Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

“She has no idea,” Francine said, after climbing behind the wheel of Martell’s POS.

She hadn’t asked. She’d just assumed, correctly, that it was okay with Martell if she drove.

He’d gotten in the passenger side, whereupon she took off west, back toward the city and its harbor. She was heading, he knew, for the Pelican Deck, a tourist bar that was right on the water, where Martell’s task was going to be to keep eyes on Berto Dellarosa while she went over to the YMCA and picked up her brother.

“She who?” he asked now. “Has no idea of what?”

“Phoebe,” Francine answered. “Has no idea how freaking crazy it was that Ian risked his life, going after her the way he did.”

“Was it?” Martell asked. “Really that crazy? Because for all of his reputation as the spawn of Satan, Dunn seems to me to fit more in the tried-and-true former-Navy-SEAL-slash-Boy-Scout mold.”

Francine laughed at that, heavy on the scorn, complete with trademark eye roll.

“So what do you care what Phoebe thinks?” Martell asked her.

“I don’t,” she lied. “I’m just commenting on it.”

“I don’t,” he imitated her. “You are so full of crap. FYI, I am watching your tension levels rise exponentially with each fraction of a mile we get closer to your old boyfriend.”

Martell knew right away that he’d pushed it too far, because she practically turned to ice. This woman was cold to start, but now …? He could feel his nose hairs start to freeze in the deadly silence.

But then Francine surprised him. “My old boyfriend,” she said, in an upbeat, conversational tone that contrasted markedly with her white knuckles on the steering wheel, “let his father rape me.”

And okay.

That was so not what Martell had expected her to say, and she laughed—a brittle sound—at his inability to speak. “Nice, right?”

“Let?” he managed to echo.

“He saw Davio hit me,” Francie said, “and he just walked away. He knew what would happen. I was being punished, and that’s how Davio punishes women. Or girls. Age pretty much doesn’t matter to him.”

“I don’t know what to say in response to that,” Martell admitted.

“Good,” she said. “So shut the f*ck up.”

She was the one who’d started the conversation in the first place, but he chose not to remind her of that.

But then she looked at him again and whispered, “Don’t tell Shel or Aaron, because they don’t know. They think he just beat me up. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” Martell promised, thinking Shit.

They rode the rest of the way in an oddly frigid silence, as he tried to come up with the best way to say Maybe you should talk to someone about this. Like a licensed therapist or a rape crisis center counselor, if you don’t want to tell your family.… But he didn’t dare.

And it wasn’t until Francine pulled to the side of the road, to drop him about a quarter mile away from the bar, that he ventured to speak again.

“Are you, um, okay?” he asked.

She looked at him with those weirdly flat blue eyes. “Text me when you have visual confirmation that he’s sitting at the bar.”

Martell nodded as he climbed out, turned to lean back into the open window. “You know, Berto might not be working this gig alone.”

“I’m aware,” she told him. “I’ll make sure we’re not followed.”

“Followed back here?” he asked. “Or—”

“No. You’re going to have to find your own way to reconnect with Little Debbie and Team Hero.”

“That’s my car you’re driving,” he reminded her.

“So what?”

Right.

She pulled away from him, forcing him to jump back to avoid having the rear tire roll over his feet.

Martell watched the glow of his taillights fading into the night as he walked toward the bar. He was well aware that moments after Sheldon’s return, the entire group—Team Hero, as Francine had called them—would bug out and leave Zebra.

No doubt they’d head immediately to Miami, where the next phase of this f*ck-tastrophe was due to take place. Martell was going to have to get creative in order to find a car in which to make the three-hour-plus drive.

He made peace with that as he finally reached the Pelican Deck’s pitted gravel parking lot. He went up the wooden boardwalk and through the bar toward the so-called party deck that overlooked the water.

The party that was happening out there was a sad and lonely one. And it was winding down, despite it still being hours before last call. The partiers were a mix of German tourists on beach vacations, elderly yachters, and sleepy drunks.

But sure enough, there was Berto, the man from the surveillance tape, nursing a pint of draft beer as he sat alone at the table that was, yes, directly beneath the self-labeled “fun-cam.”

Whoo-hoo! Whoo! Whoo?

Berto looked tired and sad and as if that wasn’t the first beer he’d ordered from the laid-back, tattooed waitstaff since he’d gotten here.

Martell walked past him to verify, pretending he was looking for the men’s, before he typed the text to Francine. He’s here, whatever that’s worth.

As he hit send, the table next to Berto cleared, its previous occupants heading back to das Beach Condo. Martell perched himself on one of the still-warm stools and settled in, trying not to let his disgust for Berto show as he thumbed through his contact list on his phone to figure out whose car he could beg, borrow, or steal to get his ass to Miami.

* * *

“You’ve really never met her?” Francie turned from where she was nestled in the crook of Berto’s arm, her head on his broad shoulder, to look up at his face.

He kissed her instead of answering, his mouth soft and sweet. As always, when he kissed her, she felt something stir, deep inside. Something hot and heavy and powerful and consuming and …

She pulled back abruptly, only to find him smiling at her, his brown eyes amused beneath their heavy lids. He murmured, “Would it really be that bad if you just let me—”


“Yes,” she said, no hesitation, pulling away from him to sit up on the tattered sofa they’d brought into the empty warehouse where they’d been hanging out since Berto had come to live with his father at age sixteen.

They’d been over and over and over this, countless times. It was the conversation that would not die.

Francie wanted to wait.

She wasn’t ready to go all the way.

She wasn’t willing to end up like her mother—forced to drop out of school and get married to some loser before she was twenty.

“Hey.” Berto now pushed himself up so that he was sitting next to her. He tucked her hair behind her ear. “You know I’d wait for you forever, right?”

She looked into his eyes and saw the truth behind his words. “Yeah,” she said on an exhale. “I know.” She also knew how lucky she was. And how unlucky Pauline, her older sister, had been.

She’d been thinking about that a lot lately. Somewhere, out there in the huge wide world, her sister was getting ready to celebrate another birthday.

Francine brought the conversation back to the question Berto hadn’t answered. “You really never met Pauline? Not even once?”

Berto scratched his head through his thick, dark curls. “I don’t think so.”

“She was at the wedding.” When Davio married Francine and Pauline’s mother, and the world went from tenable to terrifying.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t. Are you kidding? My mother was bullshit about Davio getting remarried so soon. Your mother was already pregnant with Shelly, which made it even worse. We spent most of that summer in Long Island with my grandparents, getting shit-faced. Well, I didn’t. At least not all the time.”

He was joking—he’d been a child. Or God, maybe he wasn’t joking.…

Berto laughed at the expression on her face. “I’m kidding. She was a terrible mother, but she didn’t let me drink.”

“How about that one Christmas?” Francine asked. “When we went to San Francisco?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never been to California.”

“I know that Pauline was gone before you moved in with us,” she said. It was odd that Berto’s visits before then had never, not even once, lined up with her older sister’s erratic schedule.

Pauline had hated Davio from the start, and she and Francine were frequently sent to visit their mother’s parents. The year Francie turned six, Pauline’s “bad behavior” got her shipped off to boarding school. And when she finally ran away, the response had been one of weary inevitability.

But Francie had loved her big sister fiercely.

“She was … brilliant, and beautiful, and … I wanted to be her,” she told Berto now.

“You don’t need to be her, because you’re you, and you’re all of those things and more,” he said, catching her mouth with his again.

“I want to find her,” she said, after he’d kissed her breathless. “I’ve always wanted to. Make sure she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is,” Berto reassured her. “Maybe she’s in Paris. Maybe we’ll be neighbors when we finally go to Europe.”

Francine laughed. “That would be perfect. Really unlikely, but …”

After Sheldon graduated from high school, their plan was to pack their bags and escape overseas—travel, far from Davio and the Dellarosa family business.

“We’ll find her,” Berto promised. “Wherever she is. I’ll help you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Francie smiled into the warmth of his eyes, and lost herself in the sweetness of his kiss.

* * *

As Francine now headed toward the YMCA, where she was certain she’d find her little brother, it was hard not to think about that idyllic afternoon nearly ten years ago—one of the last that she’d spent with Berto before he’d turned on her.

Francine had spent much of the past decade searching for her long-lost sister. But then, finally, last year, she’d received an anonymous email that had pointed her toward Pauline.

She’d known it was Berto who’d sent that email—even before today, when he’d confessed as much as she listened in on his conversation with Shel.

It had to have been Berto. There was no one else who’d known about Francie’s quest.

And when Francie went into one of the darkest, shadiest parts of Tampa, to some rotting hovel back behind one of the city’s strip clubs, she’d had the unnerving sensation that she was being watched.

Not in a creepy stalker way. More in an If anything bad happens, I’ll swoop in and save you, Batman way.

And although she’d been prepared to kick ass to find her sister and pull her out of there, it was clear when she first went inside, that the regulars at this particular crack house—or opium den or whatever the hell it was—were expecting her.

They were ready for her arrival. Greeting her politely, even calling her ma’am. Happy to help her carry her barely conscious sister out to her car. Defanged and, in fact, scared shitless by whoever had given them the heads-up that she was coming.

And that had to have been Berto.

She’s in a bad way, he’d written in that email. But despite that warning, Francie had been unprepared. Pauline was only in her thirties, yet she looked nearly elderly, her hair graying and lifeless, her skin stretched tight across her somehow still-beautiful face. She was bone thin, with a huge bulge of baby in front of her.…

The email had said Pauline was pregnant, but Francie also hadn’t been prepared for how far along she was.

As she drove away with her sister unconscious in her backseat, Francine had been swept up by the urgent need to find immediate medical help for both mother and unborn child, and she hadn’t spent much time thinking about the remarkable ease with which she’d pulled off the rescue.

The next few days had been filled with dealing with the medical emergency—with Shelly, Aaron, and Ian’s help.

Pauline was put on methadone, with the understanding that the baby would be born addicted, also in need of detox.

The bad news was that the baby’s first months would be miserable, but the good news was that opiates were less destructive developmentally than alcohol or other drugs. And after he detoxed, with plenty of love and care, he’d be okay.

Francine had also discovered that, thankfully, her sister had been clean and sober right up until the very end of her pregnancy, which further increased the baby’s chance of survival.

Pauline, however, had lost all desire to live. She didn’t want the baby, and after she signed custody of Rory over to Shelly and Aaron, she essentially quit. No one was surprised when she drew her final breath.

And it was only then, after Pauline’s funeral, that Francie finally reached out to the writer of that anonymous email. Thank you, she wrote, keeping it simple.

But her email had bounced back. The recipient had closed that account.

You know I’d wait for you forever, right?

Francine didn’t have to dig deep to stir up the clear-as-day memory of Berto’s youthful promise.

But on its heels came a vivid image from that terrible, horrible day she’d pretended that she was in that sex tape with Aaron—Berto’s hatred for her darkening his eyes, and then changing to an even more awful indifference, as he said, “Whatever.” As then he turned and walked away, leaving her with Davio, who didn’t wait for the door to close before he slapped her again, brain-jarringly hard, across the face.


Now, as always, Francine blinked and boxed it up, and pushed it all aside. She had a job to do. Find Sheldon and bring him home. And then convince Ian that this Mission: Impossible bullshit in Miami was not a job worth risking. Yeah, he’d given his word and said that he’d do it, but f*ck that. It wouldn’t take much for the five of them to vanish, to go fully off the grid, and never be heard from, ever again.

* * *

“This is ridiculously inefficient.”

Ian looked up from the computer to find Phoebe gazing at him from across the table. Because there was only one computer at Zebra, he’d dug a printer and a ream of paper out of the main lockup, and had printed out hard copies of several of the many FBI files that had downloaded onto the laptop’s hard drive. That way, she could read while he sifted through another of the documents onscreen.

“I’m reading this report,” she said, “and I’m finding out all about the father of those kidnapped kids. Guy’s name is Sulislaw Taman Hamad, and I see that he attended Yale and spent a great deal of time in the West, going by the name Steve Hamad. He met and married Lusa Vaszko while he was in school. Then, about five years ago, he fully embraced his standing as some kind of prince from something called the Kazak tribe and denounced his ties to America. But without Internet access, I can’t Google Kazak, so I don’t really know what that means.”

“It means I’m screwed,” Ian said. “It means he’s a fundamentalist with access to money, and a knowledge of the West, so I can pretty much guarantee he’s going to target me after this is over. It also means we take the concept of U.S. law—or international law, for that matter—and throw it right out the window. The only law this douchebag follows is his own. So that divorce that his ex-wife filed for and received? In his mind, it doesn’t exist. Same thing for her custody of the kids. That’s an impossibility in his world. She’s his property, and the kids are, too. He’s taking back what he believes he owns.”

“Hamad may not follow U.S. or international law,” Phoebe pointed out, “but the government of Kazbekistan—”

“Has little to no control over the Kazak region of the country,” Ian finished for her. “And every interest in the repatriation of a nuclear physicist like the ex-wife.”

“Is a draconian husband really going to let his wife work for anyone, let alone a government he probably doesn’t recognize?” Phoebe asked.

“Ex-husband,” Ian corrected her. “Here, he’s her ex-husband.”

“But there, he thinks he’s not,” she countered. “And I was going there. With both feet. Worst-case scenario.”

“Worst case, Dr. Vaszko returns to K-stan in pursuit of her children, and he immediately executes her. Just boom. Gun to the head, she’s dead as soon as she steps off the plane.”

Behind her glasses, Phoebe blinked, but otherwise didn’t react. “Worst case on a world-wide level,” she pointed out, “is she returns to K-stan, builds them a nuclear weapon, and then he kills her.” She leaned across the table. “But really, how likely is that to happen over your far-more-personal-to-her worst case? Again, since I can’t Google Kazak or delve more deeply into our guy’s time spent at Yale to find out how open he’d be to letting his wife work …”

“Maybe he’d do it in exchange for the K-stani government’s help in getting his kids back.”

Phoebe shook her head. “We’ve been told that the ambassador’s not involved.”

“That doesn’t mean the government’s not,” Ian told her. “And the way that we’re tiptoeing into this mission makes me believe that our government knows that their government is—absolutely—involved on some level.”

Ian knew that Phoebe was well aware that that meant rescuing these kids and keeping their mother out of K-stan was a mission that could not fail.

“I could really use a computer,” she said again.

“In Miami,” Ian said, “we’ll have access to more than one.”

“Good, because I also have some questions specific to the K-stani consulate staff’s immunity to U.S. law. As far as I can tell, it’s only the ambassador and his or her family who have such protections. The idea that an embassy or consulate is sacrosanct is a Cold War myth. Yes, there are exceptions—and I’m simplifying, of course.”

“Of course,” Ian murmured.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “This is well outside of my area of expertise, so forgive me if I’m missing something obvious, but from what I’ve read, it seems that if, say, a kidnapped child had access to a cell phone and was able to call for help, saying I’m here, held against my will in the Kazbekistani consulate, the police would be able to go in to investigate.”

“From what I know,” Ian told her, “that’s true.”

She leaned toward him. “So why not simply hack into their security system and set off their fire alarm. Go in with the first responders—”

“If the kidnappers suspected that was happening, they might harm the children. Hamad’s instructions may well have been If I can’t have them, you can’t either.”

“God,” she said, sitting back in her seat.

“You’re not going to be happy when you do get to Google Kazak,” Ian told her.

She leaned in toward him again. “Okay,” she said. “So execute a simple middle-of-the-night break-in. You locate the kidnapped children, barricade yourself in with them, and then hit the fire alarm. While simultaneously giving them your cell phone so they can call nine-one-one for help.”

In theory, it wasn’t all that bad an idea. Still … “It’s not that simple,” Ian told her. “That approach would jeopardize our diplomatic relationship with—”

“Kidnappers,” she interrupted and finished for him. “Our diplomatic relationship with a country whose consulate staff includes lawless murderers and kidnappers. Whom the K-stani government’s leaders would immediately disavow the moment the plot was revealed.”

Again, she had a point. But … “It’s really not that simple,” he said.

“Why not? I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I keep coming back to the fact that this approach—breaking in versus getting back in touch with the Dutchman, whom you haven’t seen in years … A break-in could be done immediately.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “It’s just not. The prep time would be extensive.”

“But with your expertise,” Phoebe argued, “and talents, and experience at this exact type of thing … international jewel thief that you are. Allegedly. And yes, you protest—rather weakly—that you’re nothing of the sort. While at the same time effectively propagating your notoriety. Very effectively, I might add. Which is finally starting to make sense, the longer I know you.”

With his peripheral vision, Ian could see Deb on the far side of the room. The FBI agent was sitting on the sofa and sifting through another printed file. “Get to the point,” he told Phoebe. “This dancing around is not like you.”

She glanced at Deb, too, then leaned in even further, and lowered her voice. “The point is that you’re a liar, Ian Dunn. A professional one. You’re not really a jewel thief, at least certainly not the cat burglar kind. I’m betting it’s been years since you’ve broken past any kind of security system whatsoever. And I think that’s because you don’t have to, not as long as you can talk your way past the guards. Which is something you’re very, very good at, because you’re a con artist.”


He kept his expression bland. “Well, you’re certainly entitled to your uneducated, action-movie-inspired opinion.”

“Or my sophisticated, observant, and erudite opinion,” Phoebe countered. “It really is making sense now. Your unwillingness to break past the piddling little security system at that house near the harbor, despite being naked and knowing that the place was empty, and that there had to be clothes or at least a blanket inside …?”

“There weren’t any blankets on the boat,” he pointed out.

“You’re not stupid,” she countered. “What are the odds of that happening to us twice in a row—that a waterfront vacation home would be completely empty?”

“Actually quite high,” he said. “In this economy? Lotta property for sale here in Sarasota, much of it unoccupied, I imagine.”

“Why would someone take everything out of the house but leave deck furniture? No. You didn’t break in because you couldn’t break in. Some jewel thief.”

Deb’s head was still down—Ian could see her in his peripheral vision as he made himself smile broadly at Phoebe. “You have a very vivid imagination.”

“I do,” she agreed, “combined with excellent deductive reasoning. Is that really the best you can come up with? A condescending nonargument?”

“I don’t need to prove anything to you, or to anyone,” Ian said. “If you want to think I can’t break past a basic home security system, well, honey, you go ahead and think that.”

“Condescending nonargument complete with belittling term of endearment it is,” Phoebe said. “How about your immediate decision to use both your past relationship with the Dutchman and the threat from the Dellarosas to get you inside the consulate—without waiting to see what kind of info the FBI has on the building’s security system?”

Ian laughed. “So now my desire to use the easiest, simplest, quickest approach is somehow sinister? Seriously, Pheebs—”

“Seriously, Eee,” she mimicked him. “I’m your lawyer. I won’t tell.”

“Yeah,” he said, “because anyone you try to tell will be convinced that you’re crazy. Which you are.”

“Don’t forget my vivid imagination,” she shot back at him. “Honey.”

Ian sighed heavily.

“Before you make some excuse—you need another sandwich, have to take a leak, want to check on your brother—and walk away from me, take a second to listen to this. It’s occurred to me, as you’re figuring out your big con-game plan, that if you do manage to rescue—” She stopped, corrected herself. “—when you rescue those kids, it might be worth thinking ahead. Maybe set something up that makes the Dutchman and his buddy Steve believe that the kids and their mother are dead. Because what little I do know about the father? If he’s got money—and you seem to think he does—he’s going to try again. That means this threat to national security exists as long as he’s …” She cleared her throat. “Alive. Or as long as she and the kids are. And I’m betting it’s easier to fake-kill them than it is to fake- or even real-kill him.”

Ian gazed across the table at her. Again, she had a very good point.

She didn’t wait for him to make any more noise along the vivid imagination line. “So that’s it,” she continued. “Discussion concluded. You now know what I think. You heard my suggestion. If you can use anything I said to protect those kids, then good. If you can’t, that’s okay, too, because just getting them out of there is …” She nodded her head, her eyes behind those glasses so warm and brown. “It’s enough. It’s plenty. I didn’t mean to imply that you needed to do more than that. I just thought—”

“Oh, don’t go soft on me now,” he said. “It’s hot when you get all in my face, order me around, grab me by the junk and squeeze—and suggest you know the best way to risk my life, the lives of my team members, and the lives of these kids. Your life, too, sweetheart, should our nasty friend Steve find out you helped.”

She didn’t respond. She just gazed at him with those eyes.

Ian couldn’t help himself. He went into total a*shole mode. He drew in a deep breath. “Mmmm,” he said. “Could you move your hand a little higher and …? Ooh, that’s nice.”

“Don’t do that,” she said quietly. “Just … don’t.”

Ian spoke just as softly. “Don’t you be foolish and na?ve and make assumptions about what I am or am not capable of.”

Phoebe blinked first. “Fair enough. But I wish you would be honest with me. It must be exhausting to never really be yourself—not even with your own brother. Maybe especially not with your brother …”

“You want to know my secrets?” Ian asked her. “You’ve gotta sleep with me first.”

“Wow, I must be hitting very close to home,” she countered. “For what it’s worth, I respect and admire you enormously. I happen to think you’re brave and extremely intelligent and generally just … really pretty wonderful. And I know you don’t know me and certainly have no reason to trust me, but … I’m on your side. And not just because I’m paid to be.”

Time hung for a second as he held her gaze, and held it, and held it.

It was then, thank God, that his phone rang. “It’s Francine,” he said.

As he reached for the phone, Deb approached, which meant his conversation with Phoebe, double thank God, was over, out of necessity. Aaron, too, emerged from the bedroom.

“Seven Charlie,” Ian said, after hitting talk.

“Oscar five alpha,” France said. “I got him.”

Ian looked at his brother and said the words, knowing Aaron needed to hear them. “Shel’s safe.”

“Thank God,” Phoebe breathed.

Aaron nodded and disappeared into the bedroom to get Rory ready to travel. “Anyone following?” Ian asked Francine.

“Nope,” she told him, and Ian shook his head, so that Phoebe and Deb understood that she and Shelly were free and clear.

“Head for Miami,” he ordered. “I’ll be in touch.” He hung up the phone. “Let’s do it. Let’s get out of here.”

But before he could start organizing which of the supplies and equipment he wanted to take—all of it, because he was on a budget and God knows what they were going to need—Phoebe blocked his path.

“You want me to make you another sandwich,” she asked him. “That this time you can actually taste while you eat …?”

And Ian realized that she’d seen through him. She’d known how terribly worried he’d been about his brother-in-law, and what a blessed relief it was to know, for certain, that Sheldon was secure.

But he wasn’t willing to admit it. Not any of it. Not yet. He mentally bitchslapped himself. Make that not ever. In a matter of days, this assignment would be over, and they’d both return to their previously scheduled lives.

At least Phoebe would.

Ian was going to make sure of that.

“No, thanks,” he told her, then got to work.

* * *

“There they are.” Aaron pointed, leaning into the front, as Ian pulled their borrowed car toward the back of the truck stop’s nearly empty parking lot.


And there they were. Francine and Shel, sitting on the hood of Martell Griffin’s car. Their body language was not only easy to read but followed their individual, usual pattern to a T. France was leaning back, supporting herself with straight arms, hands braced behind her on the hood, in a position of open strength that Ian knew was deceptive. Not the strong part—she was that and more. The relaxed openness was pure pretense. Francie was more tightly wound and secretive than anyone he knew, save for his own self.

As for Shel … His shoulders were hunched and he was curled into himself, as if he were cold—or as if he’d recently been grabbed and knocked unconscious by someone who should have greeted him with a hug.

Shel straightened up, though, as he saw them approaching, and Aaron breathed his relief. “He’s okay. He looks okay.” He put his hand on Ian’s shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you for stopping here. For arranging this.”

Deb had wanted to push straight through, meet Francine and Sheldon in Miami. But Ian had insisted they pull into this open-all-night throwback to the 1970s, about ten miles south of Fort Myers. And it wasn’t just because he knew Aaron was anxious to get eyes—and hands—on Shel. This was a good place to meet the other federal agent, Yashi, too.

But it wouldn’t hurt to let his brother think this was all for him, so Ian said, “Anything to make it a little easier.”

“Yeah, right,” Aaron scoffed, then slapped Ian upside his head. Not gently.

“Ow!”

“I know that this is more about ditching this car than making it easier,” Aaron said, lowering his voice in an imitation of Ian—that is, if Eee sounded like a moron. “I’m still mad at you, f*ck-face.”

Ian glanced in the rearview mirror to find Phoebe watching him, her eyebrows up. He wasn’t sure what that look meant, but it couldn’t be good.

“Yashi’s ETA is between five and ten minutes,” Deb reported from beside him in the front seat.

That was good, because Aaron was right. Yashi’s arrival meant they could shift over to his vehicle and leave behind this car that Ian and Phoebe had “borrowed.” Not driving a car that could light up the databases of thousands of police officers was always a good thing when one didn’t have time for an arrest booking in one’s busy schedule.

As Ian parked next to Martell’s car, Aaron had the door open and was out before the wheels stopped rolling.

“I’m gonna hit the head,” Ian announced, as outside the car, his brother threw himself into his husband’s arms. He couldn’t watch, because it was too intense. Too sincere. Too raw, too real.

He’d always thought that seeing Aaron with Shel, and witnessing the power and passion of their love for each other, was probably a lot like seeing God. Particularly at an emotion-filled time like this one. You couldn’t look directly or you’d go blind from the sheer perfection.

Ian turned to Deb. “I can trust you not to drive off without me, right?”

“I’d prefer it if you waited in the car until Yashi got here,” the federal agent said tightly.

“What, do you think I’m going to run away?” he asked.

Deb cleared her throat delicately. “I think anything is possible, now that you’ve got your brother-in-law back.”

“I’ll go with him,” Phoebe volunteered. “Babysit.”

Ian shot her an exasperated look in the rearview mirror, and she smiled.

“Yeah, that doesn’t make me happy,” Deb said with a frown.

“Too bad.” He disconnected the wires and the engine went dead. “I gotta whiz.”

“Just stay close to the sleeping baby,” Phoebe advised Deb as Ian got out of the car and stretched. “If you’ve got Rory, you’ve got Aaron and Shel. And if you’ve got Aaron and Shel, you’ve got Ian. And yes. It’s adorable.”

Shaking his head, Ian didn’t wait. He headed for the distant building, scanning the structure and open parking lot around it, making sure they truly were alone. He didn’t slow even as he heard Phoebe running with a weird, scraping shuffle to catch up. “Adorable,” he repeated.

“Well, it is,” she insisted. Everything she was wearing—not just her footwear—was too big. Still, he couldn’t shake that image of her on the boat, in only his T-shirt and her panties, hair loose around her shoulders. Magnificent.

She’d found a ponytail holder of some sort at Zebra, which was a shame.

He focused on watching the single 18-wheeler that was idling out in the truck parking area. Otherwise, the place was quiet; the filling pumps, both gas and diesel, were deserted.

“Just a few hours ago, you accused me of having too much fun,” he said. “I now think you’re enjoying this a little too much.”

Phoebe snorted. “Yeah, because back at the Apocalypse Hut, while you and Aaron were packing up your armory, I took a moment to talk to Deb. Who let me know that, no, I will not be able to call my mom to tell her I’m okay, nor will I be able to provide my new bosses at BH and S with the reason as to why I’m blowing off my fabulous new job over the next few workdays. So my mother is going to think I’ve been murdered, and I’m going to be fired. On my personal fun index that’s a negative five, thanks so much.”

Phoebe had a mom. Ian had never actually thought about that. Most of the people he dealt with didn’t have moms, or any kind of normal family life. Or if they did, they didn’t talk about it.

“I’m sorry about that,” he told Phoebe as a somewhat stout middle-aged woman—the truck driver—came out of the building and headed for her rig.

“I know,” she said. “After this is over, I’m going to make Deb call the law firm and get me my job back, and apologize to my mother, too. She’ll do it. She’s pretty nice.”

He glanced at her, but she said nothing about asking him to make a call—either because she thought Ian’s request might hurt more than it would help, or she was convinced that the second this mission was over, Ian would vanish into the night.

“What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?” Phoebe asked, as if she’d been thinking the very same thing. “With Aaron’s criminal record cleared, you could finally leave the country. Get away from Davio Dellarosa, once and for all. I hear New Zealand’s nice. Probably a fair number of jewels to heist there, too. That was a joke,” she added as Ian glanced at her again.

“When we get to Miami,” he told her, “you can help with the research if you still want to—”

“I do,” she said.

“Good,” he said, opening the door and going in first. Manners were put on hold when crazy a*sholes were gunning for him. But the convenience store was empty with the exception of a longhaired, tie-dye-wearing kid working the cash register. “Thanks. But other than that, your primary job is going to be to keep your head down, be quiet, and stay out of the way.”

“I’m good at that,” she said.

He looked at her.

“I am. Excuse me,” she called to the clerk, in a southern accent that was pure coal miner’s daughter. “Does your men’s room have windows or …?”

“Oh, come on,” Ian said. “That’s what you call being quiet?”

“You didn’t say I was supposed to start now,” she countered quietly in her regular voice, putting the sugar back in when she raised it again. “Or any kind of exit, maybe a back door …?”


Doh-ahr. She made the word have two syllables.

“Um, no?” the kid called back. “I mean yeah, there’s a window, but it doesn’t open.”

“Thank you,” she called. “It prolly does, so FYI, I’m just going to stand in the doorway, with the door propped open. No worries, nothing funny or freaky going on.” She laughed in a southern accent, too. “You know how it is. Just keeping my eye on my man.”

“Really?” Ian said as she leaned back against the open men’s room doh-ahr, waving cheerfully at the wide-eyed clerk. “You mistrust me that much? What about that whole adorable If you’ve got Rory, you’ve got Aaron and Shel thing?”

She smiled sweetly up at him. “For all I know, Rory’s been trained to crawl out of his car seat after hypnotizing whoever’s watching him, and he, Aaron, Sheldon, and Francine are already halfway to Contact Point Aquarius, where you’ll meet them after escaping through the bathroom window, riding away on a bicycle that you stashed back behind this facility four years ago, in anticipation of this exact scenario.”

“Except if your theory’s right and I’m just a con man, I wouldn’t have to do all that. Instead I’d merely say that I did.”

“I’ve been told by a very reliable source,” Phoebe said, “not to underestimate you. Don’t assume that you know what I can or cannot do.” She lowered her voice in an imitation of Ian that was significantly better than Aaron’s had been. “And I know. I’m paraphrasing. But that was the gist of it. So this is me, not assuming.” She gestured for him to go in. “If you’re afraid I’ll peek, feel free to use a stall.”

Ian had to laugh at that. “You are funny.”

“And yet my earlier joke about the bike fell decidedly flat.”

“Ah, f*ck it,” he said. “I know we had a deal and that I’m not supposed to, but—”

He kissed her.

And it wasn’t a repeat of the dry little peck that he’d given her back on the yacht, but rather a great, huge, tongue-in-her-mouth, full-body contact, souls-are-probably-about-to-touch event as he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his knee between her legs. At least that’s what he hoped it looked like from the cashier’s perspective.

Sadly, Phoebe didn’t melt against him, which was a shame, since he would’ve loved a reenactment of that kiss beneath the dock. Instead, she said, “Wait! Don’t! Gahhh!”

But he kissed her again and again, and in doing so swallowed her words—at least he thought the last one was gahhh—as he lifted her up so that she was straddling him in a most suggestive way, even as he pulled her with him into the men’s room. The doh-ahr shut behind them with a solid-sounding clunk.

Only then did he put her down, albeit reluctantly, because she was warm and soft in all the right places, and although she was a larger-than-average woman, her butt fit damn near perfectly in his larger-than-average hands.

Plus, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and having her pressed up against him was, absolutely, as fantastic as he’d imagined.

“You a*shole,” she started, but if she’d said anything more, it was drowned out by the sound of the clerk hammering on the door.

“No sex in the bathrooms! No sex in the bathrooms!” the kid was shouting. “You come out here right now, because I will not hesitate to call the police!”

With one last exasperated look at Ian—because she clearly knew right from the start that this was why he’d kissed her and pulled her in here—Phoebe yanked open the door. “No one’s having sex in here,” she told the boy.

“Damn straight,” the kid shouted, “because you are out of here! Both of you! Right now!”

Phoebe held her hands up as she went out of the bathroom. “All right, all right, calm down, it really wasn’t what you think,” she said, adding, “What? No!” as she turned around.

No doubt she’d expected to see Ian right behind her. But Ian had already moved so that he was standing in front of a urinal, where he was taking that leak. Obviously it was now or never.

“Sorry, can’t stop once I start,” he said. “And I sure don’t want to piss on your floor. All the way from here to the front door? Hate to make you clean that up.”

“Don’t you dare leave without me!” Phoebe said.

And as Ian looked at her over his shoulder, right before the door swung closed, he caught a flash of real fear in her eyes as she added, “Please, Ian …”

Shit. He’d pushed it too far. “I’m not going anywhere,” he called, even as he heard the clerk berating her out in the hall.

“This is a family-owned establishment,” the kid—who was actually older than he’d looked from a distance—was informing her.

“Still not going anywhere,” Ian called. As he flushed and zipped and went to wash his hands, he whistled loudly, so that she could hear him.

“You get your skanky ass off this property,” the kid said. “I don’t want to see you in here again.”

“I’m the one with the skanky ass?” Phoebe asked, apparently reassured enough by Ian’s whistling to take umbrage. “Why am I the one with the skanky ass? Are you going to give him the same warning?”

“Yes, I am,” the kid said.

And sure enough as Ian shook his hands dry—no paper towels—and pushed the door open with his shoulder, the kid turned his venomous glare onto him. Ian stopped whistling and looked back at him, eyebrows raised.

“Get your skanky ass off this property,” the kid said. “Sir.”

“Hey,” Phoebe said. “Why does he get a sir?”

Ian grabbed her arm, and pulled her, with him, out of there. “This is what we, in the con business, call making a spectacle of ourselves. Let’s try to avoid that from now on.”

“Except if Davio or his men do come here, looking for us, they’re going to be looking for a giant, two gay guys, a baby, and a really gorgeous blonde. Mr. No-Sex-in-the-Bathrooms is going to describe two probably drunk people who staggered in. Plus, he thinks I’m a prostitute. We can double down on that by …” She stopped him, glancing back into the store through the big plate-glass windows. Ian looked, too, and sure enough, the clerk was still watching them warily.

“Perfect,” she said, and then made what was, absolutely, the international two-handed gesture for sexual intercourse. She then added a couple of exaggerated hip thrusts, saying, “I want to make this absolutely clear, because this guy’s kind of an idiot.” She then rubbed her fingers together, after which she held out her hand, palm up, as if to say Pay me.

Ian cracked up. “That’s actually kind of scary. Sex with a mime. Do I have to pay extra to make sure you don’t do the trapped-in-a-box thing while we’re doing it?”

“He’s still watching,” she said. “Maybe we should shake on the deal.”

“Shake? I don’t think so.” He picked her up in a firefighter’s hold, her belly against his shoulder, his hand, again, against her ass.

Phoebe whooped her surprise, but then laughed, as he carried her around the side of the building.

He put her down carefully, which meant that the entire front of her body slid against his chest, which made her T-shirt ride up—and that meant his hands were now against the soft, warm smoothness of her waist and back.


Which made his mouth go dry, especially when she locked her arms around his neck instead of stepping back and putting proper distance between them.

“Thanks for not leaving,” she said quietly.

“And put you in danger? You didn’t ask to be here. Frankly, I didn’t either,” he said. “But this is what it is, and … I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

Her face was in shadow, but still, somehow, he could see her eyes behind those glasses. He could see that she believed him. Believed, and trusted, and …

Maybe even, despite everything she’d said through the course of what had been a very long day and night, maybe she wanted him to kiss her, too.

But Ian couldn’t kiss her. He wanted to, but God, he couldn’t. Not after what he’d just told her. Instead, he said, “Also? I figured it was probably best for me to leave that bicycle back there for a real emergency.”

She blinked, but then she laughed as she understood, and she finally stepped back. Realizing her shirt was askew, she used both hands to pull it down, making that strip of skin disappear.

But the joke he’d made wasn’t enough to soften the impact of his macho promise.

And as they walked back toward the cars—Yashi had arrived, and the team was transferring their supplies out of the stolen vehicle and into his SUV—Phoebe must’ve sensed his unease. She glanced at Ian and said, “Rash?”

He met her eyes only briefly as he nodded, because yes, things had gotten much too serious. “Little one,” he lied.

Phoebe nodded and didn’t call him on it. But Ian caught her watching him, oddly subdued, as they organized who was going in what vehicle—Yashi taking the stolen car back to Sarasota to return it, get another, and pick up Martell—and he had a strong suspicion that she knew the truth.

Ian drove on to Miami with Aaron, Shel, and Rory, and put Phoebe in the other car with Deb and Francine.

As if, somehow, that would help.