GRACE WAS nodding and smiling at a random police officer when Nick Denning caught his eye. The two bodies—Sergei Kadjic and Nameless Unlamented Thug—were both sprawled on the floor of what Grace had thought of as the “staging room,” both of them with neat holes in the center of their foreheads and very surprised looks on their faces.
And big pools of blood and gray matter on the tiled floors underneath them.
“Grace,” Denning hissed, taking Grace’s elbow and leading him away from the bloodshed. “You saw this happen?”
Grace squinted at him. “Christ no! God is good that way. I don’t want to see people die!”
Denning’s eyes got big. “Well, you have to know why this happened!”
“Josh told you things,” Grace said. “I was there. All of that. Jenkins the dead ex-cop. Magic diamond flowers. Espionage! I’m a flunky. My whole job was to lead you to the dead guys. You’ve seen the dead guys! Now—”
“Josh! Stirling! Don’t get out of the van!”
Grace heard Hunter’s shout like a gunshot through his head.
He stared at Nick Denning with big eyes and said, “Josh! Fuck! I’ve got to get the hell out of here!” before bolting out of the room.
He didn’t bother with the rooftop or the ventilation shafts. He knew the place like the back of his hand now. He headed for the service door and once again was sprinting down a concrete stairwell—but this time, it was toward Hunter and Josh.
He was scarcely aware Nick Denning was on his heels, but as he cleared the marble steps of the entrance and the great green lions, he did see Felix, Molly, Julia, and some guy in a suit he didn’t recognize as he passed them, running flat out.
The guy in the suit kept up—and so did Nick Denning, but so the fuck what. Josh. Hunter’s afraid what happened to Paulie will happen to Josh!
He’d heard the panic in Hunter’s voice. He’d even been to the briefings where they’d put together the two guys who’d killed Hunter’s old boyfriend with the guys who’d killed Jenkins the ex-cop. He knew who they were dealing with—they all did, now. Sergei Kadjic and his delicate ballet of gem and information and espionage had been killed like the golden goose who laid stupid eggs, and the two ham-handed mercenaries who liked to blow shit up were in charge.
And Josh and Stirling, hanging out in the van because it would be safe, would not have been paying attention to the outside of their vehicle while professionals rigged it to blow when one of the doors slammed.
Grace blew past the walkthrough at the pay kiosk, heading downhill and hugging the edges of the cars. But God, he hated the visibility.
In his ear, he heard Hunter and Chuck swearing as the occasional shot rang out and knew they were pinned again. As he ran past his umpteenth SUV in the garage, which was packed for the gala, he realized that he and everybody else could be running into an ambush.
“What floor are you on?” he demanded into the com, and as far as he could recall, it was the first coherent thing anybody had said in about a million years. In one bound, he leaped to the top of the nearest SUV and didn’t stop there. Lithely, he jetéd from car hood to car hood, trying hard to land on his toes and spread his weight so he didn’t leave any big divots on people’s cars, because that was mean. He knew he was going fast, but he wasn’t aware of how fast until he rounded the final U-turn to where the black van was parked and realized that Chuck and Hunter were pinned down about five cars from the van by a guy with curly brown hair and a gun.
There was another guy right next to the curly-haired guy, and he clutched one hand under his arm and leaned heavily on the wall behind the car he was using for cover. Grace assumed this was the guy that Hunter had been wrestling with, because he didn’t think anybody Hunter came up against would actually be walking away happily.
Both the bad guys had their back to Grace as he leaped from car to car, but they still might have heard him if Hunter hadn’t spotted him first.
Grace could tell Hunter saw him because his eyes got really big, and then he looked at Chuck, and Chuck’s eyes got really big, and then, without compunction or even thought, Chuck gave the flashy red sports car he was crouched behind a full-body tackle, breaking its headlight in the process.
The parking garage, which had been all gunshots and curses, erupted into the shrill screeching of the sports car’s alarm.
The guy with the gun was so focused on Hunter that he didn’t realize Grace was there until he sprinted over the last hood and kicked him square in the back of the head.
The guy went facedown onto the concrete, and Hunter ran forward, pulling magic zip ties out of a magic pouch at his waist. Grace hadn’t even noticed Hunter had one on when he’d left the car, and he was much impressed.
Grace smiled at him because he was always so prepared, but Hunter ran right past him, turned slightly to the side, and caught the hurt guy moaning against the wall in the chest with his elbow.
The guy whimpered and collapsed to the ground, a knife clattering out of his hand.
Grace looked from the guy to the knife, then back at Hunter, who was only about four feet away, standing where the knife guy had stood.
And everything clicked.
“He was going to get me with that,” he said.
“Yeah, baby,” Hunter told him gently. “He was.”
Anybody else would have kissed then, but there were bad guys at their feet. Hunter was on his knees on knife guy’s back as he trussed him up in zip ties, and Grace stood on top of gun guy’s shoulders, bouncing every so often to hear him whimper.
“Harder, Grace,” Hunter said grimly. “These are the guys that blew up Paulie.”
Grace growled and jumped on the small of the guy’s back.
He groaned. “Paulie was never meant to be a target, Hunter. You guys were supposed to be fucking in your rooms!”
“Well, you killed the gate guy, and that’s worse,” Hunter said shortly. “No bodies. Goddammit, I left the fucking military because collateral damage is so not okay.”
“So goddamned pure,” muttered the guy who’d held the knife. “Now you’re going to kill us all.”
That was not promising. As Hunter moved off of knife guy and started trussing up gun guy, Grace looked to see where Chuck had gone.
He was lying on his stomach in front of the brand-new black tech van.
“Chuck?” Hunter said gruffly into the com.
“Everybody get the fuck off this floor,” Chuck said tensely.
At that moment, Danny and Torrance Grayson rounded the corner ahead of all the people Grace had passed, and Grace stared at them.
“Where the fuck did they come from?” he asked in confusion. “I didn’t even see them!”
“Service stairs,” Torrance panted, leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees because he was obviously out of breath. “God, the service stairs in a parking garage. We were right on your heels until you got here. Jesus.”
Grace looked around and saw the rest of their group coming into the third floor from the slope of the garage. “What if someone tries to drive down?” he asked. The garage, which had been mostly empty when Josh parked, had filled up considerably. None of the cars Hunter and Chuck had used for cover had been there when Chuck parked the van.