cold predator’s wind sweeping through the room.
“What?” he asked. Unconsciously, he reached down to cup Grace’s cheek, regardless of the fact that they were the centers of attention as it was.
“Grace,” Josh said gently. “We need you here. In this room. Right now.”
Grace physically jerked his attention to Danny and Felix as they sat at the bar with the computer. “What? You guys know this falls under the category of ‘Grace doesn’t care, just tell him what to steal,’ right?”
“Dylan,” Felix said, his voice a quiet, soothing dad-rumble. “You actually know this family. The one jeweler who could make that cut is the father of someone you used to know.”
Grace narrowed his eyes. “Wait—didn’t you guys tell me he was shipped off to rehab?”
“Yes,” Felix answered. “He was. Specifically, he was shipped off to rehab outside of Springfield. Very much near Lucius’s business in Peoria, to be specific. His parents split, but his father, I do believe, moved there to visit him.”
“So one of the best gem cutters in the world lives outside of Springfield, Illinois?” Chuck said in disbelief, but Hunter barely heard him.
“So… so Gabriel Hu’s father is working with the bad guys?” Grace asked, like he was assembling Legos in his head at lightning speed.
“We don’t know if he’s being coerced,” Danny said. “And we don’t know if Gabriel is with him. We did some hunting, and he graduated from Illinois State after he was released from the facility. We don’t see any signs of a record or of criminal activity, but then, as we all know here, that doesn’t mean anything. All we know is that—”
Grace stood up abruptly. “I absolutely have to go,” he said, and with that, he spun on his heel and disappeared up the stairs, leaving the room in shocked silence.
Josh zoomed in front of Hunter before Hunter could even guess where he might be going.
HUNTER CAUGHT up with them in Grace’s room, where Josh was standing, arms and feet spread to block the doorframe, in mid-yell.
“You don’t have to go anywhere!”
“I do too!” Grace was throwing random things into a school backpack. A pair of underwear, a small bottle of lube—which was not reassuring—a pocket knife, a black ribbed hat. All of it went crashing into the backpack while Josh harangued Grace furiously from the doorway.
“You do not, you big baby! It was years ago. Do you think he even remembers you now?”
“Probably not,” Grace said, scowling. “But what if he does?” Grace paused in the act of going through his drawers. He started pulling small boxes out and setting them meticulously on the dresser.
“What if he does?” Josh snarled. “Do you think me or my dads or my mom will let him get within a mile of you? Dude! You don’t need to run away from him!”
“I’m not running away from him!” Grace cried, touching the boxes disconsolately. “I’m running away from him!” And with that, Grace pointed at Hunter, who was looming behind Josh, wondering what in the fucking hell.
Hunter recoiled, stung. “What did I do?”
“You’re fine,” Grace muttered. He looked up at Josh. “You can’t open these,” he said. “You can’t open them when I’m gone. They’re your parents’, and it’s not stealing if they don’t leave the house or if nobody knows.”
“They know!” Josh shouted. “They know. We all know. And we know they never left the house, Grace, because it’s your house too. And it’s your family. And you can’t leave us now because you’re scared!”
The face Dylan turned toward Josh and Hunter wasn’t composed or catlike. He wasn’t smiling or musing or blithe. His face was wet and streaked with tears, and his cheeks were flushed and blotchy, and his beautiful amber-colored eyes were red-rimmed and miserable.
“He….” Grace faltered in midsentence and risked a look at Hunter. “You thought I was something,” he whispered. “For a little while, you thought I was something good.”
And then he dropped the backpack and turned around, slipped through his bathroom door, which opened into Chuck’s room, and a heartbeat later, they could hear the sound of his lightly shod feet hitting the carpeted stairs.
“Fuck!” Josh snapped, and Hunter caught him around the waist as he hurled himself toward the stairs.
“Stop!” he ordered, but Josh Salinger wasn’t weak. He struggled—hard. And Hunter was hard-pressed to block a furious series of vicious blows to his face, then his chest, then his throat.
The one to the throat came damned close to cutting off his wind forever. He grunted, decided Josh wasn’t fucking