The Muscle

by Amy Lane

  IT WAS funny that Hunter had signed up with the military because he thought it would get him away from having to work factory jobs or food service. While in security, he’d worked as a waiter more times undercover than he could count. He’d learned that something about doing his job with his animal brain while focusing his full attention on the com in his ear and his surroundings in the broader sense made him superlative at his job because it made him invisible. Handing out champagne as part of a catering crew was no goddamned different.

  Of course, the jewel display rooms of the Art Institute were pretty impressive, and Danny did things right, with a wet bar on both levels. Serving champagne and canapés in the galleria filled with some of the world’s most spectacular paintings was possibly one of the coolest things Hunter had ever done while trying to be invisible.

  “Where we at?” Molly asked, coming alongside him as he waited at the bar to get another tray of full glasses.

  “Grace is in the ventilation system, Soderburgh’s moved the security guards, and Chuck’s heading back to the van after making out with Lucius Broadstone in front of the entrance.”

  Molly chuckled. “I heard that part. Have we heard from Grace about what’s going on in the room?”

  “No,” Grace muttered in Hunter’s ear. “Because I’m in the ventilation shaft above where all our scumbags are gathered. It’s full of paintings of dogs and bad guys. So yay, I was right.”

  “Do you see Sergei Kadjic?” Felix asked. Danny had provided them with pictures of the fortyish dark-haired man, complete with Poirot mustache, taken without the subject’s knowledge, and Hunter had tracked down security ID pictures of TJ “Silver Fox” Chancellor and Roy “Dragging Knuckles” Creighton so they could be identified as well.

  “No,” Grace murmured. “And I don’t see Hunter’s friends either. Lots of mayors, though. City councilmen. Rich guys wanting to go into politics. It’s like a cesspool—you should see.”

  “Apparently it’s full of dead people,” Molly muttered, “because you’re making enough noise to wake the dead.”

  “You asked,” Grace muttered.

  “Hey,” Hunter said, giving Molly a barely perceptible gesture that she followed smoothly with her eyes. He’d worked with CIA operatives who didn’t have the moves to fool Molly. “Who’s that?”

  “Buff with the square jaw and the British cheekbones?” she asked.

  “That’s the one.” The man was maybe Hunter’s age, but he had short brown hair, blue eyes, and a sort of measured gaze that he cast around the room. As they watched, his eyes fell on Danny and Felix and lingered—but not in appreciation. More in speculation.

  “He’s got a British accent,” she said. “And he carries himself like the po-po. Think that’s Danny’s Interpol connection?”

  Danny looked up from where he was talking to a late–middle-aged teddy bear of a man who Hunter understood to be his boss. Danny caught the younger man’s eye and gave him a respectful nod before going back to his conversation with Felix and the teddy-bear man.

  “I’d say that’s a yes,” Hunter said. “Liam Craig. He’s the guy who gets the gem.”

  “Here’s hoping,” she murmured.

  And that was when they heard Chuck over the coms. “Motherfucker!”

  Followed by two gunshots and Chuck’s angry swearing.

  Molly and Hunter both halted in their tracks, and from where they stood, they watched as Felix and Danny stopped midsentence in their conversation, eyes wide.

  Danny took one step back and tapped his earbud, mouthing “Security” at his boss, and said, “Hunter, get your ass out there to see what’s going on. We can handle shit here.”

  “Yessir,” Hunter murmured and handed Molly his full tray before doing what he did best in a crowded situation in which he was wearing a penguin suit.

  Disappeared.

  “HELL,” GRACE muttered. “They’re getting restless.”

  Truth was, he couldn’t see shit through the slats of the ventilation shaft. But Josh had patched the camera feed to his phone so he could watch the action from far enough away to be able to get back in the shaft and chase somebody down if he had to. His crowd of mayors and mercenaries was starting to bob, to weave, to stare at each other in irritation.

  He’d actually been in place for a good twenty minutes. Something needed to happen soon, even if it was just a goon coming in to say, “We regret to inform you, but Mr. Kadjic needs you to please fuck off.”

  Grace switched the feed on his phone to the rooms he’d thought might be the staging areas—he’d flashed through them quickly earlier, but hadn’t seen any scary big men, so he’d stayed focused on the auction space.

  Staff briefing room—dark and empty, lit only by the Chicago night sky from a small window.

  Painting restoration room? Also dark and empty.

  And there we go—long forgotten gemstones that remained intact today. The light was on, finally—it hadn’t been last time he’d checked.

  Grace squinted into his screen, saw something that hadn’t been there before, gasped, and then started along the shaft, following the twists and turns to the elevator shaft.

  The car was going down, which was great. He hopped lightly onto it and coasted to the second floor, then pulled himself through the first ventilation shaft to the right.

  “Grace,” Josh murmured over the sound of heavy breathing and scuffling that was also going on in the coms. “What’s wrong?”

  “That Sergei Kadjic guy,” Grace muttered, pulling himself out of the ventilation shaft and going to the two still figures on the floor. “Big guy, big chest, old-fashioned mustache like that detective guy—”

  “Poirot?” Josh asked, because he knew Grace. “Where are you?”

  “Dead rock room. Do you see me?”

  “Oh hell—did that just happen?”

  “Yeah. He’s dead. And so’s his bodyguard. Both cold as fish.”

  The blood pooling under their bodies even looked sticky.

  “Fuck! Stirling, we need more monitors in the goddamned van!”

  “Noted,” Stirling said, as though he was making a list.

  “Do you see the gem or a package anywhere?” Josh demanded.

  “Nope. Just bullet holes and blood.”

  “Motherfucker!” Josh swore. “Grace, get the fuck out of there!”

  Grace shuddered as he looked at the two bodies, and as he pulled the cover of the ventilation shaft closed, Josh spoke up again.

  “Guys, I’m calling the cops. Nick Denning. Uncle Danny, is that all right?”

  Danny sighed. “It’s necessary, Josh. Murder is above our ken. Tell him there’s a gala going on, and he’ll get all the cooperation in the world if he comes in through the back and lets us show him where the bodies are.” He let out a humorless laugh. “But perhaps, Josh, you should send him to the room with all the people who are waiting to buy a stolen piece of espionage first. We can’t prove they’re up to no good, but it sure would be fun to hear them swear.”

  “Deal, Uncle Danny,” Josh murmured.

  In the ensuing silence, Grace heard Chuck and Hunter swearing some more, and he made a keening noise. Hunter had gone after Chuck because he’d seen bad guys, and now it sounded like the bad guys were winning.

  “Josh!” Danny said in alarm.

  “We need Soderburgh to lead the cops to the dead guys!” Josh rasped. “He can’t bail Hunter and Chuck out. They’re somewhere between the Institute and the van. I’ll go check on the—”

  “No!”

  The cry was universal, and Grace had been one of the people yelling.

  “We’re fine!” Chuck barked, and Grace felt relief wash over him. “We’re cornered near the first floor of the structure. Do your thing, people. Don’t look at the violence in the parking garage.”

  Grace let out a growl, and before he could try to time the trip to the roof, down the side of the building, and then the three blocks to the garage, he realized he’d already gotten back i
nto the ventilation shaft and was heading for the hallway with the stairs.

  “Grace, stay put,” Hunter snapped. “Soderburgh is going to need you.”

  “But—”

  “The whole crew depends on you not getting caught, you understand? Put on your party clothes and go be the museum employee copping a break. Do it now!”

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  “And you’ve got to unlock the room too,” Soderburgh said over coms. “By all means make me look like an asshole if you have to, but there needs to be a way to explain how you found them.”

  “Fuck!” he snarled, and for a moment, he thought of completely disregarding everybody in his ear and just fucking off and going to help Hunter.

  Help Hunter how?

  What was Grace going to do in the middle of a fight with punching and guns?

  How would he be helping Hunter by distracting him in the middle of violence, which was Hunter’s oxygen?

  “Grace,” Josh said sotto voce, “please. I know you love Hunter, but the team needs you here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, got it,” Grace muttered, changing directions. “I’m finding a closet so I can change. Whatever. You all suck. Hunter?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Don’t get fucking shot.”

  “THAT,” SAID Chuck as they both dodged around a corner in the parking garage and crouched behind a minivan, “was the most fucking romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Yeah, well, my boy knows me,” Hunter muttered. “Where did you pick these guys up again?” Chancellor and Creighton—looking just like their security photos and Hunter’s nightmares of the day Paulie had died—had Chuck cornered as Hunter entered the first floor of the garage. Hunter had no idea how this happened, but he could damn their luck.

  “I tell you, I was entering the garage, they were coming out, and I noticed the damn gift bag.”

  Hunter scowled. “They had the gift bag on them?”

  “They were shoving it into the trash, which means, I assume, they took the box out and have it on them.”

  “Shit!”

  Hunter and Chuck were currently in a concrete wraparound corner, crouched in front of a truly reprehensible Dodge Caravan. When Hunter had arrived on the scene, Chuck had been ducking between cars to avoid being shot. Hunter had recognized the graying head of TJ Chancellor and the brown curly hair of Roy Creighton the moment he’d seen Chancellor aiming at Chuck’s head.

  Chancellor hadn’t seen Hunter until Hunter had been on top of him, shoving his forehead against the ski rack of the black Chevy Tahoe Chuck had been using as cover at the time.

  Their scuffle had been brief and meaningful—Chancellor had been strictly an arms and ammunition man when they’d worked together, and it had taken Hunter about thirty seconds to get to that part where he was squeezing Chancellor’s pressure point and forcing him to drop the gun.

  That would have been the end of it, but as Chancellor was doubling over, another shot whizzed by, and Hunter looked up to see Roy Creighton, broad face irritated as fuck, taking aim dead center mass.

  Hunter had dropped to the ground, kneecapping Chancellor as he went. Chancellor went down screaming, and Hunter didn’t have time to cuff him before Creighton started shooting indiscriminately. With a dive and a roll, Hunter and Chuck had met three cars down from where Chancellor was moaning and trying to recover his Beretta from under the Tahoe with the ski racks.

  The last five minutes had been hunt and chase, with the coms going off in both their ears.

  Finally they caught a break.

  Five cars—big deluxe SUVs, indicating some sort of muckety-muck was arriving—caravanned through the parking garage, and Chuck and Hunter made a break for the stairwell.

  As he pulled open the door, he realized he was muttering to himself.

  “We’re clear,” Chuck said. “Do you see them?”

  “What were they doing here?” Hunter asked, pulling his brain—so much slower than Grace’s—up for air.

  “I don’t know. Ditching the… bag?” Chuck said, and his rust-colored eyebrows dropped. “Wait. They have the gem, and they were obviously here for something besides transportation. You’re right. What were they doing here?”

  “They knew who you were,” Hunter said. C’mon… think! Grace did it so easy! Leaped from thing to thing! “They saw you and started chasing—they knew who you were.”

  Chuck met his eyes. “I wasn’t in Vancouver with you.”

  Hunter pulled in a breath. “But you were with us when we went to Laslo Hu’s. He was being watched—maybe by Sergei.”

  Chuck banged his forehead gently against his palm. “You know, your boyfriend would come in really handy right now.”

  “Gah!” But Grace was talking to police. Hunter could hear him.

  Then Josh spoke. “They obviously had Sergei bugged, guys. So whatever Sergei saw, they saw. That’s probably why they took Sergei out. They knew we were running a game on him, so they got their gem and ran. When Grace is done, we’ll call everyone in and—”

  “Stop!” Hunter snarled, not even sure what he was thinking. “They were coming from the garage, Josh. And they’d made us! So what were they doing here?”

  “Oh God.” Josh’s voice went weak and a little quavery.

  Unbidden, the image of flames blowing off the garage door of Ron Pinter’s garage seared its way across Hunter’s eyeballs.

  As did the image of the guard’s brains on the wall of the kiosk.

  “Fuck!” Hunter snapped, abandoning the stairwell and sprinting in the direction that would take them up. “Josh! Stirling! Don’t get out of the fucking van!”

  GRACE WAS nodding and smiling at a random police officer when Nick Denning caught his eye. The two bodies—Sergei Kadjic and Nameless Unlamented Thug—were both sprawled on the floor of what Grace had thought of as the “staging room,” both of them with neat holes in the center of their foreheads and very surprised looks on their faces.

  And big pools of blood and gray matter on the tiled floors underneath them.

  “Grace,” Denning hissed, taking Grace’s elbow and leading him away from the bloodshed. “You saw this happen?”

  Grace squinted at him. “Christ no! God is good that way. I don’t want to see people die!”

  Denning’s eyes got big. “Well, you have to know why this happened!”

  “Josh told you things,” Grace said. “I was there. All of that. Jenkins the dead ex-cop. Magic diamond flowers. Espionage! I’m a flunky. My whole job was to lead you to the dead guys. You’ve seen the dead guys! Now—”

  “Josh! Stirling! Don’t get out of the van!”

  Grace heard Hunter’s shout like a gunshot through his head.

  He stared at Nick Denning with big eyes and said, “Josh! Fuck! I’ve got to get the hell out of here!” before bolting out of the room.

  He didn’t bother with the rooftop or the ventilation shafts. He knew the place like the back of his hand now. He headed for the service door and once again was sprinting down a concrete stairwell—but this time, it was toward Hunter and Josh.

  He was scarcely aware Nick Denning was on his heels, but as he cleared the marble steps of the entrance and the great green lions, he did see Felix, Molly, Julia, and some guy in a suit he didn’t recognize as he passed them, running flat out.

  The guy in the suit kept up—and so did Nick Denning, but so the fuck what. Josh. Hunter’s afraid what happened to Paulie will happen to Josh!

  He’d heard the panic in Hunter’s voice. He’d even been to the briefings where they’d put together the two guys who’d killed Hunter’s old boyfriend with the guys who’d killed Jenkins the ex-cop. He knew who they were dealing with—they all did, now. Sergei Kadjic and his delicate ballet of gem and information and espionage had been killed like the golden goose who laid stupid eggs, and the two ham-handed mercenaries who liked to blow shit up were in charge.

  And Josh and Stirling, hanging out in the van because it would be safe, would
not have been paying attention to the outside of their vehicle while professionals rigged it to blow when one of the doors slammed.

  Grace blew past the walkthrough at the pay kiosk, heading downhill and hugging the edges of the cars. But God, he hated the visibility.

  In his ear, he heard Hunter and Chuck swearing as the occasional shot rang out and knew they were pinned again. As he ran past his umpteenth SUV in the garage, which was packed for the gala, he realized that he and everybody else could be running into an ambush.

  “What floor are you on?” he demanded into the com, and as far as he could recall, it was the first coherent thing anybody had said in about a million years. In one bound, he leaped to the top of the nearest SUV and didn’t stop there. Lithely, he jetéd from car hood to car hood, trying hard to land on his toes and spread his weight so he didn’t leave any big divots on people’s cars, because that was mean. He knew he was going fast, but he wasn’t aware of how fast until he rounded the final U-turn to where the black van was parked and realized that Chuck and Hunter were pinned down about five cars from the van by a guy with curly brown hair and a gun.

  There was another guy right next to the curly-haired guy, and he clutched one hand under his arm and leaned heavily on the wall behind the car he was using for cover. Grace assumed this was the guy that Hunter had been wrestling with, because he didn’t think anybody Hunter came up against would actually be walking away happily.

  Both the bad guys had their back to Grace as he leaped from car to car, but they still might have heard him if Hunter hadn’t spotted him first.

  Grace could tell Hunter saw him because his eyes got really big, and then he looked at Chuck, and Chuck’s eyes got really big, and then, without compunction or even thought, Chuck gave the flashy red sports car he was crouched behind a full-body tackle, breaking its headlight in the process.

  The parking garage, which had been all gunshots and curses, erupted into the shrill screeching of the sports car’s alarm.

  The guy with the gun was so focused on Hunter that he didn’t realize Grace was there until he sprinted over the last hood and kicked him square in the back of the head.