by Amy Lane
“We travel in the same circles sometimes,” Danny replied smoothly. “And six of them reside in Antwerp, which, as you know, circulates in the vicinity of 80 percent of the world’s jewels.”
“I did not know that,” Molly said, sounding impressed.
“Neither did I,” Chuck conceded.
“Did you know that?” Hunter asked Grace.
Grace stared at him blankly. “What’s Antwerp? Is it like a prison for diamonds?”
“It’s a city in Belgium,” Hunter replied. “The Antwerp diamond district is legendary. Like Danny said, a majority of the world’s diamonds pass through Antwerp in the course of being harvested, cut, set, or brokered.” He looked at Danny. “Where are the others?”
“Africa,” Danny said. “Which is really unfair because so many blood diamonds come from that country but so few members of the population benefit. But one of them is accounted for, and he’s brilliant, and I left him alone.”
“Good,” Felix muttered, which meant that Danny had probably slept with him during their ten-year separation. Danny did have good taste in men.
“He was just a friend,” Danny replied mildly.
Felix did a slow blink to indicate that he was not entirely convinced and then wisely let the matter drop.
“So is it one of the guys from Antwerp?” Josh asked.
“Can you count?” Molly asked. “There’s eight, nine, and ten to go!”
“Yikes. Long day.”
Hunter looked at Josh, who appeared to be beat. He didn’t usually make those mistakes.
“Well, eight and nine are in New York,” Danny said mildly.
“So the tenth one?” Josh asked, and Danny’s entire expression changed. Hunter saw a tightening in his jaw that indicated tension. And then Danny and Felix exchanged a look.
And Julia nodded slightly, as though she understood what that look was about.
“Uh-oh,” Hunter murmured, and Grace looked up from folding his paper napkin into a misshapen origami cup.
“Are we out of cookies? Here. Let me go get some.”
Grace stood up and practically grand jetéd over the heads of his friends, sticking his ass deliberately and rudely in Josh’s face as he bent over to collect more cookies. Hunter watched him with a slight smile, and then he caught the grown-ups exchanging looks again, and his stomach clenched.
There was something here—something that related directly to Grace—and Hunter was out of the loop.
“Ouch!” Grace cried out, standing up and staring at Josh. “You hit me!”
“I spanked you,” Josh said in that no-nonsense way he had of dealing with Grace. “You were being obnoxious. Go give Hunter his cookies and let my parents explain why they’re eyeball dancing with each other.”
“Well,” Danny said delicately. “About that tenth man. He used to live in Chicago—in this very neighborhood, or so I understand.”
Josh sucked in a hard breath, his eyes big. “No,” he said, and it wasn’t Hunter’s imagination. He sent a panicked look to where Grace was sitting again, handing Hunter a cookie and smiling winsomely.
Grace was gazing up into Hunter’s face, and Hunter was feeling a cold predator’s wind sweeping through the room.
“What?” he asked. Unconsciously, he reached down to cup Grace’s cheek, regardless of the fact that they were the centers of attention as it was.
“Grace,” Josh said gently. “We need you here. In this room. Right now.”
Grace physically jerked his attention to Danny and Felix as they sat at the bar with the computer. “What? You guys know this falls under the category of ‘Grace doesn’t care, just tell him what to steal,’ right?”
“Dylan,” Felix said, his voice a quiet, soothing dad-rumble. “You actually know this family. The one jeweler who could make that cut is the father of someone you used to know.”
Grace narrowed his eyes. “Wait—didn’t you guys tell me he was shipped off to rehab?”
“Yes,” Felix answered. “He was. Specifically, he was shipped off to rehab outside of Springfield. Very much near Lucius’s business in Peoria, to be specific. His parents split, but his father, I do believe, moved there to visit him.”
“So one of the best gem cutters in the world lives outside of Springfield, Illinois?” Chuck said in disbelief, but Hunter barely heard him.
“So… so Gabriel Hu’s father is working with the bad guys?” Grace asked, like he was assembling Legos in his head at lightning speed.
“We don’t know if he’s being coerced,” Danny said. “And we don’t know if Gabriel is with him. We did some hunting, and he graduated from Illinois State after he was released from the facility. We don’t see any signs of a record or of criminal activity, but then, as we all know here, that doesn’t mean anything. All we know is that—”
Grace stood up abruptly. “I absolutely have to go,” he said, and with that, he spun on his heel and disappeared up the stairs, leaving the room in shocked silence.
Josh zoomed in front of Hunter before Hunter could even guess where he might be going.
HUNTER CAUGHT up with them in Grace’s room, where Josh was standing, arms and feet spread to block the doorframe, in mid-yell.
“You don’t have to go anywhere!”
“I do too!” Grace was throwing random things into a school backpack. A pair of underwear, a small bottle of lube—which was not reassuring—a pocket knife, a black ribbed hat. All of it went crashing into the backpack while Josh harangued Grace furiously from the doorway.
“You do not, you big baby! It was years ago. Do you think he even remembers you now?”
“Probably not,” Grace said, scowling. “But what if he does?” Grace paused in the act of going through his drawers. He started pulling small boxes out and setting them meticulously on the dresser.
“What if he does?” Josh snarled. “Do you think me or my dads or my mom will let him get within a mile of you? Dude! You don’t need to run away from him!”
“I’m not running away from him!” Grace cried, touching the boxes disconsolately. “I’m running away from him!” And with that, Grace pointed at Hunter, who was looming behind Josh, wondering what in the fucking hell.
Hunter recoiled, stung. “What did I do?”
“You’re fine,” Grace muttered. He looked up at Josh. “You can’t open these,” he said. “You can’t open them when I’m gone. They’re your parents’, and it’s not stealing if they don’t leave the house or if nobody knows.”
“They know!” Josh shouted. “They know. We all know. And we know they never left the house, Grace, because it’s your house too. And it’s your family. And you can’t leave us now because you’re scared!”
The face Dylan turned toward Josh and Hunter wasn’t composed or catlike. He wasn’t smiling or musing or blithe. His face was wet and streaked with tears, and his cheeks were flushed and blotchy, and his beautiful amber-colored eyes were red-rimmed and miserable.
“He….” Grace faltered in midsentence and risked a look at Hunter. “You thought I was something,” he whispered. “For a little while, you thought I was something good.”
And then he dropped the backpack and turned around, slipped through his bathroom door, which opened into Chuck’s room, and a heartbeat later, they could hear the sound of his lightly shod feet hitting the carpeted stairs.
“Fuck!” Josh snapped, and Hunter caught him around the waist as he hurled himself toward the stairs.
“Stop!” he ordered, but Josh Salinger wasn’t weak. He struggled—hard. And Hunter was hard-pressed to block a furious series of vicious blows to his face, then his chest, then his throat.
The one to the throat came damned close to cutting off his wind forever. He grunted, decided Josh wasn’t fucking around, and swept Josh’s legs out from under him so he went sprawling on his back. Before he could recover, Hunter dropped to his knees and threw Josh over by the shoulder, then twisted his arm back and pushed his face into the carpet.
“I don’t want to hurt y
ou,” he said as calmly as he could, but he was winded. He couldn’t deny that.
“He’s getting away!” Josh all but wailed, and here—here was the youth that Hunter kept expecting when he spoke to Josh. Here was the boy who was worried for his friend.
“You have to let him,” Hunter said, and to his horror, his voice was choked. “Look, I don’t know what this is about, but unless he comes back of his own volition, you’re not going to be able to keep him safe, okay?” He thought about Ronald Pinter, who’d been in way the hell over his head and had told nobody about it until someone blew up his house. Hunter would have told him—hell, Paulie would have told him—not to swim with sharks. But he was too scared, too coked out, to listen to the people near him.
Grace was smarter than that, right?
The man Hunter had been sleeping with—hell, the man Hunter had seen in action on the job—may not have worked in the usual ways, but he was smart. Damned smart.
“But what if he doesn’t?” Josh rasped. “You don’t understand. You… you’ve never…. Fuck.”
To his relief, Josh’s body went limp under his, and Hunter moved off. They hadn’t heard the sound of a door closing, but then they wouldn’t have, would they? Not with Grace.
With a grunt, Hunter leaned back against the wall. “Wow,” he muttered, voice tinged with admiration. “The actual hell, Josh. Where’d you learn to move like that?”
“Karate, tae kwon do, aikido, jazz, tap, ballet….”
Hunter laughed a little with the last three, but he was well aware that Grace’s fluidity as a dancer made him such a superlative thief, and Josh was apparently a true jack of all trades.
“You’re really good,” he said, feeling old in his bones. “You don’t need me.”
Josh shook his head, blinking rapidly. “Don’t give me that shit. We need an expert. And we need you.” He closed his eyes tight and sat up to rest his forehead on his knees. “God, we really need him to come back.”
“And not because you need him,” Hunter acknowledged.
“There weren’t many people I could trust with my family,” Josh said, and Hunter saw Josh—self-possessed, supremely adult Josh—suddenly as a little kid.
“You and Grace must have been holy terrors,” Hunter said, laughing a little.
“We were an Offspring song,” Josh acknowledged. “Every teacher we had would try to separate us, and then, after Grace literally swung from the light fixtures, figured that having us sit together made more sense.”
Hunter nodded. “What’s he so afraid of? What’s this about?”
Josh blew out a breath. “I can’t tell you all of it. It’s Grace’s story. I thought he would have mentioned it at least. But his one actual boyfriend was Gabriel Hu. And Gabriel Hu was bad fucking news. I mean, there’s criminals and then there’s bullies, and guess which one he was.”
“Grace dated him?” Hunter asked, surprised.
“Junior year in high school. You had to know him then. If you ask, he’ll say he was bored and lonely, but it was more than that.” He looked over his shoulder and gave someone a little salute, probably to indicate he and Hunter were okay. A moment later, Julia came into view, her blond updo visible first, followed by her unlined forehead and then her sweet Grace Kelly smile.
“What in the fuck was that?” she asked, eyeing the two of them, disheveled and sweaty on the ground.
“He made me let Grace go!” Josh accused, his voice still shaky.
“Well, puddin’, if you’re an adult and can run your own crime syndicate, I think your contemporary has the right to go out and get some air.”
Josh glared at her. “That’s not the point, and you know it.”
And Julia’s arch expression faded. Without pretense or hesitation, she plopped down next to her son and leaned into his sweaty shoulder. “I know. I think Hunter has it right, though. Did he take any of his things?”
Josh shook his head. “He didn’t even take any of your guys’ things.”
She gave a little burble of laughter. “He’ll come back, then. He wants those emerald earrings badly. He’s stolen them three times in the last five years.”
Josh leaned his head against hers. “You bought them on that trip to the cabin off the lake. Before Uncle Danny left? Grace had never been on a family vacation before, and remember? He couldn’t think of a souvenir for himself. I think he just liked that you and Felix and Danny would play games with us and talk.”
“I remember,” she said softly. “Grace means a lot to all of us, honey. But—” She looked at Hunter, who nodded. “—if he’s grown up enough to have a real relationship, he’s grown up enough to deal with this moment from his past.”
“I hate this moment,” Josh muttered, sagging. Hunter recalled that instant downstairs when Josh had looked exhausted. Now he looked almost green. His mother put a comforting arm around his shoulders.
“I do too. And I’d wager Grace isn’t excited about it either. But he needs to see he’s outgrown it.” She shook her head. “He’s matured so much since then. I know you can’t see it. But the way he’s become a leader in his dance troupe, and the discipline he’s shown over the last couple of months…. He’s got this.”
Josh nodded disconsolately. “Yeah.”
“Now we have to go finish the briefing, honey. Your father and Danny have discovered some truly alarming things about those ripples they were talking about. Our little mission to protect Tabitha’s grandfather has become more high stakes than we first imagined. We can catch Grace up later, but we need to have this meeting now.”
“Of course,” Josh said, magically transforming into the tough young leader Hunter had grown to appreciate. “Hunter?” He offered his hand.
Hunter took it. “I’m, uh, sorry,” he said.
Josh shrugged, like he hadn’t been fighting hard enough to nearly best Hunter when violence was what Hunter did.
“Completely my fault,” Josh said, his usual air of pleasant courtesy descending like a mask.
“It wasn’t,” Hunter told him, because Josh was too young not to let his vulnerability leak through. “I… I hope I did the right thing too.”
Josh gave him a weak smile. “If he’s not okay dealing with this, he’s not okay being in a relationship with you,” he said. “And there’s not enough emerald earrings in the world to fix that.”
They started down the stairs, and Hunter asked casually, “So what were in the other black boxes?”
“Hm….” Josh thought about it. “My father’s onyx cufflinks, my class ring, the watch my Uncle Danny gave me when I graduated from middle school, and one just like it that Danny was wearing when he and Felix first met.”
Hunter’s heart constricted. “Anything else?”
“Tabby’s promise ring from Sanjay. The first one. She thinks she lost it.”
Hunter fought the urge to rub his chest. Of course, because Tabitha was a friend and a promise ring meant a little less of that friend to go around.
Great.
“Anything else?” He tried to keep the fear out of his voice.
Josh looked at him and grimaced. “A pack of gum you had the day you guys first met—when we were eating pizza—and your tactical pen.”
Hunter’s eyebrows went up. “I have that on—”
“Your spare one. It was pink.”
Hunter blinked slowly. “That was in my gun safe,” he said. He’d had to ask Danny and Felix for permission to have it brought in and concealed in his closet. He, of course, had a larger gun safe in his apartment in the city, but this way he didn’t have to visit it for small missions.
“Well, yes, Hunter. If stealing was easy, everybody would do it and Grace wouldn’t be a prodigy, now would he?”
Hunter eyed him sourly. “You know, I hate to point this out to you, but you are not, legally, old enough to drink.”
Josh shrugged. “Tell that to my many fake IDs.”
“You know he has fake IDs?” Hunter accused Julia, and her shrug was the m
irror of her son’s.
“Of course. Who do you think introduced him to the forger?”
Hunter shook his head and finally gave in to the temptation for that chest rub. It didn’t make him feel any better.
“Hunter?” Julia said softly.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Grace will come back. You were right to let him go.”
Hunter nodded, feeling wretched, and then pulled his big boy Kevlar on. They needed to see the rest of Danny’s presentation, at the very least.
“Where’s Dylan?” Tabby asked as they returned.
“Taking a breath,” Josh said gruffly.
She grimaced. “I don’t see why. Gabriel Hu is slimier than moldy cat shit. The only way to blow that guy off properly is to fart small.”
The shocked silence was broken by Molly, who erupted into peals of laughter. “You and Grace are perfect for each other,” she proclaimed. “He should have introduced you to us way sooner.”
“Well, I’m glad to know you now,” Tabitha told her, and then Danny shushed them all back into silence, and Hunter managed—with difficulty—to pull his attention back to the facts.
And the facts were disturbing.
Laslo Hu, Gabriel’s father, had been a highly successful jewelry designer in Chicago. When Gabriel had been sent to rehab—courtesy of Felix and Julia, Hunter suspected, although he didn’t know why—Laslo had relocated to New York but had moved the family home to Springfield, ostensibly to escape all of Gabriel’s old connections.
About two years ago—funny how all things happened two years earlier, including Sergei’s takeover of the business in Chicago—Laslo had left his shop in New York to highly competent and spectacular designers and merchants, and had retired to the family home in Springfield, contributing long distance. His business continued to flourish; Gabriel had taught his journeymen his cutting techniques for gemstones, and he apparently had an eye for talent. But none of the journeymen, according to Danny’s source, could laser cut as much information onto one single rock as they’d seen on the amber flower they’d intercepted in Vancouver.
But there was more.
Felix had contacted their friend Torrance Grayson, with the dates from Artur’s previous deliveries, and asked him to research any particular events that seemed to ripple out from the bullseye of when Artur dropped off the package.
