But he had a point.
“Nobody hurts Grace on my watch,” he agreed soberly. “I told you that before.”
Josh smiled happily and pulled his sprawl in to a prim pose behind the table. “Awesome. Sit down and let Chuck do whatever mysterious thing he does to your coffee. It’s delicious.”
Over Josh’s head, Chuck was mouthing, “Cinnamon!” and Hunter had to smile. Chuck was the sort of guy who knew how to prepare sushi, caulk a bathtub, and set a charge of C-4 in the exact place to blow a bank vault open. It all depended on what you needed that day. Josh had met Chuck the same way he’d met Hunter. In the parking garage by U of C. Except Chuck had been about to move a car that didn’t belong to him. Not steal it, just move it. Forcing the douchebag who owned it to search the entire parking garage to find it. For the umpteenth time in two weeks. Hunter could go along with that kind of job—sometimes, just harassing the douchebags was deeply fulfilling.
Now Hunter took a donut and asked them what was on for the day, and Josh grinned, catlike, and said, “Let’s wait until Grace is out of the shower.” Then he reached inside the box, pulled out a devil’s food treat with icing and sprinkles, and took his own bite. “It’s gonna be good,” he said, chewing.
Chuck paused in his act of assembling ingredients for what should have been a simple cup of coffee. “Count on it,” he said, winking at Hunter.
Hunter took a bite of his donut and asked about the weather, because it turned out he had faith that his crew wasn’t going to let him down.
“SEE,” JOSH said, when Hunter and Grace were both showered, “Danny figured that if we started looking at charity shindigs for certain politicians, or artists’ benefits, or even museum displays in Chicago about two or three weeks before the big ripples, we’d see potential auction events. You know, the spoiled rich people gather, and the big players have a special event all to themselves in a secret room. Star-chamber stuff.”
Hunter nodded. “I’ve taken a few jobs to guard people when they come out of those rooms. If they’re the ones leaving with the brass ring, sometimes the trip home can look like ‘Spy vs. Spy,’ you know?”
“That thing from Mad Magazine?” Grace asked, doctoring his coffee. “That’s real?”
“No,” Hunter said. “I was being facetious.”
Grace sighed and wandered over to the table where the rest of them were sitting. “That’s a damned shame. I always keep hoping weird bird people are going to start popping out with cartoon detonators.”
“I wouldn’t,” Josh said, “Because that would be terrifying. But Hunter, you get the idea, right? Those things are always held at galas or dinners or something. It makes a good cover, and lo and behold, muckety-mucks everywhere.”
Hunter nodded. “Yeah, I get it. And it would probably be in Chicago, because the guy who carves the jewels lives in Springfield, right?”
“That’s what we figured. Also, Chicago’s a big city with a big rep. Muckety-mucks take trips here the same way they take trips to Vancouver. So we started doing some poking around, and we got two things.”
“Hit me,” Hunter said, and to his surprise, instead of taking the empty chair between Hunter and Chuck, Grace perched on his thigh.
“One of them is Danny’s Fabergé display. It’s not just the eggs. There will be specialty cut gems out the wazoo. We started wondering if the gems that were laser cut with the information on them might not be precut for initial shape. Imagine the buyer. ‘Oh, yes. That there is a gem from the Fabergé collection—gorgeous, isn’t it?’ But he knows he bought the gem for millions because it had a fuckton of information on it. It’s like a displayable computer chip. Can you imagine the cachet?”
Grace wiggled a little, the razor-sharp bones of his ass cutting off the circulation in Hunter’s leg, but Hunter got the hint. He wrapped his arm around Grace’s waist and hauled him back against his chest. Possession. “I get it,” he said, giving his beautiful lover a sideways look. “It’s a way of showing off your power.”
Josh nodded. “Exactly. So that’s one way to go.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Chuck muttered.
Hunter cocked an eyebrow. “Why not?”
Chuck nodded to Josh. “Tell him.”
Josh sighed. “Well, this is where things get tricky. Because the gem gala is the Wednesday night before the Aether Conservatory debuts Cinderella on Friday. Chuck thinks that the timing is just too good, and I have to tell you, my spidey sense is tingling. We’ve got Danny’s Fabergé Gem Gala, and then we have an event showcasing their drop guy, Artur, so we’re waiting for him to get word that he’s got a drop. Danny’s scoping out places in the museum that might be good for their star-chamber meet—he’s got a couple of hidey-holes that he says security has conveniently overlooked, so we might have some ideas there. But the debut would be a good one too. You can see our dilemma.”
“How do you know again?” Grace asked. “How do you know they have these big fun crime-boss meetings? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Wait!” Chuck said, grabbing another donut. “This one was fun. Because a couple of weeks before that pattern of ripples, as Danny called them, began, all the bad guys—I mean all the bad guys—from the area with the ripples hopped a plane to Chicago. So they’re all here for a couple of days, and then soon afterwards, Artur goes to them to make the drop.”
Hunter swallowed hard and then swallowed again. His arm around Grace’s waist tightened convulsively, and he took a deep breath.
“Ron Pinter,” he said, and Josh gasped quietly, because Josh had heard this story.
Grace said, “Drug dealing scumbag you used to work for.”
Hunter gave a nod. “Everyone gets one bad boss,” he muttered. “No, that’s the thing. Last night, Grace said that the two other security guards—Creighton and Chancellor—obviously set Pinter up. Something like this occurred to me in Vancouver. The timing was right. About two weeks before shit went bad, they accompanied Pinter to Guadalajara. They said it was a chance to go drinking and whoring, and all Pinter did was pick up a package in the hotel lobby.”
“And you didn’t mention this?” Josh asked, eyes wide.
Hunter flushed. “Well, I was going to but I got—” He sent Grace a sideways look. “—distracted. But when I was hunting Jenkins down, it occurred to me that Creighton and Chancellor know me. If they were somehow involved, that would have been a reason for them to plant the spyware at the Westin. And Pinter was a weasel. The odds of somebody betraying him and offing him went up exponentially every time he snorted blow through a gold straw. They were close enough to him to know what he had and when the double cross would be most effective. I was just too dumb to see it.”
And the truth—the hard truth—was that Hunter had been lost without a leader. He could plan an op and execute it with a well-honed competency, but he needed a cause, a reason to go into the field. For a while, it had been his government, but gah! The things he’d seen his government do! And then it had been the boss of the moment, as long as he reserved the right to say no. Pinter had been a mistake, but he’d been ready to walk away at any time. He’d just hoped Paulie would come with him.