"Cooking. Sewing on buttons. Knowing when to stop. Basketball."
“That's funny, though, coz I’m a proper killer on the court."
He grins. "Well, then, I’d like to see you and Killy go one-on-one. That kid's a sniper from the outside."
"I'm an inside bloke. Can't hit shit but bricks from beyond the free throw line, but put me in the paint and let me cook, bruv."
"Look forward to it," Harris says, and somehow, I realize he's not kidding or blowing sunshine up my ass.
I've been pulled in, it looks like. And again, I'm not sure how to categorize the feeling that knowledge puts inside me, other than warm, weird, shaky, and…addictive.
We put down for a landing at the Austin airport, taxiing to the business aviation area. There's yet another parade of black SUVs, but these are definitely not your run-of-the-mill government issue Suburbans. Even as I descend the ramp and approach one, I can tell it's been heavily modified.
I'm stood there trying to sort out what's been done to them when the sun is blotted out by a mobile cliff on my right.
I turn, wondering if the jet rolled backward or something, and instead encounter the most enormous human being I’ve ever seen. Seven feet tall if he's an inch and built like Arnie in his prime…and this man's pushing sixty if not beyond it. Blond hair gone half silver, cropped close on the sides and messy on top, a trim beard squaring off a hard jaw.
"So you're Rush." His voice is as deep as you'd expect, rough and hard and curious.
"You must be Thresh," I say.
He just nods. "You here for a good time or a long time?"
"Um. Sorry, mate, but what?"
"Brynnie."
“Oh. Hopefully a good long time."
He grins. A massive, heavy, cinderblock hand crashed down on my shoulder with casual power that makes me realize this fella's as much stronger than me as I am your average doughy, pencil-pusher type. "Good answer, kid." He glances down at me. "We're gonna get her. Nobody fucks with us."
"Think I'm workin' that one out on my own, mate," I say. "Not sure these wanna-be warlords know what they've bitten into."
"No. They don’t.”
"But that said, it don't do to underestimate Pugli. I've done work for him for a couple years now. He's a canny, cunning, unpredictable fuck. We've got to assume we're walking into a trap."
Thresh nods. "Rule number one of hostage extraction is always assume everything is an ambush."
The telltale scent of cigar smoke wafts across my nostrils, and I glance to my right—the man who is suddenly there is quite short but as broad as he is tall, with shoulders so broad you could land a Harrier on each one. Arms near as big as Thresh's. His head's shaved to skin, and a long, thick black beard brushes his diaphragm—incongruously, there's a trio of clumsy braids woven into the beard down the center, the ends knotted with pink, purple, and baby-blue bows.
He's got a fat cigar clamped between his jaws on one side, acrid smoke curling upward, small, deep, dark, wickedly intelligent eyes scrutinizing me. "I'm Puck."
"Rush," I answer. I extend my hand to him.
He takes it in his and crushes mine, a smirk on his mouth. I notice he's missing the tip of a finger—same finger of the same hand as Bryn is now missing. I indicate the finger in question. "You and Bryn have matching missing fingertips."
Puck plucks the cigar from his jaws and taps it with his missing fingertip-hand. "That a fact?"
I nod. "Lost it in the firefight right before she got taken."
"How'd she handle it?" he asks.
I shrug. "Pissily."
This gets me another smirk. "Thatta girl." He eyes me, popping the cigar stump back into the corner of his mouth, on the opposite side, now. "Dyin' to ask, ain'tcha, bub?" He strokes his beard, fingering the incongruous bows.
I nod, biting down on my tongue to keep from letting out a comment about him being a Walmart Wolverine. "Bit out of place, is all."
