Page 9 of Flash and Bang
Investigator Carrillo smiled. “Actually, if you’ll follow my car, I’d appreciate it. My husband is a Marine out at the base and we don’t live far from there. Alfie has permission to conduct us onto the base and I can go home directly afterward if I havemy car.”
Jarrett smiled. “Alfie?”
“My husband, Captain Alfredo Carrillo.”
“Better get my salute ready, then.” Jarrett joked as they walked Carrillo to her Audi station wagon, parked in the first row.
“You were a Marine, I take it,” Carrillo said to Jarrett before turning to look at Thayne. “And here I hadyoupegged for the jarhead.”
Thayne laughed. “Nope, my partner holds that title.”
“The Few. The Proud. The Marines. You know the drill,” Jarrett said. “But I only achieved the rank of lieutenant.”
Carrillo clucked her tongue. “Not bad. Alfie only has a couple ranks on you.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, Investigator Carrillo, but you’ve never been in the military, have you?” Jarrett asked with a snicker.
Her eyes widened just a little and then she sent him a wan smile. “Okay, I get it. He outranks you so he can order you to walk the plank or something, right?”
Jarrett turned to Thayne when he burst outlaughing. He grinned at him before turning back to her just as they stopped in front of a gold Audi.
“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” Jarrett said with a grin.
“Okay, just follow me, special agents,” Carrillo said over her shoulder before climbing into her vehicle.
Jarrett and Thayne walked back to the Jeep and climbed in. “It’s about a ten-minute drive to Miramar from here,” Jarrett said as he started the engine.
“You’ve been there I take it?” Thayne asked.
“You remember that night down in Santa Monica when I told ya I’d been out to California before?” Jarrett asked, pulling the Jeep out onto the street behind Investigator Carrillo’s car.
“You mean the night I first kissed you?” Thayne asked.
Jarrett looked over at Thayne to find the man’s tongue lodged firmly in his cheek. “You mean the night I kissedyou?”
Thayne chuckled. “Yeah, whatever. It was fucking hot, that’s what I remember.”
“It was. I’d been dreamin’ ‘bout getting younaked for a month by then.”
Thayne’s eyes narrowed. “You never told me that.”
“Didn’t have much time to do that, Special Agent Wolfe. All I could think about was touchin’ you.”
Thayne reached across the Jeep’s console and put his hand on Jarrett’s thigh. Jarrett glared over at him and then put his eyes back on the road.
“I told you, this is a ten-minute drive. You do somethin’ to get me hot and bothered now, and I’m gonna punish ya for it later.”
“Okay, okay.” Thayne laughed and pulled his hand away, turning to stare out at the scenery. The route to the Marine base was much like the rest of southern California. It was a lot of desert disguised by palm trees and green landscapes. The turquoise sky and puffy white clouds set off wheat-colored rolling hills on one side of the highway and the bright blue Pacific Ocean on the other. “It sure is pretty here.”
Jarrett had to agree with Thayne’s appraisal of the view as they drove. San Diego was a beautiful place. He decided he’d have to bring him back when they had a long weekend where all they had to do waslie out on a beach all day and fuck in a pricy oceanfront hotel room all night. Within ten minutes, Ada Carrillo was turning onto the road leading to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Jarrett had been here only once before and that had been almost ten years ago. At the time, he was being sent over to Pearl Harbor on the first leg of a mission which would take him to Indochina with a final destination of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. To be precise, it was where a high-level Chinese target was hiding out in the huge city. Jarrett had been forced to meet up with a very unsavory asset for the CIA, who was acting as an informant. The man had inadvertently sent Jarrett and the asset’s CIA handler into a trap. Not only had Jarrett’s target escaped when a well-placed bomb went off, but he and the CIA operative had barely escaped with their lives.
Jarrett had stayed in the stinking, crowded metropolis waiting to get another shot at his target way too long and had a distaste for anything Vietnamese ever since. He’d eventually taken out the bad guy but he’d been in a foul mood for weeks afterward. Jarrett’s feelings weren’t logical but that’s just the way his mind worked. If he spent his life trying to think on shit too hard, he’d never go anywhere or do anything. That didn’t mean Jarrettfollowed orders blindly either. He did as much research as he could before a job; he just took whatever precautions he could when he did them… well, with the exception of rappelling off LA skyscrapers. He snickered and Thayne looked over at him.
“What?” he asked.
Jarrett glanced at his partner as they idled behind Carrillo’s car at the base’s guard gate. “I was just thinkin’ about the expression on the perp’s face when he figured out I was gonna use him as a counterweight.” Jarrett couldn’t help but grin like an idiot when Thayne frowned behind his aviators.