Brass Tacks #3
“I think you already know,” she murmured. “I’m due in February.”
The cheer that went up from the gathered family shook the floorboards of the great Glencoe mansion.
THERE WAS hugging—so much hugging—after that, and Tor’s boyfriend came down to replenish the desserts and to stay, this time, for the rest of the briefing. Tor caught him up, and Marco could be heard saying, “Oh! Okay. I get it now. Brisket and ranch salad. I’ll have to get used to that.”
“The first time it was steak,” Felix said happily, and Liam noticed that Danny and Felix were squeezing each other’s hands with joy.
Danny, noticing the attention, gave him a wistful smile.
“You don’t understand,” he said softly. “The first time she was pregnant, Felix was the first person she told, because she was desperate and afraid. I was the second, so we could come up with a plan. This time….” He smiled and peered across the room to where Molly and Julia were hugging and crying and hugging some more.
“This time she has this entire room to celebrate with, including the father, who couldn’t be happier.
” His eyes grew shiny as Josh stepped up to Julia for his turn to be hugged.
“And her son, whom she couldn’t love more.
We’d planned to wait until the end of the briefing.
This changed our plans somewhat, which was why Felix and I took over, but make no mistake, young Liam. This is a good thing.”
Liam nodded, his hands still shaking. “But what you’re planning to do,” he said, keeping his voice down. “You’re going to make our boy a target?”
Danny’s eyes lit wickedly. “Oh, ye of little faith. I get it, you know. I’ve seen you work. You go out into the field with a couple of operatives, chase down leads, get intel back, chase down more leads. Come on, Liam, think. How are we different?”
Liam’s mind flashed to the night before, when Josh had dislocated his shoulder by crashing into a wall. He hadn’t landed on the balcony alone—he’d had people tending his clothes, helping with his injury, keeping an eye on his cover. And himself, making sure Josh knew he wasn’t alone.
“I’ll be with him.” Liam wasn’t sure if he was begging or if it was a vow. He knew what he’d prefer, but he’d just had it driven home that he wasn’t in charge here.
“Did you hear the boy?” Felix asked, the lines at the corners of his eyes sexy and kind and oh so wise. “You two are in love. Far be it from us to get in the way of that.”
“I’d say they’re too young,” Danny began, but Felix laughed and stopped him with a kiss to the temple.
“Hush,” he murmured, and Danny winked at Liam and closed his eyes, obviously as content as he could possibly be.
And again Liam was yanked into the past, but this time it was Danny in the hospital, begging to be let out so he could wander the streets of Morocco and drink himself to death—or die of sepsis.
The man sitting across from him now, gazing fondly at the sister of his heart and her beau, was a man who had worked hard for this moment of peace and happiness.
Liam had to trust that he wouldn’t sacrifice his son for it any more than he’d sacrifice his lover.
“A plan, you say,” Liam prodded, but Felix shook his head.
“Hush,” he said. “They’ll calm down in a few more minutes. Look at her, Liam. She’s shining.”
They all were. Surreptitiously, Liam pulled out his phone and took a picture of Josh, smiling shyly at his uncle Leon while shaking his hand.
“Who you sending that to?” Danny asked.
“My mother,” Liam said softly. “She’s been begging me for a picture so she knows what he looks like. I think this one will do.”
Eventually people did settle down, returning to their seats with napkins full of sweets—and, for most of them, extra napkins for happy tears.
And Felix picked up the dropped thread.
“Okay, then,” he said. “So you all know part of the plan. Josh and Liam are going to be our distraction, and they are going to be a moving target. Again, thanks to last night’s op, we know where his base of operations is for each of his major businesses.
So what we propose is a two-pronged operation, one with plausible deniability baked right in. ”
“There are a lot of us,” Danny said. “And we all have special skills and the ability to think on our feet, and several of us are quite adept at running the tech or masterminding an op. So we can quite probably have Josh and Liam—posing as Lightfingers or Lightfinger adjacent—running all over the globe to get Kadjic’s attention—”
“Wait!” Grace crowed. “I get it! I get it! Josh and Liam go to a place, be Lightfingers, and Kadjic goes running to where he thinks Lightfingers is. And then, while they skedaddle, we sneak into his operation and make it go boom!”
“Big, bad-a-boom!” Danny confirmed, quoting an old movie. “Exactly, Grace. But wait—we’ve got some other wrinkles.”
“Each team taking down a Kadjic operation,” Danny said, “needs to be seen in Liam and Josh’s company at the time of the operation. So if a big red-headed guy blows up a depot carrying illegal weapons in Kazakhstan….”
“I need to be seen chauffeuring Josh and Liam around at the same time,” Chuck supplied. “How do you aim to do that?”
“A number of different ways,” Felix said, “including airplanes, disguises, electronic signatures, and time delays. We need Kadjic to be closing in on Josh and Liam in London, get news of his gun depot in Barbados, run there, hear a description of Hunter and Chuck, say, and then have his surveillance on Josh and Liam pin Hunter and Chuck back in London. And by the time he gets a handle on that one disaster, Josh and Liam need to be in Prague with the two people who are going to, perhaps, lead the authorities to his sex-trafficking hubs coming out of Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Serbia, all while Kadjic is watching them wander through the city to see the sights, steal a few paintings, and wander on. And then, just when he thinks he’s found Lightfingers again—”
“Somebody hits his next business,” Tor said. “Boom!”
“Exactly.” Danny and Felix glanced at each other and nodded, and Danny went on.
“We need it planned, right down to the doubles, and we need to keep him hauling ass from one part of the globe to the other. We are going to make him absolutely insane, and while he’s staring at the people he thinks are going to lead him to me—”
“We’re dismantling his operations, one leg at a time,” Liam said. “But he’ll be kept so busy, he won’t have time to rebuild.”
“Exactly,” Felix said. “And in the end, he’ll run to the one place he thinks is safe.”
“And by then,” Danny added grimly, “we will hopefully have invaded that too.”
“Interpol?” Liam asked, suddenly afraid for his friends, all of his friends, who had worked hard not to kill, and to work as bloodlessly as possible, unless somebody was aiming a weapon at them.
“Interpol,” Danny agreed. “Yes, Liam—we’ll skin him, dress him, roast him, and serve him. All your people have to do is—”
“Accept the silver platter,” Liam agreed.
“But wait,” Josh said, suddenly seeing the whole picture. “What will all of you be doing?”
Danny and Felix glanced at each other, and Felix spoke. “Besides directing resources, working comms and satellites and organizing that final con, we’ll be—”
“Protecting me,” Julia said softly. “Because I asked them to. And I begged—begged, mind you all—that Danny and Felix be here during my pregnancy.” She was squeezing Leon’s hand tightly as she spoke.
“They’ll be doing some traveling, but….” She swallowed.
“I need them here.” She sniffed and took an offered napkin to dab at her eyes.
“Besides, this little episode is going to be costly, and we do need to keep the businesses running to fund it.”
“And Kadjic will never suspect Danny if he never—as far as Kadjic knows—leaves Chicago.” Felix looked grimly triumphant at that, and then he sobered.
“And when we say Julia was begging, that was not an exaggeration. Danny and I do not like letting the lot of you go off into the world without us. That was never our intention. However, since Lucius and Leon have offered to supply us with transportation and extra pilots—”
“And myself,” Leon said modestly, while giving Julia a beseeching look. “I, after all, do business in Greece and much of Europe, so I need to be positioned to be an asset—”
“No,” Julia said mutinously.
“But darling—”
“You have children, Leon, and you made promises,” she said, her face growing tight as she turned a glare to Danny and Felix, who both raised their hands.
“This was not our idea,” Felix said. “Let Carl fly his plane, yes. Let him be on it while it’s crashing, no.”
“Hey!” Carl protested. “I’ve gotten much better!”
“He can land without hardly bouncing now,” Michael supplied staunchly.
Carl gave his beloved one of those expressions that said he didn’t know how to respond to that. “Thanks, sweetheart,” he murmured.
“’Course.”
“My own pilot can help,” Leon said smoothly. “I, uhm… frankly, I would feel much braver if my own pilot was at the helm.”
“Hey!” protested Carl, Chuck, and Hunter, their pilots.
“That wasn’t fair,” Julia snapped. “And remember the part about you having children—and one on the way?”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Leon said softly.
“Either Danny and Felix here and me on the road, or me here and Danny and Felix on the road. I understand that you feel safer with them here—they have, after all, kept you safe for the last twenty-plus years, but you can’t ask me to sit the whole thing out.
” His lower lip took on a hurt curve. “They always try to leave me out to protect you. It’s finally my chance to play! ”
Julia covered her eyes. “We will discuss this,” she said after a moment. “All four of us.” She removed her hand. “Suffice it to say, we need at least a month—”
“Two weeks,” Danny said. “At the outside. Liam and Josh should be on a plane to England—”
“England?” Josh asked.