“Stop talking like we’re going to die,” I said.
“All possibilities exist,” Odin said.
“Except Ice dying,” Zeus growled.
My eyes teared up so much I couldn’t see. “You think you’re not going to get away?”
“Of course we think we are,” Odin said.
“You guys!” I said.
But they were waiting.
With shaking hands, I picked up my fork and pressed the edge into the delicately crusted hunk of fish. I admired it a moment, then slid it between my lips and ate it. Or more like, let it melt in my mouth. “It’s delicious,” I said. I looked at each one of them. “It really is.”
And then my heart did a flip-flop, because that was the end of our dinner.
A long silence followed.
Zeus furrowed his brow. “I don’t want to go hot with all these fucking people. All these people having their Valentine’s dinner. Fuck if I’m going to shoot up La Belle.”
Right then I knew with a kind of weird certainty that La Belle was more than a good place he’d heard of. This place was loaded with some significance.
Thor buried his head in his hands. “Fuck! All the clinic shit is at our house. If they decrypt my laptop, I can never go back down there.”
“If they even try to decrypt your laptop it will fucking-g combust, my friend.”
“Wait, we can’t go back to our house?” I said.
Odin turned to me. “Somebody dropped a fucking-g dime on us, Isis. ZOX knows we’re in L.A. We have to assume they know where we’ve been living.”
“Or it could be nothing,” Zeus said. “A coincidence. But this is how we stay alive. This. Stay light, stay fast.”
We’d had a home. A new business. Friends. This wave of grief came over me, for how normal everything had started to seem. And for how badly Zeus had wanted this dinner. “We’re alive right now, and I love you guys so much.” I put my hand to my heart, because my love for them was so big. “I love you so mind-blowingly much. And you know what? This was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. So fuck it.” I took another bite of the fish and pointed at them with the tines of my fork. “At least try it.”
They all stared at me.
“It’s amazing. And we’re here. Right now we’re here. Two seconds. I want us all to try it. You were right about it being the best ever. And you know what? We found each other by whatever miracle, and we’re in this beautiful place in front of this beautiful meal. And we can at least taste it before walking into whatever we’re walking into.”
Zeus grabbed his fork—with his left hand, of course, being that his right was curled around the grip of a gun under the table. He lopped off a hunk and ate it, closed his eyes as he chewed. Thor and Odin did the same.
“This is the best,” Thor said.
The waiter came back. “Is everything alright?”
“We just heard of a family emergency.” Zeus pulled out a wad of hundreds—twice or maybe three times what it would take to cover our dinners. “And we think there’re people out there waiting for us in this sensitive time. You know.”
The waiter nodded, thinking paparazzi. Zeus didn’t correct him. He put three more hundreds on the table. “Name every exit, including windows.”
Odin slid over a napkin upon which he’d already sketched the layout of the place and instructed the waiter to put X’s where there were doors and human-sized, operable windows. The waiter hesitated, but then the stack of hundreds grew a bit, and he quickly started writing. He straightened up when he was done. “If I can do anything…”
Zeus said, “Carry on. Lips zipped. The less attention the better.”
The waiter, used to dealing with celebrities, though likely celebs he could recognize, nodded crisply. “You want to-go boxes?”
“We can’t,” I said sadly.
“I’m sorry your dinner had to be interrupted.” And then he added, “Happy Valentine’s Day to the four of you.”
“Thanks, man,” Zeus said, clearly grateful for our romantic unit to be recognized.
Odin took off his suit jacket and put it around me. “I’m not cold,” I said.
“I know. Grab your purse.”
I nodded. This was a time to follow directions unquestioningly. My blood raced.
Zeus said, “Why don’t they have eyes in here? Am I crazy?”
“No, this is all civilian,” Odin said. “Which is disturbing.”
“Let’s just focus on leaving,” Thor said.
Zeus stabbed at the napkin. “So this is just another bank. But with more exits. Odin, take Isis out through the kitchen. Grab a vehicle. Text when you’re coming around.” He pointed to another X. “Thor and I get out here.”
I nodded and the next thing I knew, Odin was pulling me out of my chair and back across the dining room floor. We pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen. Once there, he pulled out his gun, pointing it up. “Coming through.”
“Hey,” somebody said, but then people saw the gun and backed off or raised their hands. Something metal crashed to the floor. It sounded like a pan.
And like that, we were out in the cool night, in a small back parking lot, moving stealthily past two rusted delivery vans and a beater truck. He paused and swore under his breath, then pointed at the street where a black Mercedes four door idled. “There.”
“Someone’s in it.”
“Start your text, but don’t hit send.”
I complied, entering in black Mercedes.
“Now go get in the back, passenger side.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Just like that. Hurry.”
“What if it’s locked?”
“It isn’t. He’s waiting for somebody. Go!”
I ran around the rail and over the boulevard to where it was parked, and I pulled the back door open. The driver, who had short red hair and a trim beard, twisted around. “What the fuck?”
But then his door opened, and Odin pulled him out of the car and got in. “Send the text.” He shoved it into drive and peeled out, jumped the curb, and smashed through the gap in the rail, scraping the shit out of an entire side. He slowed and rolled up the alley that flanked the restaurant. This was the side Thor and Zeus were to come out of. I leaned up into the front and pushed the door, then I opened the back door and scooted behind the driver’s seat to make room. Zeus and Thor dove in.
Just at that time, a car appeared in front of us, blocking the way.
“Fuck me.” Odin shifted it into reverse and backed up at top speed, smashing past the rail once again. The bearded red-haired man was on the sidewalk, talking on his phone. He put up a hand, like he thought we might shoot him from the car. Or something. He wasn’t saying hi, anyway.
Odin jammed the car into drive, and we were off. “Think I fucked up the axle,” he grumbled as we pulled into traffic.
“Turn,” Zeus said.
He turned. The car was making a grinding sound. We went along tensely. Traffic thickened. Sirens sounded in the distance.
Odin was doing a good job of driving, though Zeus usually had that job. “You’re usually the driver,” I said to him.
“Logistics,” Zeus grumbled.
Logistics? What did that even mean?
It came to me in the next moment that they’d choreographed this escape with me in mind. Of all the zillion combinations ratcheting through my bandits’ minds, this one ended up favoring my odds of survival—me fleeing out the back with Odin to protect and drive me, Zeus handling the potential heat inside with help from Thor. It made me feel strange and sad and grateful and insanely in love.
“So far so good,” Thor said. About people following, he meant.
“Agreed,” Odin said. “Bus station?”
“Take a bus somewhere?” I said.
“Fuck that,” Odin said. “If we have to travel by fucking-g bus, then ZOX really has won.”
I laughed, just out of nervousness.
“We store things there.
” Thor pulled me to him. “We’re okay.”
“Does this feel too easy?” Zeus asked after a bit. “Does it feel wrong?” He looked at Odin.
Odin grunted. His meaning was crystal clear: he didn’t like it, either. He grunted again. Translation: he really, really didn’t like it.
We pulled up in the back of the bus station. Zeus strolled in, then came back out with four duffel bags. We got back on the road, with Zeus driving this time.
It turned out they had long-term lockers at the bus station containing go bags, one for each of us. Each was packed with a passport, cash, weapons, wigs, burner phones, and a change of clothes. Odin inspected and destroyed each of our phones.
“This has the feel of Rakan lowlands, Odin,” Zeus said.
Odin nodded.
“Dare I ask?” Thor said.
The fact that Thor didn’t know about it meant that it was probably before their time together. When Thor was still a doctor in a relief organization and Thor and Odin were top ZOX spies.
Odin said, “We were assigned to a jungle unit to root out an enemy informant, but the entire unit was the enemy. They’d been killed and replaced. We’d never met them aside from the commander, who they had under their control through threats. So what Zeus meant was, maybe more things are wrong than we think. Maybe it’s not just one thing wrong in this picture, Maybe it’s the entire picture; maybe it’s the frame itself.”
“The frame itself? Meaning, the danger surrounds and encloses us? Hangs us on a wall?”
Odin snorted. “More like, ZOX knows who crashed the Corvette. Maybe that’s who ratted us out. So they know each clue we will find and follow. They know how we work and where each clue would lead us. They know where we are going, and they knew where we dined. As if we’re rats in a maze now, and ZOX is looking down above us, knowing we’ll eventually find the center of the maze where our culprit is. Maybe that’s why they didn’t have eyes on us inside La Belle. They can afford to be loose and lose us, because they know our ultimate destination.”
“Using this fucker who ratted us out,” Zeus said. “Like bait.”
“Except why let us run in the maze at all?” I asked.
“Yes, that is the question,” Odin said.
“One of the questions,” Zeus said. “I have a lot of fucking questions. Maybe it’s time to leave the maze.”
“And let the motherfucker who ratted us out go?” Thor asked.
“You think I want that any less than you do?” Zeus said.
Odin hissed out an angry breath.
Chapter Eleven
We resumed a routine I knew well—me in a wig with one of the guys, posing as two lovers who want the best hotel suite in the place.
We couldn’t go home again. It got me right in the gut. The little home we’d enjoyed, if only for a matter of months.
This was a hipster hotel, not as posh as we liked, but it was near the airport, and we needed to be able to move out on a dime.
My guys were spooked. They were so rarely spooked. Whenever I asked about it all, they assured me they were being careful, and yeah, I knew they were being careful, but I also knew they were spooked.
Thor and I showed our go-bag passports with our new names and paid in cash that we took out of a congratulations card, putting on our big happy act.
We stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the second floor. The doors slid open, and Thor and Odin came in with their bags, having mysteriously gotten up there while we’d checked in. We rode to the top in silence that was part paranoia, part sadness.
The suite was beautiful—very spare and colorful and modern, and the usual things we loved were there, including a hot tub.
Still, it wasn’t home.
“I’ll miss that place,” I said, meaning our hilltop safehouse.
Zeus got the idea of lending it to the James brothers. “They’d have a lot of use for a place like that once the heat is off us,” he said. “Noel really stepped up, and he wants our groups to get along. What do you think?”
We all agreed. Having allies meant everything. It was particularly evident now that somebody had screwed us so bad.
Zeus lowered his bearish bulk onto the couch. “The weather is Paris is shitty right now, but Hong Kong is nice. So is Auckland.”
“I can’t believe we’re actually going,” I said.
“It’s time. ZOX got too close,” Zeus said.
“We flew too close to the sun.” Odin stared out the window, weary and unhappy.
I wrapped my arms around my middle. My guys never gave up. This Agent Denko really had spooked them. And poor Diego and Maria.
Odin said, “We could do a pit stop in Honolulu if we went east. Re-up on go bags.”
“You have go bags in Honolulu?”
“My favorite identity is there,” he said.
“There’s always Jerba,” I said. That was the island in Tunis I always wanted us to go to.
Odin groaned. “An old man’s place to fish.”
“Tokyo has that place with the hot tub that feels like you’re in a grotto,” Thor said. “Isis would enjoy that hot tub very much.”
I went and put my arms around him. “Do they give you fluffy bathrobes?”
Thor brushed back the hair from my forehead. “Would we take you to a place that doesn’t have fluffy bathrobes? Would we do that, baby? What would we wrap you up in after we fuck your brains out?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I accept only the fluffiest of robes after my brains are fucked out. No terrycloth for me!”
Odin got on the burner phone to look at flights. “They’ll be looking international.”
Thor said, “Honolulu would be nice.”
Odin found a set of flights. He decided he and Thor could go separately, routing through San Francisco, and I’d go with Zeus. Nothing we wanted left until the morning. Eight hours.
We bought the tickets.
“So we relax for eight hours,” Zeus said, looking me up and down, and then he looked out the window, out at the city lights, too upset to fuck. We all were. Everything was wrong.
I joined him at the window and gazed down at the crosshatch of roads outlining big box stores with their blocky rooftops. Thor and Odin came over, and we all just stood there, not saying anything.
“Except somebody fucking dropped a dime on us,” Zeus said finally.
The silence turned to chill.
“Think about it,” Zeus continued. “On us. I’m gonna be honest, when Galvano was saying that shit, I thought, ‘Nobody’s going to drop a dime on us.’ “
“And somebody fucking went and did,” Thor said.
“They assumed ZOX would take us out,” Odin said. “Before we got to him.”
“Fucking ratted us out,” Zeus said.
“It’s whoever crashed that Corvette,” Thor added.
“Oh, definitely.” Zeus grabbed a bottle of scotch from the wet bar. “Somebody ratted on us. I can’t tell you how good it would feel to just…”
Odin said, “…to sink our fangs into his flesh as we viciously rip him apart. Tear him into little bits of fiery pain that swirl into the bowels of hell.”
Probably not how Zeus meant to finish it, but it worked.
“It would feel good,” Thor agreed.
“Except, hello, if we solve the mystery, that would lead us straight to ZOX. It’s the one place ZOX knows we’ll go,” I said.
Silence. I wasn’t liking that silence.
“Right?” I said. “Amirite?”
Zeus studied the bottle.
Gulp.
“You guys. We can’t.”
“They dropped a dime on us, Ice!” Zeus growled. “And what about Diego? We let somebody wreck his and Maria’s life? This life they could’ve had?”
“Right,” I said. “And I want to sink my teeth into this person’s jugular and rip them like a satanic tiger snake blowtorch, too, and I’m not even a tiger-snake-blowtorch type of person. I get it. It’s bullshit.”
�
�Total bullshit.” Zeus topped off his drink. “That’s why I’m using the next eight hours to solve this mystery and kick some ass.”
“Fuck yeah, brother,” Odin said.
“Wait, what?”
Zeus took a swig and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “God, I feel better already. For a minute there I was in danger of not being able to look myself in the mirror ever again.”
“Me either,” Odin said.
“Wait, what about the maze? Us as rats? The evil picture frame?”
“Fuck it,” Odin said.
Thor pulled out his phone. “We need to think a little bit more about that territory Galvano was handing over. That’s the key.”
“Agreed,” Odin said.
“No, timeout!” I said.
“We’re fine.” Zeus passed the bottle to Odin. “We go back and clear it up in time to get out of town. It’s something they won’t expect. Thor, you and Ice hold down the fort while we have a chat with the don.”
“Wait, no,” Thor said. “I want in.”
“Who’s going to protect Ice?”
“Fuck you,” I said, getting off Thor’s lap and grabbing the bottle from Zeus. “We’re a family. If we’re foolish, we’re foolish together.”
Chapter Twelve
Zeus set up another meeting with Don Galvano, this one in a trendy comfort-food diner off the hotel strip, prized for its darkness.
We all used our change of clothes from the go bags. They’d packed a sweet little black pantsuit with a pink top and fabulous boots for me. It had Thor’s taste written all over it. I put it on and smiled at him. He came over and adjusted my lapels. My bandits wore nice shirts and ties. The guiding principle of go-bag clothes was that they needed to be flexible enough for dressing down or dressing up, because you never knew what circumstance they’d be used in.
We were hungry for food and for answers by the time we arrived, being that we’d never gotten to eat our beautiful meal. I ordered stuffing and mashed potatoes. The guys got burgers.
Galvano came in with his bodyguard, who lingered at the bar while the don slid in next to Odin.
“Don’t you know it’s Valentine’s Day?” Galvano said. “You oughta feed your little lady something nicer.”
The Most Wanted (Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers #4) Page 13
