work," Cass told him, handing over the rough sketch. For some reason, he wasn't showing Lucas the whole design he'd already completed in his sketchpad, but I wasn't going to call him on it.
Lucas cast his eyes over the paper, then shrugged. "I trust you, bro. You clearly know what you're doing." He indicated to the fact that Cass was pretty much head to toe covered in tattoos, and Cass huffed a sound that was close to a laugh.
"It might hurt a bit over the scar tissue," Cass continued, preparing all his work tools one-handed. "Or shit, maybe it won't hurt at all. Depends how your nerves are healing."
Lucas just grinned. "Can't hurt more than getting the scars in the first place, huh?"
Cass snorted. "Too fucking right, Gumdrop."
I hesitated a moment, unsure whether Cass was cool with me staying to watch him work. But damn, I wanted to.
He raised his head to peer at me when he was finished prepping everything and tipped his head to the vacant seat beside him. "Sit down, Red. I might need your hands."
Biting back a smile, I did as instructed, pulling my seat closer so I could get a good view as he worked. There was no way he actually needed my hands; he was too damn stubborn not to do it all himself. But I was happy to take the excuse.
"I'll do you next," Cass murmured, shooting me a wink as he started his tattoo gun.
I just licked my lips and grinned. I already had a few tattoos, so I sure as fuck wasn't going to refuse that offer. But chances were he was going to wreck himself on the hours of work he had ahead on Lucas.
"We'll see," I replied.
Cass worked in silence for a few minutes, the only sound in the room from the buzz of his tattoo gun as he began inking Lucas's chest. But when Zed joined us, he flicked the sound system on, and Cass grunted his approval at the rock music that poured from the hidden speakers dotted around the room.
I quickly became mesmerized watching Cass create a work of art on Lucas's flesh, and propped my head up on my hands to watch without being a distraction. Lucas gave a heavy yawn about half an hour into the session and closed his eyes.
When he didn't open them again, I grinned and peered closer.
"Is he seriously sleeping through a tattoo?" I asked quietly, and Cass paused to glance up at Lucas's face.
"Huh," he grunted. "That's a first. Gumdrop's a bigger psychopath than I gave him credit for."
"High pain and low boredom tolerance," Zed murmured from the other side of the dining table where he'd been drawing idly in Cass's sketchbook. Zed had never been an artist to the level of Cass's tattoo creations, but he'd gone through a graffiti phase as a preteen and still had a tendency to doodle little patterns or create logos in the margins of documents or on my newspapers.
I smiled at Lucas's peaceful face. He really did look like he was properly asleep and totally unbothered by the work Cass was doing on his chest.
"Did you get anything useful from Lucas's mom today?" Zed asked, closing the sketchpad and tossing it back onto the table.
I shook my head slightly. "Not... exactly. She was vehemently against us digging around about the Guild."
Zed nodded. "So she's been threatened."
"Seems that way," I agreed. "But she gave me a small clue. She has a framed picture of Lucas's dad on her dresser. Nicolas Porter. She seemed to very deliberately look at his picture as I was leaving."
"You're thinking her room might be bugged? That's why she was unwilling to talk about the Guild?" Zed leaned forward, clasping his hands together on the table as he stared into space, thinking. "Or at least that's what she believes, whether true or not."
I gave a one-shouldered shrug. "That was my guess. We searched her room at Lucas's house, but there was nothing there."
"They moved around a lot, didn't they?" Cass murmured without raising his head from his work. He was doing it all one handed, so he had to frequently stop and reposition himself to get the angles right.
"Yeah, ever since they left Shadow Grove when Lucas was four." I sat up a bit straighter. "That's a good point. It would make more sense if she had a safety deposit box or something, right?"
Cass flicked a quick look at me, then dropped his eyes back to the tattoo. "Suppose