Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
“Next time, I wanna do more,” Shay muttered over the line. “I may not have the training Gray has, but I’m not useless.”
“Next time?” River replied. “Boy, you’re lucky Reese and I were stupid enough to let you come at all.”
Gray grinned to himself and pushed the ATV to the limits.
It’d been an ongoing debate since they’d arrived. Back in Vegas, or before Vegas, Shay had made River and Reese promise to let him tag along next time. And the twins had been confident there wouldn’t be a next time, so they’d agreed. Now, here they were.
Shay wasn’t lying, though. Gray had been able to spar with him quite a bit, and the guy was an insanely skilled fighter. But what did an impressive history with martial arts matter when he had two Dominant boyfriends who refused to have him near danger? Gray was on the twins’ side on that point. They had no business going near combat ever again. They’d be backup, support, drivers, work with logistics—whatever, as long as they kept a safer distance.
Some two hundred yards up the mountain, the dirt road ended. Gray and Darius had reached their designated spot to wait.
Gray drove slowly into the bush, just till the four-wheeler was concealed, then killed the engine, and Darius climbed off.
Shit. It was almost impossible to see anything with the headlights off. They’d already been dimmed by an attachable filter since the guys didn’t want to announce their presence more than necessary, but it’d still allowed them to see the damn road. Now, nothing. He couldn’t even see any stars.
Oh, but he fucking heard…
With the engine off, he suddenly heard the entire jungle. All that rustling and crunching and creaking and, and, and shit. He’d seen a YouTube video of howler monkeys; he knew what they sounded like, and he fucking heard their ghostly, growl-like howling now. They couldn’t be close, but they were definitely in the area.
“The others parked here.”
Gray joined Darius on the last stretch of the dirt road and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Then he saw what Darius was pointing at, the two ATVs on the other side. The first group had left them here mere minutes ago and was now trekking through the damn jungle to get higher up.
The compound where Crew Finlay was being held was another half a mile away. Up the wide peak and to the east. With nothing but thick vegetation in between here and there. Well, there was a heavily guarded main road, of which they were steering clear.
“Nolan and DQ in position,” Darius stated quietly.
River would relay the update to the rescue team.
“Let’s say that next time we go to bed together.” Gray spoke under his breath. “Nolan and DQ in position.”
Darius shook his head in amusement while Shay coughed on a snicker.
Gray grinned to himself and retrieved his gloves from one of his pockets.
It wouldn’t be Nolan for much longer, though. In ten days, he became a Quinn.
Just ten days to go. After waiting for so fucking long. They’d postponed the wedding twice because of the pandemic.
Thanks to the doomsday prepper, they hadn’t lost any deposits. Darius had kept saying, “Let’s not order anything we can’t return, in case we gotta postpone.”
He’d been right. Hell, he’d been right about so many things.
People had hoarded. There’d been lockdowns. Many had lost their jobs.
Lives had been lost too.
At times, Gray had felt guilty for how comfortably they’d been able to live throughout the whole thing. They’d homeschooled the kids from time to time, work around the cabin continued as usual, they’d never run out of anything. Darius, on the other hand, had been firm—with zero guilt. “This is why we fucking prepare, so that when the world goes to shit, we don’t. We can’t do everything, but everyone can do something. People gotta learn to take some goddamn responsibility and think ahead.”
Not that they hadn’t suffered at all, of course. Mom’s inn had been temporarily closed for six months. Ryan had almost lost his bar in San Francisco. Darius’s restaurant had taken a huge hit, and he’d had to dig into his savings to keep the place afloat for months. But then he and a handful of local restaurant owners had banded together to switch gears. They’d pooled their resources and started a delivery service, where servers and other staff could come back to work. But rather than waiting on tables, they’d been kitted with headsets and laptops for phone and online orders, they’d loaded up food in Styrofoam containers, and they’d driven all over town to deliver meals. Without an established middleman involved to take a cut. All the money had gone directly back to the restaurants and the employees.
Improvise, adapt, overcome, as Ryan had said through vicious coughs when he’d been sick with the virus. He’d caught it pretty early on and had been down for the count for weeks. Months, if one counted the return of his senses of taste and smell, which he certainly did.