Page 139 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
“Servers. Basement. Backup in the A/C shed on the roof. Clone in Singapore.”
“Oh, yeah, your creeper. Squid, right?”
I nod.
“How d’you know him?”
“None of your business.”
Squid went through basic with me but washed out of the Navy. His American family turned their backs on him, so he moved to Singapore to be with his father’s people. While I was sweating it out in north Africa, he was building a busy surveillance business. He contacted me after I got out and has been my backup and silent partner ever since.
De Leon blows out a breath through his nose. “Maxie.”
“One, don’t call me that. Two, still none of your business. I know him. I trust him with my life, Cynnie’s life, Logan’s life, Emily’s life, and if you use the hidden network to do anything that ends up burning me or Squid, you’ll only need to watch your back for a week or two, because his tentacles are long and he’s a vicious motherfucker.”
De Leon chuckles. “Your threats are like foreplay at this point.”
I grunt. “I don’t swing that way.”
“I know.” He doesn’t look perturbed by it, either.
“Uh, do you?” Not something that had ever occurred to me.
“I’m open to it.”
“So, you’d be looking for a little boy at playgroup? We don’t have any unattached little boys right now, I don’t think.”
“I’m notlookingfor anything right now. I’m doing recon. But at some future point, if I thought I could do it right, I’d be looking for both, I think.”
“Both.”
“Uh-huh. The dynamic you and Logan have with your littles definitely fills a hole, but I need some spicy with my sweet.Your doctor friend, Jack? What he’s got with his boy is fucking intriguing. I’m also more than interested in your friend, Brenna. Logan thinks she’s a switch. D’you?”
I grind my teeth for a much longer moment. “Stay away from Sammi. Stay even further away from Brenna.”
“Why? You think I’d fuck up what Sammi’s got with Jack? Not my thing. I don’t expect a virgin, but I want a boy new to the dynamic. A boy I can break in without breaking his sass, you know?”
No, I don’t know, and I cannot think of anything worse than unleashing De Leon on an inexperienced little. “Wrong.”
“You don’t know me, Max. I know my capabilities. Once I get a handle on this daddy thing, I’ll be fucking good at it.”
“That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Nah, it’s all good. You didn’t answer me about Brenna.”
“I don’t think she’s a switch and stay away from her, too.”
“Why, because Emily’s trying to set her up with your old Master Chief?”
“Logan will strangle you when he finds out you’ve bugged his house.”
De Leon snorts. “I haven’t bugged his house. I’ve buggedyou. We slept in the same room for two weeks. You think I don’t have you wired down to your ass-hairs? Think again.”
“That conversation occurredafteryour job was finished.”
De Leon shrugs. “Seems like I’m back on the job.”
“You weren’t then. You tell me what you’ve got on me and you swear that after this is over, anything I don’t pry outta wherever you’ve shoved it, you turn it off and stay out of my life.”
