Tucker visibly relaxed, his mouth curving into a smile as he took up the conversation. “Actually, the story is very true. Sam and Ian really are that crazy. Well, they weren’t the only ones. Gator wanted to go in as well, but everyone knows he’s completely insane. He spent too much time in the swamp where he grew up.”
“You went in too,” Sam pointed out. “And I didn’t want to go; I had no choice. I couldn’t let Ian go alone.”
Tucker shook his head. “You were damned sick of the Frenchman and you wanted to throw his ass in the croc pit. He was really fighting going out in that storm. We thought he was just chickenshit.”
Sam shrugged. “Later we found out he’d betrayed his country and fed the terrorist cell intel, helping them set off three simultaneous bombs in Paris, so there was a good reason for him slowing us down. Unbeknownst to us, we were returning him to France for trial with the proof. We thought we were risking our lives to bring him out and he was fighting us. We should have known then, by his behavior, that he didn’t want to be rescued. We just thought he was a pain in the ass.”
“If you were having such a difficult time with him, why would you stop to go into a bar?” Azami asked, clearly puzzled.
Tucker snorted. “Ian said to see the crocs, and Gator said it was to get free drinks. Sam wanted to feed the crocs the Frenchman. In any case, I look back and they’re climbing in through the window. It was broken out and water covered a good two feet of the floor. I couldn’t just let them go in there without having their backs. And I sure didn’t want to face Ryland and tell him the ‘prisoner’ we rescued got fed to the crocodiles.”
Ian burst out laughing. “As I recall, you pushed me through that window and it was a bit small for you so you kicked out the windowsill.”
Sam nodded. “Oh, yeah, that’s the way it happened and I shoved Mr. ’Fraidy Cat through and climbed in after you both.”
Azami started laughing. “I can’t imagine what Mr. Miller had to say to you when he found out.”
The three men exchanged looks and began laughing uproariously. “He said, ‘Pass me a bottle of scotch,’ when he came back and stuck his head through the window.”
Azami stared at them incredulously. “So all of you decided, in the middle of a rescue mission, during a flood, with hurricane winds, that it was necessary to go into a bar with crocodiles?”
“Well . . .” Tucker hedged.
Azami’s gaze flicked toward the door and she moved, a tiny subtle movement that once again had her fading into the shadows. It seemed more a trick of the light than any real desire to disappear, but Sam couldn’t help but admire her skill. She was in a room filled with GhostWalkers, yet she disappeared right before their eyes without even a whisper of cloth brushing the walls. There was no footfall, no rustle of clothing, nothing at all. One moment she was there and then she was gone.
“There was ‘Smoke,’” Sam said, his gaze lifting to the door and the man filling it. “He wasn’t having any of those crocodiles.”
Jonas Harper entered. “Always the voice of reason, ma’am. Someone has to be with the number of crazies in this outfit.”
Before the words were out of his mouth, the other men began laughing again. Sam noted that Jonas was looking right into the shadows where Azami had disappeared. It wasn’t just that he’d heard her voice, he knew where she was. For some reason the fact that Jonas could see her set his heart tripping. He hadn’t expected that tiny surge of jealousy that another man might be able to detect her. He had grown used to the idea that he was the only one who saw what a truly lethal weapon she was.
Azami’s warmth poured into his mind, filled with a soothing amusement. He sees in the dark and I am part of the dark. His eyes glow like those of an animal on the hunt.
Whitney screwed with our DNA. It’s more than probable that he has large cat or wolf DNA somehow.
“Someone must be the voice of reason,” Azami said aloud, “but from the snickers of your fellow teammates, I am uncertain that person is you, sir.”
Jonas gave the others a long, slow, reprimanding glare. “I told every single one of you that you were nuts to go into that bar. The trees surrounding it were bent over, almost in half. I told you they looked like praying mantises about to swoop in on prey. And was I right?”
Tucker laughed. “Damn right, you were.” He nudged Sam. “Those trees came right down on top of that building and took out the wall and part of the roof with us in it.”
“I dropped the Frenchman,” Sam confirmed, laughing. “Right on his ass.”
“The tree smashed the croc barrier and these big mothers come swimming right through the middle of that bar right at us,” Tucker said. “I never saw such big crocodiles. Sam and I were swept underwater by the tree branches and those crocs were loose in the water with all of us.”
“Jonas there,” Ian continued, “he pulls himself inside and sits up top of the windowsill with his knife in his teeth and then does some kind of circus maneuver and the next thing we know he’s hanging upside down from the ceiling and telling us to get the hell out of there, that he’s got us covered.”
“Of course he looked like a chimp swinging on the chandelier, which, by the way, was hanging by one bolt and was nothing more than a couple of lights strung together by a chain,” Sam added, doubling over with laughter. “I’m looking up through the water, this heavy branch across my chest, and I could see Jonas swinging like a madman right over the water.”
“So the damn thing snapped.” Jonas took up the story, as Ian was laughing too hard to continue. “I landed on the Frenchman, who was screaming his guts out. Sam was no help. The crocs were swimming around like they were confused, sort of circling the room. They looked like prehistoric dinosaurs and pretty damn scary.”
Sam felt the energy that could only prelude a GhostWalker. He took up the story quickly, laughing as he did. “Then Gator lets loose and starts yelling like a banshee. He was doing some kind of Cajun ceremonial rain dance or something . . .”
“I knew you were in here swappin’ lies about me,” Gator said. “I could hear you laughin’ two houses over. You’re gonna wake the dead. And, ma’am, don’ believe a single lie these jokers tell you. I saved ’em all that day. It was our darkest hour, with giant crocodiles swimmin’ around the room, water pourin’ in from every direction, trees fallin’ on us, and the bunch of them grabbin’ at the liquor bottles and splashin’ around, bait for the crocs.”