“We’re good at solving problems,” Danny said mildly, and Hunter snorted to himself. “We sort of host a think tank for special friends if they need a little bit of help.”
Actually, they were a bunch of con men, mercenaries, and thieves. But that didn’t mean they weren’t nice people.
Tabby sniffled and clung to the handkerchief. “It’s not a little help I need,” she said. “It’s a lot of help.”
Danny patted her knee. “Oh, honey, how about you let us decide. But first, tell your Uncle Danny all about it.”
Tabby nodded miserably and proceeded to outline a story of greed, protection, smuggling, and extortion that might have made their toes curl and their eyes grow wide if everyone in the room hadn’t seen a lot worse at some time in their lives.
Still, as corruption went, this one ranked up there.
TABITHA’S PARENTS were scientists and, like Dylan’s parents, had spent much of their lives abroad, doing research for an environmental defense fund to solve the pollution problem of the world’s freshwater supplies. Tabitha had been raised mostly by her maternal grandfather since she was seven, and she’d come to love Aether Conservatory as much as Grace did. Given what Hunter had seen of Grace’s dedication to dance, that was possibly more than life itself.
In the early days of the Conservatory, Artur Mikkelnokov had been scrambling for pennies, and a very wealthy family had offered their patronage to help get him off the ground. All they’d asked for in return was for Artur to bring gifts to their friends abroad whenever he traveled.
Artur, sometimes with Tabitha or other students, had taken cheerfully wrapped gifts and left them with hotel concierges in Vienna, Italy, the Ukraine, Iran. Anywhere Artur’s dancers were invited to perform, Artur’s patron seemed to have a friend.
“It was like… magic!” Tabitha said guilelessly, at which point Hunter fought to keep his own face expressionless. He was good at that. Paulie used to call him bombproof, but not everybody in the Salinger household had been specialty fighters in close-contact combat.
He looked around casually and noticed everybody in the room, including Josh’s mother, blinking very, very hard to keep their eyes from widening with incredulity.
“Magic,” Julia Dormer-Salinger said neutrally. “Imagine that, Felix. The coincidence of it all.”
Felix Salinger, who was Julia Salinger’s ex-husband as well as Uncle Danny’s beloved, gave an imperceptible nod. “Amazing,” he said dryly. “Unprecedented.”
Danny sent them both dirty looks and then turned back to Tabitha and urged her to go on.
“It was a good system,” Tabitha said in complete innocence, “until the elder Mr. Kadjic passed away and left his nephew in charge.”
“Andre?” Danny asked, his eyes sharpening.
“Sergei,” she corrected. “Do you know him?”
Danny shook his head, making eye contact with Felix. “Not personally, no,” he said with meaning. “But I’ve had dealings with his cousin, Andre. He is… unpleasant.”
Tabby nodded. “Grandfather says the older gentleman, Vlad, was really kind. He gave me gifts and made sure Grandfather never had to take time away from his work to deliver the packages. But… but as soon as Sergei came along, it was different. Grandfather was suddenly making three and four trips a month. The Conservatory didn’t suffer because so many of Grandfather’s old students were now instructors, but it wasn’t good for his health. The last time Sergei was in our home, I asked him if, perhaps, Grandfather could retire from the gift-giving business, that he was exhausted. And Sergei… he came on to me, and….” She shuddered. “And he… I forget how he phrased it, but he asked me if I wanted to take over Grandfather’s job. He was touching my cheek, and I hated it, and Grandfather overheard him and shouted, ‘Nyet! Stay away from her or I won’t do your filthy work anymore!’”
She took a deep breath and Danny let her, looking mildly surprised. “Do you know what he was talking about? Filthy work?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t then, but as soon as Kadjic was gone from our house, I asked Grandfather. He said that he hadn’t realized it until Vlad had passed away. Vlad had been so kind, to both of us, you see? Apparently for Vlad he’d been passing stolen goods—they kept calling them jewels, but….” She shrugged.
“You don’t think they were jewels?” Danny asked. “The packaging could mask a lot of sparklies.”
Tabitha nodded, but her eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I know you must think we’re terribly naïve,” she said, and everybody in the room—Josh Salinger and his parents, Stirling Christopher and his sister, Molly, Hunter, and even Good Luck Chuck, their munitions expert and driver—all shook their heads.
“No!”
“Naw.”
“Oh, honey, not at all!”
“Not to speak of.”
“Of course not!”
“Duh! Jesus, Tabby, haven’t I taught you better than that?”
Everybody stared at Grace in disbelief, and Hunter, forced out of his stoic mask, covered his mouth so the little shit wouldn’t know Hunter found him amusing.
“Grace,” he said mildly, which worked nine times out of ten to help Dylan Li control his wayward tongue and rabbit-hopping mind.
This was, apparently, the tenth time.
“I’m serious!” Grace snapped, and the amber eyes meeting Hunter’s were sparkling with irritation. “I’ve tried to teach her better! There are assholes out there who will take advantage of you. You know that!” He looked at Josh in supplication. “So do you. Jesus, Tabby. We wanted to keep you safe because we know the world isn’t! All those lectures we gave you—how could you not know you were smuggling diamonds for a Russian mobster?”
A shocked silence ensued, and Hunter covered his eyes with his hands.
As usual, Danny saved the day. “Well, yes,” he said, smiling in that completely disarming way that made him such a first-rate con man. “That was a bit careless of your grandfather, sweets. It’s true. But I think what Grace—erm, Dylan—is saying is that it’s going to be very hard to say no to Sergei Kadjic now, isn’t it?”
Tabitha nodded miserably. “Grandfather didn’t know this, but most of those performances we’d been asked to do had been sponsored by friends of Vlad’s. He hadn’t just sponsored the dance troupe—he’d paid for the performances exclusively to give Grandfather a chance to carry the packages without rousing suspicion.”
Hunter reassessed the girl, who was pretty, with tawny skin and an elegantly narrow face. She had been naïve because her Grandfather had protected her, but she was by no means stupid.
And Danny saw it too. “And that is why you think it’s more than diamonds,” he said shrewdly.
She nodded. “Diamonds are valuable,” she said, “but even a big, well-cut gem isn’t enough to cover the cost of moving a dance troupe across the world and staging a performance in a decent venue while still turning a profit. I….” She looked around at all of them unhappily. “I’ve seen enough spy movies, you guys. I think it’s something more, but I don’t know what.”