“Just friends?” asked Rich.
“More or less,” she said.
“I see,” he said, slightly raising an eyebrow.
“What do you mean by ‘I see’”？
“Nothing,” said Rich, nodding toward the vault door. “Here comes Mr. More-or-Less right now with our breakfast.”
“Funny,” she said.
Devin and the operative named Jared walked through the doorway carrying brown oil-stained bags and two carryout cartons of Dunkin’ coffee. The rest of Rich’s team came to life as they started to move files to make room on the table that had been dragged into the vault from the kitchen.
As much as she wanted to use the term “motley crew” to describe Rich’s team, they didn’t fit that description. Everyone looked ragged after sleeping on the floor in the same clothes they’d worn yesterday, but this wasn’t the kind of rogues’ gallery you might connect to the words mercenary or soldier of fortune.
The two operatives who had escorted her parents and Devin’s dad to the airport looked as though they’d just returned from a business conference, dressed in pressed khaki pants, oxford shirts, and windbreakers—to conceal their holstered pistols. Alex and Michael. Just two regular guys who could probably draw those pistols and drill every person in this room through the head in the span of a few seconds.
Then you had Scott, who she’d really only seen drive an SUV at this point and throw a smoke grenade farther than she’d ever seen someone throw a grenade before. Berg said he was an ex–Navy SEAL, which would have been her first guess. Tall with a muscular swimmer’s build, totally contrasting with the rest of the team members, who looked like career ground-pounders. Muscular and stocky.
She assumed Rico and Jared were the team’s designated snipers, based on the assignments they’d been given at the town house. Emily could be anything. A taut, unsmilingly serious woman of few words, with catlike reflexes, who looked just as at ease with a knife as a firearm. Earlier she’d balanced a daggerlike blade on her fingertip while studying the wall, flipping to the handle and then back again repeatedly. Of all the mercenaries in the room, Emily scared her the most.
The two surveillance gurus had expressed similar sentiments earlier. Graves and Gupta had nodded toward her on a few occasions, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at something Emily had said. Those two intrigued her the most. Gupta might be in his early forties, but he acted like he was twenty-two, and stuck in a late-nineties rap video. Graves, who spent most of his time calming Gupta down, was clearly pushing fifty and walked with a limp. The two couldn’t be more different, but between the occasional sibling-like bickering, they worked together seamlessly. All in all, she could see why Karl had placed so much faith in this crew.
Devin opened the bags and started tossing aluminum foil–wrapped breakfast burritos around the room. Everyone snatched them out of the air as though their lives depended on it. Devin hand delivered her burrito, along with Rich’s.
“They’re all the same. Chorizo and eggs, with cheese and a bunch of other stuff,” said Devin.
“Sounds heavenly,” said Marnie, thinking she sounded like an idiot.
“Two thousand calories of heaven,” said Rich. “How’s your leg?”
Devin lifted his pant leg to expose a napkin-size compress taped in place over the front of his shin. A few specks of red poked through the sterile white dressing.
“It’s not bad at all. Normally this would take a few stitches, but it’ll heal up fine,” said Devin.
“Emily can stitch you up if you want. She’s a former combat medic,” said Rich. “Her kit includes a serious local anesthetic. You won’t feel a thing.”
Marnie nodded. “I’d take them up on the offer. God knows what we’ll be up to over the next several days.”
“We’ll be up to no good. That’s for certain,” said Rich, getting up. “What kind of coffee do you have in the kitchen?”
“Nespresso machine. No idea about the coffee itself,” said Devin. “Berg seemed happy.”
“Berg knows his coffee. I think I’ll grab one of those,” said Rich. “Be right back.”
Devin took Rich’s place next to Marnie, unceremoniously tearing open one end of his breakfast burrito and taking a bite large enough to have possibly included some aluminum foil. He glanced at her and covered his mouth.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“I’m right there with you,” she said before hungrily attacking her own breakfast.