Ah, the good ol’ days.
Danny tapped her on the shoulder and nodded toward the door. She followed him back into the lobby, then over to the front doors.
“So how’d I do, boss?” Danny asked.
“You did good, kid,” she said, playing along. “I have a cookie here somewhere.”
“Yum.”
She put on her serious face. “What about the men?”
Danny looked back at the open dining room door, at the women inside. “It’s still early. I’ll let them stew in the sun for another couple of hours.”
“That seems kind of mean.”
“I want to see how they react.”
“Meaning?”
“When I go back, I want to see their reaction. Are they agitated? Annoyed? Ready to shoot me between the eyes?”
“Sounds kind of dangerous.”
“Will and I would never have let some guys we didn’t know from Adam take you and Carly to an island while they left us behind. The fact that these guys did means they’re willing to bend over backward to get here. You have to wonder why. And like I said, there are two guys back there that I don’t really trust.”
“You’ve said that before. What about them bothers you so much?”
“They have squirrelly eyes.”
She smiled. “Squirrelly eyes, Danny?”
“Will and I had a CO back in the Stan. Guy had squirrelly eyes. One day, we were on assignment in the mountains and we walk right into an ambush. They knew we were coming, don’t ask me how. Anyway, long story short, first thing our CO does is he bails. Just like that. Drops his rifle and takes off for cover, while his men are in the middle of the road with bullets flying everywhere.” Danny smirked. “Moral of this lesson? You can’t trust guys with squirrelly eyes.”
“Okay, so guys with squirrelly eyes are bad.”
“I’m not saying they’re bad. I’m saying they’re untrustworthy.”
“Untrustworthy, then. But what if you’re wrong?”
What if I’m wrong for even letting any of them on the island?
I should have called Will…
Danny looked back at the women. “That’s been known to happen once or twice, sure. After all, I’m making assumptions based on a couple of minutes with them. But I bet those women know them more than we do. You can learn a lot about someone after spending months on the road with them.”
“You think we should ask them?”
“Not ‘we,’ you.”
“Why me?”
“You guys share similar sensibilities. By which I mean, you both have boobies.”
“Nice of you to notice.”
“I got eyes.”
“Even if I did ask, how could I trust their answers? What if those two can’t be trusted, but they feel a sense of loyalty to lie about them anyway? Like you said, they’ve been on the road together for months now. That kind of experience builds bonds, Danny.”
“Call it a hunch, but when I saw them together, the women — especially the big redhead — seemed overly protective of the others.”
“From you?”
Danny shook his head. “No. From the other two. The ones with squirrelly eyes. I got the sense she was happy to leave them behind back there at the marina. You gotta wonder why, after all this time on the road together.”
Lara looked back inside the dining room at Bonnie. “You think we can trust her?”
“She’s one of your species,” Danny said. “You tell me.”
“How would I even approach the topic?”
“Let her know she’s safe now, that whatever happens, she and the others aren’t going anywhere. That might get her to open up.”
She smiled back at him. “For a guy who doesn’t know anything about women, you sure know a lot.”
“It’s my secret weapon,” Danny grinned. “How do you think I convinced Carly to do all the creative—”
“Enough,” she said, pressing her palm against his mouth. “She’s my little sister. I don’t need to hear all the vile things you’ve been doing to her in bed.”
Lara expected the two men Danny described as “squirrelly” to look, well, squirrelly. But apparently her definition of “squirrelly” wasn’t quite the same as his, because the two men looked like cowboys, complete with jeans and Levi’s shirts and empty gun belts, as if they had just returned from the range…in the mid-1800s.
One of the men introduced himself as Brody. He was in his early thirties, with one of those ridiculous jawlines she used to think only existed in movies starring action heroes from the ’80s. He was well over six feet tall, and the only thing missing on him was a big Stetson hat. Instead, he wore a bandana around his neck to help soak up the sweat.
“Thank you for letting us on this island,” Brody said, his thick (exaggerated?) Texas drawl coming through. He shook her proffered hand lightly, as if he were afraid he might break her. “You don’t know what this means to us. It’s dangerous out there.”
Don’t get ahead of yourself, buddy.
Brody’s friend was named West. Like Brody, West looked as if he had just stepped out of an old-fashioned Western about righteous Texas cowboys who worked hard and played harder. When he leaned over to shake her hand, he towered over her like a giant. His hand felt rough, and the bright sun glinted off a gold watch around his wrist.
“I second what Brody said,” West said. “You won’t regret your decision.”
“We’ll see how it goes,” Lara said. “Nice watch.”
“Thanks,” he smiled. “My dad gave it to me.”
“Miss,” a voice said.
Lara looked between the two cowboys at a third man. Compared to Brody and West, he was tiny, but he was actually about Will’s height. He was wearing a sweat-stained white dress shirt and black slacks, as if he had just come from work in an office. She found that oddly amusing.
He leaned between Brody and West to shake her hand. “I’m Roy. Thank you for letting us on the island. I know it’s not easy trusting complete strangers these days. This is Derek—” He pointed at a teenager standing awkwardly behind them, in jeans and a hoodie. It wasn’t nearly cool enough for a hoodie, so she found that a bit strange.
“Hey,” Derek said, lifting a half-wave.
“Hi, Derek,” Lara said.
She hadn’t failed to notice that Danny had strategically placed himself on the other side of the pier, behind the newcomers. He was holding a thick leather bag stuffed with weapons.
“Are you guys hungry?” Lara asked the men.
“Starving,” Brody said.
“Whatever you can spare,” West added.
She gave them her best hostess smile. “Follow me to the hotel. The women are already getting settled in.”
“Wait, you have a hotel?” Roy said. “I was just hoping for a soft patch of ground to sleep on where I don’t have to worry about bloodsuckers.”
“We have a hotel,” Danny said, “but only basic cable, so it’s sort of like sleeping on dirt if you really think about it.”
Roy glanced back at Danny, not sure how to take that.
“He’s kidding,” Maddie said, following them from the back. “He does that a lot. He’s got an unlimited supply of jokes. Very, very bad jokes.”
“You know you love it,” Danny said.
“When do we get our guns back?” Brody asked Lara.
“Why? Do you need them back?” she asked.
He smiled widely. “We’ve depended on them for so long, we feel naked walking around with an empty holster. I’m sure you guys know what that’s like.”
“Like Roy said, trust is hard to come by these days. This is our house, so if you want to stay, you’ll have to play by our rules. And right now, our rule is no guns until we decide we can trust you to have them back.”