“I’ll head them off,” Molly said. “I’m wearing a uniform. People will think I’m with the garage.” With that she trotted down the U-turn a few yards, but not enough to be out of danger.
Danny heard Grace too, and Danny thought bigger. “Soderburgh,” he said into his com, “are you the only one of us still at the gala with the police?”
Soderburgh didn’t sound happy when he replied. “Yes, Danny. Yes, I am.”
“Well, stay there, and send a contingent of police to the entrance of the parking garage since—” Danny glared at Nick Denning, who was standing a few feet away. “—their commander in chief seems to be here.”
Nick looked at him in confusion. “Grace told me Josh was in trouble,” he said, sounding lost. “Josh is a friend.”
The look Danny sent Nick was pure compassion. “Sweet boy, you are going to have to have a reckoning with yourself, but now is not the time.” He straightened up, his fox-shaped jaw hard and determined. “Chuck, how are you doing?”
“Found it,” Chuck said, voice muffled as he lay flat on the ground and wiggled shit around. “It’s rigged to go if we open the doors or start the van. Josh, Stirling, I’d stay put for a bit, okay?”
“No problem,” Josh said over coms. “We’re fine.”
“You’re in a corner in the fetal position,” Grace chided, eyes fixed on Chuck. “Be honest.”
“He threw up,” Stirling said with forced cheerfulness. “But he says he’s got an excuse for that. It’s a good thing he brought bags to back up his story.”
Everybody gave a forced laugh, and Nick and the guy in the suit looked around uneasily.
“What’d we miss?”
It was the first time Grace had heard the guy in the suit—who was pretty dishy, actually, with coiffed dark hair, a square jaw, and dark blue eyes—speak.
His accent was pure London East End.
“He’s throwing up and making us laugh about it,” Grace said. “Who are you, British guy, and why are you here?”
“He’s my friend Liam, from Interpol,” Danny said tensely, his eyes never leaving Chuck on the ground, “and he’s here to arrest Sergei and his buyers.”
“Sergei’s dead,” Grace told him seriously. “You can go home now.”
“I’ll take these two instead,” Liam said mildly. “Just as soon as your friends are safe.”
Nick Denning seemed to shake himself. “These guys are mine,” he said. “They committed a murder in my town. You can have the dead guys, though. And the list of very confused live guys waiting to buy something from the very dead guys.”
“What are you going to do?” Liam asked curiously.
“Apparently I’m calling the bomb squad,” he said definitively, but even as he pulled his radio from his belt, Felix intervened.
“That would be lovely, sir, but if you don’t mind waiting until we’re all gone, we would be much obliged.”
“But….” Nick flailed. “Who even is that guy, and why is he trying to disarm an explosive device?”
“I’m a munitions expert,” Chuck said. “And I’m only trying because I need tools. If I had tools, I’d be succeeding. Anybody got a little screwdriver, a file, a mini wrench, and some clippers on them?”
Grace was there first with his lockpicking kit, but Danny followed up with one of his own. Felix produced a tiny wrench, Julia pulled a stiletto from a sheath at her thigh, Hunter started unloading an entire toolbox from his pockets and dorky little leather fanny pack, and Molly ran up from traffic duty to hand Chuck a thumb-sized power drill with tiny bits in assorted sizes and shapes.
Chuck stared at her in appreciation. “This is great, Molly-girl, but where were you keeping it?”
Molly shrugged and pushed up her cleavage. “The tits have got to be good for something with the lot of you. I’m serious.” She stared at Liam and Nick. “Let me guess. Gay.”
Liam shrugged. “Guilty?”
“Married,” Nick said, holding his hands up.
“No law says you can’t be both,” she told him acidly, “but you see my point. I’m going to go flag down pedestrians and beg for anonymous sex now. If we blow up, I’ll see you then.”
“Got everything you need?” Danny asked anxiously.
“I wasn’t this well-equipped in the army,” Chuck muttered. “Julia, that stiletto is something special.” He wielded it carefully before using Molly’s little electric whizbang to do something complicated afterward.
“Danny gave it to me for my birthday one year,” she said. “The emeralds in the hilt are rather famous.”
“The bomb squad is waiting at the entrance of the parking garage. You all should clear out of here,” Nick said, lowering his radio from his mouth. Molly looked at him behind her shoulder as she searched for pedestrians to warn away.
“My brother is in there, dickweed. If he goes, I go.”
In his ear, Grace heard Stirling’s tense little sob. “You should go,” he rasped.
“Fuck off, little brother,” Molly said gently. “And have some faith. I mean, his name is Good Luck Chuck—gotta stand for something.”
“The rest of you, then!” Nick tried to insist.
“Sure,” Danny said. “You first.”
Nick sent him an anguished look, and in Grace’s ear, Josh said, “Somebody make Nick go. He’s got a wife and a kid at home.”
Grace swallowed and disengaged himself from Hunter’s hand. He hadn’t even been aware he’d been holding it until that moment.
“Nick,” he said, trying for his most grown-up voice. “Josh needs you to go. You’ve got a baby. We’re here….” Grace swallowed and tried to imagine his life without Josh. It would be as meaningless as life without Hunter. “We’re here because he’s our heart. Your heart needs to be somewhere else. Go sit with the bomb squad.”
He looked behind him, where Chuck was humming—he was actually humming—as he got into his work.
“We’ll disappear shortly,” Grace reassured him. “We always do.”
“But what about the murderers!” Nick protested, looking at the two men at Grace and Hunter’s feet.
“Well,” Grace said, kicking one of them in the ribs and wincing. He’d done something to his foot when he’d kicked this same guy in the back of the head. Something not good. “If we’re still alive, they’ll still be here. If we’re not, these assholes set the fucking bomb.”
Nick grunted. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fine.”
Hunter bent down with his waiter’s tie in his hand and rummaged under the red sports car, which had stopped blaring a couple of minutes before. He came up with the Beretta that had skittered under the car next to it, held gingerly by the trigger guard.
“Got an evidence bag?” he asked.
Nick rummaged in his pocket and produced one, taking the gun using a folded poly glove to keep his own fingerprints off it. “Fantastic,” he muttered. “Let me go hold my guys off. Don’t get dead.” He gave Grace a last searching look. “And take care of Josh,” he said helplessly.