25. Freak flags and wax
Chapter 25
Freak flags and wax
TOMER
A familiar buzz of adrenaline dusts my skin. The lair is a flurry of nervous energy. The excitement steadies me.
However, Klein’s about to pull his hair out. “Call Boss. Call Shep. Call... I don’t fucking know who to call. What do we do first?”
It’s possible he may have been out of the field a bit too long. He’ll be bald by nightfall at this rate.
Mia flings her hand out, grabbing him by the wrist. “Cal, settle the fuck down.”
Shaking her off, he hovers his curled hands over both sides of his head and mimes a brain implosion. “Sorry. It’s been far too many fucking days of radio silence. And of all the potential responses, this isn’t one I expected.”
As soon as the email came through, I replied, asking the sender to standby for our response. I had hoped they’d see it while still online, and thus, we wouldn’t have to wait days for the next clue. This assumes they need to go somewhere private to communicate with us.
No fucking clue if that’s the case. But it couldn’t hurt to tell them to standby.
Still processing this development and thinking through what it might mean, I dial Big Al’s office. He needs to be in here for this.
He picks up on the second ring. “What is it, T?”
“Can you come over here? We got a reply from the email we sent a few days ago.”
“The Russian doll email?”
“The one and only.”
“Be right there.”
As soon as he hangs up, I announce, “Boss is on his way. Klein, try not to give yourself a heart attack while we wait.”
He stands, immediately launching into jumping jacks.
Mia’s face crumples like she’s ill just watching him.“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I have to get the adrenaline out, tiger.”
“Too weak for burpees, Klein?” I taunt.
He flips me off as his arms go flying up beside his head.
“Too bad Boss is on his way, or we could do that in a more exciting way than exercise,” Mia purrs at him without attempting to be covert.
The CIA has left the girl.
“No, we couldn’t. Tomer’s here today.”
All right. That’s it.
“Mia, I made Lettie come on your desk the other day. Fuck in the lair again, and I’ll make her squirt all over your chair.”
Klein stops his jumping jacks to double over in laughter.
“Well, excuse the fuck out of my French, Tomer.” Mia puffs out her chest. “That type of threat is unacceptable . It sounds like a challenge. And one you won’t win.”
“Mia, I’ve been a Dom for longer than you’ve been hacking. Don’t start with me. This is a war you can’t win. I don’t even think you’d survive the first wave attack.”
What the hell is happening to me?
Not only am I being playful, I’m exposing some of my most guarded secrets, talking about kink like it’s the weather.
“Welp, I’m so fucking glad you finally said it.” Klein flops into his chair, barely out of breath. “Pretending we didn’t know was getting uncomfortable as fuck. We’re all freaks here.”
Mia chimes in, “Let’s have T-shirts made. And get a freak flag to hang on the door.”
“The door? Why not in front of the building next to the US flag?” I joke along, tumbling entirely off my rocker. “And then, we’ll have field trips to Home Depot for supplies.”
Boss barges in, thankfully saving me from engaging in this conversation any further.
“Talk to me,” he barks out as he grabs a chair.
I clear my throat, shaking off the insanity blanketing me. “Uh. I’ll show you. Main screen.” I tip my head at the primary monitor in the middle of the wall console.
Boss reads aloud. “You’ve gotten close but can’t yet see the wax through the feathers. When the labyrinth was built, the architect lived inside Crete. Minos wouldn’t have trusted an outsider. You’re hung up on the wrong man. If you intend to help us stop him, you’ll need to figure out who you’re working with. Otherwise, I can’t trust you.”
“And he signed it, the Architect,” I add when Boss goes silent.
Mia offers her take. “Whoever is on the other end of this email is Daedalus. And he isn’t Yuri.”
Boss nods along. “Right. Because he’s not in the mafia anymore. He’s on the outside. Whereas the architect is still inside Crete.” He stands, heading over to the board, surveying the vast array of shit we’ve scribbled on it over the last few weeks.
While rolling out my neck, I surmise, “After Yuri was questioned by Shep, he must have relayed information back to the real architect to let him know we were close but not there yet. My money is on Daedalus being?—”
“Alexei,” Big Al finishes my sentence with certainty, spinning around to face us. “It has to be.”
“I agree.”
Klein bolts out of his chair, his hands running through his hair. This poor guy is barely hanging on. “We still don’t know who the fuck he is, and he won’t help us until we figure it out.”
“The call is coming from inside the house,” Mia jokes humorously. “All we know is it’s someone still in the mafia.”
I join Boss by the whiteboard. “This is what Yuri meant when he was talking about collateral damage. Whoever this is wants out, but if we take the mafia down, they’ll go down too. That’s why he’s guarding the intel so closely instead of handing it over. The architect needs more time to cover his tracks.”
Klein begins pacing in small circles. “Again, how does knowing this help us?”
“Here’s what you’ll type.” Boss points at Mia. “You ready?”
She holds her hands over the keyboard. “Go.”
“We can help Daedalus escape the labyrinth. You don’t have to die there, Alexei.”
Mia’s fingers rapidly type the message verbatim. “Anything else?”
Boss looks at me, his brows lifted. “T?”
That simple glance and one uttered syllable hit me dead in the solar plexus.
This.
This is what I’ve been waiting for. What I’ve needed.
For the only man who’s ever protected me to look at me like I matter.
The whoosh of the air flowing through the A/C vents blends with the whir from the CPU cooling fans.
Two seconds pass.
Then three.
Until I finally find my voice. “Yes, Mia. That’s all. Send the email.”
“Done.” She flounces back into her chair so energetically it rolls a few inches from the desk. “Now we wait.”
Klein’s gaze oscillates between Big Al and me, a grin gradually lifting the corner of his mouth.
Captain Compassion over there sees it. He knows what just happened. And how symbolic it was.
Finding my courage, I meet Big Al’s eyes, offering a scant tip of my chin. It’s all I can muster since words have failed me.
He repeats the gesture back. It’s the slightest movement, barely discernible. Yet it confirms the magnitude of his small gesture. It mattered to him as much as it mattered to me.
No clue where to go from here.
For the first time in my life, I want to hug him.
To communicate how much he means to me. How thankful I am for what he’s done for me. Not today. Not this month or this year.
But what he’s always done for me.
For being the father I never had. For loving me.
Why the fuck didn’t I see it until now?
I need to tell him.
The only problem is we aren’t alone, so I can’t very well do that now.
Secondary problem is he’s slowly creeping toward the door.
The excitement of the moment has waned, leaving us standing around with our metaphorical dicks in our hands.
“Well, I guess that’s it for now.” Big Al lengthens his neck into a slow roll, his posture softening since the intense moment has faded. “Let me know if you hear back. Any other updates before I head to my office?”
I open my mouth to speak, but Mia’s yelp startles my lips shut.
“He replied!”
In four fast strides, I’m behind her, with Boss and Klein flanking me.
“Holy shit,” Klein lends words to all our thoughts as we read it together.
No help is required for me. After all, I am the wax. Once the sun sets low in the sky, I’ll fly free. Like your butterfly. In the meantime, I’ll send someone special with a present you can use to coax the sun behind the first cloud. Await instructions.
-The Architect
“I’ll send someone special with a present,” I recite quietly, my mind reeling and pulse thrumming.“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I’ve had enough surprises from these bastards.”
“How can he be the architect and the wax?” Klein mumbles, lost in thought. “Is he making wings now?”
I snap my fingers repeatedly, trying to yank my memories of Yuri’s first interrogation to the front of my mind. “Mia, what did Yuri say about the wax?”
Mia toggles over to a different screen to access the transcript. Her finger runs down the monitor as she searches for it. “Here it is.”
She throws her voice in a halfway decent impression of the old Russian shitbag. “Not wax feathers, Shepherd. Wax holds feathers and threads together. Binds them. Can’t make feathers from wax.”
“He’s not only the architect. He’s the wax.” Boss bunches his hands, lacing his fingertips closed as if sealing them. “He’s binding something together.”
“What if he’s holding the mafia together?” I suggest. “He’s powerful but still trapped in the labyrinth. He’s the glue holding it together, which means he’s also the one who can destroy it. That’s why he’s not giving us everything he has on them at once. If he did, he’d go down with the rest of them. He’d melt. So he’s waiting for sunset until he flies.”
My mind works frantically, trying to formulate the words as fast as the puzzle has come together.
Klein asks, “What does sunset represent?”
“The bratva falling.”Again, I spin to face the whiteboard. “He’s giving us something to take down one of these columns. The first cloud . He must have removed himself from one of these categories. This is how it all begins. Once he extricates himself from another crime ring, he’ll give us the missing evidence to eliminate it. Again and again. The sky will get darker and darker until Lenkov falls and the architect escapes.”
“He needs us to take them down slowly so he can free himself.” Boss claps me on the shoulder. “You figured it out, son. Good fucking job.”
Too bad it was something I did that got him to call me that again instead of me just being myself.
But I’ll fucking take it. Like Rome, the labyrinth wasn’t built in a day.