Code of Honor

by Smartypants Romance

  He smirked and clinked the neck of his lemonade to the neck of my water bottle. “Well done.”

  “What about you? Any good interviews lately?”

  “I met Bill Russell the other day. He signed a ball for me,” Taylor said happily.

  Ashley came over to join us and slipped under her husband’s arm. “Taylor’s sports memorabilia collection gets much more attention than my signed book collection does.”

  “Nothing is more important than your signed book collection.” Taylor looked at his wife with such tenderness that I almost “awww’d” out loud.

  “Okay, guys, ick. Too many,” Sparky called from the gaming table where he was placing bowls with chips and dip.

  The freight elevator groaned into place, and the metal gate was lifted by a woman who stepped into the loft like she owned the place. She had the kind of classic beauty that would have fit right in with models from the 1970s, but she was way more interesting than her looks. She was tall, so maybe it was the confidence that height added, but I finally recognized it when she smiled at Sparky.

  She was magnetic.

  “Shane! You came!” Sparky had a bubbly happiness in his voice that sounded like pop rocks in soda.

  “Are you kidding? I was never cool enough to play D&D in elementary school. I had to see what I’ve been missing,” she said, in a voice that sounded like it should be served on the rocks.

  I decided then and there that I wanted to be her when I grew up.

  Ashley went straight up to her and shook her hand. “I’m Ashley, and this is my husband Taylor, and if you’re hungry, you need to horde some food before Bill and Anna eat it all.”

  “Bill and—” Shane looked at me, seemed to study me, and then a slow smile crossed her face. “Sorry, I always forget that Sparky has a name.”

  “Shane, meet Anna Collins, bounty hunter,” Sparky said brightly. He handed Shane a glass of red wine, then turned to me. “Shane’s a P.I.”

  “I thought bounty hunting was illegal in Illinois,” Shane said to me as Sparky ushered us all to the gaming table he’d set up on a cleared-off workbench in his loft.

  “It is. But I’ve been collecting licenses from most of the Midwest and eastern U.S. since I graduated from college, and being able to cross state lines has gotten me enough work that I can live pretty much anywhere.”

  “She’s heading to Boston tonight to catch bad guys,” Sparky said as he straddled a chair between me and Shane. She gave us a speculating look for a moment until Taylor piped in with his customary enthusiasm.

  “I was just there to have lunch with my friend at The Globe. Five bucks says it snows while you’re there.” Ashley rolled her eyes at Taylor’s bet. His “five bucks” statements were legendary, and I was pretty sure he owed me about thirty-five dollars at this point.

  “You don’t carry a gun when you’re bounty hunting, do you?” Ashley asked as she passed the last of the bacon smokies around the table.

  I shook my head. “Too hard to transport, and I wouldn’t want to accidentally shoot someone just because they made me chase them. Martial arts and handcuffs are usually enough.”

  “Yeah, I’m not a firearms person either,” Shane interjected. “And Sparky keeps finding new and inventive ways to stick blades in my legs.”

  “Um, really?” I asked, staring between my friend and this fabulous woman.

  Shane laughed at the expression on my face. “He designs my prosthetics, and has decided I’m his crash test dummy for whatever MacGyver leg he dreams up in his large and twisted brain. Speaking of legs, Spark, can I get another one of the Amp’d Gear sleeves? I haven’t had a hot spot or a blister since I started wearing the one you gave me.”

  “Yeah, sure. Those guys have designed a foot you can wear with flip-flops, by the way.”

  “Yes, please,” she said with a grin before turning to me and Ashley. “I don’t miss the leg as much as I miss the shoes.” She said it with a sigh, and Ashley nodded as if to say, the struggle is real.

  Two hours later, we were all comrades in arms, and after hugs all around, we disbanded until the next adventure. Taylor and Ashley left first, hand in hand, which was probably the same way they’d arrived. Shane’s eyes moved from me, not moving from the chair into which I’d slunk down in exhaustion, to Sparky, who was putting bottles and cans into the recycling bin. She stood up with a smile and held out her hand.

  “It was really nice to meet you, Anna. Sparky was right, you are pretty kick-ass.”

  I laughed. “He said the same thing about you.” I closed my eyes and sighed, then hoisted myself out of the chair and picked up the portfolio and my bag. “Ready, Spark?”

  “I need to grab my coat. Can we give you a ride anywhere?” he said to Shane as he called the elevator for her. I sank back into the chair.

  Shane gave Sparky a hug and whispered something in his ear. The surprise on his face as she closed the elevator gate made me wonder what she’d said. When she had descended out of listening range, Sparky burst into laughter.

  “What’s funny?” I grumbled from my exhausted stupor.

  “Shane thinks we’re together,” he said, still chuckling. “She said we make a great couple.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “No we don’t. I’m too weird for you, and you’re too …” I waved my hand in an up-and-down assessment, from his pink Croc-wearing feet to the tips of his messy Calvin-and-Hobbes hair, “…many for me,” I finished vaguely.

  “Right?” he agreed.

  “Hey! You don’t have to agree with me. You could pretend to pine a little for the love that will never be,” I groused.

  “I suck at pining,” he said cheerfully. “When Shane hooked up with Gabriel I pined for like, three minutes, and those are three minutes I’ll never get back. Life’s too short to pine.”

  I sighed dramatically. “She’s tall, she’s beautiful, and of course she has a boyfriend. He’s probably as pretty as she is, and they do yoga together in slow motion on the beach as her hair flips in the wind and he worships—”

  “Dude.” Sparky’s word screeched a halt to the soundtrack that was swelling in my imagination. “They’re not slow-motion people. They’re in-motion people. They’re like, badass private security agents who take down corrupt dickheads and have the feds on speed dial.”

  “I thought you said she’s a P.I.,” I said, with a growing sense of uncomfortable prickles on my skin.

  “She is,” Sparky said, “but she got hired by Cipher Security when she and Gabriel worked a case together.”

  “She works for Cipher?” I whispered.

  He shot me a strange look. “Yeah.”

  The mental image of a Disney prince that I’d locked behind the door of possibility suddenly burst into the room of my imagination, and the memory of him wasn’t just in my head, it was in all my senses too. The scent of spices in his hair, the taste of his skin, the sound of laughter in his voice, and the feeling of his fingers trailing down my arms and tracing the path of the chills he inspired – it all washed over me in a tidal wave of sense memory and blended right in with the danger I could be in from yet another Cipher agent, who knew I was leaving town, and who may or may not be able to connect me to my sister.

  I groaned. “Let’s go.”

  Sparky still looked worried, but he pulled on his coat as we waited for the elevator. “You sure you’re okay, Anna-banana?”

  I pulled a smile out of the acting lessons closet and put it on with what I hoped looked like sincerity. “I’m cool. How about you? Do you think you’ll survive our break-up okay?”

  He grinned at that. “Oh yeah, I’m already plotting how to spin that to my advantage the next time I meet someone with potential.”

  “Nobody wants to hear about the heartbreaks, Spark,” I said as we got in the freight elevator.

  “True. But when you come out on the other side of heartbreak, you’re a survivor. And if you can have a sense of humor about it, you’re like one of those Kintsugi teacups, with pretty go
ld lines where you patched yourself up,” he said, beaming.

  I shook my head in wonder. “You wear pink Crocs and you know Japanese pottery techniques. You’re so cool.”

  He snorted. “You have no idea.”

  The grin on my face faded as soon as I stepped out into the night. The handsome Disney prince still sat in my imagination, but he had a frown on his face as he looked at me from the shadows.

  17

  Darius

  “Tell a lie once and all your truths become questionable.”

  Darius Masoud

  I frowned at the half-inch of canvas left on the wooden stretcher behind the elaborate gilt frame in Gray’s panic room. The painting of the two women had been cut cleanly with a very sharp blade, but the edge of a second canvas, painted black, was clearly visible behind it.

  Sterling Gray watched me examine the stretcher with crossed arms and an impatient glare. “I don’t know what you think you can learn from something the thief left behind.”

  I studied him. He was impatient and annoyed. “Mr. Gray, I need to know whatever you can tell me about this painting.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I have told you what I know. It’s my father’s, and he’s had it as long as I can remember. My mother hated it, so he kept it in a safe until she died, and now it’s here, where he was supposed to be able to finally enjoy it.”

  I searched the edge of the canvas that remained on the stretcher. “Who are the women? Who is the artist?”

  The rigid tension in Gray’s shoulders loosened slightly with his sigh. “How the hell should I know? There were two signatures on the bottom – Alexandra something and S.”

  “Two signatures?” I looked up sharply from my study of the edge of remaining canvas. “Approximately where were they on the painting?”

  Gray pointed to the lower left side of the empty stretcher. “Alexandra something was here, under the woman on the left – the usual place for an artist’s signature, and the letter S was sort of carved into the paint in the lower right corner, under the other woman.”

  I’d seen the painting of course, when I wired the frame to the wall, but I hadn’t studied it. The style had been European, from a century or two ago, and I’d had the impression of youth and beauty in the women. “Are you saying there were two artists?”

  Gray shrugged. “There might have been. I always assumed the women in it were sisters – they looked enough alike – so maybe they painted it? Who knows?”

  Sisters who looked alike.

  Twins.

  Identical twins. Thieves?

  “Why does your father place so much value on this painting?” I asked, the blood beginning to pound in my veins.

  “I don’t know. He said it was worth a fortune, but I don’t know why.” Sterling scrubbed his hands through his hair in an uncharacteristically tense move. “I just know that the painting was supposed to hang in this room, and after me, Cipher will be the next target of Markham Gray’s ire.”

  * * *

  “Talk to me about Markham Gray.” I sat down in the chair across from Dan O’Malley and Quinn Sullivan, the owners of Cipher Security. We were meeting in the third floor conference room at my request.

  “Boston establishment,” said Dan.

  “His corporations own everything from major commercial real estate to banks, and his ventures don’t tend to get scrutiny by agencies of oversight,” added Quinn. I’d been surprised that he was in the office when I’d called Dan to meet, and even more surprised that he joined us. Quinn Sullivan had the direct line to several heads of government departments programmed into his cell phone, and his own oversight tended to be of the multi-national corporation variety.

  “In other words, he’s got some people in his pockets,” Dan said.

  “You’re working on the theft of the painting from Gray’s house, correct?” Quinn got up to make himself a coffee.

  “I am, and I have questions that will need to be addressed by Markham Gray personally.”

  Quinn nodded. “I can facilitate a meeting.”

  I considered the men sitting across from me. I’d worked with Dan directly on an operation and considered him to be straightforward and unreservedly honest. I’d had far less personal experience with Quinn.

  “There’s a chance Gray won’t like my questions,” I said carefully.

  “The fact that his kid won’t bring in the cops is a fucking road sign to that,” said Dan with a snort.

  “Gray’s contract with us is substantial,” Quinn began.

  I tensed and prepared to push back from the table. “Right, then.”

  “Darius,” Quinn’s tone brought my eyes up to meet his, and our gazes held for a long moment. “Gray’s pockets may be deep and full of the kinds of people who clean up after his messes, but I’m not afraid of his dirt, nor of you digging in it.”

  The spinning wheel of my thoughts finally settled on one. “I don’t trust easily. Too often, in my experience, people do what’s easy rather than what’s right. Placating Gray makes sense from a business standpoint, but if he has something to hide, I stand on ethics rather than ease.”

  Quinn narrowed his eyes and watched me for a long moment. “You left Iran when you were young.”

  I deliberately kept my expression impassive. Of course Quinn Sullivan had a file on me. His business was security. He had a file on everyone.

  “You and your parents fled your country, first to England, then later to the U.S. in the wake of their investigation into the Chain Murders, after a newspaper editor was shot in the head.”

  “Hajjarian had spearheaded his paper’s own investigation. My parents had shared information they had with one of his reporters.” I forced my muscles to relax.

  Quinn turned to Dan to answer the question that hadn’t been asked. “The Chain Murders of Iran were a series of murders and disappearances of poets, writers, journalists, translators, political activists, and other intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in the late eighties and nineties. It is believed the murders were carried out by internal Iranian government operatives.”

  Dan’s eyebrows rose as he nodded, and Quinn’s clear gaze returned to me. “I am in the business of security, which not only focuses on safety, but also on the business of knowing things, finding facts, and uncovering deceptions. I cannot imagine the fear your parents experienced to make them leave a country which they obviously loved enough to want to tell the truth about. Nor can I imagine what a seven-year-old boy and his little brother experienced of their parents’ terror. What I do know is that a person doesn’t come through experiences like that unscathed.”

  He stood up from the table and buttoned his suit jacket. “I’ll set up a call with Markham Gray, and I’ll send over the file we have on Gray Enterprises.

  “And if I find something?” I asked as I stood to leave the room.

  “Come to us and we’ll figure out what should be done together,” he said as he gestured that I should precede him through the door. “You were ready to push back from the table when I mentioned the size of the Gray account,” Quinn said, using his casual tone to mask the laser focus of his observation skills.

  I stopped and turned to look at Quinn, who stood several inches taller than me and practically radiated strength. “As you said, my parents’ lives were threatened in an attempt to hide the truth. And in my experience, people with something to hide are the most dangerous.”

  “And in my experience,” Quinn said with the smallest quirk of his mouth, “it’s the people with something to hide who most often hire us.”

  I offered up a wry smile that I didn’t feel. “Touché.”

  Quinn’s tone was serious. “There is no attorney/client privilege in the security business. If, in the course of our relationship with a client, it becomes evident that there is criminal activity going on, our integrity, and the integrity of our other clients demands swift and immediate action.” His gaze was that of an alpha, completely secure in his power and do
minance.

  My eyes held his a moment longer than necessary before I said simply, “Thank you.”

  He nodded and then left the room.

  Dan went over to the sideboard and prepared a cup of coffee. “Quinn’s the only guy I know who lives with his fucking gloves off,” he said quietly.

  “I’m not sure I know what that means,” I said, suddenly tired of all things that weren’t spelled out.

  “You know the saying ‘the gloves come off,’ when a guy’s ready to throw down for real?”

  I nodded. “A boxing term. Keeping gloves on means no one gets seriously hurt.”

  “There’s also a tradition up north that no matter how cold it gets, you take your gloves off to shake hands. So living with his gloves off means he’s not hiding anything, or hiding behind anything. He lives his fucking life out loud, even when he’s not saying a word.”

  Dan’s coffee had finished brewing, and he knocked it back in one blazing hot slug. Then he shuddered, slapped me on the shoulder, and steered me out of the room. “Come on. Let’s go see what kind of dirt we can dig up on the senior Mr. Gray.”

  18

  Anna

  “It’s called Karma, and it’s pronounced ‘ha-ha-ha-ha.’”

  From the T-shirt collection of Anna Collins

  Sub rosa work sucked. The coffee was always cold, the food was either fast or packaged, and because the food was such crap, the car inevitably smelled of farts.

  I mean seriously. Cheese puffs farts were the worst.

  At least it was a rental, so the stink saturation wouldn’t be my problem for long. Although at the rate my stakeout of Donnie “Junior” McConnell was going, my clothes were going to need a wash soon enough.

  Junior’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a 1950s style cement-block building, with all the charm of a Soviet era gulag. The front gate was heavy and locked automatically, and every tenant I’d seen go in or out had to dart through it to avoid being crushed in the mandibles of iron that kept the place bounty hunter-free. I was pretty sure that all the criminals were on the inside, and even the postal carrier looked terrified of being caught in the jaws of death.