Insider (Exodus End #1)(60)
Author: Olivia Cunning

“I don’t know, sir,” the man said. He had a buzz cut and deeply tanned skin. But Logan mostly noticed his yellow shirt. That meant he was one of Logan’s own and he could trust him. “It is very late.”

“I think I’ll wake her up.” He lifted his T-shirt to his nose and sniffed. “Does this smell like women’s perfume?” He offered the shoulder area of his T-shirt to the security guard, who was now walking beside him with his arms out, as if trying to save a toddler from falling on the cement and cracking open his skull. Perhaps Logan was stumbling to his left. But just a little. “Smell it. Smell it.”

The guy took a whiff. “Yes, sir. It does smell like perfume.”

“Shit. She’s going to think I’ve been messing around with other women. I didn’t though.” He patted the guy’s arm. “Why didn’t I?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Fuck it.” Logan stripped his T-shirt off over his head and tossed it on the ground. “Burn that,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Another of the security team that was trailing Logan picked up the discarded shirt.

“I’m tired.” Logan felt himself fading. He just hoped he blacked out on something softer than the sidewalk.

“Would you like to go back to the bus, sir?”

Logan scowled. “Isn’t that where I’m going?”

The guy somehow managed not to laugh. “No, sir.” He nodded in the opposite direction. “The bus is that way.”

Logan turned around, squinted down the sidewalk, and recognized the bus almost a block away under a bunch of bright street lamps.

“So it is.” He turned on his heel and started toward the bus. Again. “I think I might be drunk.”

“It’s a possibility, sir.” Logan knew they hired a lot of military veterans to serve on their security team, but why did this guy keep calling him sir? It made him feel old.

Logan ambled toward the bus, his thoughts—as always—on the woman he’d met the night before. “Do you think she really is my girlfriend?”

Enough people had certainly mistaken her as important to him.

“Who’s that, sir?”

“Toni.”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

Logan sighed. “I’m sure I don’t know either.”

Eighteen

“On your feet, soldier!”

Toni sprang from a dead sleep to her best impersonation of an army private standing at full attention—complete with salute—before she realized she wasn’t dreaming. There really was a blurry drill-sergeant type standing over the sofa.

“Not you,” the very large, very muscular man said to a half-groggy, half-terrified, completely confused Toni. “I’m going to make bread pudding out of your doughy boyfriend here.”

Doughy? If Logan was doughy, then Toni was a bag of jumbo marshmallows.

“Go to hell, Kirk,” Logan muttered before he buried his head under his pillow.

Toni doubted he’d even been asleep three hours. He apparently thought it was his job to be that last person to leave an after-party. When he’d crawled onto the sofa and passed out next to her, it had been after three.

“Wrong answer. Everyone else is already in the gym,” Kirk said. “Get your lazy ass out of bed before I embarrass you in front of your girlfriend.”

Surely he meant Logan’s justfriend.

It wasn’t even fully light outside yet, Toni realized as she blinked at the open doorway and out the just visible windshield. The bus door stood wide open and a cool breeze blew down the corridor, chilling her bare legs. She tugged on the hem of her sleepshirt, glad she’d decided to pull it on when she’d gone to bed the night before. Otherwise she’d currently be in the buff while she continued to salute Drill Sergeant Kirk. Feeling ridiculous, she dropped her arm, and then she found her glasses on the coffee table. She stuck them on her face and gawked at the giant of a man—he had to be at least six foot eight, with the shoulders of a gorilla and biceps bigger than her head. She was sure he could crush watermelons between his enormous thighs. The giant yanked the blanket off Logan and tossed it on the floor.

“I’m not embarrassed,” Logan said to Kirk as his pillow was snatched away and thrown across the room. “She’s already seen me naked.”

“But has she seen you hogtied and physically carried out of the bus before?” Kirk shouted.

Logan smirked and opened one eye to look up at the man towering over him. “Is that a threat, Captain Kirk?”

Toni pressed her lips together so she didn’t laugh as she pictured the hulking muscle man in a Starfleet uniform. In her mind’s eye, it was several sizes too small and bursting at the seams.

“How many times do I have to tell you I was an enlisted man, not an officer?” Kirk asked. Well, he actually yelled it. Toni wondered if the “inside voices” speech she used with Birdie would work on him.

“Sorry. I keep forgetting,” Logan said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Go back to the gym and torture the other guys. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“If I have to come back to get you, I’m getting out my cattle prod,” Kirk said.

“Promises, promises.”

Kirk turned and seemed to actually see Toni for the first time. His scrutinizing gaze traveled down her body and back up again. He frowned and offered her a curt nod. “You should come with him.”

She crossed her arms self-consciously over her not-even-close-to-rock-hard abs. “I was planning on it,” she said, wanting some candid shots for her project. However, she had no plans to work out and make a fool of herself in front of the fine specimen of a man on the sofa who was currently stretching like a sleepy cat and muttering negative slurs against the effects of alcohol.

“Good.” Kirk left the room, his footsteps surprisingly light as he jogged the length of the bus and down the steps.

“So that’s the band’s physical trainer, I take it?” Toni said.

“No,” Logan said, his tone thick with sarcasm. “He bakes us cupcakes.”

“Mmm, caaaake,” Toni said in the voice of a zombie craving brains. She wished Kirk really did bake cupcakes. Her sweet tooth hadn’t been satisfied once since she’d stepped on the bus. She was surprised by how healthy these guys ate. But then they probably wouldn’t look so fit and delicious if they subsisted on beer and Cheetos.