Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

“Ah, shit,” Ian said on an exhale.

And Phoebe looked up to see Martell Griffin standing—and smiling—in front of the video camera that was positioned right outside the front door.

“We knew this might happen,” she told Ian, even as her own heart sank. “I mean, his client is the FBI. It actually gives me a sense of renewed hope and security that they, you know, found us.” She pumped a fist through the air. “Yay, Team America.”

The face he made said, Are you kidding me?

Aaron, meanwhile, looked up from where he’d been sitting on the lower bunk, head in his hands. He’d been grimly quiet ever since his brother had told him that Martell Griffin was the liaison to a government agency who wanted Ian to lead a rescue op.

“Kidnapped children,” Aaron had said, incredulously repeating what he’d heard Phoebe say just moments earlier. “How many kidnapped children—and please don’t say a busload.”

“Two,” Ian had told him. “Their mother’s a nuclear physicist—she’s believed to be the real target. Intel puts the kids inside a foreign consulate in Miami. They need someone without any government connections to go in and get them out.”

Aaron took that news relatively calmly. “So what happened? You took this meeting with this Griffin guy, and with Manny’s heart attack putting him in the hospital, crazy Davio was suddenly in charge, and he immediately thought you were doing some kind of double cross?”


“That’s as good a guess as any,” Ian had said, obviously intentionally leaving out the part where he’d been approached about this “job” while serving time in prison.

He’d also failed to mention to his brother that he had a connection to the alleged dangerous kidnapper, Georg Vanderzee, AKA the Dutchman. Phoebe had noticed that, too. Was it because Aaron didn’t know the man, or because he did, and he would’ve exploded at that news?

Since they were all still trapped in the tiny panic room, where there was no privacy, she hadn’t gotten a chance to ask Ian about that.

After making the initial call to Martell, they’d gone into wait mode—both brothers preoccupied with their own dark thoughts.

Phoebe had tried to engage Aaron in a conversation—“So, you and Shelly were high school sweethearts?” But he’d answered monosyllabically, so she hadn’t pushed for more information.

Still, there was a story there, and Phoebe suspected it was a good one.

But now Aaron joined them at the monitor, looking over Phoebe’s shoulder at Martell Griffin, who was still smiling expectantly into the camera.

“Who’s that?” Aaron asked, pointing to a woman with jet-black hair—clearly it was dyed—who stood slightly behind Martell.

“I don’t know,” Ian said. “But she’s … certainly interesting.”

As they watched, the woman—whoever she was—covered her interestingness with Martell’s shirt.

“We still hold a powerful hand,” Phoebe reminded Ian. “They need your help to save those kids. Now. Not in a week or two. We have plenty of food in here. We can certainly wait—”

“We’re not going to wait,” Aaron said. “We have to find Shel, fast, and—”

Ian cut his brother off. “I know.”

Outside the house, Martell continued to gaze up at the camera, with that expectant half smile on his handsome face.

“Jesus, he’s gonna kick my ass, and love every minute of it,” Ian finally said. He turned to Phoebe. “Do it. Call him. You know what I need.”

She punched Martell’s number into the panic room’s phone. “Need as opposed to want,” she clarified. She nodded. She did know. Ian wanted the money and the equipment and the high-tech support.

But all that he needed was guaranteed safety—witness protection program level—for his brother, and for his brother’s family. He needed full amnesty for Aaron, which would give the younger man a clean slate. He also needed the federal authorities to dismiss any potential aiding-and-abetting charges against Sheldon and his sister Francine, who’d helped Aaron hide from the police for all this time.

And Phoebe knew that she had been right in assuming that the three of them, Aaron, Shelly, and Francine, worked with Ian—that they were, indeed, part of his team. Doing God knows what—anything was possible, from contracting out as private-sector spies for the CIA and FBI, to actually being a gang of international jewel thieves. Bottom line, Ian had asked for full immunity for all of them, in connection to the impending rescue mission.

In other words, they would not only be cleared of any past charges, but the authorities also wouldn’t arrest them for helping Ian break into the Kazbekistani consulate.

Ian’s own immunity, however, was not a need. He’d made that very clear. His own immunity and safety were negotiable.

Ian caught Phoebe’s arm before she pushed the button that would connect the call.

“A detail you need to know: We need to walk out of here,” he told her, again using that word. “Aaron and me. No questions, no stopping us. Towels over our heads so the legions of cops out there don’t see us. Free and clear. We’ll need a vehicle, and I want you to be the driver. No one follows, no tracking devices, no surveillance.”

“Um.” She chose her words carefully. “What if I … don’t want to be the driver?” she asked.

“Deal’s off,” he said. He smiled. “I should’ve said need, not want. I need you to drive, which works out nicely since you, apparently, need to help save those poor, unfortunate, helpless, frightened little kids. Win/win.”

Phoebe looked at him. “Desperate,” she said. “You left desperate off your list of adjectives. Forlorn. Vulnerable. Terrified.” She’d intended to mock him, but realized that instead she was talking herself into it.

And Ian knew that. “Exactly,” he said.

She sighed and placed the call, circling her shoulders and stretching her neck from side to side as prep for the impending legal boxing match with Martell.

“Well, hey there,” the other lawyer said, way too cheerfully as, still on camera, he answered his phone. “Let’ssss … make a deal.”

* * *

Clearwater, Florida

Ten years ago


“But you’ll lose your scholarship,” Sheldon told Aaron as they stood shivering in the night, in the shadows of the wall surrounding their private high school.

Aaron had sneaked out of the Brentwood dorms, and Shelly, a day student, had walked all the way over from his father’s house on the other side of town. He hadn’t dared drive, for fear someone would recognize his car.

It was late and it was cold—freezing for Florida—but Aaron had been adamant that they have this conversation in person. Tonight. And Shel had never been very good at telling Aaron no.

“F*ck my scholarship.” The wind off the Gulf was sharp and damp, and Aaron’s shoulders were hunched against it, his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he glared back at Shel. He never had gloves, or if he had them, he never wore them, even on the coldest winter nights. “What about you? What happens when your father finds out?”

This nightmare had started last weekend, when they’d realized that someone had seen them together.

Not friend together. Together together. Romantically together.

And suddenly, what had been one of the loveliest evenings of Shel’s short life—a beach blanket, a secluded stretch of dunes, a gorgeously setting sun, his wonderful, beautiful boyfriend Aaron in his arms, whispers of I love you, too—became a reason to panic.

It was bound to happen. Sooner or later.

He should’ve known it wouldn’t last—his ridiculous happiness and his sense of finally belonging. In fact, it still seemed surreal.

It had started mere months ago, when Shelly got hired as a math tutor for Aaron Dunn, one of Brentwood’s star football players. He’d expected to have to feed stolen test answers to a gorilla, but instead had found a smart, articulate friend.

He and Aaron watched the same movies, the same TV shows. They liked the same books. Aaron may have been math-challenged, but his writing skills were excellent, and he read more than anyone else on campus. Maybe even more than Sheldon.

They’d started hanging out together outside of tutoring time, and they’d talked and talked. And talked.

And then, miraculously, one day, a few months ago, Aaron had leaned in and kissed him.

Turned out Shel wasn’t the only kid at Brentwood hiding his sexual orientation from the world.

Turned out Aaron had been crushing back on Shel for months.

It was like The Wizard of Oz, where a world that Shel hadn’t even realized was in drab black and white suddenly exploded in amazing Technicolor.

But then, last weekend, they’d gotten careless on the beach, and today, the shit had hit the fan.

Today, they’d found that someone hadn’t just seen them together, someone had taken video. Of them. Together.


He and Aaron had found this out at the exact same time as the rest of the students at Brentwood—when the video was posted to the school’s social message board on the Internet.

True, the video was crudely made. It included about a dozen still photos of Sheldon and Aaron on campus—some quite blurry, and none at all incriminating—simple shots of them hanging out together. Those pictures were edited—badly—into a montage with pirated clips of some poorly produced gay porn from the 1980s. The hairstyles alone were blindingly awful.

It would’ve been easy to shrug off as a joke, or as an attempt at bullying—Shel had had plenty of experience with that—except for the fact that the actual incriminating footage from their beach blanket encounter was tacked on to the end.

Yes, it was alternately grainy and blurry, with the colors completely washed out. But that was definitely Aaron. Shel was harder to identify. In fact, he could’ve been anyone in a T-shirt and jeans—male or female, blonde, brunette, or redhead, truth be told. Anyone with short hair, that is, since the camera only caught the back of his badly lit head and the exposed nape of his neck.

But then, whoever had crept up on them and shot that footage had pulled back, right at the end, to include Shel’s car in the frame. And there it was. His license plate clear as day as, in the shot’s background, he went down on his boyfriend.

Aaron wanted to throw himself on the grenade. He wanted to step forward and publicly admit that, yes, that was him on tape. His plan was to announce that yes, he was gay, and to say that he’d borrowed Shel’s car to have this rendezvous with his boyfriend.

He wanted Shel to pretend he knew nothing, and even to condemn him.

What happens when your father finds out? Aaron was still waiting for Shelly to answer his question.

“I don’t know,” Shel finally said. And it wasn’t just his father’s reaction that he was worried about. No one knew his secret. Not even his sister Francine.

But if Aaron took the blame, he’d not only lose his scholarship, he’d be kicked out of school, out of the dorms. He’d have nowhere to go with his mother dead, his father in prison, and his older brother in the Navy, serving overseas.

“I can’t let you do it,” Shel said. “I can’t.”

“Yeah, you can,” Aaron said softly, almost gently, as he looked at Shel, his heart in his beautiful hazel eyes. “When I said I love you, I meant it.”

“I love you, too,” Shel whispered now, past his heart in his throat. “Which is why I can’t—”

“No one’s gonna kill me for this,” Aaron interrupted. “Ian knows. Really. I know you don’t believe that, but he’s always known. I’m me, and he knows me and he loves me. But we both know your father’s a f*cking lunatic. God knows what he’ll do, where he’ll send you. No. Shel, you’ve gotta let me do it.” He stepped forward then, his hand warm against the side of Shelly’s face, his thumb gentle as he brushed it across Shelly’s lips. “It’s only a few months before you graduate, a few months after that until you go to MIT. I’ll meet you there. We’ll make it work. I borrowed your car that night,” he repeated. “Say it.”

And suddenly Shelly knew. What Aaron could say. How they could fix this—for both of them. “You borrowed my car,” he repeated, stepping back, away from Aaron’s hypnotizing touch. “To spend the day with your girlfriend.”

Aaron was already shaking his head. “Have you seen that video?”

“It could be a girl.”

“With short hair?” Aaron scoffed. “About your height and weight?”

“That’s the story we’re going with,” Shel insisted. If you don’t … He didn’t say the words, but they hung in the cold night air, between them. He felt his eyes well with tears. “Please, Air. At least try to save yourself.”

“Save myself,” Aaron repeated, as the moonlight made his eyes glisten, too. “By hiding. By lying. By making it be only about the sex, when the truth is I would die for you.”

Sheldon kissed him. He couldn’t not. “Please,” he whispered.

And Aaron nodded as he wiped his face. God forbid anyone ever see him cry, not even Shel. But he said, “This world? It’s f*cked up.” He gestured with his head, toward town, in a move that was pure Aaron Dunn. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

“You don’t have to,” Shel said. “I’m perfectly capable of—” taking care of myself.

“I know,” Aaron cut him off. “It’s not about that. It’s about me being scared that this bullshit’s gonna backfire, that this could be the last time I see you for a while.”

It won’t be, Shel wanted to say, to reassure him. And if it is … Whatever happens, I’ll find you again. Somehow. Some way. Count on that. But he couldn’t speak.

“Come on,” Aaron said, and he started down the road toward town, glancing back to make sure Shelly was following.

Shel jogged a little to catch up, to keep up, and when he did, Aaron smiled at him and sang in a purposely funny falsetto, “Ain’t no mountain high enough …”

To keep me away from you, babe.

Their eyes met and caught, and Sheldon knew they were both thinking the exact same thing.

Always you. Only you. Always and forever.

Aaron’s hands were back in his jeans pockets, and Shel had tucked his own into his jacket. He wanted to reach out and hold hands as they took this, their potential final walk together.

But he didn’t dare.

* * *

Once Ian agreed to sell his soul to Martell’s government overlord, things moved quickly.

Mostly because their answer to nearly all of his demands was no.

No, he couldn’t have the additional manpower he’d requested.

No, he couldn’t have the limitless equipment, vehicles, and weaponry he’d asked for in order to properly surveil the consulate and perform the rescue op. There wasn’t enough time to get him sanitized materials—that is, equipment that couldn’t be traced back to the U.S. government.

Instead, he was going to get a suitcase—a small suitcase—of cash, from which to outfit, arm, and hire his support team. He’d also have access to an FBI undercover operative to assist him in making untraceable cash purchases. But heads up, because that suitcase would not be bottomless. And if he failed to rescue the kids? He’d have to pay the money back.

All of it.

Another no came in response to Ian’s request for full autonomy. What he wanted was to drive off with Aaron and Phoebe in an unmarked car, into the darkness of the night. He’d do what he had to do to rescue the kids and not reappear until he had them safely in hand.

Martell had laughed in his face.

Oh, the FBI got Ian an unmarked car. And it was fine with them if Phoebe drove it. But one of their agents—Deb Erlanger, the hot goth dominatrix—was going to be sitting securely in the back with Aaron, while Martell trailed behind them in a second vehicle.

And Phoebe was going to drive them not to Ian’s choice of a securely hidden location from which to prep for his mission-from-hell, but rather to a so-called government safe house that another FBI agent was currently setting up—first here in Sarasota, then down in Miami.

So Martell, Deb, and one of her FBI buddies were going to be Ian’s babysitters. Or prison guards. Or personal shoppers. Whatever their official titles were, they’d be on hand to meddle and get in his way but would be completely unavailable to help him out with the actual rescue—when he’d most need their assistance.


Thanks, Uncle Sam.

It was the worst of both worlds. No real support or top-of-the-line equipment, but constant eyes on him, watching and micromanaging his every move.

As if that weren’t enough, there was one more, great, big, screaming no that won the honor of pissing Ian off the most. It was attached to the only yes that he’d gotten—and Ian had to admit that was, really, the only yes he’d needed—the yes to his request for amnesty and/or immunity for Aaron, Shelly, and Francine. For himself, too.

If Ian could pull this off and successfully rescue these kids from their kidnappers, they were all going to get a fresh start. A clean slate.

It was exactly what his brother needed. It would allow Aaron and Shel and their baby to leave the country, if they wanted to.

Still, of course, this being the FBI with whom Ian was negotiating, there was a catch.

The amnesty and immunity wouldn’t be granted until after the mission was over and those kids were safe.

So that meant Ian would be attempting a very high risk, highly dangerous job with not only the Dellarosas’ private army trying to find and kill both him and Aaron, but an entire cadre of law enforcement—local, state, and federal—chasing them down as well.

Hoo-yah.

During part of the conversation, Phoebe had put Martell on speakerphone, because he’d wanted specifics as to how Ian was intending to pull off the children’s rescue.

Ian had laughed when Martell asked, but then he realized that the lawyer was dead serious. So Ian had made some noise about having to see the FBI’s intelligence as well as their files and reports on the consulate, because he knew that saying Frankly, bro, I haven’t yet given it a single f*cking thought would not be well received.

But the truth was, he hadn’t given it a single f*cking thought since he’d left Northport prison. His complete focus had been to make sure Aaron and his family were safe. Also? He had no intention of taking on a no-win scenario. No, thanks. No way in hell was he going to let himself get pressured or blackmailed into running this mission. He had his own battles to fight. The FBI was going to have to find someone else—someone more capable.

Or so Ian had told himself, even while knowing that—after he’d gotten Aaron and his family to safety—he was probably going to volunteer to help.

Just help. A little. Because, after all, he did know the alleged kidnapper, the douchebag known as the Dutchman.

Thinking about the Dutchman, AKA Georg Vanderzee, always brought back the sudden, sharp, and extremely unwanted memory of the ornate wallpaper in the man’s palace dining room, high in the mountains of northern Kazbekistan. That wallpaper had been a mix of textures—some kind of velvet forest green pattern, backed with a metallic, shiny gold. It was far too baroquely self-indulgent for Ian’s taste, even to start with. But it became sickening when sprayed with bright red blood …

Ian pushed the images away, along with the heaviness of the guilt he carried for not killing the bastard when he’d had the chance.

Away. Away. There’d be plenty of time to think about the Dutchman, and to figure out how best to save those kids, after he got Aaron the hell out of here, and after he then—somehow—figured out a way to extract Shel from whatever Dellarosa dungeon he was currently languishing in.

More info to keep secret from his new FBI bosses.

Of course, right after Ian had agreed to the FBI’s deal, the universe gave him one last bitchslap when the local TV station ran footage from a news copter circling this house.

It showed the massive destruction, and all of the police and emergency vehicles in the street.

It looked bad—really bad.

So bad that Ian had had to break radio silence. He’d had to call Francine, who’d gone, with little Rory, to Contact Point Charlie. She was the only one who’d actually followed his protocol and checked into the Ocean Breeze motel, up by the airport, under the alias of Charles.

Ian called the motel and got patched through to Ms. Charles’s room. She answered, and yes, she’d seen the news footage and was preparing to return to the neighborhood, to see if she couldn’t somehow help. And wouldn’t that have been grand, if she and the baby got their asses grabbed by Davio Dellarosa’s men, who were no doubt still lurking in the area despite the heavy police presence.

Since the negotiating was over and done, Martell won the short-straw assignment of going to meet Francine. His task was to escort her to the FBI safe house where they’d regroup under Uncle Sam’s watchful eye.

Yeah, this was going to suck.

Phoebe was looking at Ian as he got off the phone with Francine, so he said, “Yes?” because she clearly had a burning question for him.

“I’m sorry this isn’t working out the way we’d hoped it would,” she said, as the phone immediately rang again.

Aaron picked it up. It was probably the call announcing that their car had finally arrived.

“Yeah, well,” Ian said to Phoebe, because really, what else could he say? Dressed as she was in too-big borrowed jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair still damp from the pool, makeup rinsed from her face, those clunky glasses on her nose, she looked impossibly young and sweet.

“If you want,” she said, “after I drive you to wherever you’re going, I could attempt to contact the Dellarosas. I know I said I couldn’t, but I’ve been thinking about it and … Jerry Bryant’s not really your uncle.”

Ian shook his head and answered, even though she’d made it a statement instead of a question. “No.”

“It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Bryant was hired by Manny Dellarosa, to be your contact while you were …” She glanced over at Aaron, who was on the phone, but still, discreetly, didn’t say while you were in jail. She cleared her throat. “Anyway, someone at the law firm might know how to get it touch with him. Manny, that is. If I can reach him—when I reach him—I can explain what’s going on. With you. Without going into any breach-of-national-security details, of course.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work.”

“It might,” she countered.

“No,” Ian said, “it won’t.”

“Car’s here,” Aaron announced, interrupting them. “It’s time to go.”

Ian’s brother’s desire to find Shelly trumped his fear that he was going to be arrested the moment that the panic room door was opened.

“I’m going to have to give you a crash course in mobster ethics—clearly your law school didn’t offer Dellarosa Douchebaggery one-oh-one,” Ian told Phoebe as he shouldered Shelly’s go-bag. “Manny’s a bad guy. His brother Davio’s worse. He’s a freaking crazy bad guy. If Manny’s in the hospital, and we know he is, you’ll be dealing with Davio, who is—say it with me—a freaking crazy bad guy.”

“I’m talking about making a simple phone call,” Phoebe said with exasperation as she gathered up her own still-soggy purse and clothes. “At worst, a meeting in the office conference room.”

Jesus, she really had no clue. She believed that she lived in a world where lawyers were considered to be a sacrosanct part of the court system, where they were respected as such by all.

Or maybe she was just pretending to believe that—it was a nice embellishment to her role as the wide-eyed, innocent young lawyer—when in fact she was a hardcore Agency operative.

“Let’s play out that conference room meeting,” Ian said. “Davio will walk in and say, Where’s Dunn? And you’ll say, I assure you he’s no danger to you, Mr. Dellarosa, blah blah blah-blah-blah.” He made his voice high and squeaky in an intentionally terrible imitation.


Phoebe laughed her disdain. “I don’t even remotely sound like that.”

“Towel,” Aaron said, handing one to Ian as he draped another over his head.

Ian wasn’t done with his story. “And then he’ll leave, and you’ll pin a little star on your shirt for being such a crackerjack negotiator, except his thugs will be in the parking lot, waiting for you to go home. They’ll follow you around for a few hours, but if you don’t lead them to me or Aaron, they’ll get more aggressive—see if maybe you’ll divulge my location if they beat the crap out of you.” He put the towel over his head, hiding his face, as punctuation.

But Phoebe made another dismissive sound. “I’ve worked as a criminal defense attorney for quite a few years,” she told him. “And one thing I’ve learned is that even freaking crazy bad guys”—she imitated him this time, pitching her voice low and adding a generous helping of stupid to her tone—“need lawyers. In fact, they need lawyers more than the completely sane good guys do. And if they went around beating the crap out of their legal team on a regular basis, they would find it impossible to get anyone to represent them.”

Jesus. “Great,” Ian said. “Fine. You believe whatever myths or fairytales you want to believe, so you can sleep at night. But I’m telling you, no. Thank you, but no. I’ve changed my mind. I no longer want you attempting to contact any of the Dellarosas. At least not at this time. I’ll be sure to let you know if that changes.”

“Can we please do this?” Aaron asked.

“Yes,” Ian told him, and together they threw back the bolts on the door and stepped back to let it swing open.

At that point, the entire situation could have gone drastically south. A SWAT team could’ve rushed in, arresting them both and dragging Phoebe to safety.

Instead there was only silence and stillness.

Phoebe led the way out of the closet and into the ruins of Aaron’s living room, and no one stopped them. Aaron carried his go-bag, inside of which he’d put his handgun. Pheebs had stashed her Glock in her still-dripping giant-sized lady-purse-thing. Ian carried Shel’s bag, which was huge and heavy as hell.

A group of uniformed officers kept their hands securely atop the weapons in their belts, but other than that aggressive posturing … Nothing. No one so much as spoke a word to them. It was true, the identity-concealing towels that he and D.A. both wore over their heads weren’t a fashion statement that screamed stop and chat.

Agent Goth was silently waiting for them inside of Aaron’s attached garage where a nondescript, dark-colored sedan had been pulled inside, bay door closed.

It was dim in there, although light filtered in through an array of bullet holes.

“Son of a bitch,” Aaron muttered, disgusted by the damage as Ian loaded Shelly’s heavy luggage into the trunk. Aaron kept his grip on his own bag—good man—as he got into the backseat.

The car was an older model that no one would look at twice.

Ian climbed into the front passenger side as Phoebe arranged herself behind the wheel. The FBI agent got in, too, and with a shudder and a rattle of its chain, the garage door started to go up.

“Towels, gentlemen,” Phoebe said as she started the car.

Ian adjusted his towel as the door ended its journey with a kachunk, and Phoebe backed carefully out of the garage and down the driveway.

She sighed—just the smallest of ohs—as she saw the damage done to her car.

“I’ll make sure it gets fixed,” Ian told her.

Her voice was bemused. “In your copious free time.”

He smiled wryly at that. “Good point.”

“I’ve already called to have it towed,” she told him briskly. “After we get to the safe house, I’ll take this car, since you don’t want to keep it and—”

“Sorry, no,” he said.

“Left on Clark,” Goth ordered from the backseat, and Ian heard the signal clicker go on.

Phoebe misunderstood. “So you do want to keep this car.”

“No, this car’s gotta go. We’ll get another. One that fifty cops haven’t seen.” Ian aimed his voice toward the back. “You’re making sure we’re not being followed, right?”

“I’m on it,” Goth said. “So far so good.”

Meanwhile, for Phoebe, light dawned. “No, no,” she said. “Oh, no. Ian. You said you needed me to drive, not—”

“Honey, I hate to break it to you, but you can’t leave. I know you think otherwise, but it’s not safe. Plus, your work here has just begun,” he said.

He heard her bristle. “There is so much wrong with what you just said.”

“Phoebe,” he corrected himself. “I hate to break it to you—”

“What, you need me as part of the crack team that’s going to rescue Sheldon from the Dellarosas, before going in after those kids?” she asked.

Agent Goth sat forward, her voice suddenly louder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What?”

“Of course not,” Ian told Phoebe and ignored Goth. “I was however, thinking about what you suggested—that someone at your firm knows how to get in touch with the Dellarosas. And it occurred to me that in the event I can’t contact Manny, it might be a good option to have you make that call—but from the safe house—and pretend to negotiate with freaking crazy Davio, distracting him—”

Phoebe was already speaking over him. “Because of my incredible ability to … to … climb the outside of a twelve-story building or—”

“—while I break Shelly out,” Ian finished.

“Rescue who?” Goth asked, clearly pained.

“—grapple,” Phoebe continued, still just talking right over them both. “Although, really, I’m not all that sure what grappling is, so there’s that.”

“Jesus,” Aaron said from the backseat. “Will you please just pull over and kiss the shit out of each other? Get it over with already. You’ll both feel much better.”

Phoebe turned to aim some of her outraged disbelief in Ian’s brother’s direction, even as Ian lifted his towel to shoot D.A. a pointed WTF look in the rearview. Which of course Aaron didn’t see, thanks to the towel over his own head.

“I’m sorry,” Phoebe said icily, echoing Agent Goth’s earlier words. “What?”

“My brother has a thing for you, and obviously it’s mutual,” Aaron said, slowly and clearly as if he were talking—obnoxiously—to someone who was mentally challenged.

Ian glared at his brother. “Cut it out. Don’t take this out on her. I know you’re mad at me, and I know you’re scared for Shel, but don’t be a dick.” He didn’t dare do more than glance at Phoebe, who was still carefully heading west on Clark, her eyes on the road.

“Rescue,” Agent Goth said again, louder this time. “Who?”

Aaron pulled back his towel and turned to her. “My husband, Sheldon, has just been kidnapped by a minion of his crazy father, who hates me and wants me dead. Perhaps you’ve heard of my douchebag father-in-law? His name is Davio Dellarosa.”

Agent Goth started to laugh. She tried to stop herself. “Sorry,” she said. “That’s not funny. It’s really not funny, but oh my God, you know?”

“Yeah,” Ian said. “We know.” He pulled the towel off his head because enough was freaking enough.


Phoebe still had her eyes glued to the road, her knuckles almost white as she gripped the steering wheel. “There’s no thing here,” she said, as Ian shot his brother another disgusted look. “There’s really not. If I’ve done anything at all to make anyone think—”

Aaron rolled his eyes at Ian in an insincere apology, as if he were fourteen again. “I’m sorry, no, you’re fine. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sure it’s just my imagination. But I’m going crazy here. I have no idea where Shel is, or what that son of a bitch Berto is doing to him.” His voice broke.

Shit. “He’s gonna be okay,” Ian told him.

“You keep saying that,” Aaron shot back. “If you know something that you haven’t told me …”

“You’re going to have to trust me. I’m going to get him back.” Ian didn’t know for sure, but he suspected that as long as Sheldon was with Berto, he’d be safe. Safer than he might otherwise be, that is.

“Trust you.” Aaron sat back and shook his head in disgust. “Because you know best. You always have. Always will. And if you think I didn’t catch that I when you were talking about breaking Shelly out—I, as in without me—your head is so far up your own ass you don’t even know what planet you’re on anymore.”

“Here in Head-Up-My-Ass-Landia,” Ian shot back, “we use common logic to solve problems. We pay attention to details like, oh, look, Rory’s already got one parent in danger. Let’s not make it two.”

“Like you give a shit about Rory,” Aaron said hotly. “You’ve never even met him. I know working for Manny must’ve been a bitch, but surely you had at least a few days off to come and meet my son.”

“All right,” Phoebe said, lacing her voice with a whole lot of angry librarian, which was disturbingly hot, as she looked at Aaron in the rearview mirror. “Stop.” She then aimed her incinerating glare back at Ian. “If you don’t tell him, I will.”

“Tell me what?” Aaron demanded.

* * *

Francine got to the Starbucks first.

She parked Aaron’s car as far in the back of the lot as she could, license-plate-free front facing out.

She kept Rory in his car seat, lugging him, along with his diaper bag and her go-bag, into the coffee shop. She ordered a small whatever, paying in cash—rental for a table in the corner.

Rory was doing his best-baby-in-the-world imitation, looking around in wide-eyed wonder and smiling his goofy baby smile at anyone and everyone who caught his eye.

And that was problematic when it came to blending in anonymously. A too-cute baby would be noticed. Remembered.

Francie unfastened him from his parachute-worthy system of halter plus restraints, hoping if she held him on her lap and sang softly to him, he’d close his eyes and be more average.

At the very least, he’d present the far less adorable back of his head to the other people in the shop and …

Martell Griffin had come in while she was leaning over.

Ian had sent her a screenshot of the man she was meeting—the man who was going to bring her and the baby to some FBI safe house, where she’d connect with Ian, Aaron, and Shel, and finally get some answers to her current question, WTF is going on?

Griffin was tall, dark, and handsome, and at some point between the screenshot and right now, he’d managed to find a shirt with sleeves.

As Francie watched, he edged closer to one of the other women with babies in the place—a woman who tried not to appear frightened by the big black man looming over her.

The woman shook her head emphatically, and Griffin immediately eased back a few steps, his hands up in an easy there gesture. Somehow, he kept a smile on his face.

Francie could read his lips. Sorry to bother you, ma’am. Have a good one.

Of course, she knew what that was like, to be looked at with mistrust—in her case, by every other woman on the planet. As for the men? They looked at her …

Kind of exactly the way Martell was looking at her right now.

He’d turned to find her watching him, and his relief at not having to scare any of the other suburban ladies morphed into a flash of found Jesus surprise, and then something contained and careful.

France had seen that expression before, too. It was the classic male Maybe if I play my cards right I’ll get to tap that face.

She flattened her own eyes into an appropriately bored Not in this lifetime or the next as he approached, as she packed Rory back into his seat.

This was why she’d stopped wearing makeup, stopped wearing her hair in anything other than a messy ponytail. And still, the objectification raged on and on.

Her hope at finding someone who would love her for her, and not her pretty face and slamming body, had died years ago.

“Francine? I’m Martell.” He held out his hand.

She ignored it. Gestured with her head. “Grab my coffee, will you? I’ve already been here much too long.”

“I got here as quickly as I could.” He picked up the diaper bag, too, and would’ve taken Rory if she’d let him.

But she didn’t. “Thank you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.”

“We’re all under a lot of stress,” he said easily as he led the way out to his car.

And wasn’t that crafty of him? Use the word we, which put them into the same subset in his personal Venn diagram of life. We who are under stress. It was the first step toward getting her into a much smaller, more exclusive personal subset: we who are having sex.

Francie didn’t respond. She just focused on buckling Rory’s car seat into the back of his crappy car.

He pretended he hadn’t been checking out her ass as she straightened up.

“Mind if I drive?” she asked.

Martell blinked. “No,” he said. “You want to drive? You can drive. Sure.” He handed her the keys, went around to the passenger side.

Francie got in. Adjusted the seat and mirrors. Glanced at him. “You FBI?”

He laughed. “Nooooo.” He said it as if the idea was really funny as she pulled out of the lot. “How about you? I’m not really sure where you fit in. I got the sense that you were watching Dunn’s brother’s baby.” He glanced into the back. “Cute kid.” Said with the absolute insincerity of a man with no desire to have children for at least another decade. Back to her. “But other than that … it was more important that I get you to the safe house than understand … But I’m guessing, from the way Dunn was talking, that you’re part of his merry band …?”

France looked at him, but he was serious. This was not bullshit. He wasn’t just saying what he thought she’d want to hear. Although even if that were the case, that type of perception would already be a huge step above the assumption she usually got. Which was You must be Dunn’s girlfriend.

Still, as much as Francine would’ve liked to acknowledge the truth—I’m his partner in an extremely dangerous long con. It’s a job where he’s in jail for eighteen months, a job that even his own brother doesn’t know about—she hadn’t survived this long by flapping her mouth.

So instead, she said, “I’m Ian’s sister-in-law. Sort of. My brother Sheldon is married to his brother Aaron. So Aaron’s really my brother-in-law. I’m not sure what that makes me and Ian, officially, anyway.”


Martell ingested that info, then said, “So the baby is Aaron and Sheldon’s kid?”

It was time for her to start asking the questions. “What, exactly, is going on? Why is Ian out of prison?”

Martell didn’t answer for such a long time that she glanced at him again. He was watching her steadily. “I’ma let Dunn answer that for you when we get to the safe house,” he replied. “Interesting, though, that you know about him being in prison, because Phoebe texted me to say that Dunn’s own brother—Aaron—didn’t know he was serving time. I’m supposed to be careful not to spill those beans when we show up, and I’m guessing you should do the same.”

Shit.

Francie wasn’t the only one who’d just let information slip. She glanced at Griffin again. “Is Phoebe the FBI agent?”

“No, that’s Deb,” he said. “Phoebe is Dunn’s lawyer.”

Francie frowned. “No, she’s not.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“His lawyer is some creepy old rich guy who drinks too much and hits on me,” she told him, “every two weeks when I do a face-to-face. I’ve learned to start each meeting with No, I won’t blow you for five thousand dollars.”

Martell shook his head. “Men like that think they own the world. That there’s a price tag on everything and everyone. For the record, I’m not for sale, either.”

And there he went again, putting them both in the same subset.

“FYI,” he added, “the creepy old rich guy is up on manslaughter charges for driving drunk and killing his own daughter in a car accident.”

“Oh, shit,” Francine said. She wouldn’t wish that on her worst enemy.

“Yeah,” Martell agreed. “Phoebe’s filling in for him. Last name Kruger. Dunn’s in good hands. She’s good at the game.”

Francine glanced over at him before returning her attention to the road. She suspected that Martell Griffin, as enlightened as he might seem to be, had no idea that when Ian played games, he never—ever—followed the rules.