Chapter 20
New Day
IT TOOK two hours for Interpol to get there, and by the time they did, Tor had arrived in a rental, a flustered Marco by his side to play cameraman, and the rest of the crew had cleared out.
Felix and Leon had needed to restrain Liam to keep him from going with them. Josh was a mess, blood caking the front of his shirt, circles under his sunken eyes, his pulse thready and his temperature spiking.
“You need to stay,” Josh told him, “and get your medical treatment here. Hamlet had it right, Liam—there needs to be reporting here. You need to spin it, otherwise they’ll run fingerprints and we’re all cooked.”
“But God, baby—”
Josh’s smile had been the shy one, the one Liam treasured. “You’ll find me. Don’t worry. It’s not goodbye—it’s just one more goddamned trip to the hospital.” He scowled playfully. “Maybe from now on they’ll start packing plasma in the comms van.”
He’d kissed Liam then, hard, and Liam had responded with all his soul. But inside he knew. This wasn’t over by a long shot.
Two hours after the kiss, Interpol arrived, and somebody not Hunter stitched up his ribs.
Two days later the trailer his supervisor had commissioned to house the Interpol agents and provide offices so they could categorize and report on all the artifacts in the house arrived.
Coincidentally, that was the same day the forensics people recovered Kadjic’s broken, bloodied body at the foot of the falls.
Not much of it was left, Liam was happy to report, but his fingerprints and dental records were still quite recognizable.
Two weeks after Kadjic’s body was recovered, Liam was still at the Fortress of Vanity (as Josh called it in text now), helping to catalogue and source all the stolen artwork.
His supervisor had said, rather happily, that the job would take years and had hinted to Liam that he might be in charge of the operation before it was over.
Liam didn’t tell him that if he was left in charge, he might be found guilty of shipping some of the more memorable art pieces to a family in Chicago, for no other reason than he thought they might enjoy them when their original owners didn’t seem to care.
He obviously was not the most reliable of agents at this moment.
Two weeks after that terrible temptation to steal art for the Salingers just because Liam missed them, Josh was given the okay to go back to the States, but Liam was still stuck in the fucking trailer, longing for one of the decadent hot showers at any of the hotels he’d stayed at during his journey and wanting to see Josh so badly he almost couldn’t breathe.
He didn’t even have their fingerprints to hide. Liam resolved to send Michael’s kids a case full of toys since Michael had been the one to remember housecleaning, which he and the others had done before they left.
Liam got Josh’s text when he touched down in Chicago, and sat in that awful sterile trailer, staring at his phone, his heart, his soul, feeling empty.
His supervisor was now Carter, who had taken his turn in rehab all those years ago and run with it.
He was now an able administrator who trusted Liam since their days in the field together.
Liam—knowing that Carter valued humanity and justice more than bureaucracy—had taken that first violation of the rules in shipping Tienne to the hands of the Salingers as his invitation to skirt the rules.
Carter, who had seen that Liam was a decent human being, had allowed for any elisions Liam made with his reports.
It had been a good working relationship, and Liam had no complaints.
Until now.
“Craig?” Carter said, coming up behind him as he sat in the trailer staring soullessly at his phone. “Anything wrong?”
Liam glanced at Carter—terminally single, sagging a little around the middle, hair thinning, living for the job—and his emptiness felt eternal.
“Oh,” Carter said softly. “Time, is it?”
“Time?” Liam asked hollowly.
“You were always meant for greater things than just this unit,” Carter said. “Husband, children, a life….”
Liam’s mouth twitched “You knew I was gay?”
Carter snorted. “I am a member of Interpol, after all. I do have certain skills.”
Liam swallowed. “I love working here,” he said honestly. “I-I don’t want to leave forever. I….”
“Consultant status,” Carter said crisply, as though he’d been planning this all along.
“Visit the UK office once or twice a year, give workshops. That way—” He shrugged.
“—you can keep giving me juicy tips from time to time, but you and your young man can go your own way. And best of all….” He waggled his eyebrows and gestured to the trailer, the sole purpose of which was to allow for bureaucracy to chug along at speed.
“No paperwork,” Liam said softly.
“Right,” Carter said. “You’re never goddamned good at it anyway. Give me a week. Can you wait that long? Then I’ll book you a flight.”
He didn’t need to. A week later, Hunter, Chuck, and Carl landed in a private Prague airport, all of them rested, happy, and ready for trouble.
“Get in, loser,” Hunter said. “We’re gonna go fight.”
Stepping aboard the jet was his first step on the path home.
FINALLY, FINALLY, Josh had the all clear from the hospital for limited activity. He was tired, weak, bored and….
Content.
Healing sucked. It was gonna suck, and he needed to get used to the fact that he’d set himself back a good long year with the entire Kadjic enterprise.
But whatever he’d needed to prove about carrying on the family business, about being good enough of a son for them to have sacrificed so much, he’d proven it.
Best of all, he’d learned he’d never needed to prove it at all.
The anger he’d borne so long no longer plagued his heart, and he found that his stress over what to do next was no longer a driving, constant presence.
He was going to be bored—he could finally read all those books his professors had recommended for extra reading.
His friends weren’t going anywhere. Molly had spent a week in England with Liam’s brother—he promised to do the same in Chicago—but she wasn’t leaving.
(Although she had chopped off her straight blond locks, and what was left was short ringlets that her brother still loved to touch when she was sitting at his feet.
She looked adorable and claimed she’d lost twenty pounds of hair alone.)
Grace continued to share his time between the mansion in Glencoe and the dance studio and Hunter’s flat in Chicago.
And Stirling and Tienne might live in the basement of the Glencoe mansion forever.
Carl and Michael still ate dinner with them once a week, as did Chuck and Lucius. And Tor and Marco weren’t leaving the mother-in-law cottage anytime soon.
And the dads were… well, there had been arguing at first, during their first week back, but Josh was beginning to see the difference between an argument and a fight.
Felix had been terrified. Danny had been ready to die to protect them all but very glad that hadn’t been necessary.
They’d needed to hammer their shit out first, and then they could be the family patriarchs that everybody else needed.
It had come. Like everything else with two such brilliant, headstrong, different people, it had been difficult—and difficult to watch—but it had been worth it in the end.
And Josh’s mother continued to be smart, stylish, and very busy, and now? Radiant and madly in love with her child’s father, who while spending the last month in Europe, making sure his businesses were in good order after their summer adventures, would be back in the beginning of November.
She seemed especially glowy today, as she and Josh sat on the newly installed marble bench in her mediation garden, both of them wrapped up against the pending snow of a Chicago October, but wanting to see the leaves on a glorious sunny day just the same.
Josh had one thing on his mind.
“Mom, you know you can’t keep them.”
His mother raised her fingertips to the lovely green necklet at her throat, a circle of emeralds, princess cut, each one surrounded by an oval of tiny perfect diamonds. It was stunning, it looked glorious on her even though blonds weren’t supposed to wear green, and it was so damned stolen.
“I don’t see why not,” she said, sounding petulant and seventeen. “It’s not like anybody knows we have them. Nobody even knew Kadjic had them. And honey, since he’s given them to me, he hasn’t stolen a single pair of my earrings—not once.”
She’d said that when Grace had given her the giant pink diamond from the Louvre, as well.
Every time Julia seemed sad or tired or overwhelmed with pregnancy at forty-one, Grace went to his luggage and produced another hot piece of jewelry.
Hunter told Josh that he had no idea where the Princess Anne tiara was, but he thought Grace might be saving it for Christmas.
Right now, Josh dragged his fingers through his hair, which was getting shaggy. “But Mom, we’re trying to instill certain habits here. And not taking valuables from foreign countries is one of them.”
“But honey, we don’t even know for certain they’re from the Louvre heist.”
“Mom, he didn’t steal the provenance. It’s going to occur to them eventually that those jewels went somewhere.”
“No, it’s not” came a beloved East-End–infused voice as its bearer traveled from the rear of the house through the garden.
“Liam!” Josh stood—slowly. He was still prone to dizzy spells, and he was learning. But once he was on his feet he ran straight into Liam Craig’s arms, which were as strong and warm and wonderful as he’d remembered.
“Hello, boy-o,” Liam said into his ear. “Surprised to see me?”
“Yes,” said Josh. Liam had texted that he was trying for a flight over the next few days, but he hadn’t said a word about finding one. “You got a flight?”
Liam snorted. “Right. Or maybe three assholes in a private jet gave me an hour to pack and told me to get my ass to the tarmac so they could turn around and bring me home.”