Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
It was near nightfall when Robin’s familiar tread echoed down the stairs.
Icarus, who’d been relegated to the cellar when his fingers had started to smoke, must have also recognized their approaching visitor.
Shoulders tense, he turned from the overstock metal tanks he was pretending to be interested in and let his arms hang loose at his sides, at the ready, fingers spread as if preparing to flex his claws.
“Easy,” Adam coaxed. “If he wasn’t here in peace, you wouldn’t hear him coming.”
“I’d hear his heartbeat.”
“Maybe.” Adam tilted his head. “Maybe not.”
Icarus’s brows raced north. “Oh, really? How’s that?”
“My secret to tell,” Robin said as he cleared the bottom step. “Not his.” He met them beside the retired tasting table in the middle of the cellar great room and dropped Icarus’s jam-packed go bag at their feet. “Your apartment building was still standing. Too big to burn down.”
Whereas a fire at Adam’s house in the Terrace looked like just another arson in a dying neighborhood.
A blaze caused by a squatter or a property owner trying to collect insurance.
Barely a blip on the radar. It was what Adam wanted—as erased as he could make it—but memories were harder to scrub clean, the mental door on them impossible to keep shut.
He turned away, chest burning and eyes stinging.
Icarus skirted a hand across his back, a gentle sweep of comfort, enough to steady him on the edge of the abyss, to anchor him while he caught his breath. Icarus, meanwhile, interrogated the messenger. “What about the apartment itself?” he asked Robin. “Atlas broke in before.”
“He’d been there, but it didn’t look or smell like he stayed long.”
“Computer?”
“In the bag.”
“Crochet hooks?”
“Plus yarn.”
Icarus smiled. “Robe too?”
Robin shook his head. “Wasn’t there.”
The smile died. “Stinky motherfucking warlock.”
“First thing you’ve said I agree with.”
“I get to hit him before you kill him.”
“Second thing.”
The shared spite forced a stuttered laugh out of Adam. An easier one followed when he caught Icarus’s smirk. “Not going for a third?”
The vampire winked and hefted his bag off the floor. “I know better than to press my luck.”
That absurdity deserved a full-bellied laugh. “Since when?”
“Since now,” Icarus threw over his shoulder as he turned toward the vacant bunk room.
He disappeared into the shadows, and Adam, still chuckling, swung his attention back to the table. Robin eyed him with an expression that was half surprise and half . . . pity? The assassin tossed a dime-sized metal sliver—an embedded lens—onto the table. “Also found that at his place.”
“A bug? Someone’s been spying on him?”
“Or he’s been spying on you.”
Adam picked up the sophisticated piece of tech and examined it more closely, considering its other uses. “Or on his clients.”
“None of the above,” Icarus snapped as he zipped back into the room.
He’d left on his jeans but swapped the knit sweater for a strappy tank top that left zero to the imagination, his cut biceps and ripped upper body on full display.
For his benefit or Robin’s, Adam couldn’t say, and he didn’t have time to contemplate it further.
Icarus snatched the bug from his hand. “That’s five grand worth of tech you ruined,” he seethed at Robin.
“Who’s tech?” Robin asked. “Yours?”
“Hers.”
“Hers?”
“My sister’s, and it wasn’t active.” His gaze flicked the direction of the stairs—detecting Cormac’s approach, as did Adam—then back to them. “We have a signal. If I gave it, she’d know to turn it on and look around.”
Robin planted his hands on the table. “There’s only a handful of people with access to that kind of gear.”
Icarus pocketed the tech. “My sister is one of them.”
“According to your file,” Cormac said as he entered the room, “your sister died in the Rift.”
“Who do you think taught me how to excavate?”
“That’s not an ans—”
“Enough,” Adam said, cutting the volley off before it went any further, especially with Cormac-of-all-angles in the debate now.
“This is all beside the point.” They needed to focus on their common mission—Vincent Cirillo.
Adam was done with the asshole who’d destroyed his life, and for the first time in a decade, he had the pieces to return the favor.
To destroy Vincent and finish this, for good.
“How do we bring this to a close? Because Vincent’s clearly ready, and so am I.
” He gestured at the table, inviting the combatants to sit and strategize. “Help me figure this out.”
The stare-off continued another few seconds before Icarus slid into the nearest chair. “I have a call with my client later tonight.”
“Why not now?” Robin claimed the seat across from him. “We brought you your shit.”
Icarus didn’t rise to the bait, his fangs and claws tucked away, his tone carefully indifferent. “While you might prefer brute force, I usually get what I want through more persuasive means.” He crossed his legs and shifted his attention to Adam. “What is it we want?”
“A meet.” Adam sank into the chair beside him. “We’ll try it your way first and hold brute force in our back pocket if needed.”
“We’ll need to meet on neutral ground,” Cormac said as he took a seat beside Robin. “Extracurriculars aside, Icarus’s client is still a cop. His defenses will be up. We don’t want to be outgunned.”
“Portola,” Robin suggested.
Icarus fisted a hand beneath the table. Adam covered it with his and offered an alternative. “The Lost Valley.”
Robin lurched forward and braced his forearms on the table. “You can’t go back into the city.”
“It’s my fucking home.” He tried to keep his voice even, but the unrelenting frustration darkened the already jagged edges of his words. “I’m not going to let Vincent drive me out of it.”
Cormac slumped and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Fucking death wish.”
Beneath the table, Icarus tangled their fingers. “So we get this meet,” he said. “We convince my client to arrest Vincent and bring him in. Then what?”
Cormac dropped his arms. “Yerba Buena Building is a fortress. After the Rift, they rebuilt it to be impenetrable. Not to mention half the cops and guards inside are on Vincent’s payroll.”
“So we use the in we have,” Adam said. “Icarus’s client gets us plans and clears us a path.”
“How do we separate Vincent from the warlock?”
“We give Atlas what he wants. Me.”
Icarus’s hand nearly crushed his, and across the table, Robin growled his disagreement. “You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t want this thing inside me. Let him take it and then you kill him too.”
“You’ll die,” Cormac said. “That thing is what’s keeping you alive.”
“They died to give you that thing,” Robin rumbled.
“I didn’t ask for this. I would have rather died with them, but now, all I’ve got left of my marriage, of my life, is a charred photo and the Devil.” He shoved back from the table. Present respite over; it was time to meet fate and the future head-on. “I want it to be over, all of it.”