we were there.”
THERE WERE more questions after that—travel plans, Artur’s habits, places he liked to go when visiting another city. Danny tried to press Tabby on Sergei a bit more, but she hadn’t known anything, and Danny had moved on so quickly, she’d hardly noticed he’d tried. After another half hour, Tabitha drooped visibly, and Julia escorted her upstairs to rest in a guest room.
Julia gave them all an arch look over her shoulder as they were leaving, and Hunter, who could speak fluent nonverbal, had no problem interpreting that to mean “Don’t you idiots make any permanent plans while I’m gone.”
They disappeared, and the entire group—Hunter included—visibly relaxed. Grace and Danny both stood up and stretched, Grace doing something elaborate and showy that involved kissing his kneecaps because he could and Danny simply raising his hands above his head and reaching for the sky.
Hunter’s eyes were on Grace, mostly, and the long, sinewy lines of his legs to his hips, from his hips to his shoulders. He moved like air, or like smoke, but Hunter had seen him in tight clothes—he knew the muscles that supported all that flexibility, and he wanted to touch them.
But he didn’t want them to be gone the next morning.
“Okay, children,” Danny said, moving toward the wet bar. “I will take suggestions and observations at this moment. What do you have for me?”
“He’s been a mob mule for how long?” Chuck asked, voicing everybody’s question with his usual succinctness, and Hunter blinked hard, trying to snap his mind to the job.
“We’ll have to ask Grace,” Felix said. “Grace, how old is the Conservatory?”
“Mm… thirty years, I think.” Grace closed his eyes, stood straight, and then arched over backward and did a complicated ripple thing with his hands coming out from his chest. He straightened and reached for the sky, and Hunter found himself staring again.
Dammit.
Grace looked over his shoulder, toward Danny and away from Hunter, and Hunter found he could breathe—and concentrate on the job too, which was a definite plus.
“So thirty years.” Danny blew out a breath. “Vlad Kadjic was… well, he was nothing like his nephews, that’s for certain. Andre may be an animal, but he’s got rules. I don’t know much about Sergei—but I’m expecting he’ll be worse than Andre. The ones on the bottom of those dung heaps often are.”
“Will they expect Artur to be loyal?” Felix asked, hands casually in his pockets as he leaned against the bar. “And yes, I want orange juice too.”
Danny got behind the wet bar and started scooping ice from a freezer underneath. “No, yes, and it doesn’t matter,” he answered, and Hunter could hear the rustle of rolled eyeballs go around the room. “Don’t look at me that way. What I’m saying is that no, Sergei won’t expect Artur to work for him out of loyalty, hence the veiled threat to Tabitha. Yes, he’ll expect the threat to Tabitha to work, and the threat to the Conservatory too, because these are things that Artur Mikkelnokov loves, and they are both particularly vulnerable. And it doesn’t matter, because he’ll either (a) work Artur to death because he doesn’t give two shits about him, or (b) have him killed because working people to death creates enemies but killing them outright creates silence and fear. No, Grace,” Danny added, dumping straight orange juice into two tall glasses, “it’s just as well your friend asked for help now. We’ve got some time before Sergei decides to start killing people and burning things down.”
There was a collective shudder, and Hunter—who had always respected Danny—grew to respect him a little bit more for not sugarcoating things.
Danny saw his regard and smiled, downing a swallow of orange juice. “Hunter, you have something to say?”
Hunter nodded slowly, uncoiling from his position against the wall, remembering he was among friends—a thing he’d never really had before he met Josh Salinger, but one he was beginning to enjoy.
“We need to know what they’re trafficking,” he said slowly. “Tabitha is right. It’s got to be more than precious gems or gold.” He narrowed his eyes at Danny. “How high up was Vlad Kadjic? Was he, I dunno, a big enough mobster to fund a coup?”
Danny sucked air in through his teeth. “If you’re asking if he was into industrial espionage or spy work, I have no idea.” He bit his lip. “I expect Felix and I can do some digging.” He aimed a look at Stirling. “You wouldn’t want to help when we need