by Amy Lane
Grace was rubbing his arms, whispering, “Sh, sh, sh,” into Hunter’s ears before he realized what he was doing.
Oh God. He was comforting. He was caring for a lover after sex. He was exhausted, shaking, his ejaculate drying clammily between them, and he couldn’t think of anything to do besides tell Hunter it was all going to be okay.
He heard his voice begin to wobble, and then it broke. And then Hunter was stroking Grace’s hair back from his face, kissing the dampness under his eyes, and telling Grace, “Sh, sh, sh….”
And Grace went with that, the tears coming hot and fast, because Hunter was right; Grace had been right.
Together, they were going to be okay.
Let the Dance Commence
HUNTER HEARD the pounding on his door and groaned, trying to tune it out. In Hunter’s world, if someone was knocking, they weren’t that much of a threat.
Then he heard Josh’s voice.
“Look, assholes, I’m knocking out of courtesy. I’ve already broken in and neither of you were wearing clothes.”
And that made Hunter sit up, the covers twisted around his knees in the face of the syrupy Chicago heat that was blasting through the windows he hadn’t yet dimmed.
He and Grace had been plastered together with come and sweat, and damn him for going two more times the night before.
He’d been in charge of his body since middle school and Pop Warner football, and this was the first time in his life he’d felt like all his bones had given up and melted away.
“We’re on our way,” he said rustily. “Give us a sec!” Then he turned to Grace. “Go get in the shower and put on your sweats,” he muttered. “I’ll let him in.”
Grace mumbled into his chest, and Hunter was at a loss, before Josh said—through the door—“I don’t care if I’ve seen you naked before. It’s never been voluntary. Now move it! I brought coffee and donuts and—”
Hunter didn’t even see Grace move, but he was wearing underwear and unlocking the door to Josh and Chuck almost before Hunter could pull on his boxers.
Still groggy, Hunter hit the dimmer on the window and the switch that controlled the three fans in the vaulted ceiling. Grace grabbed the box of donuts and helped Josh to the table while Hunter slid on his T-shirt and, thank goodness, the air began to move.
“Sorry,” he rasped. “Late night.”
Grace gave Josh a supremely satisfied look, nodding emphatically.
“Well done,” Josh said grimly to Hunter. “He’s all yours. We’ll draw up a contract later, and you’ll have to keep him forever. But first, we’ve got a job to do.”
“I thought we had a few?”
When the briefing had ended the night before—right before Grace had finally answered his phone, damn him—they’d been in a place of wait and see.
Danny was going to talk to his contacts at Interpol to see what Sergei Kadjic’s status was and if they’d want a stake in bringing him down. Josh was going to lay things out for his friend Nick Denning to see if he had enough to bring to the FBI to get Sergei for embezzlement and intellectual property crimes, as well as corruption.
“The problem is,” Danny had mused, “that we have a lot of information being traded and marketed, but only some of it is illegal. Some of it is blackmail, I’m certain, to get politicians in his pocket. Some of it is insider financial trading. Some of it is technology. It’s like each gem has a super bundle carved into it that affects that particular area. So—” He looked at Josh and Hunter. “—that fortress you encountered in Seattle? That belongs to the guy who invented polycomp adhesive. You know what that is?”
Everybody in the room had looked blank except Josh—and Stirling. “It’s a polymer used exclusively inside computer circuit boards to make sure things don’t shake loose.”
“Exactly. Well, Clive Cooper—that guy—has taken his fortune and gone more and more into politics. So it makes sense he’d want to buy that sort of information and then outsource what he doesn’t need.”
“Where would one go about buying this sort of infobomb?” Josh asked, and Hunter heard a low whistle in his own mind. That was exactly the sort of question a mastermind would ask, and it was easily above Hunter’s paygrade.
“There would be some sort of auction,” Danny mused. “Either in person or online. Considering how much of this information is probably given over to making things like even the dark web unsafe, I’d be inclined to think it’s an in-person sort of thing….” He hmmd. “Stirling, I think you and me have some work to do tonight. Are you up for it?”
Stirling had brightened, and he, Danny, Felix, and Julia had all settled in for a big research session that probably involved more than one untraceable IP address and several forays onto the dark web. Hunter had gone driving after that, while Josh narrowed down neighborhoods where Grace’s phone wasn’t and cursed himself for not having the software installed that would help them track it when it had been turned off.
Josh nodded now, but Chuck—who’d been to Hunter’s place before—was the one who spoke. “Hunter, man, I’m making more coffee. Any objection?”
Hunter smiled tiredly. He and Chuck were both muscle—and guy Friday, if one was needed—and they’d bonded a bit on the last job. One of the best things about Chuck was that he had his priorities straight. Coffee first, briefing next. Donuts first, personal stuff next. He’d been up-front and absolutely unapologetic about wanting to hang with Josh’s crew because he liked having coworkers and didn’t want to go it alone, and Hunter could really appreciate that. Chuck’s last crew chief had double-crossed him—and the rest of the gang—mid bank robbery. Chuck had managed to escape with all the cash—and had set up bank accounts for the surviving members of the crew, making sure they knew the money was available when they got out of prison. But he had promised himself, in no uncertain terms, that he would never, ever, work with guys who put the job before the crew again.
In his own words, he didn’t want to shoot anybody, get shot himself, or walk away with blood on his hands. Just no.
Hunter was okay with a little blood—knuckles got bruised in a good fight—but for the most part, after seeing what was left of Ron Pinter and Paulie, he was on Chuck’s side of the equation.
The crew first, because he was only ever working again with people he trusted.
He’d never been so inextricably bound to his crew before, not even in the military. Maybe it was because he was dealing with people whose entire identity was about avoiding violence, but somehow, being their protector meant more to him now.
“Big pot,” Hunter said now on a yawn. “And Josh, if you can wait until I shower, I’d be much obliged.”
“Yeah, no problem,” he said. “Grace, you go first.”
Grace—who looked at least as tired as Hunter—smiled benignly and wandered off toward the shower, grabbing the discarded sweats on his way.
“Those yours?” Josh asked, sprawling into one of Hunter’s kitchen chairs. Josh himself was slightly built and maybe as tall as Grace. Whomever his biological father had been, he’d given Josh his coloring, but Josh had kept his mother’s build. That didn’t keep him from taking as much space as Chuck when he wanted to.
And right now, he apparently wanted to.
“Yup,” Hunter said.
Josh looked at him directly. “Good. Don’t expect to get them back.”
Hunter gave a grim smile. “You weren’t joking about the contract, were you?”
“Look,” Josh said on an exhale, “you make him happy right now. He trusts you. We trust you. So I’m just putting it out there that we have expectations, and I know you won’t disappoint us.”
Behind him, Chuck let out a snort that sounded purely involuntary. “Oh my God. He sounds like a daddy! It’s terrifying.”
Hunter grinned at him, knowing that a lot of Chuck’s good-ole-boy attitude was for show. If he hadn’t been wiping spit off his face, Hunter would have suspected he’d been trying to break the tension.
But he ha
d a point.
“Nobody hurts Grace on my watch,” he agreed soberly. “I told you that before.”
Josh smiled happily and pulled his sprawl in to a prim pose behind the table. “Awesome. Sit down and let Chuck do whatever mysterious thing he does to your coffee. It’s delicious.”
Over Josh’s head, Chuck was mouthing, “Cinnamon!” and Hunter had to smile. Chuck was the sort of guy who knew how to prepare sushi, caulk a bathtub, and set a charge of C-4 in the exact place to blow a bank vault open. It all depended on what you needed that day. Josh had met Chuck the same way he’d met Hunter. In the parking garage by U of C. Except Chuck had been about to move a car that didn’t belong to him. Not steal it, just move it. Forcing the douchebag who owned it to search the entire parking garage to find it. For the umpteenth time in two weeks. Hunter could go along with that kind of job—sometimes, just harassing the douchebags was deeply fulfilling.
Now Hunter took a donut and asked them what was on for the day, and Josh grinned, catlike, and said, “Let’s wait until Grace is out of the shower.” Then he reached inside the box, pulled out a devil’s food treat with icing and sprinkles, and took his own bite. “It’s gonna be good,” he said, chewing.
Chuck paused in his act of assembling ingredients for what should have been a simple cup of coffee. “Count on it,” he said, winking at Hunter.
Hunter took a bite of his donut and asked about the weather, because it turned out he had faith that his crew wasn’t going to let him down.
“SEE,” JOSH said, when Hunter and Grace were both showered, “Danny figured that if we started looking at charity shindigs for certain politicians, or artists’ benefits, or even museum displays in Chicago about two or three weeks before the big ripples, we’d see potential auction events. You know, the spoiled rich people gather, and the big players have a special event all to themselves in a secret room. Star-chamber stuff.”
Hunter nodded. “I’ve taken a few jobs to guard people when they come out of those rooms. If they’re the ones leaving with the brass ring, sometimes the trip home can look like ‘Spy vs. Spy,’ you know?”
“That thing from Mad Magazine?” Grace asked, doctoring his coffee. “That’s real?”
“No,” Hunter said. “I was being facetious.”
Grace sighed and wandered over to the table where the rest of them were sitting. “That’s a damned shame. I always keep hoping weird bird people are going to start popping out with cartoon detonators.”
“I wouldn’t,” Josh said, “Because that would be terrifying. But Hunter, you get the idea, right? Those things are always held at galas or dinners or something. It makes a good cover, and lo and behold, muckety-mucks everywhere.”
Hunter nodded. “Yeah, I get it. And it would probably be in Chicago, because the guy who carves the jewels lives in Springfield, right?”
“That’s what we figured. Also, Chicago’s a big city with a big rep. Muckety-mucks take trips here the same way they take trips to Vancouver. So we started doing some poking around, and we got two things.”
“Hit me,” Hunter said, and to his surprise, instead of taking the empty chair between Hunter and Chuck, Grace perched on his thigh.
“One of them is Danny’s Fabergé display. It’s not just the eggs. There will be specialty cut gems out the wazoo. We started wondering if the gems that were laser cut with the information on them might not be precut for initial shape. Imagine the buyer. ‘Oh, yes. That there is a gem from the Fabergé collection—gorgeous, isn’t it?’ But he knows he bought the gem for millions because it had a fuckton of information on it. It’s like a displayable computer chip. Can you imagine the cachet?”
Grace wiggled a little, the razor-sharp bones of his ass cutting off the circulation in Hunter’s leg, but Hunter got the hint. He wrapped his arm around Grace’s waist and hauled him back against his chest. Possession. “I get it,” he said, giving his beautiful lover a sideways look. “It’s a way of showing off your power.”
Josh nodded. “Exactly. So that’s one way to go.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Chuck muttered.
Hunter cocked an eyebrow. “Why not?”
Chuck nodded to Josh. “Tell him.”
Josh sighed. “Well, this is where things get tricky. Because the gem gala is the Wednesday night before the Aether Conservatory debuts Cinderella on Friday. Chuck thinks that the timing is just too good, and I have to tell you, my spidey sense is tingling. We’ve got Danny’s Fabergé Gem Gala, and then we have an event showcasing their drop guy, Artur, so we’re waiting for him to get word that he’s got a drop. Danny’s scoping out places in the museum that might be good for their star-chamber meet—he’s got a couple of hidey-holes that he says security has conveniently overlooked, so we might have some ideas there. But the debut would be a good one too. You can see our dilemma.”
“How do you know again?” Grace asked. “How do you know they have these big fun crime-boss meetings? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Wait!” Chuck said, grabbing another donut. “This one was fun. Because a couple of weeks before that pattern of ripples, as Danny called them, began, all the bad guys—I mean all the bad guys—from the area with the ripples hopped a plane to Chicago. So they’re all here for a couple of days, and then soon afterwards, Artur goes to them to make the drop.”
Hunter swallowed hard and then swallowed again. His arm around Grace’s waist tightened convulsively, and he took a deep breath.
“Ron Pinter,” he said, and Josh gasped quietly, because Josh had heard this story.
Grace said, “Drug dealing scumbag you used to work for.”
Hunter gave a nod. “Everyone gets one bad boss,” he muttered. “No, that’s the thing. Last night, Grace said that the two other security guards—Creighton and Chancellor—obviously set Pinter up. Something like this occurred to me in Vancouver. The timing was right. About two weeks before shit went bad, they accompanied Pinter to Guadalajara. They said it was a chance to go drinking and whoring, and all Pinter did was pick up a package in the hotel lobby.”
“And you didn’t mention this?” Josh asked, eyes wide.
Hunter flushed. “Well, I was going to but I got—” He sent Grace a sideways look. “—distracted. But when I was hunting Jenkins down, it occurred to me that Creighton and Chancellor know me. If they were somehow involved, that would have been a reason for them to plant the spyware at the Westin. And Pinter was a weasel. The odds of somebody betraying him and offing him went up exponentially every time he snorted blow through a gold straw. They were close enough to him to know what he had and when the double cross would be most effective. I was just too dumb to see it.”
And the truth—the hard truth—was that Hunter had been lost without a leader. He could plan an op and execute it with a well-honed competency, but he needed a cause, a reason to go into the field. For a while, it had been his government, but gah! The things he’d seen his government do! And then it had been the boss of the moment, as long as he reserved the right to say no. Pinter had been a mistake, but he’d been ready to walk away at any time. He’d just hoped Paulie would come with him.
Then Paulie had died, and Hunter had been adrift. Not destroyed—hurt, but not broken. It had taken Josh Salinger to show him that.
“So what does this have to do with Chicago?” Josh asked, taking a thoughtful sip of coffee.
“During my job with Pinter, he took a trip to Chicago. I was the driver, but we went to some sort of social event downtown. Paulie and I stayed with the car”—and got laid—“but Chancellor and Creighton were the ones at Pinter’s elbow the entire time. They said it was some sort of auction. Then we got back to Arizona, and two weeks later, Chancellor and Creighton went down to Guadalajara with Pinter, got laid, and came back. Again, they had no idea what they were doing, or so they claimed. All they did was pick the package up and party. Two weeks after that, Pinter’s brains were all but running out his nose, and Chancellor and Creighton took out the gate guy
and blew town, leaving the car wired to blow on the assumption that me, Paulie, and Pinter would be in it when it blew. But Pinter wasn’t completely stupid—high, but not stupid—and for some reason he was like, ‘I gotta get outta here.’ And he was so panicked, I went to go check things out at the gatehouse before we left, which was where I was when the limo blew.”
He took a big breath and looked Josh in the eyes. “What does that sound like to you?”
Josh inhaled carefully, setting his coffee down. “That sounds like they figured out what Pinter had, stole it, and tried to take down anybody who might have known anything about it. So we need to look up Guadalajara a year ago?”
“Fourteen months,” Hunter said. “But those guys—they got what they wanted. The odds of them coming back for more—”
“Are pretty big,” Chuck said. “I helped plan bank jobs for years—and I sweartagod these assholes had nothing more going for them than walk in, wave the gun, and run out. Fact is, most bad guys don’t have that much imagination, Hunter. They got money stealing one of these things before, and probably a lot. If they blew up your boss last time, that means they’ll keep ki….”
Chuck trailed off, and the silence in the room was thick.
“What?” Grace asked. “Why aren’t we talking anymore? Chuck, are you dead? Your eyes are big. Is your brain about to run out of your nose?”
Chuck slow-blinked at him, his big green eyes almost dazed. “Hunter?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a brave man. Grace, buddy, you remember the guy who shot at you and then ended up dead?”
“Jenkins?” Grace sounded surprised. Then, “Jenkins?” A little more thoughtfully that time. Chuck, Josh, and Hunter all exchanged glances, and Josh held his hand up, counting down on his fingers.
Five, four, three, two—
“Jenkins!” Grace said excitedly. “Oh my God! He was working for your bad guys.”
“Which would explain why he was taping us,” Josh said. “If Chancellor and Creighton got a look at Hunter while he was nearby, they would have wanted to know how much he knows.”