“You think we should go on the offensive?”
Deacon craned his neck to see who had spoken. “What’s Joel doing here?”
Ethan kept his eyes forward when he answered. “Joel’s been coming longer than I have.”
Lee tossed the clock once. Caught it. Then smashed it against the wall. The glass face exploded, and the metal clanged. “We need to hit HOOK where it’ll hurt most: their main research facility in Virginia.”
This time, the cheering was deafening.
The crowd disbanded quicker than Deacon had expected, and everyone funneled toward the single exit. “Come on.” He pulled Ethan by the sleeve. “I want to get out of here before anyone—”
“Deacon. It’s been a while.”
Deacon managed to appear relaxed as he turned with a nod. “Hello, Lee.”
“Are you stopping by in an official capacity,” Lee said, throwing his coat over his shoulders, “or are you as interested in anarchy as the rest of your fellow PAN?”
“I will admit, it was interesting—you made some valid points. I have one question though,” Deacon drawled, loosening a bit of mud stuck to the unfinished walls. “If you’re so sure of Leadership’s inaction, why are you hiding in this musty basement?”
“Maybe you could ask Peter to lend us the Aviary for our next meeting.”
“Ask him yourself. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.”
“Don’t worry,” Lee said, his mouth curling into a malevolent smile. “He’ll be hearing from me soon enough.” He turned to walk away, then stopped and twisted back around. “I wonder what your mother would do if she knew you were here?”
Deacon knew exactly what his mother would do—and he had a feeling that Lee did too. “I make my own decisions.”
“If you say so…”
Lee Somerfield was an arrogant ass who deserved a kick in the bloody teeth. Deacon stomped up the stairs, pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, and turned toward home.
“You need a drink,” Ethan called, jogging to catch up.
Deacon stopped mid-stride. A drink sounded wonderful, but, “I don’t really feel like socializing.”
“Come on,” Ethan whined, clapping him on the back. “We both know you’re not gonna sleep when you get home.”
He had a point. “Fine. One drink.” Deacon crouched, then shoved away from the earth.
Ten minutes later, they landed in the trees behind the parking lot of their favorite bar. The clientele was middle-of-the-road, and it was mostly deserted on weeknights. Plus, the staff had stopped asking for ID two years earlier.
Deacon pulled aside the door with faded beer stickers plastered over the window and stepped inside the warm, stale room. Joe saluted them from behind the bar. He’d been working there for as long as Deacon could remember.
“You guys here for the usual?” Joe asked, throwing a rag toward the sink. Lights filtered through the bottles of liquor on the shelves behind him.
“Please.” Deacon removed his sweatshirt and settled it over the back of his stool.
Ethan nudged his shoulder and asked what he thought of the meeting.
“I certainly don’t plan on going back.”
A group of four men in their mid-twenties stumbled through the door, laughing and shouting curses at each other. Three of them fell into the booth nearest the door, and the fourth, a short man with a barely-there mustache and a buzz cut, weaved unsteadily to prop himself up against the bar.
“Here you go, boys.” Joe set a glass of scotch in front of Deacon and a glass of whiskey and Coke in front of Ethan. Deacon handed over his credit card, and Joe asked if they wanted to start a tab.
“I’m afraid we’ve time for only one drink tonight.” The last thing he wanted was to be hungover tomorrow.
Joe nodded and went to the till.
“Yeah, but what about the stuff Lee said?” Ethan asked, picking up where they’d left off. He clinked his glass against Deacon’s and took a sip. “He’s right about a lot of it, you know.”
“I can see why people are drawn to his ideas.” And if Lee had stuck to berating the rules and HOOK, Deacon probably would have given him more credit. But the moment he started on Leadership, he had lost Deacon’s support.
“I’m surprised you weren’t standing beside Lee, cheering him on. You hate the rules almost as much as he does.”
Joe slid a black checkbook toward him, then turned to serve mister mustache.
“I wouldn’t say I hate them.” He understood why some rules were necessary. A select few, anyway. He leaned across the bar for a pen so he could sign the receipt and leave Joe a tip.
“You sure as hell don’t follow them,” Ethan snorted, taking another drink.
Deacon relished the way the cold liquor scalded his throat. “I adhere to the no-photos policy.”
“That’s only because you don’t want Leadership knowing what you’re up to.” Ethan swiped a cherry from the plastic container. “If I tried half the shit you’ve done,” he said, popping the cherry into his mouth, “they would’ve kicked me out years ago.”
“That’s because no one likes you.”
“If you weren’t so pretty, no one would like you either.” Ethan’s mobile started ringing and he cursed. Instead of answering, he silenced it and abandoned it on the bar.
Deacon glimpsed the screen before it went black. “How’s Nicola?”
“Pissed off.” Ethan knocked back his drink, slammed the glass onto the bar, and wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. “She caught me texting Brittany the other day.”
Brittany, Brittany, Brittany . . . Who the hell was—“The girl from the nightclub with the phoenix tattoo?”
Ethan’s brows shot up. “How do you know about her tattoo?”
He hid his smile in his glass. “She showed me.”
“I hate you,” Ethan groaned, dropping his head in his hands. “I really hate you.”
Deacon never understood why Ethan insisted on wasting his time with outsiders when he had Nicola. “Why do you hate me? I’m single and can do what I like.” Ethan, on the other hand, was supposed to be trying to make it work with Nicola.
“Gwen would disagree.”
“Gwen and I have an arrangement.” His least favorite rule in Neverland was the one regarding relationships. Leadership had this insane notion that, if an inter-PAN relationship didn’t last forever, the breakup could jeopardize their beloved secrets. He’d been seeing Gwen on and off for years, and the PAN’s existence was still as secret as it had been a century ago. “She understands I’m not interested in anything serious.”
“That makes two of us.” Ethan waved at a pair of girls smiling at them from across the narrow room. Their tight dresses dipped low, and their tighter skirts rode high. “What do you say? Shall we go make some new friends?”
The group of men in the booth stopped the girls for a chat.
“Looks like someone beat you to them.”
Which suited him down to the ground. He wasn’t interested in meeting yet another girl who would never know his real name. His life had enough secrets, and he hated bringing more of them into the bedroom.