by Amy Lane
Nick’s face went carefully blank. “That’s too bad,” he said sincerely. “Lucius is one of the good guys.”
Josh inspected his manicure. “Give it up, Nick. We know about Caraway House.”
“I don’t,” Grace said, suddenly perking up. “Is it like Cassowary House, where shitty birds tear apart your car?”
Josh manfully contained a smirk. “No, but thanks for playing. It’s a place for—”
Nick held out his hand. “Don’t say it here,” he murmured. “There’s a reason it’s secret.”
Josh nodded, as though suddenly remembering himself. “Anyway, Lucius is one of the good guys. And we’re looking into where the tech has been funneled, with his help. We know the delivery system—”
“Which is…?” Nick held out his hands and made a “gimme” gesture.
“Secret,” Josh said without batting an eyelash.
“But it’s so cool,” Grace told him, doing another pirouette. “You only wish you knew our secret.”
Nick gave Grace a narrow gaze. “You two still aren’t an item, right?” he asked, as though making sure.
“No,” Josh said. “He’s sleeping with a mercenary right now. It’s the healthiest relationship he’s ever had. Don’t hate.”
Nick did a slow blink. “A mercenary? Who does he work for?”
“At the moment? Himself. He likes us, though, so we’re sort of a team. Anyway, he’s a badass. He’ll keep Grace safe.”
“He even has superhero clothes,” Grace said, remembering the long leather duster. The shorter one held sentimental value, Grace had to admit. It was like Hunter had been a prince and Grace had been his other prince and Hunter hadn’t wanted him to get his feet hurt.
Nick did another slow blink. “I’m not even going to ask,” he said. “But I will help you. I’ll get you the information on Jenkins, and you tell me who to arrest when they’re in Chicago. Do we have a deal?”
Josh stuck his hand out, and a manly handshake ensued. He turned to Grace and bobbed his head, and together they headed for the front of the station, where Hunter was probably waiting impatiently.
“Thanks,” Josh said as they half jogged through the hallways, past the offices where detectives lingered over their paperwork and cups of sludge, and past the receptionist desk where the desk sergeant worked hard to keep her cool as someone obviously coming down from a high begged to speak to a cop because she had information.
“But they’ll want to talk to me, I know,” the woman said, almost desperately, and the desk sergeant handed her a voucher with a patient air.
“This is a rehab clinic, honey. The officers you’re requesting are out right now, and you’re going to need help before then. Please—”
Grace couldn’t help but stare at the woman, wondering if that could have been him if Gabriel hadn’t been so careless with his dosage.
Grace had been primed to become a junkie because he hadn’t had anything else guiding him at the moment.
Josh’s shoulder bumping his own brought him back to the present. “It’s not you,” he said softly. “Never would have been.”
Usually, Grace would have feigned ignorance, but right now, with Hunter in the car, thinking Grace was worth something, he had to ask, “How do you know?”
“You were bored and lost and trying to impress an asshole, Grace. It was a perfect storm of your worst impulses. Look at all you’ve accomplished since then.”
They reached the double doors, burst outside, and Grace scowled. “I honestly can’t think of—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, dumbass. You’re the principal male dancer at Aether, and if I hadn’t dragged you away from school to help Felix, you’d be getting your degree by now. And”—Josh was trying and failing not to look like someone with secrets to hide—“we’re doing something fairly significant and important, even if we don’t have a certificate. So stop doing that, okay?”
“What?” Grace asked, but he knew.
“Stop trying to pretend that one shitty mistake in high school defines your entire existence. When I think about that night, I don’t think about how you’re a danger to yourself right now. I thank God you were okay and stopped doing what you were doing.”
“A good thing Gabriel left, though,” Grace said.
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Is that Hunter?”
“No—shit, where is he?”
Josh paused, unduly winded by their little jog, and they slowed down and walked toward the crosswalk, keeping a sharp eye on the people wandering by. Police stations tended not to be in the greatest parts of town. Go figure.
“Check your phone. We were in there a while. They probably made him—”
“Here he is.” Grace pointed to the approaching SUV. “He probably had to drive around the block.”
“Sure.” They waited until Hunter had pulled up to the curb, and then got in, Josh taking the back seat, to Grace’s surprise.
Grace always took the back seat. He was the second banana. Josh was the leader.
Why would Josh take the back seat? Was it to let Grace be near Hunter? Or was he trying to distract Grace from something el—
“How’d the meeting go?” Hunter asked.
“Good,” Josh told him. “But we need to have a family meeting in the den tonight because I’ve got a bad feeling about what went down in Vancouver.”
“What do you think it could be?” Hunter was smart; he respected Josh just like Nick did.
“Well, if Jenkins was working for Kadjic, he’d have no reason to try to steal the jewel. He had to have been working for someone else. He shows up without the jewel, they tell him to get it or else, he bugs our rooms and goes in and tells them that he’s got a plan, but it’s too late. You and I tracked the jewel to that compound—and we need to find out who’s there, still—and that’s probably Kadjic’s approved delivery place. Tazo and Verhoeven were part of the system. No questions, no lies. So all this we know. What we need to know is (a) how much information is on these gems, and (b) who was Jenkins working for. That’s what we need to get from tonight’s meeting before figuring out what to do about it.”
“What can we do?” Grace asked. It suddenly occurred to him that chasing this information could be like chasing a chipmunk who was chasing a nut attached to a string attached to a stick on top of his head. Up, down, around and around, through the forest, over the trees, into traffic, and they were dead. There needed to be an endgame.
“We could put together a case and tell the most appropriate federal agency,” Josh said, as though feeling his way. “That’s one way to go. Also, stop the next delivery so we can catch Kadjic in the act and maybe stop the competition. If we’re lucky, maybe we can do both those things at the same time so we can get the mobsters before they run Artur into the ground and steal Lucius’s last good project, and not put any of the blame for the bust at their feet.”
“I have to say,” Hunter mused, “this idea of dragging the Feds into it and spoon-feeding them the information to get the bad guys off the ground—that works for me. It’s like having a stealth army at our back and nobody goes gunning for us. We’re invisible.”
“There’s some bennies to working for thieves,” Josh told him smugly.
“We can also get you free leather jackets,” Grace said. “I would like a free leather jacket, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d like you to have a free leather jacket,” Hunter agreed. “Since you seem determined to wear that hoodie until it falls apart.”
“It’s soft,” Grace told him, and while that was the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth.
Hunter smiled like he knew what the whole truth was, and Grace wondered how they would get to be alone again so Hunter could deliver on that smile. Because Grace knew what that meant now, and it was worth being alone.
Traps and Pitfalls
DINNER PROVED to be a raucous, happy affair, with everybody telling Felix, Danny, Chuck, and Tabitha their favorite Vancouver story, including Lucius Broadstone, who said his
absolute favorite moment was eating Thai food in the hotel room after Grace had climbed up his face.
“Your chest!” Grace protested.
“That was only by accident,” Broadstone maintained with grim humor.
“Oh, come now,” Chuck drawled. “You look pretty sturdy, Mr. Broadstone. I’m sure our Grace would have tiptoed so delicately up your face, you could have sold it to a spa as a beauty treatment.”
“Yes, I’ll put that to my research and development crew immediately,” Broadstone retorted. “All he’ll need is some loofahs on his feet and a little bit of fancy soap.”
“Now we’re talking!” Chuck grinned back, unperturbed, and Hunter wondered if he was the only one who saw the sparks of challenge flying between the two.
“Maybe I don’t want to run up people’s faces,” Grace said randomly. “Maybe I want to have my fortune read instead. Or maybe get a sandwich.”
“A sandwich,” Hunter asked, unable, as usual, to resist Grace’s non sequiturs wherever they may be headed.
“It sounds good when comedians say it,” Grace pondered. “Do you think sandwich is just a funny word?”
“Right?” Josh said. “It’s like jam or the moon—it’s totally out of left field. Makes whatever you’re talking about funnier.”
Grace nodded. “I mean, I guess I could want mochi. That’s sort of random too.”
“So’s shawarma,” Tabby added.
“Italian food,” Molly said decisively. “Except there’s always that mob carryover. Like saying you’re eating rigatoni would sound funny, unless your stupid brother has just made you watch a Martin Scorsese marathon, and suddenly you think of eating rigatoni while someone’s carrying out a hit in front of you, and it’s all bad.”
“Next time, you pick the shotgun,” Stirling said mildly, and then, with a moment of thought, added, “And why aren’t potato chips funny? The ones in the can? You’d think that would be a funny food, but nobody ever uses it as a funny food.”
“It can’t be funny if you physically need them after a bad breakup,” Tabby said, and Molly, who was sitting across the table from her, offered her fist up for some validation. Tabby didn’t leave her hanging.
“Sauerkraut!” Danny said suddenly, and at any other table, Hunter would have thought that was an odd thing to say, but the rest of the table started to nod.
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Definitely. Sauerkraut is up there.”
“It doesn’t taste as good as a sandwich,” Grace mused.
“Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?” Josh demanded. “A pastrami Reuben is the perfect sandwich.”
“Bull,” Chuck cut in. “Pastrami extra pickles on sourdough.”
“Heathen!” Lucius protested. “That sandwich demands rye!” and the banter zoomed on.
Hunter followed it, amused. He’d had brothers, but while his parents had been kind, their dinner table discussion had often been prosaic—if there’d been much at all. The verbal free-for-all at the Salinger table was something special, but he wasn’t going to risk stopping the momentum to contribute.
And then Grace—who was sitting right next to him—leaned over and said, “You don’t think food is funny?”
“I think sushi is hilarious,” Hunter corrected under the cover of all that chatter. “Raw fish and rice, and it tastes delicious, but seriously, who thought that would be a good idea?”
Grace’s mouth opened, like he was trying to formulate an answer. It was Josh who said, “The Japanese, Grace. The Japanese thought sushi was a good idea.”
“I knew that,” Grace said quickly. “I just… I mean, he’s right. Who slices open a tuna and goes, ‘You know, if we chilled this a little and added this green shit that’s hotter than balls, that wouldn’t be a bad thing’?”
“Yeah, but that goes for any spice that’s hotter than balls,” Molly said from across the table. “I mean, hot sauce is in joules of heat. Who tasted a ghost pepper, burst into tears, threw up, and said, ‘Hey, add some vinegar and some tomatoes and we might have something here’!”
“Technically,” Stirling said, “pretty much all spice evolved from the need to keep meat from spoiling, or to mask the taste of it when it did spoil. So if someone’s got half a cow that’s not going to get eaten in the next week, the reasoning would go, ‘But if we hang it over a fire and put something hotter than balls on that, it might not turn green.’”
And at that point, Julia looked beseechingly at Felix and said, “Darling, if you have the dynamite to derail this juggernaut, I would love to be able to eat the food on my plate without thinking of spoiled beef, ghost peppers, or the word ‘balls.’”
Felix gave Danny a look that seemed to imply he was responsible for the complete chaos and tried to impose order. “So now that we know why wasabi was invented, what do we know about Vancouver?”
There was a reason Felix was considered one of the best network CEOs in the business.
The table talk turned to the shopping—which Molly and Julia mostly participated in—and then moved on to Grouse Mountain and Capilano Park, although they had to take a sharp detour when Grace tried to bring up vulture vomit.
“You guys are no fun,” Grace muttered, and Hunter cleared his throat and fixed Grace with a stern look.
Grace did a slow blink, and something seemed to shift in his head. He cast a look toward the head of the table, where Felix, Julia, and Danny seemed to be chewing over some of the details that revolved around the actual job.
“I’m stupid,” he said, looking embarrassed.
“Your mind goes places,” Hunter corrected. “But sometimes we like it when you stay here with us.”
Grace brightened. “I can live with that,” he declared, and Hunter felt like they’d made an important inroad.
Phyllis—the housekeeper who ate with them when she felt like it—came in from the kitchen with a couple of college students she’d hired as helpers, and they did the clearing up. And that was their cue to move downstairs, to a dessert spread of cookies, fruit, and cheese laid out on the coffee table and the big screen television already booted up and attached to Danny’s laptop.
“Are we good here, my darlings?” Danny asked pleasantly. “Have we gotten the weird food thing out of our system? Can we concentrate? Because class is about to start, and your Uncle Danny would like very much to know he has everybody’s attention.”
Hunter assumed his usual position, arms folded, leaning against the far corner of the room so he could take in the entrance from upstairs and make sure everybody in his venue was safe and accounted for. He missed sitting on the couch with everyone else—he really missed dessert—but he couldn’t resist the urge to watch over his people. He wasn’t being paid, although the Salingers had given him room and board and let him know that anything he needed was at his command, but that wasn’t it. He wasn’t even officially anybody’s bodyguard, either.
It was just with this group of people—even with Chuck, who was standing, arms crossed, leaning against the far wall with the same view for the same reasons—he felt protective. If a sudden horde of bad guys swept through the upscale Chicago suburbs and down the staircase, bent on mayhem, Hunter and Chuck would take as many of them out as they could, doing their damnedest to protect his family.
But dessert, though…. Phyllis had been baking while they were gone. There were pecan tarts and shortbread and snickerdoodles and oatmeal raisin. Yeah, some people preferred chocolate chip, but Hunter loved that chewy sweet oatmeal raisin action. Only he didn’t want to—
Grace brought him a napkin full of cookies. Full of cookies. Three of them were oatmeal raisin, and Grace snagged one of those and a snickerdoodle for himself and then collapsed bonelessly at Hunter’s feet, nibbling experimentally.
“These brown things are not chocolate,” he accused.
Hunter took a full bite and chewed blissfully, eyes half-closed. “You have to chew it all together,” he said, trying to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. “People try
to eat the raisins by themselves, and they’re super disappointed.”
Grace glared at him suspiciously while Danny finished setting up his presentation, and then bit boldly.
Hunter counted in his head. One, two, three—
“Oh my God.” Grace’s voice had that guttural sound of complete fulfillment, and that sound kept rumbling as he chewed and then took another bite.
“Good, right?”
Grace nodded and continued to sing to his food as Danny asked for the lights to dim.
“Okay, are we all—” Danny looked over his shoulder and smiled fondly. “Is that cookie good, Grace?”
“Mmmffff!”
“Is it better for the serenade?”
Hunter bit his lower lip to keep from snickering, but Grace nodded, unperturbed.
“Good. You keep humming to your food, precious. Subdue it with music. I can carry on.”
And he did.
First, he pulled up a slide of the jewel as they’d photographed it.
“You all know what this is,” he said, and they nodded. “Good. So you know that it’s lovely—and it will make a wonderful centerpiece for an amulet or tiara or even a really gawdawful tie clip. It’s beautiful, and the cut is extremely unique and extremely skilled. In fact there are maybe thirteen jewelers in the world who could make a cut like this, and maybe ten of them have the know-how to use a laser to cut information into the facets of the gem so precisely. This here is a singular item. Or it should be.”
“But my grandfather’s done four deliveries this year!” Tabitha exclaimed. “Do you think they were all jewels? He’d have to be working someone pretty hard, right? One of those would take… how long?”
“A couple of weeks to plan,” Danny confirmed. “And depending on how good our guy is, at least a week to inscribe the stone, as long as we wanted to leave it undamaged. So while you guys were playing climb-the-billionaire and how-to-steal-the-same-gem-twice, I was here making some calls.”
“You know these guys?” Chuck asked from his wall, admiration tinging his voice.