Danny sighed. “It’s necessary, Josh. Murder is above our ken. Tell him there’s a gala going on, and he’ll get all the cooperation in the world if he comes in through the back and lets us show him where the bodies are.” He let out a humorless laugh. “But perhaps, Josh, you should send him to the room with all the people who are waiting to buy a stolen piece of espionage first. We can’t prove they’re up to no good, but it sure would be fun to hear them swear.”
“Deal, Uncle Danny,” Josh murmured.
In the ensuing silence, Grace heard Chuck and Hunter swearing some more, and he made a keening noise. Hunter had gone after Chuck because he’d seen bad guys, and now it sounded like the bad guys were winning.
“Josh!” Danny said in alarm.
“We need Soderburgh to lead the cops to the dead guys!” Josh rasped. “He can’t bail Hunter and Chuck out. They’re somewhere between the Institute and the van. I’ll go check on the—”
“No!”
The cry was universal, and Grace had been one of the people yelling.
“We’re fine!” Chuck barked, and Grace felt relief wash over him. “We’re cornered near the first floor of the structure. Do your thing, people. Don’t look at the violence in the parking garage.”
Grace let out a growl, and before he could try to time the trip to the roof, down the side of the building, and then the three blocks to the garage, he realized he’d already gotten back into the ventilation shaft and was heading for the hallway with the stairs.
“Grace, stay put,” Hunter snapped. “Soderburgh is going to need you.”
“But—”
“The whole crew depends on you not getting caught, you understand? Put on your party clothes and go be the museum employee copping a break. Do it now!”
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
“And you’ve got to unlock the room too,” Soderburgh said over coms. “By all means make me look like an asshole if you have to, but there needs to be a way to explain how you found them.”
“Fuck!” he snarled, and for a moment, he thought of completely disregarding everybody in his ear and just fucking off and going to help Hunter.
Help Hunter how?
What was Grace going to do in the middle of a fight with punching and guns?
How would he be helping Hunter by distracting him in the middle of violence, which was Hunter’s oxygen?
“Grace,” Josh said sotto voce, “please. I know you love Hunter, but the team needs you here.”
“Yeah, yeah, got it,” Grace muttered, changing directions. “I’m finding a closet so I can change. Whatever. You all suck. Hunter?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Don’t get fucking shot.”
“THAT,” SAID Chuck as they both dodged around a corner in the parking garage and crouched behind a minivan, “was the most fucking romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah, well, my boy knows me,” Hunter muttered. “Where did you pick these guys up again?” Chancellor and Creighton—looking just like their security photos and Hunter’s nightmares of the day Paulie had died—had Chuck cornered as Hunter entered the first floor of the garage. Hunter had no idea how this happened, but he could damn their luck.
“I tell you, I was entering the garage, they were coming out, and I noticed the damn gift bag.”
Hunter scowled. “They had the gift bag on them?”
“They were shoving it into the trash, which means, I assume, they took the box out and have it on them.”
“Shit!”
Hunter and Chuck were currently in a concrete wraparound corner, crouched in front of a truly reprehensible Dodge Caravan. When Hunter had arrived on the scene, Chuck had been ducking between cars to avoid being shot. Hunter had recognized the graying head of TJ Chancellor and the brown curly hair of Roy Creighton the moment he’d seen Chancellor aiming at Chuck’s head.
Chancellor hadn’t seen Hunter until Hunter had been on top of him, shoving his forehead against the ski rack of the black Chevy Tahoe Chuck had been using as cover at the time.
Their scuffle had been brief and meaningful—Chancellor had been strictly an arms and ammunition man when they’d worked together, and it had taken Hunter about thirty seconds to get to that part where he was squeezing Chancellor’s pressure point and forcing him to drop the gun.
That would have been the end of it, but as Chancellor was doubling over, another shot whizzed by, and Hunter looked up to see Roy Creighton, broad face irritated as fuck, taking aim dead center mass.
Hunter had dropped to the ground, kneecapping Chancellor as he went. Chancellor went down screaming, and Hunter didn’t have time to cuff him before Creighton started shooting indiscriminately. With a dive and a roll, Hunter and Chuck had met three cars down from where Chancellor was moaning and trying to recover his Beretta from under the Tahoe with the ski racks.
The last five minutes had been hunt and chase, with the coms going off in both their ears.
Finally they caught a break.
Five cars—big deluxe SUVs, indicating some sort of muckety-muck was arriving—caravanned through the parking garage, and Chuck and Hunter made a break for the stairwell.
As he pulled open the door, he realized he was muttering to himself.
“We’re clear,” Chuck said. “Do you see them?”
“What were they doing here?” Hunter asked, pulling his brain—so much slower than Grace’s—up for air.
“I don’t know. Ditching the… bag?” Chuck said, and his rust-colored eyebrows dropped. “Wait. They have the gem, and they were obviously here for something besides transportation. You’re right. What were they doing here?”
“They knew who you were,” Hunter said. C’mon… think! Grace did it so easy! Leaped from thing to thing! “They saw you and started chasing—they knew who you were.”
Chuck met his eyes. “I wasn’t in Vancouver with you.”
Hunter pulled in a breath. “But you were with us when we went to Laslo Hu’s. He was being watched—maybe by Sergei.”
Chuck banged his forehead gently against his palm. “You know, your boyfriend would come in really handy right now.”
“Gah!” But Grace was talking to police. Hunter could hear him.
Then Josh spoke. “They obviously had Sergei bugged, guys. So whatever Sergei saw, they saw. That’s probably why they took Sergei out. They knew we were running a game on him, so they got their gem and ran. When Grace is done, we’ll call everyone in and—”
“Stop!” Hunter snarled, not even sure what he was thinking. “They were coming from the garage, Josh. And they’d made us! So what were they doing here?”
“Oh God.” Josh’s voice went weak and a little quavery.
Unbidden, the image of flames blowing off the garage door of Ron Pinter’s garage seared its way across Hunter’s eyeballs.
As did the image of the guard’s brains on the wall of the kiosk.
“Fuck!” Hunter snapped, abandoning the stairwell and sprinting in the direction that would take them up. “Josh! Stirling! Don’t get out of the fucking van!”