Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3) (22 page)

O’Connor watched her sway away and realized he’d just received the same advice from two, separate
,
female members of his group. He’d have liked to ask for a male point of view but—as he’d stated to Rae—his best friend Allan Ryker: Casanova of Free-fall, was hopefully safe and sound with the rest of their friends in Pecos, awaiting their arrival. George would be no help. At all. Leo was even more clueless than Jake himself. So much so that Elle had basically made the first move on him. And the second. And the third. Henry wouldn’t be much help either, even though the guy was a rock emotionally. His lifestyle didn’t really provide him insight into the female mind.

Nope. Jake was entirely on his own with this one.

“Well... shit.”

CHAPTER TEN

With dawn, came guard duty.

Kat was tense. Jake hadn’t returned to the Mimi until late and when he did, had barely said a word to her. He’d begged off talking, playing cards with her, Elle, and Leo, even passed up Jameson’s—something he
never
did—to lock himself away in lead module. He hadn’t used his bunk. She’d checked. Kat never slept in one either, but that was simply because the tight confines always made her feel unbearably lonely. Normally, she’d roll out one of their mummy bags and sack out near the rear door.

Jake’s still-bruised eyes were rather bloodshot when he finally stumbled from the transport (following the smell of freshly brewed coffee) and, after gulping down a mug of bean squeezings, had gone to speak with Mooney concerning something he was pretty vague about. For that reason, she didn’t know if the unruly-haired man was angry over her part in blowing up the gas station the previous day or if he was falling into his pain once more, but it worried her. Kat didn’t know if she could handle him retreating into himself again. It hurt so
bad
not to talk with him every day. She looked forward to making him laugh with silly, off-kilter jokes, and enjoyed the play of emotions on his face over her sometimes questionable, sometimes ridiculous—and quite intentional—lapses in judgment.

O’Connor was still absent when her three hour shift at Langley’s eastern barricade came around, and Cho wished for time to move quickly. She never knew what kind of trouble he’d get into without female supervision, and said as much as she and Foster helped man the wall.

“I’m just saying he doesn’t think about how his actions affect the rest of us sometimes. He does
crazy
stuff,” she insisted.

George scratched behind one ear. “Ya’ mean like climbing up the outside of a railroad granary? That kind’a crazy? Or usin’ a mini-gun against a bunch a’ Nazi assholes from three stories up?”

“That’s different. If you’ll notice, I did both of those because I was pulling his hunky-butt out of the fire. Both times.”

Foster guffawed and puffed at his stogie as he put the butt of the Long-Arm sniper rifle in his hands against his shoulder. Sighting through the 4x optics, the aging man sent a single round almost soundlessly east along Route 28. It impacted into—and vaporized—the head of a zombie staggering north from the Tia Juana Fire Station. The headless body dropped to the pavement, and George put another tick on his side of the rail with a Sharpie
marker.

“That’s five to your three, China-doll. You slackin’ today or what?”

“I’m just distracted.” Kat scanned the area beyond the wall with her binoculars. “I think I drank too much with Penny and the others night before last. I still feel a little out of it, but it was a fun time.”

“So I’m told! Rae said you copped to playin’ for the other team once. That true?” The gray-haired soldier’s face swiveled towards her. “I want specifics, dammit! I never heard about good stuff like that in the navy. It was always: burn down this location, strangle these shit-eatin’ pedophiles, take out those goat-raping, camel jockeys before the blow up our embassy. That kinda thing.”

Kat gave him a sideways look. “You’re turning into a perv in your old age.”

Foster leered at her.

“Perv.”

“Yeah, yeah. Now make with the saucy details.” He went back to his rifle scope.

“Before I tell you anything, I have to know this won’t go any farther than you and me.” Kat found she actually needed to let
someone
in on the big secret.

“Cross my heart an’ swear on my favorite testicle.” Foster said without looking. “And, since I’m equally fond of both my nuts, yer story is safe with me. I’m used ta’ keepin’ my mouth shut, ya’ know. You don’t last too long in my line of work unless—”

Kat lowered the binoculars and quietly said, “It was Laurel.”

“Holy. Shit.” Foster rocked back in his heels, eyes wide. “You ain’t serious.”

“It was almost two years ago. Long before her and Jake ever met. And only the one time,” Kat admitted, her voice hushed. “It was a pretty weird the next morning, waking up together too. We both agreed that it was a once-only thing, after we dealt with our respective hangovers, and put it behind us. Laurel and I were much better as just friends. We’d have killed each other if we tried to turn it into something else.”

George spoke quite sternly “Never...
ever...
tell anyone what you just told me. Do you understand? No-one. Jake
can not
find out you and Red had a thing. Even if it
was
just that one time.”

“Oh, rats. I was going to run over and ask ‘Hey, did Laurel claw at
your
butt-cheeks during sex, too? The scratches on mine hurt for a week afterwards.’ That’ll be right after I cut my nipples off with a pair of garden snips.” Cho gave him a harsh stare. “I know you think I’m a bubble-head, but give me a
little
credit for fuck’s
sake!”

George shook his head in disbelief. “Fine! Fine. Jesus H. Christ on a flying mountain bike... That little piece of information would twist him inta’ nineteen different versions of fucked-up.”

Kat feigned surprise. “Gee, you think?”

“I’m serious, girl.” Foster went on to explain about the ex-writer’s ex-Nazi, ex-girlfriend—who was now ex-tinct—Nichole. Kat had met the awful woman and knew she and Jake had been a disastrous relationship prior, but she hadn’t been privy to the gory details. The first day of the Apocalypse, said blonde twit had shown up at Jake’s door, assuming he’d ‘save her’ and end up forgetting all about the reason their relationship had come to a swift end previously. What she
didn’t
know before that moment, was what that reason had actually been.

Basically, Nichole had been all for bringing additional partners into their relationship. Granted, they had been
female
partners, but that hadn’t mattered to Jake in the slightest. He simply believed that sex was for more than pushing the human body to its fornicational extremes. It was supposed to be an expression of mutual affection, a way to become even closer to someone. Intimate on a level that defied the limitations of the skin.

“Oh my God... How
could
she?” Kat put a hand over her mouth in shock. “You only have to be around Jake for a day to know he wouldn’t go for that!”

George fired another round, blowing the head completely from a ghoul nearly five-hundred yards distant. “Yee-up. Bitch was a real piece o’ work. That’s one a’ the reasons I was so tickled you tossed her nasty ass out the Mimi’s hatch into that herd a’ face-eaters back near Cinci. He’s just not the type ta’ do what we used ta’ call ‘double duty’. Allan used ta’ heckle him about it in fun, but understood O’Connor’s thinkin’ is on it, an’ was a good friend to him. That’s why I didn’t make the skinny gink disappear a while
ago.”

“You could do that?” Kat raised a skeptical eyebrow.

The smile that split the old man’s visage was, to say the least, troublesome. “Girl, it would’a been
easy.
You forget: I had any resource I could want, courtesy of Uncle Sam. That was because I had so
much
dirt on so
many
paper-pushers, I could’a been a zillionaire if I’d been so inclined. I jus’ couldn’t be bothered. Too much ta’ do, too many lowlifes ta’ send on a magic carpet
ride.”

“You’re kinda scary. You know that, right?”

“It’s a talent,” Foster informed her loftily. “Heads up.”

She looked around and saw one crowbar-toting writer heading for the barricade at an easy trot, accompanied by Rae. As the two approached, Cho again marveled that a woman so endowed was able to jog at all. If she would’ve attempted the same—and possessed such ‘divine augmentations’—Kat at least would have blackened both her eyes.

Maybe even given herself a concussion.

George knelt and waved them up. “What’s goin’ on?”

“I need to borrow ‘Smurf-berry Bluebell’ for a while,” Jake told him as Rae scaled the barrier and joined Foster on top. “Rae agreed to take the rest of her watch since she’s on for the next shift anyhow. That way you’re not left short-handed, and we don’t have to bug Mooney for someone as a replacement.”

The older man shrugged. “Works fer me.”

Cho was looking daggers at Rae. “You
told?
”

The curvy woman smiled, slapped a full magazine into her baby (a monstrous XM-8 rifle she’d assembled from component parts, ordered through Cheaper-Than-Dirt), and took the spotting glasses from Kat’s stunned fingers.

The ninja-girl was so angry she couldn’t speak coherently and stomped one foot on the steel. “You
promised
that was just between us! You… You..! Ooooo! I’ll...get back to
you
.”

After leveling an accusatory finger in Rae’s direction, Kat leapt from the top of the twelve-foot barricade, cartwheeled in mid-air, and landed nimbly on her feet to the surprise of all watching. They’d known she was
exceptionally
agile—the young woman had gymnastic skills that were second to none—but seeing her leap from a structure over twice her height, without even rolling when she landed? That was just impressive.

Jake waved his thanks and ushered Kat towards Langley proper, before anyone did something permanent or painful to anyone else. She glared over her shoulder at Rae until they rounded Pistol Pat’s and moved out of view up the street.

“What’s our boy up to?” George asked, honestly curious. Normally, the drama within their little group didn’t interest him in the slightest. He was there to break people and kill things, not to watch episodes of
The Dating Game
play out in real life.

Rae filled him in and the graying warrior’s eyebrows went up.

“Oh,
really?”
When his counterpart nodded her pretty head, he gave a grunt before focusing his gaze through the sniper scope again. “About damn time.”

* * *

“That miserable twat!”
Cho kept walking, doing her level best to quash the urge to turn around, head back to the wall, and choke the life out of Rae. “I should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to resist talking! She spent all that time in an Internet chat-room, messaging about auto repair with George, for God’s sake. I’m going to shave her head when she goes to sleep! That will teach her to keep her trap shut!”

O’Connor attempted to pacify her. “You’re making too big a deal out of it. What was that song? Just ‘
Let it go-o-o-o
’?”

“I’ll rip her nostrils off when she’s not looking!” Kat obviously wasn’t listening.

“You’re overreacting,” he said.

“Kick her in her coochie!”

Rolling his eyes skyward, he took Cho by the shoulders and steered her to the right up Beach Drive. Her insults towards Rae became ever more descriptive, and ranged all the way from ‘over-sexed, blab-happy, know-it-all’ to the ever popular ‘treacherous, silicone-chested, clam-box.’ Jake cringed over the last. He’d heard Foster refer to Rae using the exact same phrase before in a moment of towering rage, right after she suggested they take Brillo pads to the pin-up girl riding the bomb painted on the side of the Mimi. His old apartment sup had been incensed. To be fair, it was a nice piece and destroying it like that would’ve been sinful.

Jake kept one hand on Kat’s shoulder as they walked. That way, if she decided to turn around he’d have a moment or two to react. Maybe he’d be able to outrun her back to the wall. He sure as hell wasn’t going to attempt getting
between
her and Rae if the claws actually came out. That would get him killed by one of the parties involved for sure.

He tried to mollify her with a different tactic. “Look at it this way, Rae’s just jealous. She’s
way
too top heavy to pull off any cool ninja moves.”

She gave him the Look. The one that said he was full of it.

He nudged her from the road as they came abreast of a small peninsula jutting out into the lake—just south of Cedar Port Marina below the Sunset Bar and Grill—and strode into the grass.

“Why the heck are we going out there?” Kat was still fuming. “Everything’s still covered with dew. We’ll get our boots soaked.”

Jake moved into the lead, blazing a trail through the burrs and tall saw grass. “Will you just keep up? You’ll like this. I think.”

“If it’s a boat with a working engine I’ll love it.” She grumbled crossly and stomped after him through the underbrush. “That will let me get
way
out over deep water without having to break my back rowing before I toss Rae overboard. With a cinder-block chained to her ankles. Naked. So the little fishies won’t have to work so hard when they start nibbling on her ti—”

Cho’s voice cut off when they cleared the overgrown foliage and came out onto a rocky, lakeside beach butting up against a mid-length dock.

“Wow. I wasn’t
completely
serious about the whole boat thing, but you know. Gift horses and all that,” she admitted.

O’Connor kept walking and, curiosity peaked, Kat stayed on his heels.

“It’s just up here,” he told her, body obscuring the far end, “Hope you like surprises, because this one might be a little... Um. Yeah.”

Now she really wanted to see whatever he’d stumbled upon and tried to look over his shoulder. “Well, if you’d move I can—”

Two boats from the end, Jake sidestepped and Cho jerked to a halt.

On the end of the dock there was a blanket, a gallon jug full of what she assumed was Tang (since they had a ton of it), a couple of pint glasses borrowed from the Sunset, a pair of plates and utensils, two mismatched seat cushions and, in a glass-topped serving dish what looked like…

Her mouth hung open. “Is that... a
quiche?
”

“Yep. Made fresh this morning.” Jake gave her a hesitant smile. “Want to have breakfast with me?”

Judging by her expression, he could tell Kat wouldn’t have been more surprised if Bigfoot had danced out of the trees in a ruffled hoop-skirt, sipping tea, and singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” in a flawless British accent, but managed to blurt out, “Hell yes!”