Chapter Six | TORIN
Chapter Six
TORIN
The Morrow Museum sat on the Halo City waterfront like old money with better security.
Fog came off the bay in silver sheets, sliding between the black cars at the curb and catching in the hot white burst of press cameras.
Valets moved fast under the porte cochere.
Women in formal gowns crossed the entrance beneath museum columns tall enough to make everyone under them look briefly mortal.
Men in tuxedos stood beside them, smiling for cameras, pretending the price of entry tonight was generosity and not proximity to power.
The Harbor Lights Gala had drawn exactly the crowd Landon promised.
Donors and developers, hospital-board names and civic fixtures filled the room. These were people who could move money, bury money, bless money, and still look offended if anyone mentioned money at the table.
It was the sort of room I’d been hired to protect more times than I cared to count.
Tonight, I was here to use it as a trap.
The HPG-arranged sedan eased to the curb, and Rourke looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Front is clean so far.”
“Keep the engine warm,” I said.
“You’ve got it.”
Beside me, Noa sat very still in red.
That was the problem with being a man of discipline.
You could build a life around control, train your hands not to move before your head had chosen the target, teach your breathing to stay level while the room went to hell around you — and then one woman could step out of a hotel suite in a strapless red gown and make a mockery of the whole enterprise.
The dress fit her like sin had taken measurements.
Red satin held her from chest to hips, then flared at her knees, the mermaid skirt falling clean to the floor. Her hair was down, dark against bare shoulders. Diamonds caught at her ears and throat. Her mouth was painted red enough to make a man forget every holy vow he’d never taken.
Noa looked at me sideways. “You’re staring.”
“I’m looking.”
“That distinction exists because men needed a defense.”
“I’ve got better defenses than that.”
“You’d need them.”
The corner of my mouth moved before I could stop it.
Her left hand rested on the red clutch in her lap. The little gold cat on her bracelet caught the press lights through the window, front paw lifted like it had somewhere better to be.
“Final check,” I said.
“Drive in the false bottom. Comms active. Simmons gets it first. I don’t become bait until it’s out of my hand. The knife is reachable if this dress turns out to be more cooperative than most people.”
“It had better be. HPG paid enough for it to have manners.”
“They also sent shoes I can run in. Someone over there is learning.”
“That was me.”
Her eyes cut to mine. “You chose my shoes?”
“I approved your ability to flee, stab, or kick someone in the knee without breaking an ankle.”
“That may be the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“Stick with me, sweetheart. I’ve got hidden depths.”
“No, you’ve got alarming depths. Different thing.”
I leaned closer, low enough that Rourke couldn’t hear me from the front seat. “When we’re inside, we stay together until Simmons has the drive. After that, you don’t leave my sight unless we agree on it.”
Noa’s gaze held mine, dark and sharp. “And if the room makes that impossible?”
“Then you use the comm.”
“And if the comm fails?”
“Then you make trouble loud enough for me to hear.”
Her mouth curved, small and dangerous. “That one I can do.”
“I never doubted you.”
Rourke opened her door.
The sound hit first — cameras, music through the museum entrance, the low moving thunder of expensive voices. Then Noa stepped out, and the nearest cluster of photographers turned toward her.
I came around the car and offered my arm because this room expected polish, and I had no problem giving a room what it expected while I counted every way to break it if I had to.
Noa set her hand on my sleeve. Her fingers were cool. Steady.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Not even slightly.”
“Honest woman.”
“I’m ready enough.”
“That’s the version that counts.”
We walked into the Harbor Lights Gala under the cameras.
The museum’s main hall opened ahead of us in marble, glass, and old coastal money.
A vaulted ceiling rose above a central installation of suspended blue glass meant to look like water.
It caught the chandelier light and broke it into shifting pieces across the floor.
Waiters moved through the crowd with champagne trays.
A string quartet played from a balcony above the entry, elegant enough to make everyone pretend the room wasn’t built on favors, headlines, and tax receipts.
Silent auction tables lined the west gallery. Jewelry, private wine tastings, weekend yacht charters, signed first editions in glass cases, and a week in a waterfront villa where the sheets probably cost more than my first car. Along the far wall, sponsor boards gleamed under discreet spotlights.
The Warren Pediatric Care Foundation sat in gold lettering near the top.
I kept Noa on my left. My right hand stayed free. Under the tux jacket, the shoulder rig sat flat against my ribs, the comm tucked where the collar hid it. Formalwear complicated the work, but only if a man let it.
Landon’s people were in the room where he said they would be.
A woman in emerald stood near the auction tables.
A man with silver hair held position by the south corridor.
Two more moved through the crowd in catering black with trays they didn’t need to carry.
Clean law enforcement waited close enough to matter and far enough back not to warn anyone.
Simmons stood near an installation of antique maritime maps, grey suit, open collar, press badge tucked just enough under his lapel that most people would miss it and the right people wouldn’t.
He saw us.
He stayed where he was.
Noa followed my sightline without turning her head all the way. “That him?”
“Yes.”
“He looks like he has ruined several brunches by telling the truth.”
“That’s his finest quality.”
“You know him?”
“Not well. Landon does. Simmons has burned enough bridges with comfortable people to count as clean.”
“That’s a strange standard.”
“It’s Halo City. We use what we have.”
A waiter stopped beside us with champagne. Noa took one flute. I took one and didn’t drink. She noticed, of course.
“You’re not even going to pretend?” she asked.
“I’m pretending plenty. Watch me socialize in a tux.”
“You look like you’re waiting for the tux to confess.”
“It knows what it did.”
Noa’s smile flashed and vanished.
A camera popped. She angled her face a fraction away, making the red mouth, dark eyes, and diamonds look accidental. Nothing about Noa was accidental. Not tonight. Not ever.
Across the hall, Pamela Warren held court in gold sequins.
The woman knew how to build herself for a room.
Gold gown, heavy professional makeup, diamond drop earrings bright enough to signal from shore, diamond bracelet flashing whenever she lifted her champagne.
She stood with her husband near a cluster of hospital-board donors and museum trustees, both of them mid-to-late fifties, polished in the same expensive way, matched products of the same social machinery.
Warren money sat on him like a second tux. On her, it had sharper edges.
Pamela laughed for a donor, touched another woman’s arm, turned to give a photographer her best side, and never once looked like a woman frightened of anyone in the room.
Vain, yes. Polished, absolutely. Armed with money, beauty, and practiced grief for children she could invoke from a stage while laundering blood through a foundation.
But not scared.
Noa watched her for half a second too long, then looked away. “That’s her.”
“That’s her.”
“She looks exactly like the kind of person who says philanthropy when she means tax strategy.”
I took a slow breath through my nose.
“Careful,” I said. “You keep that up and I’ll think you’re having fun.”
“I’m wearing formalwear in public while waiting for criminals to expose themselves. I’m having whatever the opposite of fun is.”
“Foreplay, in your case.”
Her eyes cut to mine.
Worth it.
“Behave,” she said.
“I’ve been behaving for nearly six minutes. It’s a personal record.”
Her fingers tightened once on my sleeve.
I covered her hand with mine for the length of one breath. Not long enough for anyone watching to read it as anything but a date being attentive. Long enough for Noa to feel the answer.
The room shifted near the north gallery as a man stepped into a cluster of civic types.
Judge Malcolm Hughes was easy enough to recognize from the printed gala program.
Mid-fifties, tailored tux, silver hair, calm smile, the public manner of a man who had been listened to for decades and liked the sound of it.
People made space for him without seeming to know they were doing it.
Noa looked where I looked. “Judge?”
“Hughes,” I said. “Gold Circle Honoree. Keynote speaker. Platinum sponsor.”
“That’s a lot of titles for one man.”
“Men like that collect titles because titles are easier to mount on a wall than character.”
“He looks respectable.”
“He’s meant to.”
He was one more powerful man in a room full of them, useful to Pamela, useful to the foundation, useful to the image the gala wanted to project.
Simmons moved.
Not toward us. Toward the silent auction.
I touched Noa’s wrist with two fingers. “Maps. Then jewelry table. He’ll cross behind you.”
“Do I get to know the handoff?”
“You’ll do better if you do.”
“I usually do.”
“I’ve noticed.”
We moved into the auction flow like people killing time before dinner. Noa paused over a glass case holding a diamond bracelet donated by a jeweler who had paid handsomely to be named in the program. I stood close enough to look possessive and bored, which required no acting at all.
Simmons approached from the opposite side of the table, phone in hand, eyes on the bracelet rather than us.