Chapter 17
“Goddamn, you think you know a person…”
Cole chuckled under his breath as they entered the elevator, leaning the ladder against the wall before hitting the button for the ground floor. “Says the man who maintains a different history for everyone he meets.”
“That’s different,” Will insisted, adjusting his baseball cap so the brim sat a little lower on his forehead. “That’s not for my sake, it’s for Baby Boy’s. Everything else about me is a hundred percent genuine.”
“If you were smarter, no one would even know you had a brother to cover up for.”
Will chose to take that as a compliment. “You think I’m smart, honeybee?”
Cole turned to glare at him. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?”
“At least one more.” Will looked over his partner—in crime, just in crime—and adjusted the strap of his painter’s overalls. “Christ, you need to learn to slouch. Maybe if we took that stick out of your ass…”
Cole smacked his hand away. “Professional painters understand body dynamics and the need to keep a straight spine, and for what it’s worth, I think this is overkill.”
“Spoken like a man used to working from behind a monitor.” Cole scoffed. “No, seriously, you’d do everything in a suit if you could, wouldn’t you? Classic James Bond wannabe, right here.”
“And you’d do everything in ratty jeans and a T-shirt.”
Will leered. “I’d definitely do you in ratty jeans and a T-shirt.
” The elevator stopped and they took hold of the ladder, one on each end, and headed for the parking garage.
The man at the lobby desk didn’t look twice.
“But really,” Will continued once they were alone again, “I had no damn clue Cheyenne moonlighted as a forger, and I’ve known her for almost ten years. ”
Cole shrugged as they made their way over to the plain, white-walled van they’d rented under a fake identity that morning. “We should be grateful she’s so close by.”
“I’m grateful,” Will said. “I’m super grateful. This is my expression of gratitude, can’t you tell?”
“No.”
“I just don’t understand why she’d want to keep her skills a secret.
” He unlocked the back of the van and opened it up.
They slid the ladder in together, and Will hopped inside after it to bungee it into place.
“She could have more business than she knows what to do with if she advertised it a little.”
“Clearly she prefers quality over quantity,” Cole said. He frowned. “Wrap it again before you fasten it to the hook.”
Will glared at him. “I know how to secure a damn ladder.”
“It’s going to rattle around.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“I’m just saying—”
He popped out of the back and slammed the doors shut before Cole could finish. “C’mon, let’s get out of here before we’re made.”
Cole plucked at the front of his overalls distastefully. “Isn’t that what your clever disguise is meant to prevent?”
Wow, you fucked a guy one time—all right, twice—okay, maybe more than that at this point but who was counting—and he thought he could act like a little bitch to you. To be fair, Cole had always acted like a little bitch to Will, but he was going all out lately.
And thanks to the unfortunate way the wires in Will’s brain were crossed, he found it to be cute as hell.
“First you call me smart, then you call me clever…be careful, baby, or I’ll start to think you like me.” He pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Cole. “You’re driving.”
It spoke volumes about Cole’s appraisal of Will’s driving skills that he didn’t even argue, just headed for the front of the van.
Under the circumstances, Will didn’t mind.
He hated New York traffic. He hated that he had to even think about New York traffic when this fucking city was the last place they should be right now, given Alders’s efforts to hunt them down and take them apart for the sake of his Puffin.
But Lilith was here, and more to the point Cheyenne was here too. Even worse, she’d refused to work for them without a face-to-face exchange of money for product.
“I only take cash,” she’d said when Cole confronted her about it during their meeting this morning. “And I know fake money when I feel it. If you want a replica Iberian Puffin on short notice, then you’re going to do things my way.”
“Five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of cash,” Cole had pointed out.
“Not too much for a man of your means, I’m sure.
” Cheyenne had simpered for a moment in Will’s direction, a nod to the character she played at Lilith’s gallery.
She’d been nothing like that in the middle of her own vast art studio, which took up the entire second story of a warehouse in the Bronx.
There, she’d had the bearing of a queen ruling over her domain. “No offense meant, of course.”
“None taken,” he’d replied faintly. It wasn’t even a lie—who kept half a million dollars in cash around?
Cole did. Not even in his apartment, either; he had a locker with the money they needed half a block away from the hotel they were heading for now. He’d left fifty thousand dollars with Cheyenne as the deposit, and she assured him that she’d have a Puffin for them by tomorrow.
“I still have the molds from the first one I did,” she said. “Otherwise this would take a week or more. Where are you staying?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“Because the only person I take work calls from is Lilith, that’s why. You can expect a messenger to inform you once I’m done, so don’t leave the hotel for long, gentlemen.”
“I never thought I’d work with a person even more old-fashioned than you,” Cole groused as he turned off Longfellow onto Westchester, away from Cheyenne’s studio. “Cash only, in-person messages…”
Will smirked. “Makes it kind of fun, doesn’t it?”
“Try slow and inconvenient.”
“I happen to know for a fact that you like taking it slow sometimes.”
“Is there anything you can’t turn into a sex joke?” Cole asked as he drove right past the hotel they had told Cheyenne they’d be staying at. They’d gone inside and booked a room there, yes; they’d even set up cameras inside, just in case someone paid the room a visit. But actually staying there?
Absolutely not. They’d learned their lesson in Montreal. They were staying in a discreet brownstone bed and breakfast half a mile away, which wasn’t where they were parking this van, incidentally. That was the parking garage Cole was about to turn into.
“Some things,” Will assured him. “I wouldn’t—” Cole snapped the wheel over, sharpening the turn, and there was a loud thunk from the back of the van. “You bastard.”
“I told you the cord needed an extra wrap,” he said as he leaned out the van window and took the ticket from the dispenser.
“You did that on purpose,” Will accused.
“It’s not my fault your workmanship can’t withstand a bit of rough driving.”
“I’ll show you rough,” he said through gritted teeth as Cole parked the van.
Cole shook his head. “Yet another sex joke. It’s starting to get old.”
Will was caught halfway between the impulse to laugh and to punch Cole right across the face.
He didn’t believe in solving all his problems with violence, though, especially not when those problems were an infuriating, supercilious, too-smart-for-his-own-good asshole like the man he was caught up in this thing with.
There was one surefire way to make Cole fall right off his high horse.
Will got out of the van, walked right up to him, and wrapped his arms around Cole’s waist. “Baby.” He pressed a soft kiss to the edge of Cole’s mouth, then to his cheek.
“You can’t blame me for wanting you so much, can you?
” He nuzzled the edge of his jaw. “You’re just so damn pretty. ”
There it was, the flush of red he’d been waiting for, crawling up Cole’s neck and across his ears. God, it was cute.
“I look pretty in a dirty painting uniform, right,” Cole snapped. “Do you ever stop lying?”
Had there ever been a harder man to compliment? Certainly not one that Will had been interested in. “You do,” he insisted. “You always look good, honeybee, no matter what you’re wearing. Not to say I wouldn’t rather have you out of it, but you’d tempt a saint.”
“Which you’re not.”
“Which I’m not,” Will agreed. “Good thing, too. We’d be having way less fun otherwise. C’mon.” He pressed one last kiss to Cole’s mouth, then stepped back to give him the space to find his equilibrium again. “Let’s go kick back for a while.”
Cole didn’t fuss this time, and Will internally congratulated himself on his expanding lexicon for the other man. Cole was a puzzle, no doubt, but Will was going to figure him out. He’d already learned a lot, and was surprised by some of the things they had in common.
For instance, Cole was also a man who valued contingency plans.
That was a nice surprise. Will had always known the guy was meticulous, but especially here in New York he had access to all sorts of supplies that made their lives easier.
Fake IDs, credit cards, cash, a new phone for himself with an online persona and a linked bank account—he was prepared.
Given that Alders was turning up the heat, something that plenty of their “acquaintances” were complaining about in numerous group chats, Cole’s preparation was a big part of why they were risking staying in the city right now.
He would probably hate admitting it, but Cole was honorable, too.
Not just for a thief, either; he was resolute about taking responsibility and offering help if he thought someone needed it.
Hell, he’d done it for Will the night the Puffin was stolen, and he’d had no reason to want Will anything but drawn and quartered at that point thanks to their mutual ex.
It was refreshing to find someone like that, to be able to relax in Cole’s company because he was certain that no matter what, Cole wasn’t going to sell him out.
It was going to be hard to let him go after this.