The Deeper Game (Taken Hostage by Hunky Bank Robbers Book 3)

by Annika Martin

  “Seriously?” I said. “You’re ruling out people by their Facebook pages?”

  “Best OSINT ever,” Odin said, thumbs flying over his keypad. Open source intelligence, he meant. They’d used the term before. I couldn’t remember what the NT was.

  By the time we were ten minutes from home, Odin had the list narrowed down to five. And at the top was one T. Hansen, a.k.a. Travis Hansen. Or in Thor’s words, Sleazy Travis Hansen.

  Apparently everybody in their set knew Sleazy Travis, though the man hadn’t shown his face lately because there was a warrant out for his arrest. He’d been locked up twice for sexual assault, and he had jumped bail on rape charges. He was known for stalking his victims, including leaving strange gifts.

  “Travis dies,” Zeus grumbled.

  “If we can find him,” Thor said. “He might not even be in town.”

  He and Zeus discussed the way they’d work the grapevine. The problem, apparently, wasn’t whether they’d learn where he was holed up, it was whether they could learn where he was holed up without his knowing they were after him.

  “Because then he’ll really disappear,” Odin said. “Hiding from the cops is a lot easier than hiding from us.”

  I didn’t doubt it.

  Zeus pulled off at a gas station and Thor took over driving on the next leg. I sat on the passenger side while Odin and Zeus worked the phones in the back seat, conferring and beating the bushes for Travis, going hard at some people, soft at others.

  We grabbed gourmet breakfast sandwiches at a place near downtown, then made stops at two bars and one apartment building—both times Thor and I had to wait in the SUV. Both times Odin and Zeus came out looking a little more mussed than when they went in.

  After the last stop, we had an address. Travis was staying in the shed behind his mother’s house.

  “The cops couldn’t find him?” Odin spat out. “At the mother’s house? It’s Sex Offender 101. The mother’s house.” He seemed almost annoyed.

  “Matter of time now,” Zeus said to me, low and hard. “We protect our own, goddess.”

  Shivers ran over me.

  We parked on the far end of the street. Zeus and Odin slipped out and melted into the neighborhood. Thor and I were to keep watch at the front with the motor running, just in case.

  Thor checked his email again.

  “Any news?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “The midwives still hope they can turn the baby.”

  “She’s lucky to have you,” I said.

  “I should be down there,” he said.

  “You can’t just sit there. You said yourself it could be a weeks before she goes into labor.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You’re just two hours away,” I pointed out. A little more, actually, especially if it was rush hour. “And there are midwives. Don’t they know what they’re doing?”

  “They’re the best, but neither of them has delivered a breach as risky as this one. Well, one of them has, but it went badly,” he said. “Which is actually worse than no experience.”

  Just then a car came up the street behind us. The driver, a lone man, matched Travis’s description—somewhat.

  Thor slid down in his seat, watching through the side mirror. “Too old,” he said as he passed.

  Zeus called just then. Thor put it on speaker. Travis wasn’t there, but they’d found evidence in the shed. Definitely him.

  “Damn.” Thor clicked off. “How are you doing? You don’t seem freaked out.”

  “I was at first, but I know this will be okay. I wish he was there, but hey, of all the people who have threats against them in the world, I think I’m the safest.”

  “I’d say you’re safer than the president.” He gazed out at the street, scanning a new car coming down the way. A woman. “It’s hard to believe that anybody would decide to go after you. It’s like poking a hornet’s nest, but then again, people do stupid things. And sometimes people have a death wish.”

  Ten minutes later, Zeus and Odin were bounding back through the neighborhood carrying large, clear baggies. One contained white butcher paper, the other contained what looked like gloves. Thor and I got out and schlepped into the back seat.

  Zeus flung open the driver’s side door. “Not there. But it’s him.”

  “Looks like him,” Odin corrected, getting in the passenger side. “Still circumstantial.”

  “We’ll know when we see him face-to-face.” Zeus shut the door quietly. “That shed is completely wired up with cameras. Almost as secure as our hideout, and he dug a lower level. The place is so empty and clean, you almost couldn’t tell somebody was living there.”

  “Clean?” Thor asked.

  “The man is a neat freak of the highest order,” Odin said. “Pathologically neat. The mother’s house is even worse. She has plastic over all the furniture,” Odin said.

  “Even the kitchen table,” Zeus said. “The lamps. Disposable plates and utensils. Who lives like that?”

  “The mentally ill, typically,” Odin said. “Maybe she tried to keep plastic on the son in a metaphorical sense—keep him pristine. Sexual predators like Travis often have issues around mothers and bodily functions.”

  “Well, that’s hot,” I said as a white car passed.

  “I wonder who wired it for him,” Odin continued, snapping on his seatbelt. “Manning? Not a lot of guys will wire up a shed like crazy and keep their mouth shut. We found all that butcher paper in their dumpster. If we laid it out next to the butcher paper from the package with the feather, pieces would line up. I bet you anything.”

  Just then, Zeus peeled out.

  “Hey—”

  “I think that was him.” Zeus took a corner and the white car ahead squealed around another. “Gotcha.”

  “Take it easy,” Thor cautioned as the driver of the white car started getting more erratic.

  “Travis knew, goddammit,” Zeus said. “Somebody tipped him. He should’ve been in there.”

  We sped after him onto a crowded surface street; Travis wove in and out through a pack of cars.

  “Slow down,” Thor said. “He’s gonna kill someone.”

  Travis went through a stoplight, nearly causing a crash. That’s when the sirens started.

  “Damn!” Odin said. “Hang back.”

  We slowed, moving in behind a cop car. Two more cop cars came in from the side to join the first. Zeus slowed to the speed limit. The chase got farther ahead, and soon the cherry-red lights disappeared. Odin fired up his police scanner app. “They’re taking Bentham Road,” he said. “Go west on 28th.”

  Zeus did a U-turn and took 28th, going on to follow Odin’s ever-changing directions. We turned left and right and left.

  A helicopter sounded overhead.

  “Do you think they know who they have?” I asked.

  “Could be,” Zeus said.

  “Hold on,” Odin said as the voices through the radio got frenetic. “Shit. He crashed.”

  “Bad?” Thor asked.

  Odin shook his head. “Unknown. Zeus, turn up here. Here—this light.” He directed us to the crash site.

  It took a while to get there because the crash had slowed traffic in both directions. Red lights lit up the palm trees and houses. By the time we neared, they were loading Travis into an ambulance and we saw only a flash of him, all bloody and twisted. They were waving people past.

  “Did you see him, Thor?” Zeus asked. “What do you think?”

  “Doesn’t look good,” Thor said. “From the look of his car, he’s lucky he’s not dead.”

  “He preferred to risk death and arrest,” Odin said.

  I finished his sentence in my mind: He preferred to risk death and arrest over dealing with the God Pack.

  We arrived home exhausted and dirty. Matteo reported in: things had gone as usual. It was nearly closing time.

  Thor called the hospital and finagled an update on Travis. Critical but stable.

  I was surprised to se
e Odin and Zeus, both wearing latex gloves, smoothing out the crumpled butcher paper from Travis’s garbage. They had the paper from the feather package already laid out to compare to this new evidence.

  Zeus looked up and caught my eye. “Just to be sure,” he said. “You know how thorough we like to be.”

  I smiled. Such professionals. It was a little bit sad, to think of all the things they could’ve been. The work they’d done back in the agency had probably saved countless lives.

  “What’s that look?” Zeus barked.

  “No look,” I said.

  “Go meet us in the hot tub,” Odin said, not looking up.

  I headed for my room instead and took a shower. When I got out to our back porch, my guys were already in the tub, which made a peanut-shaped hole in our wood-slat deck. You could see the setting sun glinting through the trees all around us.

  “What took you so long?” Thor asked, sliding all the way down. The tips of his longish blond hair grazed the water.

  I undid the belt to my fluffy robe, swishing my toe in the warm water. “Girls take longer with everything.” I shed the robe and stepped into the delicious and bubbly warmth.

  Zeus snorted.

  “But it’s always worth the wait,” I added as I sunk down next to Thor. Heaven.

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” Thor said, sliding an arm over my shoulders. “No blood on our hands. We didn’t have to carry out vigilante justice. Travis is on his third strike, so he’ll stay inside.”

  “I want to visit him,” Zeus announced.

  “Are you afraid he’ll tell the authorities about us?” I asked.

  Zeus sniffed, like that was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. “Sleazy Travis would never snitch on us. We could get to him so fast.”

  “What is it, then?” Thor asked.

  Zeus paused, as though his thoughts were baffling even him. “Just to make sure it’s really him in that hospital bed. And I want to ask him to his face about the package he left. I want you to come too, Odin.”

  “He won’t admit it,” Odin said.

  “I know, but did you think it was too easy?” Zeus asked. “Did it feel too easy?”

  “Hmm,” Odin said.

  Zeus grunted.

  “You’re not suggesting we postpone the Prime because we’re awesome in ferreting out our enemies, are you?” Thor asked.

  “It felt easy. And the frame job on Ingvey—that was off,” Zeus said, ever the instinctual one. His gaze fell to me. “It can’t hurt to make sure. It felt easy.”

  “Though it was easy relative to the shit we do now,” Odin said. “Running down criminals is much easier than knocking off the most fucking-g well-protected structures in the Western hemisphere.” Odin flicked water at Zeus. “You, my friend, are unused to easy work.”

  “Why can’t it be easy?” I asked. “Why can’t that be a goal? Don’t you guys deserve better?”

  Thor groaned. “Is this the Tunisian island again?”

  “It’s being good to yourselves,” I said. “You’ve messed with your enemies, but where does it end?”

  Odin frowned.

  “She’s picked out an island for us to retire on,” Thor explained.

  Zeus furrowed his brow. “You knew this was what you were signing on for when you joined us, Isis,” he said, seeming troubled. “Are you regretting—”

  “No! Of course not,” I said. “I wouldn’t go back and change a thing. I’m with you one hundred percent, you know that.”

  “It’s our moral obligation to fucking-g make them wish we were dead, Isis. What possible reason would we have to abandon it?” Odin stared into the dark trees. “You are not with us if you suggest we abandon our sworn work.”

  “It’s because I’m with you that I’m suggesting you maybe look at that.”

  Because I love you, I thought.

  I needed to tell them how much I loved them—each of them individually, and them together. But not in the middle of an argument.

  I knew they loved each other, too. They thought they were saying it with their matching tattoos, but it wasn’t the same thing. Especially now that they’d soon be emblazoning that stupid You WISH we were dead, Motherfuckers motto on our arms. That wasn’t about love.

  “We can’t just fade away and let them win,” Zeus said.

  I thought again about their talents and intelligence. What they’d given up. It made me feel desperately sad—too sad to sit there one second longer. I wanted, suddenly, to be alone. “Excuse me, you know? For wanting some fucking peace and happiness for you.” I shot up out of the tub, grabbed a towel, and headed toward the sliding door.

  Stupid me thinking I could walk away from an argument with my stubborn guys. Heavy footfalls shook the wooden slats of the porch behind me; heavy hands grabbed me and picked me up.

  I tried to wriggle out of Zeus’s arms, but he had me. “Screw you, I’m not going back in the tub.”

  “No choice,” Zeus said, climbing back down into the hot water. He settled me on his lap and held me there, arms like a vice.

  Odin’s gaze was sharp. “We will have peace and we will have vengeance,” he said. “We take what we want, Isis. And we are not going to fade away in some retirement paradise fishing like old men. You don’t want that life any more than we do. You of all people don’t want a life without thrills.”

  “What about the thrills of making your own meaning? Remember what Matteo said at Guvvey’s? If you spend your life reacting to somebody, they control you as much as if you spend your life obeying them.”

  “That’s not what he said.” Odin said. “You added something.”

  “Giving ZOX pain is the opposite of obeying them,” Zeus said. “We’re doing the Prime next week.”

  Odin swished his foot, brown toes forming a knobby fin, moving through the water. “You may not agree with that decision, but if you’re participating, we need you committed—one hundred percent there. Are you there or not? That’s the question on the table right now.”

  “Of course I’m there a hundred percent.”

  “He’s right. We need you there fully,” Zeus said, keeping his massive arms around me, a prison and a cocoon. “It’s okay if you’re not. I’m sure one of the Gigis would fill in if you felt apprehensive. We can’t go in with you half into it, that’s the thing. This is the Prime.”

  “One of the Gigis?” My belly nearly sunk through the floor of the tub. “You see me as interchangeable with the Gigis?”

  “Of course not,” Thor said quickly.

  “That’s what it sounded like!”

  “You could never be replaced,” Thor said.

  “They’re pros and they know how to rip off a place, that’s all,” Zeus said, warm in my ear. “So you wouldn’t have to feel bad if you didn’t want to—”

  “I don’t need the Gigis filling in for me!” I wriggled out of Zeus’s hold. Or more, he finally let me go. “I’m all in,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, but it hurt that he’d even suggested it. “I just think live for vengeance is a shitty long-term strategy, that’s all.”

  Odin gave me a look I couldn’t read. In our normal life, my current attitude might merit some erotic punishment. The fact that it was off the table showed the seriousness of this conversation.

  “I’m always in,” I added. “And the Gigis don’t have half the allegiance to you guys that I do. I can’t believe you would suggest it—”

  “He was just giving you an out,” Thor said.

  “I don’t need an out. I’d tell you if I wasn’t into playing my role a hundred fucking percent. I need you guys to trust I’d speak up on that.”

  “We trust you, goddess,” Zeus said.

  “Maybe not if you think I’d endanger you by being half-ass on a heist. You guys look out for me, but this thing goes both ways.”

  Odin came to me through the water and pressed a warm, wet hand to my cheek. “You were trying to talk us into quitting, goddess,” he whispered. “You know what that feels like?
It feels like you want to quit.”

  I understood, now. I’d scared them. I felt badly. “I never want to quit.” I put my hand over his, sandwiching it onto my cheek, wondering suddenly if Venus had tried to get them to quit. I know she’d fucked up a robbery shortly before her suicide. “I don’t want to quit, I swear. I love our life,” I said, remembering the day I got the cloud and lightning tattoo to match theirs. How it made us a family. Us as the four bolts coming out of the cloud. How proud I felt.

  Odin trailed his hand down my slick shoulder. “Our commitment to each other is how we survive as a pack.”

  “I know,” I said. It was how they knew they’d always go back for each other. How they knew they could count on each other. Odin didn’t use the word pack lightly. They were like the human version of a werewolf pack from the books I loved, fighting to the death for each other. “Talking about the island, that isn’t me pulling away. It’s me thinking about Travis on that stretcher today and hating that it could be one of you someday. It’s me wanting to be with you forever, no matter what. I’m with you on everything. Always.”

  “Goddess,” Zeus said, turning my head and kissing me.

  Out the corner of my eye, I saw Odin float back to his spot in the tub. He seemed unconvinced.

  Thor squeezed in next to me, resting a hand on my thigh under the water.

  “And you’ll get the tattoo?” Odin asked.

  “Of course,” I said, even though the idea of those negative words on my skin bothered me.

  A lot.

  Maybe I could still at least talk them out of that. Or find something better for the tattoo to say, something positive and badass. There was still time.

  Odin’s dark, wet hair shone in the moonlight. “You WISH we were dead, Motherfuckers.“ He watched my eyes. “It’s time to finish them. This week.”

  “Whatever we do, I’m in,” I said smoothly. The heist was a few days off, and there was a lot to do yet. Surely he wouldn’t want to spend time on lengthy tattooing sessions.