Carl slowly turned his head and gave Chuck a level look. “Are you bored, Chuck?”
Chuck smiled, all teeth. “I don’t mind a little turbulence now and then.”
As if in response, the plane bucked, very gently, and Carl let out a low growl. “If the plane gods decide to throw us against a mountain because you felt like fucking around, you’re gonna have to find another cellmate in hell.”
Chuck cackled. “Hunter’ll room with me until Grace can break us out.”
“Or the devil kicks you out,” Carl added. “Now stop tempting fate!”
Chuck’s laughter subsided, and Carl settled into the experience.
In a way, it was much like driving when the road was clear and traffic was mild. You had to keep your wits about you—keep to the fight path, keep the altitude consistent, literally stay in the lane you’d told everybody you’d be occupying when you filed your flight plan—but there was all that much-vaunted freedom and exhilaration that people dreamed about, and it turned out to be true.
The terrifying part was, of course, the different gauges, the three-dimensional space, and the margin for error. But once Carl had compartmentalized the margin for error, the rest of it fell into place.
The exhilaration shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. The ocean opened underneath them as they crossed the Atlantic, and while the air currents got frisky, knowing it was underneath them felt sort of vast and awesome, much like the openness of the sky above. Chuck took over for a couple of hours, and Carl watched him, answering his questions about gauges in his area, listening to his discussion of how to react to pretty much every flight contingency known to man.
When land came into sight, Hunter kicked Carl out of the cockpit and took over as copilot. Carl left the connecting door open and settled into the nearest seat so he could listen to their conversation.
“Hey, Carl!” Hunter called. “How come we’re staying in Brussels when we’re landing closer to Antwerp?”
“Because Danny’s still fairly well known in Antwerp and he didn’t want anybody’s hackles raised. Besides, our hotel’s in Brussels for the night, but the thing we’re doing is closer to the airstrip. Better getaway potential.”
Hunter grunted. “I hate the Sablon.”
Carl shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s original.” The hotel boasted “cocoons”—townhouse-style rooms with an upstairs loft and a downstairs sitting area. Julia had done the booking, telling Carl that she was choosing a highly recommended place that none of the Salingers—including Danny—had ever visited.
“It’s just that if you’re going to check into a place that charges like a palace, I want it to look like a palace.”
Chuck shook his head. “I’ve been there,” he said. “It’s clean, spacious, modern—”
“Modern.” Hunter put his finger on his nose. “Not really a fan.”
“You like the antiques.” Carl smiled a little. “I’ve been to your apartment. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
Like a lot of the crew, Hunter kept an apartment in the city when he wasn’t sleeping periodically in the Salinger mansion. His was in a high rise, a loft surrounded by brick and enormous windows. Hunter used it mostly to work out and to think. It had comfortable furniture, a large bed in the corner, a serviceable bathroom, and soundproof walls. It also, Carl surmised, held an arsenal’s worth of guns and weapons, all nicely locked up in secret caches. He’d spotted several false walls and ceiling tiles when he’d visited.
“Brussels is an old city full of art and history,” Hunter said, making the adjustments to the plane that would start it on its landing path. “I just like to feel the old.” Then he clicked on his headset and addressed the tower of the private landing strip they were using and the conversation was over.
THE DRIVE into the city was probably lovely. Carl knew there was a lot of farmland involved, but by the time they pulled their rental up in front of the 9Hotel Sablon, it was deep into the dark of the morning, and even Brussels was sleeping. Whether Hunter liked the décor or not, the hotel was one of Brussels’ premiere lodgings. As Chuck, who had no problem adapting to rules of the road in any country, pulled the car past the neatly angled, big-windowed exterior, Carl looked wistfully at the lights and thought hopefully of a bed in the suite he knew had been reserved for them.
Those hopes were dashed when a young man with dark-brown curly hair and a neat slim-cut sports jacket over a red turtleneck sweater and slacks waved at them from the ashcan near the front of the hotel. He pulled guiltily at his cigarette one last time and ground the butt out before approaching their car.
Carl noticed him pulling a small hand sanitizer from his pocket as he walked, and he was popping in a breath mint before they even got out of the car.
“Poor boy’s been caught,” Chuck murmured before hopping out of the Renault Magane. “Should we give him shit about it?”
“Of course,” Hunter murmured back. “Carl, got any fun statistics for us?”
Of course he did, but he wasn’t going to share.
“Liam!” Chuck said pleasantly, extending his hand for the shake as the valets cleared out the luggage. “So good to see you again.”
“Particularly when you’re not disassembling an explosive device,” Liam replied with a thin smile. He glanced at Carl. “You weren’t there that night,” he said, puzzled. His accent—British by way of East London—left a lot of consonants out of that sentence. “I didn’t realize you were part of the crew until Julia contacted me.”
“I was on coms that night,” Carl said with a sigh. “Someone had to speak with the police in the museum and make it all look happy fine.” He extended his hand. “Good to see you again, Liam.” He and Liam had worked together periodically. Liam was an up-and-comer in the property crimes division of Interpol—art theft was his bread and butter—but it went deeper than that. They’d worked together nine years ago, and Liam had been the one to gently poke Carl about the four-scotch-a-night habit that had snuck up on him when he hadn’t been looking. Carl had gone to the rehab clinic Liam had recommended outside of Wales, unaware that Liam had actually driven Danny to the same place two weeks prior. The affair with Danny had ended, but the friendship with Liam remained.
Liam returned the shake. “The sentiment’s mutual,” he said before moving on to shake Hunter’s hand. “I took the liberty of setting up a late supper in your suite. If we can have a brief discussion before you turn in, I’ll let you sleep.”
“Nice of you,” Hunter said. “I could eat.”
“Lord, me too,” Chuck agreed, and Carl nodded in agreement. It was a kind gesture—finding food at the end of a late-night flight was always a pain in the ass.
The suite was a townhouse-style room, done mostly in white with bursts of color in the bedding and in the comfortable lounge-area furniture. The two bedrooms were upstairs, and Chuck grabbed Carl’s suitcase along with his own.
“Carl, you and me can bunk together. I don’t trust Hunter not to wake up, realize you’re not Grace, and knife you.”