Crystal Blue (Buck Reilly Adventure Series Book 3) by John Cunningham (novels for beginners txt) 📕

I swallowed.

Jeremy handed me back my notebook. I mouthed a thank-you and said I’d call him tomorrow. Then jumped off the boat, my mind atwirl from Booth’s insinuations. I considered asking him about the red Cigarette, but given his comment on the “charity case,” I let it go. It was 7:55 and I needed to get out front fast.

“Text me…when you have me cleared…for water landings.” I was talking and jogging at the same time. “Which better…be…by morning…for me…to be…effective.”

“The hell are you doing, Reilly, jerking off?”

I hit the END button as I ran through the lobby toward the front door.

A black SUV with tinted windows was parked out front, and like a foolish mouse I headed straight for the cheese.

THE SUV’S PASSENGER SIDE window lowered a few inches. I stopped a couple feet away. It was pitch black inside, so I took a deep breath and moved closer to look in the window.

Inside was a face with blood red eyes. Literally. I jerked back.

“You Buck Reilly?”

“That’s right.”

The window lowered further. The man held a sawed-off shotgun.

“Get in back.”

I may have spotted my underwear as I stood frozen.

“Nothing to worry about,” Sawed-off said.

I took a lungful of air, rolled some imaginary dice, and pulled open the back door. Slid inside the ice-cold SUV and found a man next to me with a shotgun resting between his legs, pointed toward the roof.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The driver slowly edged out of the circular entry and up the hill, then turned left.

“Where are we going?” I said.

None of them responded. Instead, the driver pushed a button and ear-deafening music erupted inside the vehicle. I nearly jumped out of my seat, but none of them so much as flinched.

So much for conversation.

As we wound up and down the road toward the port I tried to note landmarks, but darkness fell quickly and I had nothing but the occasional lighted sign or structure to track. Three cruise ships were at the docks, and as we approached them we turned to the right and began to weave back up the hill. Even though the air conditioning was blasting as high as the music, there was a smell of perspiration inside the SUV. The three men were all dreadlocked, beefy, sunglass-wearing soldiers, and I was either their guest, or target.

Tourist facilities disappeared as we switch-backed our way into the mountainous region, which I recalled from previous visits was above Magen’s Bay. A sudden turn up a washed-out gravel path resulted in a gut-busting jolt that rattled my teeth along with the SUV. No speed was lost—if anything, the driver accelerated.

But soon he slowed, then braked abruptly. The headlights illuminated a chain link gate. After a moment a man emerged from the woods—it took me a few seconds to realize he was holding the largest blunt I’d ever seen. The driver rolled down his window and the sentry handed him the huge smoldering reefer. The driver inhaled deeply and passed it to Sawed-off in the passenger seat. He did the same, then handed it back to my seatmate, who kept the ember glowing and tried to hand it to me.

I held up my hand to abstain, but his expression turned to a sneer of mistrust. The driver and Sawed-off both turned in their seats to stare at me.

Talk about peer pressure.

I took hold of the monster with both hands and tried to draw in just enough to make the cherry glow—

My lungs expanded and my throat constricted and I started to cough uncontrollably. A head rush like I hadn’t felt in years hit me and I wondered what these boys were smoking—check that, what I had just smoked.

The men in the car and the guard outside laughed and laughed. More unintelligible statements, laughs and fist-bumps, and the gate screeched open. Gravel blasted out behind us as we launched up the hill to a promontory—even in the darkness I could tell there’d be 360-degree views. In the center of it all was an old house made of stone and block with a red tiled roof and a lot of people standing around it, all holding guns.

Even though the smoke had only been in my lungs for a second, I felt as if my head had separated from my body and floated above the scene, untethered. My backseat neighbor spoke to me, lifted the shotgun, and opened the truck door. The other men followed and I sat there a moment, unable to feel my feet. I took a deep breath and tried to gather what was left of my wits to deal with whoever I was soon to meet, for whatever purpose.

And shit, I was stoned. Not wrecked, but definitely stoned.

The others stared at me. I tried to count how many there were but kept losing track. At least ten men, many of whom had glowing cherries in the middle of their faces, which I hoped were cigarettes or blunts and not glowing red Cyclops eyes. I couldn’t afford another toke, decorum be damned. I had no tolerance for the stuff anymore

I had a fleeting thought that perhaps John Thedford was being held in the house, and possibly even Stud Mahoney, which would be marvelous since he was such an accomplished action star and could help figure out what to do next….

“Buck Reilly,” a loud voice came from the lit porch.

I floated toward the sound, concentrating on the crunching noise caused by each step, which sounded like chewing Wheaties. The observation struck me as funny but I bit my lip to stifle my laughter, knowing that once I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. Damn weed.

“That’s me,” I said to the giant standing on the porch. “And you are?”

A booming laugh and hot breath sprang from his mouth and I imagined it shooting my hair backwards like in cartoons. I again stifled a laugh.

“Let’s say I’m an interested partner.” The man was huge,