Page 148 of The Perfect Wrong

Marnie: Delia Burr. Do NOT tell me you shared a room with a guy for a week—a guy who saved your cute butt—and you just napped together. You had one bed. One.

Delia: So?

Marnie: The one bed rule! Duh. You never share a bed with a dude and actually sleep with him. You have to have sex.

Delia: Oh, yeah. That rule.I snort, rubbing a hand across my face.

Marnie: I hate you.She adds a gagging emoji face with its green tongue hanging out.

Delia: What? What did I do?

Marnie: You’re gonna do it. You’re leaving me in suspense. Do you want your semester of free lunches or what? Because you’ve got to admit you got your cherry popped.

Of course. And then I’ll have to tell her who did the popping and every sordid detail so granular it would make a romance writer blush.

Delia: You’ll get your deets when I’m ready. Just give me time, okay? I told you. It’s complicated.

There’s dead silence for a few minutes and I wonder if I’ve actually upset her. Then my phone buzzes.

Marnie: Cordie, honey, what have you gotten yourself into???

I sigh before I push my fingers to the screen and reply.

Delia: Girl, you don’t want to know.

16

Carbon Bets (Chris)

Ican’t believe how boned I am.

I hide it well, but I’m out of focus at the briefing a few days later.

Sexton snaps his fingers and calls me out twice for zoning out, asking if I want to be shipped home in a body bag.

Shit.

“No sir,” I say, feeling like a jackass.

Everybody from tactical is in the room, plus the whole senior team from Landon Strauss on down. There’s also a sprawling contingent of Federal agents and their Mexican counterparts, everyone with a hand in signing off on this raid.

The commander returns to the high-definition black-and-white photos on the projector screen, using a laser pointer to identify the only road into Eladio’s secretive compound.

It’s tucked back just like every snake pit built with money, rocky and hidden and well protected by the natural landscape.

The place itself is built like a medieval castle with modern comforts, perched so precariously over a jagged shoreline that it looks like it’ll slide into the foaming Pacific if anyone steps in the wrong place.

Of course, their advantages don’t end with sharp rocks and natural barbed wire lines of brush and cacti.

They’re strapped in with trained killers and military grade weapons.

Even with the solid rock around the place, Batista reminds us it might have reinforced tunnels plunging under the main structure. The kind of fighting that makes liquidating bin Laden look like a ride on a Ferris wheel.

“We’ll dig those bastards out for a solid week if we have to,” Sexton promises with a nod. “We’ve got the gear and all the time in the world after we breach them. We just need time. A few more weeks of recon and planning, and we’ll be coming down like a ton of bricks.”

Rosy assessment. Way too damn rosy,a voice in the back of my head whispers.

Because I know they’ll probably be packing more than a few hostages they can use as human shields anytime.

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