”

“Exactly.” Rav pointed at their seats. Without argument, they stood and began the process to convert them into beds. “And that’s why everyone needs to be at their sharpest. Fast reaction times. Quick decisions.”

While Will had been following our schedule for the past week, Brie had been at their office twenty-four hours a day. She napped when her programs were running queries and searches, woke to adjust, then took more naps. For a computer geek, she had amazing stamina.

I placed my hand on Rav’s wrist and slowly removed it from my chest. It was obvious he only needed one of the two to kill me if he so chose, so there was no reason to move too quickly around him. “I just want to check on her. It was an intense evening and I—”

Rav looked pointedly at the seat next to me and slid into the one opposite it. In the area next to the VIP cabin, that meant chairs facing each other on either side of a worktable.

Great. Another heart-to-heart with a Reynolds man. Another reminder to leave Scarlett alone.

All the same, I sat. We had two and a half hours. I had time to talk to her, but I had to get past her guard dog if I was going to before she dozed off. “She was upset about the gunman, and I wanted to be sure she was alright.”

“He was threatening one of her team. Of course, she was upset.”

“She’s normally so controlled, but she froze. It was…” I glanced at the door beside him. “It was like she panicked. An absolute level of terror I wouldn’t have expected from her.”

Rav folded his arms, as he did so often, showcasing the ridiculously broad chest and bulging biceps. Protective mode was amping up even higher. “How much have you heard about Noah?”

Was this an ex? “I don’t know who that is.”

“He was our 2-IC on every job—”

Definitely military, otherwise he would have at least said ‘second-in-command.’

“—until we had an incident two years ago and he died.”

“She’s mentioned that. Losing a team member after some communications problems?”

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