Brennan was tall, dark, and handsome except for the hair being buzzed so close to his head it made me want to pet it to see if it was soft like baby duck feathers or bristly like beard stubble. The face was nice enough to carry the lack of hair, but it still made him seem unfinished to me. Griffin was also tall, not so dark, with a few curls escaping the beretlike hat he had on his short hair, which meant his hair might be as curly as mine if he didn’t keep it so short. His eyes dominated his face, huge blue-green orbs with thick, dark lashes. He’d probably spent his whole life having women tell him he had beautiful eyes, and since he’d gone military, he’d probably gotten tired of the compliment before he hit high school. No matter how much he lifted in the gym, or how good he was on the range or on the field, the eyes would make the other men give him grief and the women pester him. Donahue was shorter, but still about five-eight, which made her taller than me by five inches. She was built leaner than me; even under the body armor you could tell the hips and chest were more boyish than my curves. Her hair was brown, straight, and cut short enough that it tried to undercut the whole girl thing, but her face was too feminine to pass for male. She was pretty without a drop of makeup on, which meant she’d have to work even harder to prove that she was really just one of the boys. Her handshake was firm, though her hands weren’t much bigger than mine. She smiled when she was introduced to the rest of the gang.
“More women than you’ve ever worked with on any of the special-operations stuff, isn’t it?” I said.
“It is,” she said, and like everything she’d said, it was lyrical, and just sounded better than a straight American accent.
Nolan said, “Forrester didn’t tell me we’d have this many women in your group.” He made no pretense that he was happy about it, and implied in his tone that he would be asking Ted to explain once he had him in private. Nolan was starting not to sound charming even with the Irish accent.
“Is this private enough to talk about the name Anita mentioned earlier?” Edward asked in his Ted voice.
“If the rest of her people step away, yes.”
“They all know the person in question,” I said.
Nolan looked at me and then at the people around me. “All of them know him, including Mr. Long Hair here?”
“Yes, Mr. Graison knows him,” I said, hoping that if I kept repeating everyone’s names he’d remember them. I did nicknames when I met a lot of people all at once, too. Mr. Long Hair sounded like something I’d use on a stranger, so it really shouldn’t have bugged me, but it still did.
“We all know him,” Edward said.
Nolan turned to him. “She said my darlin’ reminded her of Bobby Lee.”
Brennan’s dark brown eyes went a little wide, then looked at me. He looked me up and down, but not like a man looks at a woman he thinks is attractive, more like he would have looked at me if I’d been a man about my height and size. Shorter men have to work harder to earn their stripes in this kind of fraternity, too.
“How do you know Bobby Lee?” he asked.
“I’ll answer you in the car once we get moving,” I said.
“Why are you in such a hurry?” Brennan asked.
I looked at Edward, who gave a tiny nod. It was his go-ahead nod. “Because we are wasting daylight and one thing you learn quick about hunting vampires is you want to use every bit of daylight you can.”
“We know the job,” Brennan said.
“Then let’s get moving to Dublin, or are we not hooking up with the local police right away?”
“We need to talk about Bobby Lee before we decide where we’re going, Blake,” Nolan said.
I looked at Edward. “How honest can I be with him?”
“I’d like to know how he knows Bobby Lee before I answer that question,” he said.
I put down the bags I was holding; no reason to hold everything if we were going to be there for a while. Most of the guards followed suit. “Fine. We play twenty questions and then we get our asses moving.” I turned to the men. “How do you know Bobby Lee?”
Brennan narrowed his dark eyes and went from speculative to nearly hostile. “We don’t owe you an explanation.”
“Then we’re at an impasse,” I said.
“Impasse?” Brennan said.
Griffin said, “It means the situation can’t progress, that we’re stuck where we are until we agree to move forward.” He was fighting not to smile at me or at Brennan’s discomfort, one or the other. I’d take any lightening of the mood.
“I know what it means,” Brennan snapped at him.
Griffin just smiled pleasantly at him. He was teasing the other man and not in a buddy kind of way, more an “I almost don’t like you” kind of way.
“You aren’t going to share information until we do, are you?” Edward said.
Nolan just stared at him, which was answer enough.
Edward smiled his Ted smile at me. “Anita, you be the grown-up and tell the captain how you know Bobby Lee.”
“Me the grown-up, that’s different,” I said.
“Answer the question, Anita, please.” He didn’t say please for much of anyone, not when he meant it, so I did what he asked.
“Bobby Lee is one of our bodyguards.”
“Our?” Brennan said.
“Jean-Claude’s bodyguards,” I said.
Edward said, “We all look for work once we get out of the service, Nolan. Now, your turn: How do you know Bobby Lee?”