by Wasp, A. E.
Breck giggled like it was his job, and I rolled my eyes behind my glasses because Steele’s joke didn’t even make sense, let alone make me laugh. Must be nice to have someone appreciate your dumb jokes and agree with you all the time.
“Yep. There’s nothing as hilarious as making assumptions about someone’s sexual preferences based on their appearance,” Danny bitched from his chair. As usual, he was lounging around in nothing but a Speedo as if clothes were against his religion. “You two are so cutesy. It’s nauseating.”
“Spoken like a guy who hasn’t gotten laid in way too long.” Ridge leered at Danny in a totally unconvincing way. “I could help you with that.”
Danny didn’t even open his eyes. “All set, thanks. Meet Lefty, my new boyfriend.” He held up his left hand. “He knows exactly how I like it, he gets the job done, and he’s always there when I need him.” What he didn’t say, because we all knew, was that Lefty was unlikely to assault him and abuse his trust like now-disgraced Senator John Harlan had, when Danny and Breck had been working as rent boys up in D.C.
“Aw. I think that’s kinda sad,” Breck said.
“And I think fuck you,” Danny returned easily.
I ducked my head to hide my smile. What was it about Danny Munroe that got me? I mean, aside from the fact that subtle smartassery was my catnip and that the forty acres of smooth, tanned skin and lean muscles he displayed made me want to…
“Fuck both of you. Can we get back to the part where I have been stolen from?” Ridge demanded. “I mean, you think you’re in a relatively protected environment, you think your shit is safe where you left it, and then suddenly, you find that things you care about are missing. I feel… violated.”
There was absolute silence on the patio as each of us turned to look at Ridge. Leo put down his Kindle. Danny sat up and opened his eyes. Breck and Steele stopped eye-fucking. Carson leaned forward.
Ridge blinked, then tilted his head to the side, as though considering what he’d said. He shook his head. “No. Nope. This is not irony, you assholes. I have never stolen a man’s shirts.”
“Only because you couldn’t get a fair price for them,” Carson sighed, sitting back in his seat.
“Shook, you’re an investigator. Find what happened to my shirts!”
“Sure,” Leo said, swiping his finger across his screen like he couldn’t possibly give less of a fuck. “Let’s make a list of suspects. Who could wear your crappy shirts?”
“Well, me,” Ridge said. “Danny, but God knows he doesn’t wear shirts anyway.” Danny snorted. “Wes, I guess.” He looked at me. “But he doesn’t have my taste. Or any taste. And then there’s, uh…” He looked at Breck and narrowed his eyes.
“Rather than stealing,” Breck said, licking his lips, “which is such a harsh word, maybe it would help you to think of it as liberation?”
“You stole my shirts!” Ridge roared. “Jesus Christ. My own brother?”
“Well, I didn’t have my own for a while, while all my stuff was back in D.C., and then… um… I guess I decided I liked yours better?” Breck grinned winningly.
“You couldn’t borrow shirts from your boyfriend?”
“No. I mean… have you seen my boyfriend?” Breck ran a hand across the massive expanse of Steele’s chest while Steele smirked like the smug bastard he was.
“You are a shithead, Breck Mason Pfeiffer,” Ridge announced. “I expect my shirts back in my possession within the hour, or a reign of terror will commence the likes of which you have never seen.”
Breck stuck out his tongue.
“See, all of this could be solved if you guys would only embrace nudity,” Danny said sleepily. “Free the pecs.”
I snorted under my breath, but of course, Danny heard me and lifted his head to give me a dirty look.
Jesus. Say one shitty little thing about a guy being a prostitute and suddenly he was giving me crap over every breath I exhaled, riding my ass day and night.
And not in the fun way.
There were times when I really didn’t get what the fuck I was doing here. I mean, yeah, sure, Charlie had some dirt on me that I really didn’t want to get out. But unlike the rest of these guys, I figured I had some dirt on Charlie, too. He’d been an information broker, but I specialized in information acquisition. I could find some shit on Charlie’s companies—or make some up if I had to—that would invalidate anything he had on me. I could plant enough evidence to have Miranda arrested for being a high-profile madam – and no lie, the idea amused the hell out of me – before she could turn me in to the authorities. Hell, I could get each of these guys locked up without breaking a sweat.
And even though I liked them better now than I had in the beginning, sometimes it was hard to remember why I’d given up my cushy little set-up back in Elm Lawn to come down to the Island of Misfit Criminals.
I’d never exactly played well with others.
“Mail call!” Josie yelled, walking out onto the patio.
As usual, everyone turned at the sound of Josie’s voice, primarily because the woman always seemed to be bringing us tasty food or alcoholic beverages. After a few weeks, the Pavlovian response had already been ingrained.
Today, Josie was wearing a short white skirt, white platform boots, and a flowery scarf. Was an Austin Powers sequel filming nearby? I wouldn’t put it past her to be in it if there were.
“Mail call?” I asked. “As in, someone got actual physical mail delivered here?” People still mailed stuff?
“Only Ridge,” she said, grinning. “But I’ve always wanted to say mail call!”
I smiled back. It was impossible not to like Josie.
She handed Ridge a magazine, and he quickly rolled it up and stuffed it in the back of his pants. Was he blushing?
“And for the second part of mail call, may I present the one and only Miraaaanda Bosley!” Josie threw her hands out like a gameshow host, giving us the jazz hands.
Miranda stepped out onto the patio in a blue sleeveless dress, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. “Subtle, Josie. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome!” Josie chirped. “Listen, the fridge is full of snacks, there are steaks if you wanna grill ‘em, but I’ve got an underwater demolition class in half an hour and I’m running late. You’re on your own, boys...and Miranda.”
Ridge frowned. “You’re taking an underwater demolition class?”
“What? No!” Josie laughed. “God! Wouldn’t that be a trip? Me, learning about underwater demolition at my age?” She shook her head like Ridge was hilarious.
“But you said…”
“Teaching it, Ridge, honey. I’m teaching the class.”
Ridge stared at Josie like she was a unicorn, mostly because she was.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
A new email from Jane with a lovely little attachment and a smiley face.
God. If there was a bigger rush than this, I hadn’t found it, and I was sure it couldn’t be obtained legally. I fucking loved calling the shots, I loved being in control. I loved knowing I’d never be powerless again. And I loved that the buzz came with the added bonus of actually helping other people.
Of course, today’s project wasn’t anything particularly newsworthy. Obtaining info from a pesky little press release – information that would be made public in a few days’ time anyway – wasn’t the same as using a bot army to access vulnerabilities in a server, but I wasn’t doing it to impress anyone. And besides, I much preferred the art of social engineering over smash-and-grab theft any day. Get some inside information, make some smart investments, profit, and make sure other folks profit too.
I preferred to think of it as redistribution of wealth rather than theft. Or, like Breck said, I was liberating the money from the ultra-rich so I could set it free with a charity that supported underprivileged kids in Chicago…or maybe hurricane victims down in Puerto Rico.
“Bond?”
I glanced up, startled to find M
iranda standing in front of me. I’d been caught up in imagining all the good I could and hadn’t heard her approaching. Why was everyone looking at me like….oh, damn. My eyes locked on the manila envelope in Miranda’s hand. I knew that envelope. It was identical to the one Steele had opened a few weeks back that had led us to investigate John Harlan.
Looked like it was my turn.
“The other half of mail call, huh?” I said, grabbing the envelope.
“Hand-delivered. Nothing but the best for you,” Miranda drawled. She hefted her briefcase. “Well. Good luck, guys.”
“Wait, what? Aren’t you going to stay while I open it?”
She shook her head. “Just like last time. Plausible deniability. You’ve got your limitless credit cards, all of Charlie’s resources, and Josie, God help you. But if you get in a jam, you can call me.”
“And the ‘interested party’?” Leo demanded. “The other guy who knows about these missions?”
Miranda stared at Leo without speaking for a minute. “You don’t call him. But he’ll be around, too.”
Leo watched her warily as she departed.
I stared at the envelope for a second, smirking at the low-tech-ness of it all. Just my name written in tidy block letters on a plain, manila envelope, but it felt heavy. Portentous. Charlie had sure as hell gone for the drama with these things.
I slit the top of the envelope, and my smirk died as I pulled out a stack of pictures and photocopied documents.
“What the fuck?” I muttered.
There were pictures of passports, maybe two dozen, in various shades of blue, green, and purple-red, all dumped in a box. Republica de Honduras was clearly spelled out on one and Guatemala and Colombia on a couple of the others.
I passed the photo to Leo, who’d stood and walked closer to my chair. Then I looked at the next one.
More passports, but this time a few were opened, with names and pictures visible. Some smiling, some serious; some presenting as women, some as men; all relatively young, and almost all from Central or South America.
“I don’t get it,” I muttered.
But as I passed that picture to Leo and looked at the next sheet, I thought maybe I did understand, and what I understood sickened me.
Missing person reports from various cities, all with pictures attached. My Spanish was rusty, but I got the gist. Dinorah had left her home in Esquintla for a short-term job and never came home. So had Fernando from Copan, Tomas from Guatemala, Isobel from Bucaramanga, Tala from Manilla, Mercedes from somewhere indistinguishable, and so on. The only differences were the dates and the cities. The circumstances were all frighteningly similar.
I passed those sheets off blindly and dove into the next set. Pictures again, but this time… a tropical resort, like maybe one of those bougie all-inclusive places? Women and men laying out on lounge chairs not dissimilar to the ones we were all lounging on. Crystal-blue pools and grass-roofed tiki bars, private bungalows and waitresses dressed in…
Oh. Oh, wait, hold up. I peered at one of the images.
“Leo!” I snapped my fingers without looking up. “Gimme the report about Tala Whatshername.”
Leo or someone handed it to me, and I snatched it blindly, looking back and forth from the missing woman to the waitress. She was skinnier in the photo from the resort – like, count-her-ribs skinny – and her hair was longer, but the face was unmistakable. The tiny mole below the outer corner of her left eye was visible in both images.
“This is the same person,” I said, glancing up. “The missing woman on the report is the waitress in this picture. And I bet if we look closely, every one of these other missing people is working at this resort, too.”
Breck peered over Steele’s shoulder while he frowned at the pictures of the passports. Ridge, Carson, and Leo studied the photos of the missing people. But Danny was staring at me, a tiny frown on his face.
“But how?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Looks like some kind of human trafficking thing to me.”
“So, what are we going to do?” he asked, serious and worried.
It was weird that in this sea of take-charge dudes – Twelve-Foot-Tall Steele, Head Bitch in Charge Leo, Man of a Thousand Faces Carson – Danny looked to me, the techie who pissed him off on the daily. Weird, but also kind of sweet.
My lips twitched the tiniest bit. “We’re going to find them, and we’re going to get them home.”
Danny nodded once, a combination of agreement and conviction that we would get it done, all cute and earnest. Really, a guy who’d been through as much as Danny had shouldn’t have been able to pull off innocent and sweet that way, but he did. Somehow, it made me feel better.
I flipped through the papers still in my hand. There were a few more resort pictures, including a close-up of the name and logo that I would use to obtain every microgram of available data about the place. But then there was a picture of a smiling, pregnant Tala with her arm around a man’s waist. The man held a toddler who looked as happy as his parents.
Tala had a family. And her son had his mother’s smile.
And that was when I remembered exactly why I was here – why I’d let myself be “blackmailed” by a dead man into taking down John Harlan, and why I’d stayed in this house ever since. One misanthropic hacker redistributing wealth could only do so much, but I was more than that now. I was part of a team.
Sometimes even the good guys needed to fight a little dirty. Sometimes, to bring the truth to light, you needed to employ a little deception.
Game. On.
Also By A.E. Wasp
HOT OFF THE ICE
CITY BOY
COUNTRY BOY
SKATER BOY
BOY TOYS
BOY NEXT DOOR
BOYS OF SUMMER (MAY 2019)
HOT OFF THE ICE BOXED SET (BOOKS 1-3)
CHASING THE STORM (HIDDEN CREEK)
SCORE
TWENTY BUCKS (SHORT)
VETERANS AFFAIRS
INCOMING
CHRISTMAS OUTING
PAPER HEARTS
PAPER ROSES
MAN IN THE MIRROR (SHORT)
BRONZE STAR
SHOWTIME (SHORT)
THE COMPLETE VETERANS AFFAIRS BOXED SET
PROS & CONS
PROS & CONS OF VENGEANCE
PROS & CONS OF DECEPTION
STAND ALONES
BELIEVE (FROM HEART2HEART #1)
FAIRYTALE OF LAGUARDIA (WITH BETH BOLDEN)
About the Author
After time spent raising children, earning several college degrees, and traveling the world with the U.S. State Department, she is returning to her first love - writing.
A dreamer and an idealist, Amy writes about people finding connection in a world that can seem lonely and magic in a world that can seem all too mundane. She invites readers into her characters’ lives and worlds when they are their most vulnerable, their most human, living with the same hopes and fears we all have. An avid traveler who has lived in big cities and small towns in four different continents, Amy has found that time and distance are no barriers to love. She invites her readers to reach out and share how her characters have touched their lives or how the found families they have gathered around them have shaped their worlds.
Born on Long Island, NY, Amy has lived in Los Angeles, London, and Bangkok. She currently lives in a town suspiciously like Red Deer, Colorado.
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