"What - where - how did you?" he asked as he circled the car.
In his black suit, hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, Ethan looked like the double agent who might have ridden with me to the dead drop.
Gabe's car was giving me illusions of grandeur. And spy fiction.
"Gabriel," I said. "The Volvo was beat up, and he offered to have a friend take a look at it. This was his loaner."
Slowly, Ethan looked back at me, eyebrow raised in shock. "He gave you this car as a loaner?"
I nodded and tried hard not to grin, and not altogether successfully. He wanted to tweak you, I thought. And he'd managed it very effectively.
"Is this the car?" Luc asked.
"This is the car," Ethan said. He put his hands on his hips and completed his circle, green eyes poring over every detail, just as a man might peruse the curves of a beautiful woman.
"Wait," I said. "The car? You know about this car?"
"We knew her once upon a time," Luc said, walking closer. He reached out as if to caress her, but then pulled back, perhaps loathe to mar her finish with fingerprints.
Ethan glanced back at me. "Gabriel won this car in a game of poker from Sonny DiCaprio."
I frowned. "I don't know the name."
"Sonny DiCaprio was what you might call a well-connected man," Luc said. "He had a pretty nice establishment in Chicago in the eighties. Larceny with a side of protection racket. He also ran an illegal poker game downtown."
"Gabriel wasn't yet in charge of the Pack," Ethan said, moving to stand beside me. "His father was, and he was friends with Lou Martinelli, Sonny's arch enemy. Gabriel thought he'd show his old man a thing or two and arranged to join Sonny's game one night. He was just about out - having lost a lot of money and some of his father's territory - when he went all in on the final hand. He came away with a lot of money and Sonny DiCaprio's 1957 Mercedes."
"DiCaprio let him walk away with it?" I wondered aloud.
"They called DiCaprio the 'Gentleman's Mobster' for a reason," Luc said. "And that's probably why he didn't last much longer. He was taken out in a turf war a few months later."
Whatever I thought I knew about Chicago - or its supernaturals - there was always more to the story. Of course, having seen Gabriel shuffle and deal, I wasn't surprised to learn he was a cardsharp.
"That's quite a history," I said.
"Mm-hmm," Ethan agreed. "Did he mention why he's letting you drive this particular car?"
"Because we're friends?"
Ethan made a sarcastic sound. "You may be. But that's not why he's letting you drive it." He leaned forward and flicked a bit of dust from the clear coat. "He's doing it to piss me off, because I've been trying to buy this car from him for ten years."
Luc whistled. "That's quite a burn."
"Indeed," Ethan said, glancing at me with a dubiously cocked brow. "But I'm sure Merit had no knowledge of that, did you?"
"Of course I didn't," I said. "Not of the specifics, anyway."
Ethan gave the car one last, long look before gesturing toward the door. "Now that we've ogled, shall we get back to work?"
"Are you sure you can leave her here unattended?" I asked.
Ethan grinned. "I have no intention of leaving her here unattended . . . or letting her leave this House again."
"Let the battle begin," Luc said, clapping Ethan on the back, both of them clearly thrilled to have a different kind of battle to wage.
Boys and their toys, I thought, and followed them back into the House. But before we got to the Ops Room, Ethan stopped me in the hallway, a hand on my wrist. I glanced back at him.
"You're okay?" he asked.