Hunter's Hope

by M. J. O'Shea

  “Yeah?”

  Alo looked up from where he’d been going over the letter that had the Munich address in it. There was only one. They’d better make it count. Alo’s hair had swung into his face, sandy and shiny. It looked soft. Jack wanted to tuck it behind Alo’s ear. Or maybe pull on it. That would be nice too.

  Shit. Knock it off.

  Getting physical with Alo was a complication none of them needed.

  “Don’t worry about what you said this morning. On the train. It’s okay.”

  “You’re not the one who looked like a dickhead. You can say whatever you want.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I opened my big dumb mouth and said that I wanted you. That I want you. You’re obviously going to be, like, nice about it. Let the kid down easy and everything, but I’d rather just pretend I didn’t make the mistake of saying it in the first place.”

  “Is that what you think this is?”

  Jack had been Alo once—well, not really. He’d been a cocky twenty-two-year-old who knew exactly how he made men drool. But he’d been young. And underneath the bravado, he’d been just as insecure as everyone else at that age.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I should take a shower.”

  Jack tried not to think of Alo, naked in the shower, water slipping down miles of lanky limbs, creamy skin, hair slicked to the back of his neck.

  “I want you too, okay?” Jack said. He hated the idea of Alo feeling humiliated, or thinking the chemistry was one sided. “I don’t think it’s a good idea—you have to know that just as much as I do—but you’re beautiful. And smart. And a sarcastic ass sometimes, but I kinda like that too.”

  Alo froze from where he’d been pulling his toiletries out of his bag. “Really?”

  “Yes. Really. I just thought I’d be an adult and try to ignore it.”

  “Unlike I’ve been doing,” Alo said with a snort. “At least not when I’ve had a few drinks.”

  “C’mere,” Jack murmured.

  Alo put down his bag of toiletries and rounded his bed until he was standing right in front of Jack. Jack tugged on his hand until he sat on Jack’s bed. Jack reached over and cupped Alo’s face in his hand. He leaned in and brushed a small, gentle kiss over Alo’s soft lips. He wanted more. He made himself pull away.

  “It’s not just you. I promise.”

  Alo bit his lip. Jack had to keep from leaning in and kissing him again. “And it’s a bad idea for us to get involved physically,” Alo muttered.

  “Horrible idea,” Jack whispered. He found himself leaning closer. He wasn’t the only one.

  He crashed into Alo. Lips, hands, teeth—every part of him wanted to get closer. Alo bit on his lower lip, not too gently, and Jack couldn’t help but groan. Alo knew how to kiss. A hell of a lot better than Jack had ever expected.

  Why do all the things we aren’t supposed to do feel the best?

  Jack wasn’t sure if he cared. All he knew was Alo’s lips, soft and plush, his breath, his hands, shy and seeking on Jack’s neck, they felt like heaven. And he didn’t want to stop. Eventually Jack pulled away.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked.

  Alo made a face. “I’m not that big of a dork,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t say you were.” Jack slid his finger down the high bridge of Alo’s nose. “I just didn’t expect that.”

  “Me neither.” Alo dropped his hands from Jack’s neck. “Is this where you say that was a huge mistake and we should never do it again?”

  Jack shook his head. One kiss and he was already past that stage. “Nah, this is where I’m going to say I don’t know what to think about this, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Ever since last night.”

  Alo flopped backward onto Jack’s bed but didn’t say anything.

  Jack let the silence stay for a few moments before he turned and brushed Alo’s hair out of his face. “You want to take a shower still, or are you cool relaxing while I rinse off?”

  Alo quirked the side of his mouth up in a smile. “Go shower. Better lock the door, though. I might get tempted.”

  Jack choked. “What happened to Librarian Alo?” he mumbled as he hauled himself up off the bed.

  “Don’t you know? You always have to watch out for the quiet ones. I thought that was common knowledge.”

  Jack escaped with his toiletries case and his dignity. Barely.

  Dinner was an uncomfortable affair. At least the walk to the nearest restaurant was. Kendra kept shooting him looks, Brad furrowed his eyebrows more than he usually did, and Alo? Well, Alo kept rubbing up against Jack while they walked, like some rangy adolescent tomcat who wanted to get his back scratched.

  Jack wanted to scratch his back more than pretty much anything. But he wasn’t in the mood for a public show. His crew was already on the verge of stopping him in the middle of the street to ask what the hell was going on. The last thing they needed was to find out that he and Alo were... different than they’d been a few hours ago.

  It took Kendra about twenty seconds after they’d been seated in a dark corner booth to slap her menu down on the table and grab Jack’s as well. “Okay, we’re at dinner, we’re in the corner, this place is loud, and nobody is listening to us. What the hell is going on?”

  Alo cleared his throat. “Why don’t I tell?” he asked. “I’m the one who keeps seeing things.”

  Jack gestured for Alo to take over. He filled Kendra and Brad in on how he thought he’d seen that rich Watson guy’s assistant in Berlin, and how he’d seen the woman now in two places. Brad looked spooked, but Kendra seemed to brush it off.

  “Aren’t you worried?” Alo asked her.

  “Not really. We need to secure the items to be safe, but if she’s just been in a few places, we can’t really do anything about it. She hasn’t approached you, has she?” Alo shook his head.

  “Okay, you know now. Can we eat?” Jack asked. He’d come to the same conclusion. Wait and see. He was hungry, tired, and he didn’t want to dwell on creepy things he couldn’t change.

  Kendra handed him his menu back. “You have my permission,” she said with a smirk.

  Jack had Alo to help him with the menu. They brushed fingers more than a few times while Alo was pointing out items to him. It felt a little tingly, like he remembered it from back when he was a kid and that boy on his soccer team used to throw an arm over Jack’s shoulders.

  Kendra, way too observant Kendra, shot him a few questioning glances, which Jack ignored. Nothing was going on. Not really. They’d kissed. It wasn’t a big deal. Still, his gut warmed up and melted when Alo’s thigh brushed against his.

  Jack tried to ignore it.

  Alo woke up in his own hotel bed the next morning. Jack, Jack, was across from him on the other bed snoring quietly into his pillow. His hair was down and fanned across the white pillowcase in a golden fringe. They hadn’t said anything about the kiss when they’d returned from dinner. Hadn’t said anything about their possible tails either. Alo made a choice.

  He crept out of bed, made sure he didn’t look at Jack again like he wanted to, and tiptoed to the bathroom to get dressed. He was going to get rid of the ring and the painting. He’d told his mother not to do anything with Grandpa’s house. She had to know what that meant. They’d been communicating in half sentences and significant glances for years.

  Alo used his phone to find the closest post office. He used a fairly large chunk of cash to have the packages shipped to Florida as fast as possible. Then he messaged his mother and told her not to forget to pick up the souvenirs and gifts at Grandpa’s. It was done. Alo could only hope they arrived safely and that he didn’t get arrested. If there was one common theme in the whole trip, it was that. Please don’t get arrested.

  By the time he got back, Jack was up and dressed. “Where’d you go?” he asked.

  Alo held up the two coffees and the bag of pastries he’d picked up on the way back. “Breakfast?”

  He didn’t want t
o lie to Jack exactly. Just figured it was better for everyone involved if not too many people knew how Alo was getting the items back to the US. The Klimt was a “reproduction art print souvenir” and the ring was “costume jewelry.”

  He’d pretty much lied his ass off on the customs forms. Hopefully the lies were believable. Alo wanted to do the right thing when all of this was over, but it was impossible to think about it when they were in the middle of... everything. It would be easier to figure out what the right thing even was later, after everyone was safe and home.

  “So where are we going today?” Jack asked. He made it seem like they were off sightseeing somewhere.

  Alo bit his lip. “I honestly don’t know if this one’s going to happen,” he said. They’d talked about it on the train the day before. Munich was so different than it had been when Ira was there—so much had been destroyed in the war and rebuilt. Even more than Berlin.

  “Where does the address in the letter point?”

  Alo plunked it into his computer and turned the laptop to face Jack. “It’s a landmark alright.”

  “Hofbräuhaus?” Jack scrunched his eyebrows.

  Alo snorted. “Just think really, really famous beer hall. Like Oktoberfest kind of stuff. Mozart drank there, Lenin.... Hitler was there too, although not to drink. He gave a few of his original speeches there.”

  “And lemme guess. It’s always crawling with tourists?”

  “But of course,” Alo muttered. “Look here, though.” He spread the letter out. “My great-grandfather kept repeating words like ‘below’ and ‘underneath’ over and over in these two lines. And then right after that, he used the word ‘hearth.’”

  “Knowing him, it wasn’t a coincidence. You think there’s a fireplace in the basement?”

  “The building is hundreds of years old. Originally, that would’ve been how they heated it. I would imagine there were quite a few fireplaces.”

  Jack made a dubious face. “Well, then, I suppose we should hope they don’t use them anymore.”

  “I feel ridiculous,” Brad muttered as they stood in the huge crowd inside of Hofbräuhaus.

  The place was packed to the gills and touristy as hell—long trestle tables crowded with people in varying stages of drunkenness, high painted ceilings, and busty waitresses in braids and traditional costumes, loaded down with huge steins of beer.

  Jack had to snicker at the sight of the four of them standing in the middle of a crowd of revelers, trying to blend in. Brad had the smaller of his cameras. Kendra looked like she didn’t want to touch anything—or anyone—and Alo? Jack outright grinned. Alo was the best part of all. He’d somehow managed to keep himself starched and proper even with little sleep and three days of living out of a very small suitcase. If there was a single place Alo would fit in the least, well, they’d found it.

  The kid wanted to bolt. It was more than obvious.

  “We need to look for a way downstairs,” Jack said. Time to get moving. They didn’t want to get caught up in a crowd of tourists answering questions about their filming equipment.

  “What about outside?” Kendra asked. “This is a zoo. There has to be a service entrance somewhere. Maybe there are stairs to lower levels.”

  “I agree.” Alo looked like he’d agree with pretty much anything Kendra, or anyone, said to get himself out of the pits of revelry hell.

  “Let’s try that, then.”

  Brad led, guarding his camera, and Jack followed, with the other two behind him. At one point near the entrance, he felt a hand on the waist of his khakis. He turned back. Alo’s eyes were wide with panic, and he looked like he’d probably die if Jack asked him to let go.

  Brad wasn’t filming. Jack was perfectly happy to have Alo hold on for dear life. Or for any other reason.

  They wound around the formidable outside of the building until they found a back road, an alley of sorts, which seemed to be just what they were looking for. There was a door into the kitchens, propped open, with smells of yeasty pretzels, sauerkraut, and sausages floating out. A small, dark, crumbly stairwell around the corner from the kitchen went down two flights and ended at a rusty door—the exterior entrance to what was hopefully the exact basement they were looking for.

  “Do you think that’s what we need?”

  They all looked at Alo.

  He nodded. “I actually believe it might be.”

  “Down we go.” Jack gestured for Kendra to lead the charge.

  At the bottom, Jack had to do some creative door opening— aka breaking in—once again, but the door wasn’t too difficult, and it creaked open.

  “Well this place isn’t creeptastic,” Kendra muttered. She tucked her ponytail into the back of her shirt. “Looks like spider central.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Our last dig was in a cave in the jungle, and you’re worried about the basement of some old beer hall?”

  “A very old beer hall,” Alo said. “And I agree with Kendra. Let’s get in and start looking for a hearth. That’s our spot.”

  One by one, they filed in the door. Nobody was happy to search the damp, dark basement that was surely crawling with all sorts of creepy bugs, but at least their goal wasn’t too hard to spot. The hearth was enormous, and obviously used at one point for baking. The bricks were blackened in areas, and old stacks of breadboards were piled to the side, covered with dust and cobwebs.

  “How often do you think people come down here?” Alo asked.

  “We’re going to hope for never. Looks pretty boarded up to me,” Jack said. “Let’s get cracking. Look for initials. Just like in Berlin. Remember. Keep any noticeable details out of the shot. We’re not supposed to be down here.”

  Brad gave Jack a withering look and gestured to his camera. “Think I know how to do my own job, thanks. You worry about yours.”

  It was Alo who found them, scratched into a section of the bricks on the left side of the hearth’s arch. The entire area looked considerably newer and the bricks were a different size and shape from the others.

  “Let’s hope they’d already stopped using this as an oven before Ira decided to hide something here. Otherwise, it might be charred beyond recognition,” Brad said.

  Jack stroked the bricks and the hastily done mortar job. “How did one guy get to all these places and then have time to hide these things?” Jack marveled. “I’d think it would be impossible.”

  Alo shrugged. “According to my grandpa, he could get nearly anyone to do anything. I guess if he ‘broke’ a few of the bricks and ‘didn’t want to get in trouble,’ he wouldn’t have had a hard time getting someone to replace them for him.”

  “Wouldn’t someone have asked questions?” Kendra said.

  “I think someone eventually did,” Alo reminded her. “The kind of questions that ended up with him dead.”

  Brad gestured at the fireplace. “Let’s analyze this later, okay? Anyone want to try and get in there to see if old Ira was blowing smoke up our asses with this one?”

  “Here. I’ve got it.” Jack searched around until he found a heavy old fire poker that he thought would probably do the trick. Then he hammered until the whole section crumbled to the inside of the old fireplace, spitting out antique dust and a whole lot of ash. They coughed and backed up until the dust settled. Alo leaned forward and started clearing away some of the particles.

  “Is there really something there?” Brad asked as if he could barely believe it. Jack could barely believe it himself.

  Alo dragged a slouchy, wrinkled drawstring leather bag out of the dust and debris of the hearth. It was dirty but seemed unharmed other than a crease or two. “I don’t know. Let me see what’s in here.” He pulled the string open gingerly and choked a little as he withdrew what looked to be another rolled-up painting. He unrolled it and revealed bright splashes of color on a dark, almost sooty background. It was, in fact, another painting.

  “I read that Goering had hundreds of them,” Kendra whispered. “Appropriated from public and pri
vate collections all over Europe. “Do you know this one?”

  Alo shook his head. “I don’t recognize it, and I can’t see a signature anywhere down here. I’d have to look at it in the light. In better conditions for sure.” Alo slipped the painting back into its somewhat protective bag.

  Brad turned his camera off, Kendra picked up her supplies, and Jack led the way out of the crumbling basement up the stairs and into the alley where they’d entered. It was freezing outside. Not snowing, but covered in a thick haze of winter fog. The cheerful chaotic roar of a crowded restaurant and kitchen poured out of the propped-open door.

  “Nice to be back out in the light. It was a little spooky down there,” Jack said with a nervous chuckle. He was glad Brad was done filming. Probably not “Jack Hunter TM” material to sound like he couldn’t handle one moldy basement.

  “It is. It smelled weird down there,” Kendra said.

  Like Jack, she’d been in more odd-smelling places than she could count. But there was something about that basement that crept up Jack’s back, no matter how much crap he’d given Kendra on the way in. He was genuinely happy to get out of there.

  “Hotel is that way,” Jack said. He’d gotten disoriented down in the dark. Alo looked uncomfortable holding the large leather pouch. “You want me to take that?”

  Alo nodded and was about to hand the pouch over to Jack when a chunk flew out of the stone right near his head. And then another. There was no noise other than a faint whizzing and then stone shattering.

  Guns. Someone was shooting at them. Jack went to duck and seconds later the others reacted.

  “Fuck. Those are guns!” Brad exclaimed. He ducked down, and Jack went to cover Alo.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here, guys. Run.”

  Jack pushed Alo in front of him, waited until Brad and Kendra took off running and then took Alo’s hand and started sprinting. More chunks of stone showered over them, but either their assailant was an awful shot or they were too far away.

  Jack ran faster and passed Brad and Kendra. They turned the corner into another alley, then another, and another, until even Jack had no idea how far they’d gone or where they were in relation to the hotel. They went through a parking garage and emerged on the other side of the building, then sprint-walked through a busy shopping area before Jack slowed down a bit. There hadn’t been any gunshots since the first alley.