The Grifter E-Book

Amy Lane

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Long Con
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 624

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Josh Salinger grew up with the legend of how his two fathers sacrificed their happiness to save his life. He's been doing his damnedest to live up to that legacy, and he'll be damned if he lets his attachment to Liam Craig, the charming, useful Interpol officer, change his plans in any way. Liam cut his Interpol teeth on the curious case of Danny Lightfingers—superlative thief, recovering alcoholic, dedicated family man, and Josh's father. Liam fell for Josh the moment they met, but Josh keeps asking Liam to wait… wait until all Josh's plans come to fruition. Liam is done waiting—but Josh's plans aren't complete by a long shot. Josh lets Liam into his life, but Liam has to be willing to go along for the ride, and it's a doozy. Crossing the globe, the Salinger crew has the grandest caper of them all planned— one that's going to keep Danny safe from the demon he awakened so long ago, and is still threatening the Lightfingers family now. Is Josh and Liam's love strong enough to sustain them as Josh fights to live up to the legacy that built his very foundations? Can Liam convince him that just being Josh Salinger is enough, and that Josh never needed to be the king of the grifters to steal Liam Craig's heart?

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Blurb

Dedication

Author’s Note

Long Way Down

I Don’t Think I’ll Make it On My Own

I Think I’m Falling

Serpent in the Garden

Tasks Pleasant and Less So

The Hardest Part

Bad Guys

Counting Stars

Ladies and Gentlemen I Present You….

Brass Tacks

Landing Gear

Operation Rembrandt

Schloss

Drops of Blood

Prague

A Little Night Music

Easy as Klimt

Reichenbach Falls

Catch You, Catch You, Catch You if You Fall.

New Day

Jitters, Jumps and Thieves: A Long Con Short

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Amy Lane

Visit Dreamspinner Press

Copyright

The Grifter

By Amy Lane

Josh Salinger grew up with the legend of how his two fathers sacrificed their happiness to save his life. He’s been doing his damnedest to live up to that legacy, and he’ll be damned if he lets his attachment to Liam Craig, the charming, useful Interpol officer, change his plans in any way.

Liam cut his Interpol teeth on the curious case of Danny Lightfingers—superlative thief, recovering alcoholic, dedicated family man, and Josh’s father. Liam fell for Josh the moment they met, but Josh keeps asking Liam to wait… wait until all Josh’s plans come to fruition.

Liam is done waiting—but Josh’s plans aren’t complete by a long shot. Josh lets Liam into his life, but Liam has to be willing to go along for the ride, and it’s a doozy. Crossing the globe, the Salinger crew has the grandest caper of them all planned— one that's going to keep Danny safe from the demon he awakened so long ago, and is still threatening the Lightfingers family now.

Is Josh and Liam’s love strong enough to sustain them as Josh fights to live up to the legacy that built his very foundations? Can Liam convince him that just being Josh Salinger is enough, and that Josh never needed to be the king of the grifters to steal Liam Craig’s heart?

Mate and Mary—most definitely. But a lot of credit here goes to Andi, who is always so happy to hear from me, and to Brenda, who loves this series very much.

Author’s Note

Supposed to be a fantasy; however, there was a rather spectacular robbery at the Louvre AFTER I wrote that scene, and I had to add the jewels in at the end as a tribute to the mother of all heists.

Long Way Down

JOSH SALINGER peered over the edge of the fifteenth-floor balcony and hissed. He was low enough that the high-rise forest of Chicago obscured his view of even the most vestigial sky, and his heart hammered with a combination of fear and claustrophobia.

He didn’t feel ready for this jump, and it pissed him off.

In his ear, his comms piece buzzed, and his best friend, Dylan Li—aka Grace—said, “You gonna make this, Recovery Boy, or do we need a Plan B?”

Josh glanced behind him where the darkened “thief-proof” room sat, looking pristine and unmolested as it teased the city beyond its outstretched arms with the treasures contained within.

Thief proof Josh’s still-scrawny ass. He and his team had spent weeks planning this job. Hacking the temperature control had stumped them for a while, until Stirling had pointed out that instead of trying to pump up the temp to ninety-eight degrees so a human could walk in the room (which would put many of the priceless works inside at risk), all they had to do was account for what the temperature was when disturbed by one human.

And putting the human in a dry suit to contain some of his heat put that difficulty in the bounds of acceptable risk.

Josh had gotten access as an up-and-coming art dealer, his bona fides backed up by Stirling’s excellent hacking and his Uncle Danny’s references. Uncle Danny’s day job was being an art docent for the Chicago Art Institute, so that hadn’t been hard, and Josh had grown up around art, both in America and abroad. He knew his shit, so actually doing the job of an art dealer wasn’t a stretch. Which was good because he had to be doing something to keep his cover up. Besides, he and his family liked art. With his family’s help, he’d spotted a couple of new talents and gotten them coveted places in nearby shows, even offering to showcase paintings and one sculpture at his parents’ home. His father, Felix Salinger, owned a Chicago-based cable network that had gone national. Without his ever asking a broker’s fee, a lot of art had been sold because somebody had seen it on the wall in the Salinger dining room. His mother had planned the entire room around doing that.

So yeah. The side gig that was supposed to be his real gig had been satisfying, but what it really had done was give him unlimited access to the private collection of Celeste Buenaventura, heiress, party girl, jet-setter, and, in his mother’s words, “porcutwat.” Looked pretty and sexy, had a thousand ways to make any interaction unnecessarily painful.

Sadly, along with her mother’s billions, the girl had also inherited her father’s ruthlessness and recklessness in business. She ran his enterprises deftly, cheated unions and vendors alike, bought art in quantity and quality to hoard and lord over the masses, and slept with anything that slithered.

She was that rare bird—a person with no moral center but wielding enough imagination to love and appreciate art, even the weird stuff like Otto Dix that made people both queasy and tearful with the horrific nature of mankind at war.

Much of her private collection was stolen; she had a fondness for stuff that had disappeared during WWII after having been confiscated from their victims by the Nazis.

Again, a real porcutwat.

She said it was for “historical significance,” but the majority of recovered art that had been stolen by the Third Reich had been restored to the original owners, or more recently their descendants. With the exception of the United States government, most of the world still regarded the ideals of the Nazis with contempt.

No, Celeste Buenaventura liked to keep stolen art because it made her feel powerful over the poor and unlucky, which made her the perfect person to set up for this caper, which was why Josh had spent the last four weeks pretending to be her art dealer—and keeping one step away from her entitled octopus hands.

Ugh. As. If.

But her much-examined history had shown that Josh, of all the men in the crew, was Celeste’s type, which was unfortunate, because he was also the guy planning the heist and the guy who needed to be back downstairs at the party to give coy, shy smiles and dodge neatly out of the way from Celeste’s wandering hands like a champion twat tease.

However, that’s what put him on this ledge right now, attaching the paracord to his carabiner and getting ready to leap three stories, catch his weight on the cord, and then rappel three more floors down to the men’s room he’d excused himself into fifteen minutes ago.

“Josh? Recovery Boy? You ready to go? That’s one hell of a jump.”

Josh blinked. The voice was different—no longer the staccato patter of his best friend, the thief who should have been doing this if he’d been at all able to people enough to pull a grift. Instead it was the deeper, more gravelly bass of Grace’s boyfriend, Hunter.

“How long’s it been?” Josh asked hoarsely. His bones felt fragile, his muscles weak. Oh God. He was about to blow this caper because he’d pushed himself too far, too fast, and now he was about to prove everybody who loved him right by wimping out at the last possible moment.

Jesus, boy-o, what in the hell are you trying to prove?

Liam’s voice, during their last heated conversation, reverberated through his head.

Josh had scowled and walked away, leaving Liam, curly hair in stunning disarray, freckled face blotched, usually smiling mouth compressed in anger, and, Josh knew in his fragile bones, hurt.

Josh had owed him an explanation, and now, before making a jump that would have been easy fifteen months ago, before the cancer had sucked out his strength and his stamina, he hoped he’d have the chance to give it to him.

God, Liam, I don’t want you to see me as wounded. Is that too much to fucking ask?

But he hadn’t asked, had he? He’d simply gone about and planned the damned op, politely asking his Uncle Danny—who’d been the one to bring Interpol Officer Liam Craig into their painfully intimate circle of grifters, thieves, and muscle—to pass along their planning to “anybody who might need to know.”

Danny had given him a distinctly disapproving look but had done as Josh asked, probably figuring—as most parental figures did when their children hit adulthood—he would eventually pull his head out of his ass and fix this thing with Liam, who didn’t seem to have a petty or bitter bone in his body.

I want to see him again, Josh thought. I need to tell him I’m sorry. I need to tell him why.

“Josh?” Hunter asked tentatively.

“Yee-fucking-haw,” Josh said grimly… and made the jump.

The first descent was terrifying—and exhilarating—and for a whole heartbeat Josh remembered why he’d done this for fun before. And then a gust of wind came out of fucking nowhere from off the fucking lake, and Josh was slammed sideways and into the building. He let out a grunt of pain, and his left arm went numb.

Oh fuck. He had to be three stories lower and to the left and ready to party in less than three minutes.

“Josh?” Hunter asked, his voice taking on the restrained tension of someone trying not to panic.

“Arm,” Josh gasped. “Shoulder. Have Grace ready to pull me in when I hit the balcony.”

Hunter muttered something to somebody else, and Josh concentrated on not throwing up. God, he’d hardly ever thrown up as a kid, but since the big C and chemo and recovery and special foods and protein drinks, throwing up was his go-to for any sort of discomfort.

Fiercely, he concentrated on working the rope, the pulley, gloved hands and slippered feet finding purchase on the hundred-year-old stone of the stately apartment building. Oh thank you, Celeste Buenaventura and your great taste in art and living quarters, even if you are a shitty human being!

He’d forgotten how pain could dog even the most fluid movement, could make his breath come short, could… oh God, foot, foot, foot—he was so close. If only he could extend his arm to pull himself closer.

Pain blinded him, and he almost lost his grip on the rope. He fought the urge to throw up and was trying to pull his shit together enough to actually slide onto the balcony when he felt an arm around his waist and a hand at his belt, while a familiar voice, accented with London’s East End, conferred with Grace.

“He right bloody bollixed it,” Liam hissed. “God. Out of socket, you think?”

“Here,” Grace said, sounding flat and unemotional, which meant he was really panicked. “Liam, you steady him, I’ll hold his arm. Hunter—”

The crack his shoulder made when it slid back into its socket was what pushed him over the edge.

“Gonna puke,” he rasped, and before he could even position himself, he felt strong hands on his waist and another under his chin, and somebody—probably Grace—was holding the puke bag.

The stomach spasm was mercifully swift, and Grace—ethereally graceful and beautiful like the stars even with such an awful chore—disappeared with the offending receptacle. Someone—Hunter, Grace’s decked, stoic boyfriend—wiped Josh down and thrust a breath mint into his mouth, and Liam…?

­Definitely Liam… simply held him upright, whispering into his hair.

“Goddammit, boy-o, you had to do all this without me? Can I come help now? Please?”

Oh God. “Dammit, Liam,” Josh rasped, trying to put his weight on his feet. “I missed you so bad. Do you really have to see me like this?”

“I’ll take you anyway I can get you, lad. Just don’t leave me behind.”

And then Grace was back, lint roller in one hand for Josh’s all-black suit, bottle of water so Josh could rinse and spit the breath freshener, and a comb for a quick touch-up. Grace—whose real name was Dylan Li—was often described as a firefly in a tornado. Off-the-charts brilliant, a stunning dancer, so much natural beauty most people claimed it was like a slug to the gut. The catch to all this might have been called ADHD on steroids with a nuclear chaser: Grace was lucky he lived through most days, either because his own recklessness and lack of focus would get him killed or because the people around him wanted to kill him before the gods took their share.

But nobody who believed that had seen Grace over this last year, working his ass off to keep Josh alive.

“Thanks, Dylan,” Josh said softly, catching Grace’s hands as he went for one more swipe of Josh’s suit. “I’m fine.”

“You are not fine, and I need at least twenty minutes to tell you why you’re fucked and a fucking asshole, so let me—” He literally spit on his hand, wiped a scuff of dirt from Josh’s check, and then flounced off.

“Oh dear,” Josh murmured. “Everybody’s pissed off, and I’ve got to go get my ass grabbed.”

“Good news is,” Hunter said, shining a light in Josh’s eyes to make sure he wasn’t concussed, “a bigwig entered right when she would have been searching for you. She’s been kissing up to him for the last fifteen minutes.”

Josh perked up. “Our target?”

“No,” Hunter said. “Leon di Rossi, the European shipping tycoon, with his newest belle, Julia Salinger.”

Josh groaned. “They didn’t—”

“They were on standby, my boy,” came a new voice, and Josh hoped the balcony would break off the side of the building so he could die right there.

“Uncle Danny… this was supposed to be—”

“Oh, son,” Danny—who was not Josh’s real uncle, but Josh had always considered him a second father—said. “This is a big enterprise, but we’re a big crew. We’ve all had a hand in this. You wouldn’t want to cut us out now, would you?”

Josh gave him a weak smile. “No,” he said softly. “Sorry, Uncle Danny.”

Danny gave him a tender kiss on the forehead. “Plenty of people will yell at you—you don’t need me. Give your prize to Liam and then go back in there and put on your show. This little caper has had some glitches, but they all do. If you and your mother and Uncle Leon can get out of there without notice, this will all be worth it. Trust me.”

Josh felt some strength infusing him. Worth it? Well, then—let the con go on!

At his side, Liam gave a nod to Danny, who nodded back, and with that, Hunter, Danny, and Grace all faded away—probably to scale back down the dark side of the building to the waiting van—and only Liam was left.

“Liam…,” Josh said plaintively, hating that his voice was still a little thready with fear and hurt.

“Stop,” Liam said harshly. “No. Not from you. You asked me to stay away until you were up to full strength, and here you are. Jumping out of buildings and risking your life. You’re up to full strength, and here I am.”

Josh grunted. “Not so full strength if I’m fucking up this early in the game, am—”

The self-deprecation died aborning.

Liam Craig had been by his side for so much of his illness. He’d caught Josh when he’d stumbled, carried him to bed when Josh had overdone it, entertained him for hours while Josh’s family went out on capers much like this one and Josh had to stay behind.

Secret by painful secret they’d peeled the veils from each other’s hearts until Josh felt as naked with Liam as he’d ever felt with another human being, including the few lovers he’d taken in his short span on the planet.

It was a painful sort of intimacy, a frightening sort of need, but Josh had been sick, leukemia ravaging his slender body, threatening to destroy every plan and every hope and every dream he’d ever had.

For all that Liam was to his heart, for all that he’d been devastated when Josh had begged him to stay away these last five months, not once—not ever—had they kissed.

Until now.

Liam’s mouth crashed onto Josh’s with absolute fury, and Josh’s breath caught in his chest as he fought for the strength to keep up.

I Don’t Think I’ll Make it On My Own

Six months earlier

“NOW THAT’S a ship,” Liam said, mostly to himself as he approached the yacht in San Juan harbor. Liam had come quite a ways from his mother’s East End flat and the five younger siblings he’d worked hard to feed from the time he’d hit fourteen.

Even as a copper, his income hadn’t increased that much from what he’d received as a strong back loading freight on the docks. He’d continued to live in the flat until his brothers and sisters got old enough to help their mum, and then while spending his days as a bobby, he’d done a remarkable thing.

A series of small art thefts had occurred in the local museums about his neighborhood. Nothing too large—nothing that would bankrupt the places—but small things, almost whimsical items. A button from a uniform worn by a general rumored to be Oscar Wilde’s first lover. The tiara from a cottage maid who’d lived happily with the Archduke of Somebody, giving him many children while he was ostensibly married to his cousin.

Nothing too spendy. Nothing too spectacular.

And nothing to be related to the following month or two, wherein something fabulous—a Monet thought to be destroyed when the Nazis invaded Paris, for instance—would suddenly resurface, hung on full display for the world to see where no painting or sculpture had been before.

The events were… sporadic. There was no rhyme or reason to them. No pattern, except that when one small thing disappeared, one large thing took its place. Liam had been… intrigued. In his spare hours, sitting cross-legged on his twin bed in the room he still shared with his younger brother, he’d mapped out the museums that had been hit, the things taken, the things returned.

And had come to an odd conclusion.

Money wasn’t involved in either the thefts or the returns. The thefts were so small, but they all had to do with, of all things, love affairs ending badly—or held in secret. The returns had to do with righting a terrible wrong.

One day, his day off, he was wandering a small museum—one of the ones that had been hit already—when he came upon a miniature that, Liam could swear it, had been painted by Francis Bacon upon the suicide of his lover, George Dyer. He stared at the six-inch painting, heartsickened by the image, trying desperately to remember if the artist ever worked this small. This seemed a sketch, framed, not a fully realized painting, and while Liam wasn’t really a fan of the work—Bacon hurt his heart and his senses—he could appreciate the skill and the passion.

“Lovely sketch, that,” said a man passing by. He was cute—a good ten years older than Liam but puckish, with curly brown hair and slightly crooked teeth. Slender in build, with a vulpine face, the man shouldn’t have been remarkable, but somehow he had Liam’s complete attention.

“Tragic,” Liam said, giving the man a slight smile. Then, quite seriously, he said, “But this sketch doesn’t belong here—these are all nineteenth-century expressionist. I have no idea what a modern-art sketch is doing with this lot.”

“You know your art, then?” the man asked, cocking his head. Liam got a faint whiff of expensive scotch and tried not to recoil. It could be as innocent as a businessman having a drink with lunch, but Liam’s father had died young of too much drink—and too much driving near country bridges—and Liam had no fond memories of scotch.

“I know my crime,” Liam murmured, frowning at the sketch. “Have you seen the art docent nearby? I want to ask him about—”

But the man was gone.

And while there was nothing to suggest it overtly—Liam knew his own freckled features with the slight gap in his front teeth were neither elite nor particularly stunning—he had the feeling it wasn’t because the man had found his company unpleasant.

In fact, he was pretty sure it was because he’d spoken to the thief/art restorer himself.

And after a brief, frantic consultation with the docent, who had never seen that Francis Bacon sketch before—this, goddammit, wasn’t that sort of museum!—Liam was quite sure of it.

And after writing a detailed report and sending it to his local Interpol office, he had his guess confirmed and was invited to a one-on-one meeting with Detective Chief Inspector Alec Lawson.

Lawson was about fifteen years Liam’s senior, with prematurely silver hair, tired eyes—wandering eyes, as Liam would discover—and a kind, distracted smile.

And two file boxes on a thief he and half of Europe called “Lightfingers.”

“You talked to him?” Lawson asked excitedly, like a much younger man asking about a pop star.

“I suspect so,” Liam said. “He… he said the sketch was a good one when it clearly didn’t belong there.”

“What was he like?”

Liam thought carefully over the seconds-long exchange. “Sad,” he said after a moment. “That painting. It really… it meant something.”

Lawson’s face fell. “That’s too bad,” he said. “In the past he’s been… whimsical. Happy paintings, pretty families.” He brightened. “He once substituted a child’s sculpture of a cartoon character for the sculpture he stole from a private collector who had the original illegally.”

“He kept the original?” Liam asked.

Lawson shook his head. “No, no—it found its way back to the French museum where it had been stolen.” That soft expression again. “No fatalities,” he said. “No big break-ins through glass ceilings. Ninety percent of the time the thefts are to return something where it belongs. I swear to God, he’s like king of the goddamned fairies.”

Liam—who’d once been given that moniker in school and had to bloody a lot of noses before losing it—grimaced.

Alec caught the expression and misinterpreted it. “I don’t know if he’s that kind of fairy too, but so what?” That last was said challengingly, and Liam gave a startled chuckle.

“I thought that was my name,” he said, and Lawson’s sad eyes turned speculative.

“I could have sworn it was mine.”

The dalliance lasted only six months, but it was long enough for Liam to get promoted to Detective Inspector and Interpol liaison—and for Lawson to rekindle his romance with the wife he’d never told Liam about.

Disappointed and more than ready to move out of his mother’s flat, Liam took an assignment from Interpol that involved a more frightening kind of criminal. Andres Kadjic was a Jack-of-all-trades. Guns, drugs, girls—he trafficked them all, and surprisingly, he spent much of his ill-gotten gains on art.

Before Lawson retired into politics, he’d put Liam on a task force trailing Kadjic through North Africa and Eastern Europe.

Liam had been but a tiny cog in a big bureaucratic wheel at the time, but he’d gotten to travel, gotten to see Morocco and Prague, St. Petersburg and Istanbul, and everywhere he went, he’d catch a whisper, a scent, of Lightfingers, the man who sometimes stole for profit (but usually from the filthy rich) and often stole to even the scales. (He was the tinier museums’ best friend.)

The hard-core law and order folk at Interpol would loudly decry that a thief was a thief, but the younger generation would file their reports on the crimes—still with that element of whimsy—and say to themselves that they’d be very disappointed if this man was caught.

“Seriously, we’ve got the likes of Kadjic literally polluting the world with misery, and this guy swaps out the portrait of some noble’s wife for a privately commissioned one of his mistress, and we’re supposed to go after him, guns blazing? It’s a joke,for God’s sake.”

For his part, Liam kept to himself that memory of the puckish, boozy man who had chuckled to himself about the painting being hung in the wrong place. He felt as though he’d been allowed a privileged glimpse of an endangered species in its natural habitat. The gentleman thief was, after all, a rare bird indeed.

And then Liam tracked a pair of forged passports to Morocco. The carriers of the documents were a father and his son—both artists—but Liam had noted that they seemed to be running from wherever Kadjic was.Which made him think that if he could find them before Kadjic did, he could make one of those arrests that young up-and-coming officers only dreamed about—and maybe earn the rank that Alec Lawson had bestowed upon him out of guilt.

He was literally wandering the streets one evening when he heard the chatter of excited children. He walked through that back alley and saw a dozen kids, each with their own set of thick crayons, all of them scribbling on the outside wall of one of the most unpleasant vendors in the square—a man who sold Khubz, and who sold it dearly and would rather feed the crusts to the pigs or chickens than to give even a scrap to the hungry children.

The children were not drawing graffiti, though; they were drawing pictures. Yes, some of them were of the baker, and none too flattering, but some of them were of hawks from the world-famous aerie nearby, and some were of horses, and some were of sparrows.

Liam approached a little girl drawing a dragonfly and offered her a dirham. “Yes?” he asked.

She nodded, her eyes fastened hungrily on the coin.

“Who gave you the crayons?” he asked in passable French.

Her response sounded like “Dwyleje,” and it took him a moment to translate.

Doigts Le’gers.

Light fingers.

“Only crayons?” he asked her.

“Khubz,” she replied happily, and only then did he notice the paper-wrapped bread in the pocket of every child there.

Lightfingers bringing food and art to street children.

Idly, he wondered which item would be reported stolen next.

In any event, it wasn’t his circus—nor his particular monkey—and he had business to attend to in Casino de Monte Carlo, where the current pit boss was trying very hard not to turn on Liam’s big fish, who also happened to be the casino’s biggest client.

Ayoub Fassi was a muscular man with a stout face and a constantly sour expression. He seemed to have a hatred for everybody—not only Liam, but anybody foreign or who spoke English as opposed to French was on his hit list.

When Liam, wearing a white linen suit and a straw hat in deference to the sun, walked into the man’s office and gave his most charming smile, Ayoub had merely wrinkled his nose and launched into a diatribe against anybody with freckles, curly hair and….

Liam had to look up the word the man kept using, and then his eyebrows went up.

“Really, mate,” he said in his broadest East End accent. “We’re not good enough friends for you to comment on that!”

Fassi gave a hiss, as though knowing damned well he had gone too far. “It is this Kadjic,” he spat. “He’s one. He and his….” The word that came next was best translated as “concubine,” but it had a distinctly male flavor. “He drags the man in, and neither of them are decent. Swilling scotch, laughing—he dresses like a cartoon character. Is insulting.”

“Cartoon character?” Liam asked, at a loss.

“Aladdin,” Fassi said succinctly. “So insulting.”

Well, yes, there was some cultural appropriation involved, but a lot of kids loved that cartoon. Liam wasn’t going to dissect the implications now.

“So Kadjic and his boyfriend are here?” he asked. “In the city? When did you last see them?”

Fassi shrugged. “An hour ago? ‘Aladdin’ was trying to get him to forget something… something about a painter. I don’t know.” He sighed. “If I did not hate that cartoon so much, I might find the young man charming.”

Liam blinked. The word was… evocative somehow.

“Do you know where they went?” Liam asked.

“The market district,” Fassi said unequivocally. “Kadjic had found somebody there he’d been searching for.”

Liam felt his face pale. Fassi might not know this, because apparently Kadjic spent his money prodigiously at this establishment, but “finding somebody” Kadjic had been hunting for did not bode well for anybody.

Without another word, Liam bolted, pulling his comms out and rushing to find a cab that would take him to the market district where he’d just been.

On a burst of breath, he told the other two people he’d managed to drag with him to Morocco chasing the painter lead—oh shit, oh hell, a painter that Kadjic had found—and told them to search the market district, close to the bazaar where a father and his son might slip in to what was left of the afternoon crowd.

The cab let him out before the streets became pedestrian traffic only, and the absolute stillness of the evening told him something was happening that only the people who lived there would know.

He paused for a moment after the cab roared off, and he listened. He heard a man plead. And a child’s scream. And then another man yell… and chaos erupt.

He rounded the corner of the alley, weapon out, badge extended, screaming, “Interpol, put your weapons down!” in time to see a midsize man wearing a very sharp European suit and black leather shoes disappear around the corner. Liam would later hear that he’d allowed his target to escape, but he couldn’t regret it.

In front of him was a scene from a nightmare. A man with pale skin and light blue open eyes—poor, with a battered knapsack in his hands and wearing the most threadbare of traditional garments—slumped against the wall, his head tilted to the side, halfway separated from his neck. His mouth was open, blood still oozing from his throat like a dying river.

On the ground next to him was a thug—no other word for it—a thickly muscled man in another sharp black suit (in this heat, for fuck’s sake!) He had black hair, white, white skin, and his hands were coated in blood. As was the weapon in his fist. The thug groaned slightly, and a third man on the ground a few feet from him let out a sob.

“Is the…,” he gasped. “Is the boy okay?”

At that moment one of Liam’s fellow agents rounded the corner, and Liam gestured at the groaning armed man.

“Cuff him,” he said imperiously, as though he knew exactly what had happened when all he knew for sure was that the thug with the knife was bad news. When that guy had been secured, he bent next to the bleeding man on the ground, and almost cried to recognize his phantom thief, the giver of crayons and bread.

“Hello, my friend,” he said softly, wincing at the mess of blood on the man’s midsection. “What happened to you here?”

“Kadjic,” gasped the man. “Didn’t like it when I jumped on Yuri’s back. Said he’d teach me manners. Good thing he forgot how to spell.”

“Spell?” Liam glanced up at Carter, his counterpart.

Carter shrugged and spoke into his comms, asking for medical assistance while the boozy, youngish man with the curly hair and the charm—and the blue velveteen harem pants and vest of an expensively dressed Aladdin—tried to talk.

“His name. My flesh. I think he forgot the d.”

Liam stared at him in horror, squatting to take his hand regardless of protocol. “Weren’t you his boyfriend?” he asked baldly, and that earned him a blood-flecked smile. Nicked lung,Liam thought, and prayed the medics would arrive soon.

“Right up until—” The man gasped. “—I stopped Yuri from killing Antoine Couvier’s son.” He squeezed his eyes closed. “I didn’t know he’d kill Antoine. Poor Antoine… seemed like such a gentle man. Fucking booze. I should have known.”

Liam smoothed his hand over the man’s brow, wanting to give comfort, until it hit him. “His son!” he gasped. “Did he get away?”

Aladdin nodded. “Nicked the paint in his bag. You can see it. Green. Like grass.” He let out a little sob. “Like home.”

Liam could see the man losing consciousness and thought, I should arrest him for art theft. He must be Lightfingers—he must be! But Andre Kadjic had just tried to carve his initials in the man’s ribs—after he’d choked out the thug who’d killed Antoine Couvier and gone after his son.

That was a lot of valor in their little thief, Liam thought. Arresting him now would be a poor way to repay him.

At that moment the medics arrived in a small, old white-painted van with a red cross on the front. Liam moved out of the way to let them work, getting the location of the hospital from the driver before he went to talk to Carter.

“What’d he say?” the man asked, stepping aside so a medic could treat the still-groaning mob muscle on the ground.

“Said Kadjic ordered his man to kill Antoine Couvier and then the man’s son. L… little guy couldn’t stop Couvier’s death, but he did manage to choke out the hired help while the kid got away.” Liam glanced around at the dark that had fallen dreadfully fast. “Poor kid,” he muttered. “Must be scared to death.”

Carter, a fortyish veteran with the hide of a Komodo dragon, gave a snort. “Not for long. If Kadjic finds him, he’ll be dead!”

Liam’s heart started pounding in his ears. He may have moved out of his mother’s flat, but that didn’t mean he didn’t miss the whole stinking lot of them. How old would the boy be? He’d been what? Six? Seven? When his father had first gone on the run after tipping the authorities off to one of Kadjic’s operations via a clever flaw in their forged documents. That would make Etienne twelve now. Liam could see his own little brother, Caleb, with spidery arms and legs, thin wrists and ankles, and that sort of perpetually super-excited/super-confused expression that a lot of boys that age seemed to have.

“We need to find him,” he said, trying not to let his panic show.

Carter looked around as though there were listening devices on the dirt streets, the clay walls, the colorful canopies set up to temper the brutal daytime sun that only blocked the stars now.

“If we do find him,” he said softly, “he needs to disappear, you hear me? So he doesn’t disappear.”

Liam blinked. “Any ideas where he should disappear to?” he asked, realizing that Carter had just suggested waggling their fingers and making a material witness go away to save the boy’s life. It was an unexpectedly human move from the seemingly implacable Carter, but maybe Carter had memories of children he loved too.

“Talk to your Aladdin friend,” Carter said. “He seems to feel some obligation to the boy. But first let’s find him.”

It took them all night.

The green paint helped, but the boy had been wily—and fast. Over, around, through—he must have hit every street in Morocco before finally crawling into a back alley and curling up, head on his knees, to sleep.

The eyes the boy turned to Liam when he approached were unutterably weary… but grateful.

Liam stashed the boy in his own small flat to sleep, bathe, recover, while he went to see how their Aladdin friend was doing. Tienne—as he gave his own name—seemed to be in a sort of fugue state. Liam didn’t think he’d run, but he had Carter come over to keep him company anyway. Carter promised to sleep on the couch all day and maybe get them food, which for Carter was a declaration of responsibility.

Aladdin was waking up from surgery when Liam showed up in his room in the early afternoon, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to cadge some scrubs from the attending orderly so he could slip out the back door.

“Oh-ho, now!” Liam said cheerfully. “That’s no way to repay the man who rescued you, is it?”

He got a sour look in return. “Rescue me? Are you serious? After trying to drink myself to death for a year, I finally found a shortcut. You cheated me is what you did. I could have been happy and dead by now.”

Liam gasped as though slapped, and remembered the Francis Bacon painting. Aladdin of the velveteen pantaloons was apparently in a dark place.

Well, Liam could go there with him. “That’s a shitty thing to do to the people around you, isn’t it? There’s got to be somebody out there who would miss you.”

Aladdin sagged into the bed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I… wow, copper, you don’t know it, but you hit me where I don’t live anymore.” He took the deep shuddering breath of a man who was trying not to cry, because men weren’t supposed to cry, and kept his face averted. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to tell you that the boy—Tienne—is okay. I’d say fine, but—”

Aladdin swallowed. “He just saw his father practically beheaded in a back alley. No. Not fine. Poor kid.”

Listening to him now, Liam could hear the British accent he’d affected—fairly successfully—slipping. What remained was subtly American, although Liam wasn’t yet great at gauging from where. If it wasn’t a moviesque New York or Southern accent, he was at a loss.

“He thinks you’re a hero, you know.” Liam softened his own tone and, trying to appear non-threatening, sat down in the chair across from the reluctant patient and got a good look at his face.

He was breathing hard—Liam had heard he’d nicked a lung, although there’d been no pneumothorax, thanks to the quick treatment. But the flesh of his rib cage and concave stomach had been carved upon—literally a K, A, D and the beginnings of a J.

Liam could see blood seeping out through the bandages and thought with a sudden cold sweat that if he’d managed to get some scrubs and slip out the window—and it was obvious he’d been eyeing it the entire time as an exit—the young man might truly fulfill his wish and die. Quickly or slowly, it wouldn’t matter.

With a swallow, Aladdin dashed at his eyes with the palm of his hand. “He doesn’t know, though, does he?” he mumbled, almost to himself. “What a real waste of oxygen I am.”

“You saved his life,” Liam said. “And now we need your help.”

Surprised, the man glanced up, his eyes red-rimmed and shadowed with pain and exhaustion. The hand he moved to wipe more tears was shaking, and Liam had a sudden flash of insight. The boozy humor in the museum, the announcement of “trying to drink himself to death.”

He apparently almost had drunk himself to death. Now that he was coming down from the anesthetic, he was detoxing.

“I’m a wreck,” the man said, laughing bitterly at himself. “I’m not sure what I can do.”

“Do you know the boy?” Liam asked.

A shake of the head. “No. First time I saw him was in that alley. I tried not to pay attention when Kadjic was working.”

As long as the booze was good—the words remained unspoken, but the recrimination hung in the air.

“Well, we’ve got two options. One is to take him into custody as a material witness―”

“And sign the boy’s death warrant?”

Those puckish features suddenly sharpened, and Liam could feel it roaring out of the man: Protectiveness for a boy he’d never met.

“Or find someone willing to shelter him,” Liam said. Besides me mum, who would do it, too, but that’s a fine way to thank her.

“Shit,” Aladdin muttered. “Shit, shit, shit-shit-shit-shit-shit. Fuck. Goddammit. Fuck.”

Liam found himself chuckling in spite of the direness of the situation. “That was impressive.”

There was a roll of the eyes. “Is my bag of stuff still here?” Aladdin asked. Liam found it on the side of the bed and handed it over. Inside was a cell phone—but not a smart phone. This was a dinosaur, a Nokia, the tiny coffin-shaped one that needed shortcut keys and a degree in cryptography to text.

The charge was dying on the thing, but there was a cord—as ancient as the phone—and an adapter in the bag too.

And enough cash to rent a flat for a year.

And a small silver flask. Liam checked it for an inscription.

Danny, to grand adventures. Love forever, Felix.

Liam swallowed, and then watched as Danny—it had to be his flask—plugged in the phone and hit a number. Not a preset, from memory.

“Dearest?” he said in a voice one might use for a beloved sister. “No, no—don’t give him the phone. Don’t tell Josh either. Just… goddammit, I had no idea you’d all be eating breakfast. Get up, apologize to Fox, and hide in the office for a minute. I’ve got….” His voice fractured. “Julia, I have a huge favor to ask you, but it’s important.”

There was a pause as Danny waited for the woman to do what he asked. Then after a brief, tearful entreaty on the other end of the line, Danny replied in an equally fractured voice, “Sweetheart, I’m a mess. I can’t come home like this. Do you think I want the boy to see me like this? I can’t… I can’t come back to Fox when I’m looking up to see rock bottom. I… a man has his pride.”

He broke on the word “pride,” and Liam had a terrible sense of how much this conversation was costing him.

That tearful voice again, but with an edge of control. They were both pulling themselves together.

“There’s a boy,” Danny said. “Our boy’s age. He’s… he’s seen terrible things. He needs shelter. I… I have no idea if he understands family like we do. He may prefer boarding school—” Danny paused. “Art, I think. He and his father make—made—beautiful art. That is the only thing I know about him. But he needs home. Someplace that is home. You… I may not be able to come back, but he’s got no sins to repent. He needs somebody, and I- I can’t be that somebody. Not now.”

There was a digestive silence, and then the voice, calmer now, in charge.

“I’ll give the phone to my young copper friend—” A sudden look of disgust. “No, I didn’t get nicked. My God, woman, cut a man when he’s down. He is….” Danny gave Liam a beseeching glance. “He is a friend. And he’s doing this boy a big favor shipping him to you. He’ll need another name and ID. I’ll….” Danny let out a breathy sigh and seemed to sag even more against the bed.

Gently, Liam took the phone from his fingers and gestured for him to lie down to rest. This man had just come out of surgery—and, as he’d told the woman on the phone, he had to look up to see rock bottom.

“Hello?” Liam said softly. “This is Agent Liam Craig, Interpol. Your friend here—”

“Danny?” she said, and while her voice was thick, it was also begging for confirmation.

“Danny,” he confirmed when the figure in the bed nodded. “He’s been helping us in an investigation, and the boy… he’s at risk. I don’t know if you’re equipped to deal with someone who needs a new identity—”

“Oh, you leave that part to us,” she said, so dryly Liam had to wonder at her background with Danny Lightfingers, the thief. “But Danny—”

“Please,” Danny said, shivering in what was probably his first shock of the DTs. “Please don’t tell her.”

“He needs to dry out,” Liam said. “Don’t worry. I can find him a place.”

“Tell her not to tell Felix,” Danny whispered. “Not anything. Just shelter the boy.”

“He….” Liam swallowed, realizing that here was when he put himself between two lovers. “He requests that you don’t tell Felix.”

“Fucking aces,” Julia said acidly. “Tell him….” Her venom only lasted four words. “Tell him he can come home anytime.”

“I’ll do that,” Liam said. “Here’s my number.” He rattled it off. “I’ll call you with travel information—”

“What does the boy have?” she asked. “Does he need anything?”

“He needs everything,” Liam told her, thinking of the backpack, which had been sliced by the murderer’s knife and had bled its contents, including the green paint, all over the streets of Morocco. “I don’t think he’s got a spare pair of skivvies to call his own.”

“Poor baby,” she said, and her compassion was real. “Contact me in an hour with a place to send money, and I’ll see that you get him kitted out and on a plane to Chicago. I’ve got to get my son off to school and speak to my husband, but we’ll get this sorted.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to warn her again not to speak to Felix, whoever he was to her, but she signed off, and the line went dead.

He handed the phone back to Lightfingers, who unconsciously cradled it to his chest.

“She’s… formidable,” he said and was amused by Lightfingers’s adamant nod.

“She is.” He closed his eyes. “I hate to turn the boy loose, but if anybody can offer him shelter, she and Fox can.”

“Is she your sister?” he asked. Something about their familiarity, their pained separation, spoke deeply of family.

Danny Lightfingers let out a fractured laugh. “Lover’s wife,” he said, with a bitter smile at Liam’s surprise. “It’s not as sordid as you’re thinking. She….” He shuddered. “She needed to escape. She was pregnant, and her father would have beaten her to death if he’d found out. So we married her off to Felix.” And then, to Liam’s everlasting wonder, he saw Danny Lightfingers smile. He was huddling in the bed, in pain and detoxing, and he smiled.

He looked like a fallen angel.

“And she had the baby, and we were a family. And it was really wonderful.” Then a tear escaped from eyes he’d squeezed shut. “The boy… he’s ten now. Just went to his party. Snuck in, hugged him, left him a gift, snuck out. So smart. Kind. Light of my life.”

“Why’d you leave?” Liam asked, his heart hurting.

“’Cause that’s all I ever was to them,” Danny whispered, and he was Danny now, whatever his last name. He was young—Liam would find out later he was barely thirty—and he was sad and lonely and in pain. “I was the thing that crept in their windows, made love to Fox, played games with the boy, hugged my sister… crept out. It’s cold in the shadows, young copper. Pretty soon I needed the scotch to warm my heart so it would beat. None of it was any way to live.”

Liam’s eyes were burning. He didn’t know the whole of the story, but he knew enough now. He’d had a dalliance with a man who had lied about being married. It had hurt, but the thought of being in love, not only with a man but with a family,and being the dirty secret—the ache that would cause….

Chilled Liam to the bone, and he was just sitting by the man’s bed.

“What next?” he asked, settling down in the chair again, this time so Danny could see him sitting.

“I have no idea,” Danny mumbled.

“I do,” Liam said. “You know, Interpol agents have a thing for scotch.”

He got a crooked smile. “Oh really?”

“Or coke or gin.” Liam had seen enough of it—Carter was headed for a treatment program if he didn’t stop taking a snort in the morning to wake himself up. Either that or a cardiac infarction.

“There’s a center—a good place. Not an awful place. It’s in Ireland. I can get you a bed there, Lightfingers.”

“So I could wake up in prison? No thank you.” Danny managed to open his eyes for that one, and Liam had to laugh.

“Well, you get me a name I can give them that isn’t an international art thief, and I’ll get you there,” Liam said, meaning it.

Danny closed his eyes. “This is a nice fantasy,” he mumbled. “But it’s never going to work—”

“That boy,” Liam said harshly. “You’re going to just leave him?”

“Tienne?” The reply was puzzled. “I thought we were hashing that out!”

“The other one,” Liam said. “Josh. The one you snuck in to see. He’ll want to see you again. And again. My father was a drunk. And, you know, he died early, and he left us poor, but you know what? We miss him. You keep going like you are, I won’t be in the next alleyway to bail you out.”

“Oh God,” Danny groaned. “You’re young, copper, but I think I hate you.”

Liam reached out and took one of those fine-boned, trembling hands in his own. He felt a kinship for this man.

“You,” Danny said, “are far too young for me.”

“My last lover was ten years your senior,” Liam told him dryly. “But that’s the last time I sleep with a married man, and your heart is obviously already taken by this Fox fellow. No, this is a simple human touch, my friend.” His dryness faded. “Please. My father was a sweet man with a weakness. I’d give anything to have him back. You… you just saved a boy at your worst moment. I think you’ve got the strength to fight this thing. That boy you love—he’s waiting to see you again. Think about how he’d feel if you crawled off to die.”

There was a deadly quiet then, and Liam could hear, barely, the changes in Danny’s breathing as the tears slipped through in spite of his best efforts.

Finally, “I’ll need a sedative,” he murmured. “Enough to kill the DTs while I go find my cache.”

Liam cocked his head. “I’m in Interpol—”

“Nothing stolen!” Danny retorted, voice wounded. “My God, you people—you and Julia—with the insults. Just my ID, my computer. Did you think I left that with Kadjic? Not enough booze in the world.”

My God, he was sharp. Liam wondered what sort of menace he’d be when he was fully sober.

And suddenly resolved to find out.

Liam wasn’t in love with Danny Lightfingers—and Lightfingers didn’t seem to be in love with him. But Liam thought of his father, of his siblings, of this man who was loved so much that his lover’s wife begged him to come home.

He seemed like a man worth knowing.

Kadjic had left Morocco, but Liam still got points for getting so close to him in the first place when his entire detail thought Liam was mad for searching there. He was reassigned to the UK to take on a ring of car thieves, which proved to be exciting. And it gave him opportunities to visit Lightfingers in rehab, where he stayed for three months. While he was there, Liam helped him set up a dead drop in New York so he could send mail to Josh without being traced and witnessed firsthand the brilliance of the man when unhampered with booze or despair.

Toward the end of Danny’s stay, Liam arrived with a gift. A trunk-sized suitcase to hold the things Danny had gathered in Ireland, since he’d left Morocco with barely the clothes on his back.

Danny had greeted him warmly, but as he did so, he gave a tall young Viking about his own age a gentle “this is private” glance, and the man nodded and ambled off in a dignified manner.

“A conquest?” Liam asked, laughing. Not handsome or beautiful, no. In fact, perfectly ordinary—but there was that puckish appeal that was, apparently, irresistible.

“A… dalliance,” Danny said, inclining his head. He sobered. “I’m going to have to leave him soon. He knows it.”

Liam nodded. “I’m going to ask—is Felix, perhaps, tall and blond?”

Danny grimaced. “You mean because Carl is tall and blond?”

“Yes, and Kadjic is—”

“Not,” Danny finished blandly. “Yes. Kadjic was a petty little tyrant. He was cruel and violent, and I felt like deserved that.” He blew out a breath. “You know, they have a perfectly adequate therapy program here. I’m sure I’ve covered this.”

Liam nodded and sighed. “All I’m saying, Danny, is that… it sounds like your family was doing the best it could. Maybe don’t try so hard to forget him is all.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “I can hardly forget him if I’m going to be going back to Chicago to see Josh and Tienne while dodging him at the same time, can I?”

Liam gave him a flat look. “That’s mature.”

“I’ll take my little revenges where I can.” Danny sniffed. Then, soberly, he said, “But this next trip isn’t to see them, so avoiding the whole fam damily should be easy.”

Liam cocked his head. “What are you going to do?”

He would start to identify that special little lip curl Danny made when he was planning to do something DCI Liam Craig, currently assigned to Interpol, could not condone.

“An old friend of the family died,” he said, and Liam heard the lie. Whoever had died, Danny wasn’t sorry in the least to hear he was dead. “And I must pay my respects. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” he added with a rakish smile, and Liam, who had come to trust Lightfingers on some base level, didn’t. He wasn’t going after Kadjic. If he stole something, it was something the victims could afford or probably deserved to have stolen. And as for being caught? Even if Liam decided to bring him in for suspected crimes, what did he have to convict? A boozy smile and an impish wink at a not-really-a-crime scene?

And so it went.

They would meet every so often, usually because Danny was nearby (he managed to keep tabs on Liam although Liam had no idea where Danny would be), and they would catch up. Liam’s love life (usually dismal) and Danny’s (he had a parade of lovers whom he left on good terms) were discussed, and then the heart of the meeting.

Pictures. Usually candids: Josh, his friend Grace, Tienne. Even Felix and Julia, taken in secret, who did not disappoint.

By the time Danny and Felix reunited—in a suitably spectacular and public fashion—and Danny contacted Liam about making an arrest for a very bad person, Liam felt like they were a second family. He would visit his mum and his siblings, and if the visit was long enough, they would usually ask him, “Hey, how’s Lightfingers? Any new stories?”

Always. Always with Danny there were stories.

And as the boys grew, many of the stories centered around them. Liam watched with interest as the pictures on Danny’s phone grew from children to teenagers to adults—well and truly. Tienne, so shy and blond as to be nearly transparent, even when smiling for the camera. Josh’s friend Grace, vibrant and pulsating, demanding attention for his beauty, his intelligence, his wildness. Stirling and Molly, Josh and Grace’s friends since middle school—Stirling compact and intense, Molly exuberant, with a glorious cascade of red ringlets and a muscular grace and beauty that could conquer any obstacle.

And Josh himself, who while not related to Danny by blood, seemed to have inherited everything—his build, his fierce intelligence, his impish sense of humor—from the man who had stolen parenthood from thin air and lavished it on him.

After the reunion, Danny and his new “crew” seemed to be getting on swimmingly doing the same thing Danny had done on his own—but on a larger scale. Evening the odds. Liam enjoyed their exchanges even more now that Danny was officially “Benjamin Morgan.” Having a home, a family, people to care for, young adults to mentor, seemed to bring out the greatness Liam had seen from the very first, obscured as it was by alcohol and despair.

But still… he had not been prepared for that first meeting with Josh.

He’d arrived in the middle of a firefight, and then along with the rest of the crew, had waited with bated breath as a bruiser named Chuck had disconnected a bomb from the electronics-filled van where Stirling and Josh had been trapped.

When it was time to open the van’s doors, Liam had stepped up, because that’s what you did when you were law enforcement, right? You stepped up?

And Josh Salinger, sick from his first round of chemo, had all but fainted into his arms.

But not before gazing into Liam’s eyes with a fiercely intelligent, kind, and clever expression, his dark brown eyes limpid with pain and avid with curiosity.

Liam had held him until they’d secured a vehicle and, under the guise of solicitous concern, had managed to hover over the boy for the rest of the night.

The next six months had been… odd.

Josh wasn’t merely sick,he was all but dying. Danny had called Liam one night in early November, because he didn’t have a sponsor to call, to confess that after a long, terrible week when the rest of the crew was off chasing murder birds, Josh had been in the hospital, literally fighting for his life.

Only Danny and Felix knew. Josh had begged them to send his mother away, and they had, but the burden of being Felix’s strength, of being Josh’s, was almost enough to make Danny break a then ten-year-old vow to never drink again.

And Liam had stayed in touch, calling Danny, calling Felix, being included in the crew’s adventures and almost coyly insinuating himself into Josh Salinger’s life.

On the one hand it felt deceitful. Josh had no way of knowing that Liam felt connected to his family after years of association with Danny.

But on the other hand… if all Liam ever had was that moment, that one moment, of Josh Salinger in his arms, scowling with embarrassment, still trying to run the op as his entire family lost their mind over his health, then he still would have known that the boy was extraordinary.

He still would have wanted to know the man whom Lightfingers had helped to raise.

And Josh seemed to realize there was something… a connection, a plucked and vibrant string, binding them together.

His emails to Liam were oddly formal when the language of his crew was almost free-flowing performance art.

The times Liam sat for dinner with the crew were the only times Liam ever saw him discomfited.

And now…? Now they would be stuck together on a yacht for three weeks of vacation and mystery solving, investigating the deaths of Stirling and Molly’s parents. Stirling and Molly were two of Josh’s oldest friends, foster siblings who’d been adopted by a couple of sweet middle-aged zillionaires, a breed Liam could have sworn was born in myth.

But leave it to Felix and Julia to know two unicorns, and leave it to Josh and his friends to want to avenge their untimely demise.

Liam wanted in. He’d benefited from some of their capers, had gotten some promotions from the leads they’d let him in on.

He wanted in on this one.

But mostly he wanted the in to Josh. He wanted the right to sit at the boy’s table. To hear him talk, to learn the language of the crew so he spoke it like his own.

That string that had plucked in his heart when he’d first seen the boy smile—that sound, that chord—had grown cacophonously louder in his ears since that close day in July. It only stilled when Josh glanced at him or, hell, texted him a detail or wrote an email.

He felt ridiculous on the one hand. He was past thirty; Josh had turned twenty-one in January. What sort of addled, daft, lecherous… oh dear God!

As Liam approached the yacht again—he’d made friends with the captain the day before while waiting for the others to arrive—one of the younger crew came dashing down the dock.

Liam knew them by now. Stirling, of course, was the crew’s computer specialist—their hacker—and Liam had seen firsthand that the boy was sort of a prodigy. Compact, midsize, Black, with hair kept precision short, Stirling wasn’t always great with people, but he was practical to the bone, and he seemed a bit rattled now.

“Heya, Stirling,” Liam said, concerned. “Did you get lost?”

“I was looking for Julia or Danny or Felix,” he said unhappily, peering back to where Grace, Josh, Hunter, and Tienne were grouped. “I know this is supposed to be Leon’s yacht, but Josh can’t really wait—”