Mack faced her. “Liv, you can’t go. Royce will know something is up if he sees you.”
“Um, I could say the same for you.”
Mack clenched his jaw. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s no less safe for me than for you.”
“He’s right, Liv,” Hop said.
“This is so sexist!”
Mack dragged his hands over his hair. “Liv, on this issue, please let me be in charge.”
“Uh, no. I’m the one who started this. I’m not going to stay behind while you guys take all the risks.”
Rosie walked in and handed a hen to the Russian. “Maybe you could stay in the van,” Rosie suggested.
Liv spun and gaped at her. “I thought you of all people would take my side.”
Rosie shrugged. “I’m a little biased on this one.”
“So am I,” Mack said quietly. “I need you safe.”
The look in his eyes made her heart do a thing that she didn’t like because she wasn’t ready for it, wasn’t ready to trust it, so she did the thing she always did. She got cranky. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. You’re acting like a, like a . . .”
He lifted his eyebrows.
She planted her hands on her hips. “Like an overprotective boyfriend.”
Mack threw his hands in the air. “That’s because I am! Maybe you haven’t noticed after last night, honey, but I’m hooked.”
The sentence exploded in the room and covered everyone in its guts. Liv blinked, sucked in a breath.
The deafening silence was followed by a quiet whisper.
“I knew it,” the Russian said.
Chaos erupted as the guys dug out their wallets and started throwing money at the Russian.
The Russian stood and lifted the chicken in the air to dance. “I won the bet! I won the bet!”
“There was a bet?” Liv hissed.
Mack held up his hands. “I had nothing to do with it.”
Hop stood and yelled at everyone to shut up. “This is serious shit we’re talking about.”
His cop voice brought the room under control.
“Liv, you ride in the van with me. Malcolm, make the reservation for eight if you can. Noah, you said you have a van we can use?”
Noah nodded, grinning like a gamer who’d just gotten an upgrade. “Oh yeah.”
“You have to be shitting me.”
At seven o’clock, Noah pulled up in front of Mack’s house in a dirty white van that couldn’t have been more obvious in its nondescript creepiness if he’d spray painted “Free Puppies” on the side.
Liv, Hop, and Mack stared in silence. Noah rolled down the passenger window. “You ready?”
Mack wrenched open the door. “Are we going for child-molester chic in this thing, or what?”
“This is a good van. I got laid for the first time in this thing.”
“And I’m out.” Hop backed away, hands raised.
“Don’t worry. I took the seats out a long time ago.”
“When?” Hop grumbled. “During the Clinton impeachment? This thing is ancient.”
“Yeah, I was in elementary school during the Clinton impeachment.”
Hop flipped him off.
Noah gestured for everyone to get in. “This was one of my grandpa’s vans for his roofing business.”
“Great. Because a roofing van is definitely what we need,” Mack said.
Noah got out, rounded to the passenger side, and opened the sliding door to reveal a cavernous back full of computer equipment and some kind of radio shit that lined one entire wall. Computer screens provided a 360-degree view of the outside of the van.
Everyone stilled. “This really is a surveillance van,” Mack said. “You weren’t lying about that.”
Noah slid back behind the wheel. “Nope.”
“Why exactly do you have this?”
As Liv and Hop got settled in the back, Noah eased out onto the street. “All IT professionals have one.”
“You work for the CIA, don’t you?” Liv said from the back.
“The CIA can’t operate domestically.”
“Which is a totally natural response.”
“The NSA, on the other hand . . .”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking,” Liv said.
“No one admits if they work for the NSA, Liv.”
The Russian’s house was just three miles away from Mack’s. They found him waiting outside in the driveway wearing black tactical pants, a black T-shirt, and a mobster-style leather jacket. He carried a black workman’s lunch box, the kind they used on construction sites.
After a brief silence, Noah spoke for them both. “What exactly is going on there?”
Mack sighed and dragged his hand down his jaw. “I told him to wear dark clothing.”
Noah parked, got out, and went around to open the back doors. The Russian climbed in, his massive hulk taking up most of the space. He sat on the floor, knees to