The Muscle

by Amy Lane

  “You should be, my boy,” Felix said genially. “I inherited my money too, and it still took me years to get there.”

  “Are you on that list, Felix?” Danny asked blandly. “I had no idea. Anyway, Lucius Broadstone inherited his father’s security guy—and a security leak. Lucius, if it makes you feel any better, your competitors have been showing up with what should have been your product for a good five years. But until your old man passed away—about two years ago—it was almost a gentlemanly looting. Enough for you not to hit the Fortune 500, not enough to really put a crimp in your style. Over the last two years, though, you’ve lost millions. It’s almost as if….”

  Hunter’s brain made the click at about the time Grace spoke up.

  “Yeah, yeah. Same guy. Dance Master has to start making lots of drops, and this bozo starts losing all his crap. I’m sure there’s other marks out there shitting kittens too. Bad guys changed ownership. We get it.”

  “Do you really?” Danny asked, and Hunter sucked in a breath because his tone was perfect. He wasn’t condescending. He was, in fact, asking if Grace, specifically, had made the intuitive leap that Danny obviously had. “Because you need to share. We can see that Sergei has upped his espionage and embezzlement, and he’s been working Artur like a Trojan, trying to get him to make deliveries, but does he have an endgame, or is this bad management?”

  “It’s a good question,” Julia added. “Because he’s burning out his resources. And we need to see if he’s just stealing tech from Broadstone and selling it broadband, or if he’s got other irons in the fire. If he’s not storing capital, this is a really bad way to run a business.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Grace muttered humbly.

  “You’ll get there, my boy,” Danny told him, and Grace brightened a little.

  It hit Hunter then how badly Grace seemed to need not just attention, but validation. All of the preening, all of the look-at-me—he never expected anybody to see when he’d done something wonderful.

  “It’s important,” Josh muttered. “If he’s building toward something, we need to know what. And Broadstone, your tech may be really crucial to that end. Do you have a list of projects you know for sure have been stolen?”

  Broadstone nodded. “Of course. Why?”

  “Because if we can look at who’s been producing what, maybe we can see a pattern,” Josh replied, gnawing on his lower lip. “But first….” He gave Artur a meaningful look.

  Artur quailed. “Do you really need to see it?” he asked, sounding wretched. “You don’t understand—I need to drop it off in less than two hours!”

  “See what?” Lucius asked.

  “The thing that carries your data. The thing Mikey Jenkins was sent here to steal,” Josh told him, his forehead still puckered into a frown. “Which actually introduces a third party here.”

  “Oh God.” Molly was sitting on one of the beds, and she flopped backward with a tremendous sigh. “My head hurts. Explain.”

  “Well, we’ve got the people being exploited,” Josh said slowly. “Artur, Lucius, anybody else Sergei is blackmailing into helping him or stealing from, and the people doing the stealing and profiting from it—so, Sergei. And then Mikey—and I don’t know what he was doing here, but given that Lucius was unaware of the gun and wasn’t the one who let him go, he’s either working for Sergei—which makes no sense at all—or….”

  “Or he had his own reasons,” Felix finished for him on screen.

  “Okay, then,” Julia said. She’d crossed her legs elegantly and was leaning forward, tapping her lower lip with her finger. “We still need to see exactly how the information is being transported. Wait.” She cut a sharp look to Lucius. “How did you know about Artur? How did you know he’d be transporting information or a thumb drive or whatever?”

  Broadstone grimaced. “Jenkins told me.”

  “Of course,” she murmured.

  “But….” Artur’s voice cracked. “It’s a trust, you see,” he finished, not looking at anybody. “I’m trusted with a job. It’s… it wasn’t a comfortable relationship. I didn’t ask for it. But for thirty years I… I was trusted.”

  “But the person who trusted you is gone, Dance Master,” Grace said, his voice dropping compassionately. “The first guy may have treated you like a business partner—unwilling or not, he may have shown you respect. That’s not who’s left. The man who’s there now is going to drive you into the ground. Everybody at the Conservatory has seen it. You’ve been traveling more often than you’re home, and we need you at home.” Grace blinked soberly at him. “We need you, Dance Master. Yanking you away from us makes you betray your most important trust, doesn’t it?”

  Artur nodded, defeated. “Da,” he murmured throatily.

  Hunter tried not to get whiplash from the many facets of Grace, but it was hard. He wondered if affection was part of Grace’s emotional repertoire, because if so, it would have a hard time breaking free from the other six hundred directions his personality tried to travel simultaneously.

  But Hunter liked this particular side. Seeing him be kind, gentling the proud Artur into changing a pattern established after thirty years of work—that showed that there was more to Grace than the brilliant thief who was also an obnoxious pain in the ass.

  “So,” Julia said, dimpling, “could you please fetch the present? Don’t worry. We’ll have Grace open it. He knows how to make it look as though nobody has touched it. Sergei will never suspect—”

  “But what if it’s my tech!” Broadstone protested, and suddenly, through the computer screen, Felix “Fox” Salinger made his presence well and truly known.

  “What if your tech is being used for nefarious purposes?” Felix demanded. “Have you thought of that? The people this tech is being delivered to are mobsters on an international scale. What if you’re funding a coup? Don’t you want to know who has been stealing from you and what their organization looks like? Come on, man. You’re poised to be a Fortune 500 company here. Think bigger than your backyard!”

  “You have no idea how big I’m thinking,” he snapped. “Don’t judge me. I have irons in the fire that don’t show up on Forbes—”

  “We can subsidize Caraway House,” Felix said, and while nobody else in the room knew what that meant, the effect it had on Lucius Broadstone was immediate.

  His broad shoulders relaxed, his hard jaw softened, and the lines on his forehead went from “etched deeply” to “showing character” in less than a breath.

  “How did you know—”

  “Please,” Stirling murmured, his fingers clicking relentlessly on his laptop. “We’re not amateurs.”

  “Who are you people?” Lucius muttered. Then he seemed to remember. “I mean, I know you’re Felix Salinger and Benjamin Morgan—everybody from Chicago knows that.” He frowned. “But what are you doing involved in this?”

  Danny gave him an engaging smile, and even through the computer screen, Hunter could feel the tug of the man’s charisma. “Isn’t it wonderful what awesome and powerful paths the tides of life can sweep us toward? So do we have your permission to continue to make the drop and see this little adventure through?”

  Lucius blinked slowly, probably trying to decipher whether or not Danny had answered the question, which everybody else in the room recognized he had not.

  “Sure,” he breathed after a moment. “Fine. Whatever. Caraway House is safe. What’s a forty-year-old tech legacy anyway?”

  “Have a little faith,” Felix said genially. “Your old man sounds like a bastard. Imagine what starting over could do for the old self-esteem.”

  Lucius glared at the screen through hooded eyes, and Hunter smirked. He didn’t see Felix and Danny letting Lucius’s firm go under if they could at all help it, but they were right. Interrupting the delivery of whatever it was Artur was transporting wasn’t going to solve their problem—in fact, it would only make it worse.

  “I assume you’re being ironic,” he said after a deep breath
.

  “You are so very generous!” Danny clapped his hands, delighted. “Artur, why don’t you fetch that package now. You’re going to have to deliver it soon, and we want everything to go smoothly.”

  Artur nodded and exited the room with heavy steps, leaving the rest of them to talk about him while he was gone.

  On Delicate Toebeans

  “GRACE,” JULIA asked, “is he up to this?”

  Grace blew out a breath. “I think he’s tired,” he admitted. His feet ached, and he wished mightily for some—

  “Here,” Hunter murmured, thrusting some ibuprofen into his hand with a bottle of water. “Should have made sure you had this earlier.”

  Grace stared at him, knowing his eyes were wide and limpid but unable to help himself. “Thank you,” he rasped, before downing the pills. He gave Hunter one last glance before pulling himself back into the game. Inscrutable man. “He’s tired,” Grace said again to the suddenly quiet room. “He’s been doing this for months, Tabby said—and like I told him, we’ve seen it. I thought he was just… getting older, but the travel’s been wearing on him, and he… he needs to not have this on his shoulders.”

  Everyone in the room nodded, and then Josh said, “How are your feet, by the way?” He glared at Lucius. “You ran the fuck out of everyone here in this room. Besides Hunter.”

  Grace scowled. “Do you know he has Kevlar in those super slick leather coats? They weigh as much as you!”

  Josh blinked. “I sincerely doubt it.” But Josh was looking wafer thin these days, so Grace was pretty sure.

  “I don’t,” Hunter rumbled, barely loud enough for Grace to hear, and Grace flashed him a grin, because apparently there was a Team Hunter and Grace now, and Grace was sort of all for that shit.

  “Back to the matter at hand,” Julia steered gently. “Although, Josh, you do need to eat. So, our plan now is what? We drop the item off again, see what it is and who picks it up, and formulate a course of action then?”

  “Yes,” Danny said. “Except, Stirling, do you have a little wrinkle to add?”

  “Sure do, Uncle Danny,” Stirling said, lighting up when Danny gave him attention. They all did that. Felix was a good dad—steadfast, kind, firm if you needed it—and Grace had always adored him. But Danny was the fun uncle, and his attention was like a sunshiny blessing. Stirling, who was so much happier in his own head until he looked up and realized he was missing human contact, seemed to gravitate toward that sunshine unconsciously, like a shy, brilliant cephalopod who only sought out company if it made his skin happy.

  In this case, Stirling didn’t just light up, he inked like an octopus, producing a little baggie with something in it so tiny and clear that Grace—who had amazing vision—couldn’t see it from across the dimmed hotel room.

  “Why are there no lights?” he asked suddenly.

  “Because this room is supposed to be vacant,” Josh said. “We sort of hacked the room so nobody would know you guys had a tail.”

  “So no room service?” Lucius said, sounding disappointed.

  “Oh, darling—we didn’t say that.” Julia pulled out her phone. “Give us your order, people. I’ll have it delivered to mine and Molly’s room next door. They’ll text when they arrive at the hotel.”

  “And that,” Danny said, “would be our cue to log off. Stirling, Josh, send us information as soon as you get it. We truly wish we were there.”

  Felix gave an exasperated growl behind them, and then their screen went dark. Grace had a feeling that Felix was perfectly happy, this once, to have the house to himself and the man he was—for all intents and purposes—honeymooning with after a ten-year separation.

  Artur slipped back in while people were ordering Thai food, and he gave Grace a tired smile. “I suppose our dinner plans are no longer valid.”

  “Only for tonight, Dance Master,” Grace said apologetically, “but we can still do the super fancy place tomorrow. I packed!”

  “We shopped!” Molly added. “I say we definitely rock the fancy restaurant.”

  To Grace’s relief, Artur’s expression lightened, and for a moment, Grace saw the kindly gentleman who had begged him to take care of himself when Grace had been so very self-destructive.

  “Well, then,” he said, “let’s enjoy eating in tonight, shall we?”

  He handed Grace the package before sinking down tiredly into the overstuffed chair Broadstone had vacated, his eyes closing almost of their own volition. He probably would have slept an extra hour or so if his nap hadn’t been interrupted by two thieves fighting, and Grace left him alone. All of the noise, the people, the new situation—it would have taken a toll on the older man.

  So instead of spending his energy lifting Artur’s spirits, he concentrated on the brightly flowered little gift bag. The flowers and paper were mostly yellow, with a little red mixed in, but Grace was more interested in the weighted object in the middle.

  “Pad thai for you, Grace?” Josh said over the thrumming in Grace’s blood.

  “Hot for white people,” Grace told him absently. People assumed because he was Asian, he could take the super spicy native seasoning. Nope. Grace had been raised on cheeseburgers and spaghetti—and caviar and filet mignon.

  “I know that. You want chicken satay too?”

  Grace glanced up at Josh from the seductive puzzle of how to break into a gift bag undetected, and gave him an absent smile. “With yo—”

  “And yogurt instead of peanut sauce. Got it.”

  Grace nodded and turned back to the bag, noting the way it had crushed slightly in the plane.

  “What are you thinking?” Hunter asked.

  “I’m thinking that the paper shreds have gotten pretty compact around the box,” Grace said, closing his eyes and running his fingers along the almost-lumpy exterior. “If we go diving inside, we’re going to disrupt that. And note that the paper is sort of bent along the lumps—but the package is still at the bottom.” He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a tiny case that had cunning little blades and some colorless, odorless adhesive.

  “You… you slept with that in your sleeve?” Hunter asked, sounding surprised.

  “You walk around wearing Kevlar?” Grace mimicked and then ignored him.

  “Fair,” Hunter muttered, but Grace was busy. He took the finest knife and sliced through the glue holding the bottom together, then peeled away the paper and extracted the champagne-colored five-by-five-inch box underneath.

  Julia finished giving the food order and said, “Molly, darling, could you be a dear and go wait for the order in our room? I’m afraid you’re on for carting everything over.”

  Molly huffed, and Stirling arched an eyebrow at her. “I’m still monitoring coms in everyone’s rooms. Don’t look at me.”

  “I’ll do it,” Josh said, casting an inscrutable look over at Grace and Hunter. “Broadstone, you’re with us.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Broadstone said. “Just because you’re—”

  “Not reporting you to the police and subsidizing your charity and trying to figure out who’s stealing your tech when it’s mostly developed but hasn’t been announced yet and trying to save your company?” Josh snapped. “Because we’re doing all that, you’re goddamned right I get to tell you what to do. Your henchman—”

  “Shot at Grace,” Broadstone finished in defeat. “Got it. Indentured servitude until that debt is worked off.”

  “Damned straight. Now shut up and come with me.”

  “Can I take the wig off?” Molly asked plaintively, and Julia gave her an apologetic headshake. “Not until we’re in bed for the night or you have another person to be. You don the wig, that person has to answer the door until the job’s over.”

  Molly let out a sigh. “Fine, fine, lesson learned. It’s a good thing it’s Vancouver and it’s seventy-five degrees outside. If I’d chosen to do this in August, I’d totally forfeit the job to get this thing off my head.”

  They departed while Grace was muttering
, “It wouldn’t suck so bad if she didn’t have a fuckton of hair under it. She should let people pretend that is the wig and then put a wig on and disappear.”

  “Grace, darling,” Julia murmured, coming to sit beside him, “what are you so interested in?”

  “This box is not an ordinary jewelry box,” Grace said, frowning. “See that?”

  “Hinges,” Julia said promptly.

  “Yes, but what’s that on the other side of the box that also looks like hinges?”

  “Oh!” Her breath caught, and Hunter bent over to take a closer look.

  “You are an elephant in front of the sun,” Grace snapped at him as his shadow loomed large. “This room has barely enough light to not kill us all. Get out of the way.”

  “Okay, okay, ok—”

  Grace took a very deep breath and remembered Hunter’s sweetness as he’d been doctoring Grace’s feet. He looked up to meet Hunter’s gray eyes and felt like shit. “And I am sorry for being an asshole. Pull out your phone or something and you can look at it too.”

  A smile flitted across Hunter’s lean mouth, and he pushed a button on his phone and shined the light on the box so Grace could see. The position put him at Grace’s shoulder, the heat from his body radiating comfortably out. Grace found he was leaning back against Hunter’s thigh and chest, trying to cling to some of that warmth as he worked.

  “Contacts,” Hunter said, which was, of course, why Julia had gasped. He glanced up, eyes searching first Grace’s, then Julia’s. “The kind that could trigger an alarm or even a bomb. What happens when the contact is broken without the magic password?”

  “We don’t know,” Grace said, frowning. “Stirling, don’t suppose you’ve got a portable X-ray machine in your luggage.”

  Stirling grunted. “What am I, an amateur?”

  With that, Stirling went to the closet and started rooting around. He came back with a little handheld device that had a wide circular shield on one end and a handle on the other with a trigger.

  He also had a dongle, which he plugged into his computer. After a little bit of tapping about—and some explanation, which Grace ignored, because duh—he turned one of his monitors around, showing a blank screen.