Night Hawk. Lindsay McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ Harper is offering us. I think it was nice of him to do it.”

      Talon frowned.

      Cass moved uncomfortably around in the chair, his gaze moving to Gil.

      Gil’s mouth flattened, his knuckles whitening as he looked at Talon, waiting for an answer.

      Studying the list, Talon rubbed his brow as if he had a headache coming on. He studied Kai. “Okay, judging from what you saw and did today, do you think the other pieces of equipment need as much rebuilding?”

      “I haven’t really done any kind of inspection to honestly answer that, Talon.” Kai opened her hands. “But just seeing these two, the amount of rust, the amount of metalwork and welding it will take to replace badly rusted areas, yes, I think it’s going to be a pretty good estimate of what’s to come.”

      “And you work with metal?”

      “Of course,” Kai said. “If we had to replace a fender or some metal skin that took a bullet hole in an Apache, it was up to us to fix it. I’m good at welding, Talon. I’m qualified in specialty metals. I can do all this for you. But I need a good machine shop to do it in. And Harper runs a clean place and he’s got all the latest equipment to make my job easy and fast.”

      Talon glanced at Gil. “Is Harper the only game in town?”

      “Unfortunately, yes.”

      “And the next closest machine shop would be Idaho Falls, Idaho. That’s a six-hour round-trip and that doesn’t account for the time Kai would have to spend at a machine shop,” Talon said.

      “I know for a fact what he charged us today is about one-third less than what a regular machine shop would charge us,” Kai pointed out.

      “Cass?” Talon held up the paper toward him. “Have you seen this yet?”

      “No,” he said, taking the papers and quickly parsing the numbers. His brows moved up. “Well,” he murmured, looking at Talon, “Kai is right—these numbers are lower than normal.”

      “Because Harper wants something in return from you, Kai,” Gil ground out.

      All heads turned toward him.

      There was no mistaking Gil’s words or his barely closeted anger. Kai shook her head. “I think all of you are going overboard,” she stated flatly. “Harper did not accost me this afternoon. I worked with José. I never saw him again.” She saw Gil grit his teeth. The man was jealous as hell.

      Cass sat there scribbling some numbers on the back of one of her notebook pages. “Boss? If we assume each piece of equipment is going to need this kind of do-over, then we’ll easily save one-half of what was going to be spent on those repairs. That’s a considerable sum when you look at the totals here.”

      Kai couldn’t stand being near Gil anymore. He felt like a nuclear power engine that was about ready to explode. “Look, Talon, when you guys figure out what you want to do, let me know? I’m tired and I’m going to bed. Good night...”

      * * *

      GIL WATCHED KAI walk away, the soft sway of her hips reminding him starkly of far too much from their past. He swung his head toward Talon. “You cannot let her do this. You know Harper is into the sex-trafficking trade and drugs. There are two women he was dating and both are gone. Disappeared without a trace. Do you want to guess where they probably ended up? In some Eastern European slave trader’s hideaway to be sold to the highest bidder.”

      Talon held up his hand. “Look, I’m aware of the gossip about Harper. No one’s proved anything, Gil. At least—” he sighed “—not yet.”

      “What if one of us went with her?” Cass asked, giving the two men an inquiring look.

      Talon’s mouth quirked. “Like any of us have time to babysit her for fear Harper will steal and sell her?”

      “Look,” Cass said reasonably, opening his hands, “why not go talk to law enforcement? The sheriff’s office is in town. Talon? You could swing by—”

      “I’ll do it,” Gil muttered. “No one is handling this except me.” He gave Talon a look of warning.

      Shrugging, Talon said, “Fine by me. I’ll tell Kai to not go back there until you’ve talked to the sheriff’s department about Harper.”

      Gil rose. “She needs to be protected from that bastard,” he growled, and left.

      Cass gave Talon an amused look. “Did I miss something here? Or did your SEAL nose catch it, too?”

      “What?” Talon asked.

      Cass sat back in the chair, rocking it on its two hind legs, hands resting on his thick thighs. “I might be wrong about this, but I sure think there’s something simmering between Kai and Gil. Did you pick up on it?”

      “No,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “I’m so damned busy trying to coordinate everything else, I’m probably missing a lot.”

      Cass smiled a little. “She’s a pretty lady. I’m surprised she’s single.”

      Talon shook his head. “She was married to a Delta Force operator for three years until he got killed in a firefight.”

      Brows drawing down, Cass said, “Yeah, she told me earlier about it. Probably why she’s still single.”

      “Well,” Talon said, standing, “I wonder if Gil knew her husband. Maybe there’s a connection there you’re picking up on.”

      Cass grinned a little as he rose. “What I felt was definitely interest on Gil’s part toward her. He’s like a nighthawk around her.”

      Talon shook his head. “A nighthawk is the wrangler who protects the herd during the night from all kinds of danger. Gil is protective of Kai. You have eyes in the back of your head, Cass. You always did.”

      Giving him a wicked look, Cass slid the chair up to the table. “Yes, and I can count how many times we saved your sorry ass out on an op, too, because of it.”

      A sour grin edged Talon’s mouth. “Can’t deny it, bro. I’m going to spend some time with my mother and then I’m hitting the sack.”

      “Yeah,” Cass grumped good-naturedly. “All I have to look forward to is swimming in red and black numbers in my office for a couple of hours now.”

      Talon looked over his shoulder. “Better be more black than red,” he warned him.

      “Doin’ my best, boss,” Cass teased. “We’re slowly eking toward the healthy side of the business ledger. Rebuilding an empire takes time.”

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