“Why’d he hate you?” Josh asked, and Hunter was grateful—he’d been a little curious too.
Lucius raised a shoulder. “Same reason the old man put off passing the company over to me until he was practically eating out of a tube. Le gay.”
The collective eye roll was punctuated by Molly’s frustrated, “Goddammit! It’s like a conspiracy.”
“You don’t like gay people?” Lucius asked.
“Oh, please. I am surrounded by gay men, most of whom I adore. I just want my own boyfriend, thank you.” She crossed her arms in a fit of temper, and Julia patted her shoulder in commiseration.
“I particularly like the subtle way you go about it, sis,” Stirling murmured, and Molly—in good sibling tradition—stuck her tongue out at him.
“You do have to admit that our Mr. Broadstone is sort of a dish,” Julia said, flashing her dimples at Lucius. “But we must continue with his story. So you inherited your security man, and he told you that your last bit of stolen information would be in Artur Mikkelnokov’s room. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Lucius said. “I went to school with the manager of this particular hotel, which I guess I should have seen as far too fortuitous. I had Mikey get access to her floor plans on the pretense that I was thinking of holding a convention here. He figured the best way to search Mr. Mikkelnokov’s rooms was to come in through a ventilation port in the closet.”
“And he brought a gun,” Hunter growled.
Lucius let out a breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes. And he brought a gun. I cannot apologize enough.” He turned so he was looking at Grace directly and gave a wan smile. “Please, allow me to apologize—both for the gun and for running you down. I just….” The smile faded. “Over two thousand employees are depending on this next quarter’s income. And more than that, I’ve got charities that are depending—depending—on our profits so women and children don’t end up on the street. I saw what could happen if we didn’t get ahold of our security leak, and I panicked. I’m sorry. I should have checked Jenkins out more thoroughly. I thought if there was one thing—one thing—I could depend on, it would be my father’s employee to uphold his legacy.”
“I guess that was the one thing you could depend on,” Felix said kindly from the screen. “And we’re sorry. But we know most of this. What we don’t know is what you thought you were looking for.”
“A thumb drive?” Lucius said, shrugging. “A microchip? Something that could hold many terabytes of information in a very small space?”
“A pretty present in an ostentatious gift bag big enough to hold a jeweler’s box?” Julia suggested.
Everybody in the room except Lucius snorted, but Lucius wasn’t stupid.
Neither was Artur Mikkelnokov.
“Is that why you’re all here?” he asked, and Hunter wondered what they’d told the gentleman to get him to join them in the very cramped hotel room. Then Artur turned toward Grace accusingly. “Is that why you asked to accompany me?”
Grace seemed to shrivel, and Hunter moved so he was between the old man’s glare and Grace.
“Your granddaughter was terrified for you,” Julia said, her voice brooking no argument. “She confided in Grace, and we’re Grace’s family. We showed up to help.” She glared at Lucius. “And it’s a good thing we did, young man. Your friend with the gun might have decided to use it on Artur had he awakened, and then where would you be?”
“In prison,” Lucius said grimly. “But not before I figured out what Mikey Jenkins knew that I didn’t.”
“You would have gone to prison for that?” Hunter asked, disgusted.
“Underdeveloped sense of vengeance,” Stirling murmured.
“He has no concept of the superhero origin story,” Molly agreed. “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to escape prison, go after him yourself, make him pay horribly for his crimes and for dumping his bullshit on your head, and then continue on as a zillionaire superhero, funding the opposite of whatever nefarious scheme Jenkins was a part of.”
“Poisoning also works,” Grace said. “Or, you know, drugging him, stripping him naked, and duct-taping him to the police station.”
“Or hacking the most wanted list and putting him at number seven,” Stirling said.
“Not number one?” Lucius asked.
“No, one is too conspicuous. Everyone would be, like, ‘Wait a minute. I know who number one is—who the hell is this guy?’ But anywhere on the top ten and he still has a very good chance of being caught.”
“Particularly if you broadcast his financials to every news agency in the country,” Josh agreed.
“Or track down his old exes and tell them he won the lottery,” Grace added.
“That’s a good one,” Danny said admiringly from the screen. “I’ll have to remember that. But the point is, Mr. Broadstone—”
“Who is who he says he is!” Felix called, looking around Danny, who appeared to be sitting on his lap. Hunter had to hide his smile, because they were both in their forties and how cute was that?
“Yes. Mr. Broadstone, who has missed the Fortune 500 by just a few bodies to walk over, is exactly who he says he is.”
Lucius pursed his lips, his nose wrinkled in annoyance. “Thanks for that assessment. So proud. You have no idea.”
“You should be, my boy,” Felix said genially. “I inherited my money too, and it still took me years to get there.”
“Are you on that list, Felix?” Danny asked blandly. “I had no idea. Anyway, Lucius Broadstone inherited his father’s security guy—and a security leak. Lucius, if it makes you feel any better, your competitors have been showing up with what should have been your product for a good five years. But until your old man passed away—about two years ago—it was almost a gentlemanly looting. Enough for you not to hit the Fortune 500, not enough to really put a crimp in your style. Over the last two years, though, you’ve lost millions. It’s almost as if….”
Hunter’s brain made the click at about the time Grace spoke up.
“Yeah, yeah. Same guy. Dance Master has to start making lots of drops, and this bozo starts losing all his crap. I’m sure there’s other marks out there shitting kittens too. Bad guys changed ownership. We get it.”
“Do you really?” Danny asked, and Hunter sucked in a breath because his tone was perfect. He wasn’t condescending. He was, in fact, asking if Grace, specifically, had made the intuitive leap that Danny obviously had. “Because you need to share. We can see that Sergei has upped his espionage and embezzlement, and he’s been working Artur like a Trojan, trying to get him to make deliveries, but does he have an endgame, or is this bad management?”
“It’s a good question,” Julia added. “Because he’s burning out his resources. And we need to see if he’s just stealing tech from Broadstone and selling it broadband, or if he’s got other irons in the fire. If he’s not storing capital, this is a really bad way to run a business.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Grace muttered humbly.