Brass Tacks
“WE NEVER did figure out which Muppet you were,” Josh said as they descended the staircase into the basement again.
Phyllis and Marco’s minions had already walked coffee and cookies down there, along with some portions of a pudding dessert that Liam was both fascinated with and afraid of.
My God, he knew everybody worked hard for fitness, but they must burn some calories to eat like he’d eaten that night.
“Easy,” Liam replied. “I’m the police bear.”
Josh probably would have stopped dead on the stairs, but they were two of the first going down, so he just let his voice crack. “A what?”
“You know—whenever they need a policeman at the end of the show, I’m the copper who shows up and takes the villain to the nick. The police bear.”
Josh squinted at him. “Grace,” he called, because the boy was behind them, “was there a police bear in the Muppets?”
“His name was Bobo,” Grace said happily. “He was really ugly.”
“I don’t like this solution,” Josh said. “Find another character.”
“I don’t see how,” Liam said. “It’s not everybody who can pull off Shrimp Louis or Rolf the dog.”
“Wasn’t Fozzie a police bear at one time?” Josh asked.
“You remember that and you don’t remember Bobo,” Liam muttered. “No wonder I got sent to the bleachers for six months.”
“I have never actually seen you in uniform,” Josh told him, exasperated. “As far as I’m concerned, you live in a trench coat or a madras shirt.”
“Or my suit jacket,” Chuck added. “We’ll have to work on that.”
Liam suppressed a sigh. It occurred to him that overcoming his own embarrassment with Josh’s money should have been something done during their separation, but he’d been so busy worrying, it hadn’t occurred to him that he needed to adjust to having table service in Josh’s home, or a cast of characters so brilliant that of course they’d get their own Muppet and their own movie.
Liam couldn’t afford to be a supporting player in this relationship—he needed to step up and be a leading man.
“In London,” he said, “I wear a cheap tan suit. It’s riveting. I’d rather be seen in a madras shirt.”
“Or without one,” Josh replied puckishly, and Liam felt his cheeks warm.
“Or without one,” he answered with dignity.
Josh winked and went to sit down behind the AV outlet so he could project his computer—or Danny’s—on screen.
“Josh,” Danny said, “let me and Felix sit there for tonight. You sent us everything you had, and we….” He gave a brief smile, and Liam caught the tiredness—happiness, but also tiredness—in his eyes for the first time that night.
“Fox and I spent some time strategizing after Stirling got us some of the data from the cloned phone. I think we actually have a plan.”
Liam expected Josh to bristle at this, but he didn’t. Instead his face opened, and some of the tenseness, the drive that had only seemed to fade when they’d been making love, drained out of him.
“It worked?” he said breathlessly. “Last night worked?”
Danny’s smile was as relieved as Josh’s.
“It worked,” he said, and Liam recalled all of the fishing nets the crew had cast for information the night before.
Not just the cloned phone, but Leon and Julia in the crowd at Celeste’s and Chuck and Lucius downstairs.
Hunter and Molly mingling with the staff—even Marco back in the kitchen and Carl doing double duty as an insurance investigator and con man.
All of them had been fishing for information.
That’s why they’d spent so long staging the theft, baiting the hook, setting the hook, and making Kadjic’s manic thrashing the centerpiece of the night.
The real con hadn’t been the theft, or even yanking Kadjic’s chain. Josh, tapping on his keyboard that morning and consolidating information during video games—none of that had been frivolous.
Liam’s discussion with Grace as Josh had been sleeping told him that.
The young dancer’s famously firefly-like attention had suddenly narrowed, and he’d spent that quiet hour walking Liam through a detailed people map of the party attendees the night before, including diagrams of who was more important than whom when it came to analyzing Kadjic’s details.
Interpol would not have approved of the Salingers one bit, but they wouldn’t have been able to match them in efficiency or accuracy of information either.
“So,” Danny said as the rest of the crew filtered in and settled down, “Fox and I are running this one, because Fox insisted, but I’ve got Liam and Josh here front and center.
Liam because he’s had personal experience with Kadjic, and Josh because he’s been running the show thus far and he’s why we have what we’ve got. So has everybody visited the restroom?”
He glanced pointedly at Julia, who rolled her eyes and nodded, which made Liam curious, because as far as he knew, Julia Dormer-Salinger never used the restroom, nor did she snore, nor did she pick her nose. It was all unfathomable.
“Excellent,” Danny said. “Does everybody have their dessert of choice? Take a few minutes and gather, because as soon as I’m hooked up here, we’re on the clock.”
There was a quiet mingling then, and Julia, Liam noticed, did make a quick dash to the washroom—there was one in Stirling and Tienne’s bedroom suite, which was adjoined to the basement den with a door.
He caught his breath as something occurred to him, and then he glanced at Josh, who appeared to be oblivious.
He caught Danny’s knowing smile, though, and the other man raised his finger to his lips and mouthed “Later” softly.
Liam’s eyes widened, and he glanced at Josh again, thinking of the sober way he’d carried the burden of being the family’s hope.
Would this event set him free, Liam wondered with a painful swallow, or would it rob him of things he knew were true?
And on the heels of that thought came another, more pressing thought.
They absolutely positively had to put Kadjic behind bars—but more.
Like a snake, Kadjic’s venom was potent enough that not even death would render him harmless.
If Danny was to keep his promise to the family and not disappear, taking the risk of Kadjic’s wrath and an all-out war with him, then they absolutely had to come up with a strategy to destroy him, and they had to do it on a timeline.
And suddenly Liam understood why Josh had been sidelined and Danny and Felix looked so tired.
Josh had been wounded, and he and Liam had shit to sort the night before, but everybody else, it appeared, had been all hands on deck, because if all hands weren’t on deck, the coming storm would sink the bloody ship.
Three minutes later a bowl of pudding dessert was thrust into Liam’s hand by, of all people, Carl.
“Hang tight,” he murmured. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
The big man disappeared, aligning himself with Chuck and Hunter near the bottom of the stairs so they could act as sentinels and guardians to the rest of the group, and Liam turned to find Josh glancing down at an absurdly large napkin full of cookies.
“Phyllis gave them to me,” he said. “Which was weird, because she hasn’t forced me to eat cookies since I was ten years old.”
Liam opened his mouth and then realized he had absolutely nothing to say, and he was relieved when Felix, this time, called the group to order.
“Carl, hit the lights,” he said, and in a moment the big projection screen at the far end of the room, which had hosted video games that afternoon, now held the image of a man they were all well familiar with.
“Andres Kadjic,” Felix said. “Age fifty-five, started as a street thief in Russia and grew to gang leader, and then, being unusually clever and very ruthless, he had his street gang at the time—Nozh, meaning ‘knife’—literally kidnap the head of the underground cigarette trade in Russia. The man was released and allowed to run his own company, but Kadjic is suddenly a twenty-percent partner, and boom. He has gone from street thug to businessman. He has grown in myriad ways, which we will discuss further, but never forget that he started off as a street fighter and he will continue to be one until the day he shuffles off this mortal coil, hopefully sooner than later.”
“So a people person then,” Hunter said, surprising Liam with a bit of snark.
“Oh definitely,” Danny said dryly. “He loves people. He loves them hurt, trafficked, addicted, and bleeding—and he’s got his fingers in all the pies to make sure that happens as often as possible.”
There was an injured silence in the room.
“Too close to our hearts, beloved,” Felix said softly, and Danny gave a brittle shrug.
“We know what he is, we know what he’s done. And after last night we know exactly which pies he has his fingers in, and that’s what we’re here to talk about today.”
Everyone in the room took a collective breath, and Liam remembered the fragile, broken thief he’d found bleeding in the alleyway ten years earlier. I’ve been trying to drink myself to death for a year now, and I finally found a shortcut.
Danny Mitchell, healthy, happy, and shored up by the love of his family, was worth every law Liam had violated, every blind eye he’d ever turned.
“Well, then,” Felix said, his voice gruff, “let’s continue. We’ve got a lot to cover.”
“I think,” Danny said, “that Liam will back me up on this. The hardest thing about bringing Kadjic down has been not just his lack of visibility—he’s uncanny about staying hidden when his operations are going down—but also the sheer number of businesses he’s working on.
If we take out one business, for example, say gun running”—they all nodded, remembering when they’d put a considerable dent in his operations that January—“he can easily rely on his other businesses to fill that hole until the first one is up again. He’s literally a hydra.
Cut off one head and it grows back three-fold. ”
“That’s, uhm, bleak,” Carl muttered, and the rest of the room was with him. “You got any good news for us?”