Chapter 5 #2
Liam nodded. “I….” And he hadn’t confessed this to anybody but Josh.
“I would like very much for my family to meet the crew. Lightfingers at the least, but all of them. They’ve grown up on my stories of this family, you know?
And part of it was the job.” He grimaced.
“One of my brothers and two of my sisters are already married. And there they are, starting families and lives, and all I had was Danny’s stories to share with them.
But part of it is… the joy of it. We find the same joy.
” He shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about Danny’s drinking or his own father’s—not with Leon anyway—but they were both outsiders there.
Being here at the hospital was like being in the inner sanctum, and it felt right to share.
Leon chuckled. “It must be magical,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Because I am sitting at a table with a member of Interpol, and I’ve got to tell you, in my family that’s practically a crime.”
Liam gave a grin, tickled at that, and then they were interrupted by Danny, escorting a beleaguered-looking Josh, who now wore a sling.
“Bone bruise,” Josh muttered. “Go ahead, text it. Tell everybody I’m fine.
Some anti-inflammatories, two weeks in the sling, and don’t forget my vitamins.
Then log off and talk to me while I eat.
Leon, you’re a nice guy, and I love you, but Danny thought maybe I didn’t have to know about my mom fainting, and I’m telling you, that doesn’t work for me. ”
Danny shook his head. “Well, you made it work for your mom in November. I thought perhaps you owed us a little willful ignorance.”
The two of them took their places, Danny next to Leon, grabbing the sandwich with his name on a Post-it on top and a stack of napkins, while Josh slid in next to Liam. Liam snagged Josh’s sandwich and a plastic knife and started cutting it into pieces and setting the pieces on the tray.
“This is romantic,” Josh said, his tone absolutely arid.
“Would you like me to change your nappy and do your pigtails?” Liam retorted. “Because that could be arranged. Or maybe you could just eat and not be such a pain in my arse—”
Josh held up his hand, forestalling the “boy-o” they both saw coming. “I’ll eat. Leon talks. It’s been a long night, and it’s only eight o’clock.”
Leon’s story was short—and the salient point seemed to be that Julia had fainted when Kadjic had gotten suspicious of her, and Carl had filled in admirably—but still a little worrisome.
“She said it was hunger,” Leon told them, brow furrowed. “Which is understandable. She was wearing this ice-blue dress that all but cracked her ribs.”
“Very elegant,” Danny said proudly. “There were only two dresses of color tonight, Julia’s ice blue and that terrible scarlet macaw thing that Celeste had going on.”
Josh grimaced and swallowed his first bite of sandwich. “I tried to tell her that didn’t work like she thought it did.”
“Did you mention The Emperor’s New Groove thing?” Liam asked seriously. “Because all I could think was, ‘Yzma?’”
Josh had to put his hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t sputter crumbs. “No,” he said behind his hand. “Because I put my age as twenty-nine on my résumé, and I didn’t want to sound ten!”
“Twenty-nine?” Liam asked, eyeballing him up and down. “And she bought that?”
Josh scowled at him. “She did. She seemed to think I was the perfect age.” He shuddered. “My God, people should keep their hands off other people’s asses unless they have a sign and an arrow and a contract that says ‘I give consent.’”
“I’ll remember that,” Liam murmured, and Josh shot him a glance.
“We signed that contract on the balcony,” he said, and Liam’s eyebrows went up in surprise.
“Look who is clearly all out of fucks,” he said.
Josh flushed and turned back toward his tray. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m just… it’s been a night.”
“It has indeed,” Felix said, arriving just in time. “And if it’s okay, I’m going to call an audible. Leon, can our young Interpol friend here have your keys?”
“It’s the red Porsche,” Leon said. “It’s parked near Felix’s SUV.”
Liam extended his hand and tried not to drool.
“You know how to drive that?” Felix asked, probably because he’d loaned it to Leon while he was in Chicago.
“I do,” Liam said. “I once tracked down a gang of car thieves—nicked ’em right after your friend Chuck left the crew, ’cause they were violent sadists, and Chuck wanted no part of that.”
“Did you drive their cars?” Felix asked pointedly.
“Oh aye. Even wrecked one, but I don’t recommend it.”
Josh snickered weakly. “Dad, give it up. He’s a grown-assed man, and he has letters behind his name. Give him the keys.”
“Do we have to have the yelling tonight?” Felix asked pointedly. “Do we? Just because I was at the car show with Carl for plausible deniability doesn’t mean I wasn’t on comms.”
Josh winced, and Liam could suddenly see pain etched in the corners of his eyes. “No, Dad,” he murmured. “No yelling tonight. Just, you know, trust him. He’ll get me to the apartment in one piece, and we’ll be home tomorrow.”
Felix sighed and bent to give his son a gentle kiss on the top of the head.
“No yelling tomorrow either,” he said. “I’m not sure if anybody’s told you, but the job went really well.
Yes, there were glitches, but I seem to remember that thing in January that turned into a WWF melee, and this went considerably better. ”
There were pained chuckles around the table; everybody had visited the hospital after that one, Chuck, Carl, and Hunter included, and they were the team’s bruisers.
“Seconded,” Danny said with a smile.
“Thirded?” Leon added. And his smile was considerably broader. “Although I could be biased because I got to be part of this one.”
“A pivotal part, as it were,” Felix said, and Liam tilted his head, taking in Felix’s expression. There was something in there… something Felix wasn’t telling them, and Liam had to trust, once again, that Felix would tell them if something was seriously wrong with Julia.
Leon’s phone buzzed again, and he turned it over with exasperation before his expression lightened. “Oh! Julia says I can come pick her up now.”
“And I’m about done,” Josh said. “Let me go hug my mom and we can leave.”
FELIX STOOD back and watched them exit, lingering for a moment so he could wrap his arm around Danny’s shoulders and take a breath.
“So?” Danny asked, sounding excited.
Felix turned to him with a grin. “Oh yeah, you pegged it. She’s so knocked up.”
“I knew it!” Danny chortled. “So tell me, how’d it go?”
Felix paused for a moment, remembering the pure relief on Julia’s face when Felix had entered her exam room with a smuggled sandwich.
“Hungry are we?” he’d needled gently.
“Stupid of me,” she’d replied, taking the sandwich greedily.
“So….” He’d given her a sideways glance, urging her to tell him so he didn’t have to intrude.
She’d smacked his arm. “You’ve guessed already,” she muttered, and her hands, cradling the sandwich she’d begun to devour, dropped into her lap. “Of course you have.”
“Danny guessed first,” Felix said, because Danny had always been smarter. “He remembered when you and I first arrived here. Remember the train station?”
He’d sat next to her, as familiar as a brother, and she’d hidden her face against his shoulder. “Oh God, yes. How could I forget?”
The plan—Danny’s plan—had been for the two of them to elope to America.
They’d made appointments with a justice of the peace by phone from Rome.
Escaping had been fraught—truly fraught—because Julia’s father would have killed her for defying him, and for being pregnant in the first place, and for depriving him of the match he’d hoped to make with one of his many mob contacts so he could solidify his holdings.
Felix left the house that morning, claiming the relatives he’d purportedly been supposed to visit had called to give him access to their villa.
Knowing that Hiram Dormer took Julia to the marketplace every day (the better to parade her in front of his cronies and their sons), Felix had stolen some small tchotchkes for Danny to sell for tickets.
As far as they all knew, Dormer had never missed the tchotchkes, and it had taken him half an hour to realize that his daughter—who had asked to be allowed to shop and try on clothes—had escaped out the back of one of her favorite boutiques.
By the time Julia’s father had realized she was missing, she and Felix were on the way to the airport.
By the time he realized she was no longer in Rome, they were married, and she was drawing on her mother’s trust to buy the mansion and send wedding announcements to every news outlet in Chicago.
Danny remained behind, leaving false trails and paying people to claim they’d seen Julia Dormer when they hadn’t.
He and Felix kept in touch with burner phones, so Danny had been there when Felix had called him, panicked and tearful, because Julia had passed out at the train station and been taken to the hospital.
Felix—who had been establishing his false credentials as a businessman, the better to impress Dormer when he arrived to find his daughter’s marriage a fait accompli—had been called as her first contact, and suddenly it had occurred to him what he, Danny, and Julia were doing.
“I’m the father, Danny! I’m the goddamned father, and this girl passed out and—”
“Felix, pinch yourself.”
“What?”
“Pinch your wrist. Really fucking hard.”
Felix had done so—the bruise had remained for days.
“Why did I do that?” he asked when his breathing had stopped hitching.