by Lila Dubois
Now that she’d started talking, Irina couldn’t seem to stop. And she didn’t want to. It felt good, actually saying all these things she’d been feeling. “If I weren’t in the Trinity Masters, I’d be…I’d be a bit of a failure, frankly. Dean Adams helped me figure out my major in school, got me my job with Bennett Securities.” She took a deep breath. “I probably don’t have a job anymore. Exposing the owner of my company as a traitor probably isn’t good for job security.”
Eli looked stricken. “I’m sorry. I was so focused on my job and my situation, I didn’t even think about you.”
She shook her head. “It’s hardly the same thing. That’s your career. I’ll get another job.”
“No, you won’t,” Jasper declared. “You’re going to paint. I’ll support you. I’ll support both of you.”
Irina couldn’t grab Jasper, so she leaned back on one elbow, stretched out her leg and kicked him in the shin.
He grunted and grabbed his leg.
“You deserved that,” Eli commented mildly.
“I’m not going to be your kept woman.” Irina failed to keep the snarl out of her voice. “I should have known that showing even a hint of submissiveness would turn you two into raging misogynists.”
“Why am I in trouble?” Eli demanded. “I didn’t say it.”
“I’m not a misogynist. I offered to support him too.” Jasper rubbed his shin with one hand and pointed at Eli with the other. “And you are going to paint. Because you need to.”
Moving gingerly, as if he were approaching a wild horse, Jasper knelt in front of Irina. “I want you to close your eyes. Do you trust me?” She nodded. “Then close your eyes.”
Irina eyed him suspiciously, but she did trust him, so she did as he asked.
“Imagine a big room. There are concrete floors, and tall, tall ceilings. One wall is all windows. Nothing but natural light. There’s nothing in the room except an easel. An easel and table. On the table are hundreds of tubes of paint. In every color. And brushes, every kind of brush they make.”
Irina could see it—the dream studio. Nothing but space and light and a blank canvas waiting to be filled.
“That is what I want for you. I want to give you that room. I want, for myself, to see what you’d create in that room.”
That stillness she had felt only a moment ago returned. This time she didn’t turn away from the feeling, she embraced it. Her life had changed in this past week. It should have—she’d finally been joined in a trinity. But what Jasper and Eli were offering—encouraging—was for her to make another huge change.
They wanted her to listen to that tiny voice, a voice she’d been silencing her whole life. A voice that had something to say, something that could only be expressed through paint.
“If you’re just saying this to…to make me feel better, or because you love me and are being supportive…don’t. It would break me to find out later you were lying.”
“Irina.” Jasper grabbed her chin, forced her to look at him. “Irina, you know how talented you are. Someone has told you that before. But you didn’t listen.”
A thousand memories—art teachers, other people she met in studios, the few friends who’d seen pieces she’d left drying in her apartment, all people who’d exclaimed and admired her work—surged up. She’d brushed it all aside. “No, I didn’t.”
“Then listen to me. Listen to Eli.”
Eli bent to kiss her hand. “He’s right. The Grand Master may have put us together so you could be the muscle, as you say, but this is what our trinity is really about.”
“I’m scared to hope. Scared to believe you.” Irina’s voice was thin.
“Don’t be.” Jasper finally relented and leaned in and kissed her. “I love you. I love both of you, and have since we were in that warehouse.”
Eli wrapped an arm around each of them. Irina let out a small sob and buried her head into the safety of their chests. Hands stroked her hair, her back. When her tears stopped, Irina felt both lighter and giddy—as if she’d had a few glasses of champagne. Drunk on hope and love.
“This would be a lot better if I could hug both of you.” Her voice was husky from the tears, but she was smiling.
Eli reached for the restraints, but once more Jasper blocked him. “Leave her there. It’s safer.”
“I’m not going to throw anything away. I’ll fix the self-portrait.”
“I mean it’s safer for you. I have a very strong urge to turn you over my knee and spank you for your wanton destruction of art. Plus not telling us about it.”
“Oh no, you did not just threaten me.” Irina narrowed her eyes. “Don’t forget I can still kick your ass. Eli, get these things off me.”
Eli was looking between them with a decidedly lascivious expression. “I’d like to see that,” he said thickly.
“See what?” Irina was alarmed by Eli’s look. “See me kick his ass?” she asked hopefully.
“Him spanking you.”
Irina’s libido sat up and took note. She scowled to cover her reaction. “Well, tough luck.”
“Let’s take a vote.” Jasper grinned. “Who thinks Irina needs a spanking?”
Eli and Jasper both raised their hands. Irina sputtered.
“Me thinks the lady doth protest too much,” Eli murmured.
“Agreed. Come on, Eli.” Jasper headed back toward the paintings.
“Why don’t you spank her now?” Eli slid his hand up her thigh. Irina considered resisting, but that would be a lie. She wanted his hands on her. She let her legs fall open.
Jasper grabbed Eli by the collar and yanked him away from Irina. “Focus, man, focus.”
Eli shook his head. “Right. But later?”
Jasper looked over his shoulder at Irina and his eyes were hot with promise. “Later.”
Irina pulled on the restraints, but they held tight. She’d just have to wait. And anticipate.
Chapter Eighteen
“Price, we’ve got a problem.” Gunner was yelling to be heard over the sound of sirens.
“What’s going on?”
“Someone got here first.”
Price Bennett leaned his fists on the conference table and bowed his head over his phone, which was on speaker.
“How bad is it?” he asked his husband.
“The whole building is on fire. I’m waiting to find out if they recovered a body, and I made a few calls while I was waiting. It might actually get worse.”
“Of course it does,” Price said.
“Bryan Cobb chartered a private plane. It left about an hour ago. There were fifteen passengers.”
Price’s head snapped up. “Fifteen?”
“Yes, and based on the names, it’s the entire Cobb family—kids, grandkids, even his kids’ in-laws.”
“You’re saying everyone who might have known Cobb got on a private jet bound for, oh, let me guess, Cuba?”
“The Maldives, actually. Man’s got taste.”
“Can TSA confirm identities?”
“Ah, well, you see, there was a computer glitch in the private terminal. TSA hand-checked all the passports and weren’t able to take photos.”
“Of course there was. You going to check the houses?”
“Yes.”
“Let me know what you find. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Price tapped his phone to end the call, then looked at the Grand Master. She was young, and Price was used to thinking of her as immature, but when he looked at her now there was no doubt in his mind that she was an Adams. That she would rule the Trinity Masters with the same cool control her brother and father before her had shown.
It had been a tense few days for him. It had started with the crisis in Denver, when one of his HRD teams was attacked after losing five packages they’d been there to protect. He’d been trying to piece together what had happened—including why an HRD team had been sent into Colorado in the first place. Then there was the issue of one of his D.C. operatives who
had inexplicably checked out equipment from the Boston field office, and who matched the description of one of the attackers in Denver. That’s when he’d been summoned to Boston.
Being called before the Grand Master and accused of treason was never a position he’d thought to find himself in. He’d served as counselor to Harrison Adams. He’d been the one to uphold their rules, resulting in Harrison stepping down. But none of that had mattered. The Grand Master had some damning evidence against him. However, that same evidence turned out to be the information he needed to make sense of the seemingly disparate events in Denver.
Now Price was playing catch up, trying to both get answers and assure Juliette of his loyalty.
He thought he’d finally gotten to the bottom of it when he was able to trace the order for the HRD team to a Mr. Cobb, who was the business manager for a VIP client. Bennett Securities was too big for him to know every client personally, but most VIP clients were members of the Trinity Masters. However, there’d been almost no information about this particular client in his system. No information except that he or she had been a client of his since the beginning—which was a very bad sign. Members of the Trinity Masters had helped him start his career by investing in him at the beginning.
And now Mr. Cobb, his best lead, was gone.
“What do you think, Mr. Bennett?” the Grand Master asked.
“It’s possible that Mr. Cobb is a major player. After the problems in Denver, he grabbed his family and escaped, burning down the building to cover his tracks.”
“Or?”
“Or Mr. Cobb and his entire family were killed as a cover-up, and the private plane is a ruse to keep the cops from looking too hard.”
Juliette Adams turned to look at the painting of the Capitol behind her desk. “Fifteen people died for our secrets tonight.”
Price clenched his fists. Mr. Cobb’s grandchildren had ranged in ages from four to fourteen.
“We’ll find them.” Devon Asher laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“How many more people will die before we do?”
“We have another problem.” Seb had walked into the room halfway into the conversation. “Price, it would have been nice if you’d let us know what you were doing. I was looking into the Denver situation too.”
Price straightened. “You were investigating my business?”
“He was. On my orders.” Juliette’s gaze was cool and unapologetic.
“I found your Mr. Cobb too. But I found him yesterday.” Seb crossed his arms. “And I told Irina and her trinity where he was, so they could look into it.”
Juliette cursed, jumped from her chair and ran to her computer. “They weren’t going to check their email until today. If we’re lucky, we can stop them.”
“Luck isn’t something we’ve had a lot of,” Devon muttered.
Price glared at Sebastian, who returned the glare. “I had it handled,” he told the younger man.
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” Juliette snapped.
Price clenched his jaw. Sebastian and Devon both took a step toward him. He exhaled. “I’m sorry, Grand Master.”
Price stalked out of the headquarters. He was no longer suspect number one in the kidnapping of one of the Trinity Masters’ members—though technically his company, his HRD team, was the one to kidnap Eli Wexler. He needed to evaluate his organization from the bottom up.
If the purists had been using Bennett Securities as their henchmen, without Price realizing it, there would be hell to pay.
They huddled around the library’s computer screen. It took a while for them to find the email from the Grand Master, since the actual sender address was “I <3 Boston.” But after sorting through all Irina’s emails, they decided the weird email from “I <3 Boston” had to be from the Grand Master.
The email subject line was blank, and there was no text, but there was an image embedded in the body of the email. It had been sent late Monday.
Irina opened the email from Monday.
Eli peered at the image. “Is that a clue?”
“What kind of clue is a picture of three baby goats frolicking in a field?” Jasper asked. He was looking over Eli’s shoulder.
Irina made an aggravated noise. “This is an encrypted email. The image is just the vehicle for the encrypted text.”
“How do we decrypt it?”
“I need to open this on my tablet. My work tablet.”
“Shit,” Eli said with feeling. He might not be the most tech savvy person, but even he knew that Irina using her work computer, which could probably be traced, was a bad idea.
Irina pursed her lips, then nodded definitively. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll find a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi. I’ll turn on the tablet long enough to download the email and decrypt it, then we’ll immediately leave. We’ll set a timer. Five minutes tops then we jump in the car and move. If we don’t get it done in five minutes, we find another place, stop, and try again.”
Eli hummed in agreement. Jasper headed for the door—he was nervous about having the car out of his sight, and apparently wasn’t going to spend one extra second away from it. Eli had felt the same when they’d first gotten hold of the Rodin, but now…well, now there were more important things.
Eli held out his hand to Irina. She placed her fingers in his.
“Why thank you, kind sir.”
“You’re welcome, pretty lady.” He tried to do a drawl, but it was pretty bad.
Irina laughed, leaning into his side. She seemed lighter, happier than before. Admittedly, Eli hadn’t had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with her when they weren’t stressed out and running for their lives, but his instincts were telling him that this was more than just “relaxed” Irina. This was Irina happy and looking forward to the future.
He was still shocked that she’d been painting in secret and throwing away the results since she was a teenager. While they were packing, checking out, and loading the car, Jasper had grilled Irina about every place she’d abandoned or thrown away a painting. He had plans to track each of them down.
It had been bittersweet to say goodbye to the hotel, but it was time to move on. They’d found yet another library, this one in a small town in southern Kansas, and had figured once they got the “all-clear” email they’d head up to Kansas City to catch a flight home. The encrypted email had thrown that off a bit, but they had time.
Jasper was leaning against the car in a seemingly casual pose, as if he hadn’t been stressing out about letting the car out of his sight the entire time they were in the building. As they emerged from the library, he unlocked the doors.
“Coffee shop?” he asked Irina once they were all in.
She was in the back, with the touch-dry oil paintings stacked on the seat beside her. “Yep.”
With no smartphones to help them, they had to drive around for a bit, but finally found a national chain coffee shop with free Wi-Fi strong enough to reach them in the parking lot. Irina dug her tablet out of her suitcase, then closed the trunk and jumped back into the car. Eli twisted in his seat to watch her work.
Her fingers hovered over the screen. “Jasper, five minutes.”
“Go,” he said.
Irina started tapping. In moments her email program was open, and Eli watched, heart in his throat, as her emails slowly downloaded, populating the screen. The “I <3 Boston” email appeared and Irina pounced on it. It took what felt like twenty minutes for the picture to download. Once the frolicking goats appeared, Irina’s fingers started to fly. The screen split so half was the image, half was a black box, with scrolling white, green, and red code.
“Time?” Irina asked.
“You have two minutes.” Jasper was facing forward, eyes glued to the little clock display on the dash.
“It’s going to be close.”
More typing, and Eli’s head started to prickle with sweat. He had no idea what she was doing, and knew he couldn’t help, but he was fighting the u
rge to ask what he could do.
“One minute,” Jasper warned.
“Got it. Drive.”
Eli had a brief glimpse of the goats dissolving into a short message before Jasper threw the car into reverse. Eli fell against the window as Irina jammed her finger on the tablet’s power button, turning it off.
Once they were on the freeway, Eli asked, “What did it say?”
Irina closed her eyes and recited. “Bennett under investigation, but order came from Bryan Cobb, business manager for Bennett client. No information available on client. Cobb address 1245 11th Street, Dallas.”
“Dallas?” Jasper jerked the wheel to the right and they went careening onto an off-ramp. Eli braced a hand on the dash and prayed.
In less than two minutes, Jasper had them back on the freeway, this time headed south.
“Wait, are we going to Dallas?” Eli asked.
“Yep.”
“If the bad guy is in Dallas, shouldn’t we go anywhere but Dallas?” He knew even as he asked that it was a forlorn hope that his spouses would run away from the danger instead of toward it.
“I’d like to have a conversation with Mr. Cobb,” Irina said.
“Conversation. Right.” Eli sighed. “If he’s a business manager, it can’t be that bad, right?”
“This might also mean that Price Bennett isn’t actually a member of the purists.” Irina sounded relieved.
“If it’s not him then we have no idea who the owner of this art is,” Jasper said. “And that means we’re still in danger.”
“I know how to find the owners,” Eli said.
“You do?” Irina yelped.
“You said the owner. The owner of these pieces is either European museums, or the descendants of the people they were taken from.”
“Oh, I thought you meant the current owner,” Irina said.
Eli growled. “The people who had these things and hid them away, clearly knowing exactly what they had, are not the rightful owners. They don’t deserve that title. They’re thieves.”
