17. Declan
17
DECLAN
“ S o,” I begin slowly, holding out the ‘o’. “When are we going to discuss the elephant in the room?” My voice cuts through the awkward silence in the garage. I watch as Hayden makes his fifth pass around Silas’s bike, keeping his eyes firmly on the machine and away from our faces.
“It’s clearly not an elephant,” Silas says as he eases himself into a cushioned chair. His leg still seems tender during the evening hours. “More like a giant lizard,” he adds with a chuckle, and cracks open a beer.
Hayden rolls his eyes, clearly not up for our bullshit today. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbles, and leans against his own bike, still keeping his eyes securely fastened to the floor. “How about instead of giving me shit, we talk about what we need to do from here.”
I nod, the smile fading from my face. He’s right. We need to figure what the fuck we are going to do about the situations we have gotten ourselves into. “I can’t help but feel like something isn’t right. Like we’re missing something.”
Silas folds his arms across his chest and leans back. “I feel like I’m missing a lot of somethings,” he mumbles under his breath.
The corner of my lip twitches. “Right. You’ve missed a bit. Let me fill you in. Hector apparently found Emelia shortly after you got on that plane. They showed up here later that night covered in blood. Emelia had been stabbed several times, but nothing fatal, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Hayden quips from his corner of the garage. I narrow my eyes at him, but he doesn’t look up from his tinkering.
“We’ve been slow on the cyber security front, mainly because we don’t know the ins and outs of your programs. We tried an assassination mission for O’Leary, but we were unsuccessful because Tobias and Hector were there.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Silas says, and holds up his hands. “They were with you on the mission? Since when are you working with them?”
“No.” I clench my teeth and take a deep breath. The thought of a betrayal still makes my insides boil. “They were in the room with the Irish.”
Silas blinks owlishly at me, stunned silent for once in his life. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Correct,” I push off the wall I was leaning against, and begin to pace the length of the garage. “We didn’t have the room bugged, so we have no clue what they were discussing.”
“Does Emelia know?” Silas asks quietly.
I shake my head once. “I don’t know. I assume not because they won’t need to tell the record keeper things that they keep strictly off the records.”
A loud, metallic clang pulls my attention over to Hayden, who is trying to do God knows what with the tailpipe of his motorcycle. “Sorry,” he mutters and beats it back into place with the wrench in his hand.
Each ring of metal against metal makes my eye twitch and the anger inside me rise to the surface. “Hit it one more time, Hayden, and I’ll cave your skull in with that wrench.”
Silas chuckles and pushes slowly to his feet, only wincing with the first step. “What about Hector?”
Hayden stands as well and drops his tools back into the box against the wall. “We could tell after nearly losing her that he was attached, more than any security detail should be. I told him that if she wanted it, we would share. We are nice, respectable men after all.”
Silas raises a brow and gives Hayden a look. “Share her or him?”
Now it’s my turn to raise a brow. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the snark from bubbling out. Silas doesn’t back down though. He stares at Hayden in silence, patiently waiting for a response.
Hayden sighs and shoves his hands into his pocket, fishing out the serrated blade he always keeps there. His lethal fidget spinner, he likes to call it. “That was just a bonus,” he finally admits and looks at Silas. His eyes are dark and serious. “If she wants it, she gets it. I left it up to her and made no comment about it. What they did between them must have sealed the deal to lead to the other night.”
Silas shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “What are we going to do about the Irish?”
“Well, we aren’t going to be taking any orders from them. That job was void the moment they blew the engine out of that plane,” Hayden snaps quietly.
I nod my head in agreement. “We need to do some more digging into Tobias and O’leary. I want to know what they’re up to behind closed doors.”
“That, I can do,” Silas says with a smile. “I’ll take a look into that tonight after my date with Emelia.”
Hayden flexes his shoulders and meets my eyes. Fuck. He isn’t going to let this go.
I watch as Hayden twirls the knife between his fingers, momentarily mesmerized by the fluidity of his motion. “There’s something else.” I clear my throat as Silas looks over at me. Hayden stares a hole directly through me as I square my shoulders. “Do you remember the hotel heist we did?”
“The one where the fucking crazies blew up the entire building? Yeah, I remember that. I doubt I’ll ever forget that shit show. Why?” Silas asks warily as he takes in my serious expression.
“That was Emelia’s family hotel.”
“Holy shit. Does that mean…?” his voice trails off.
“Her parents died in that fire and she knows that we were involved. I cleared the air and she knows that we had no part in the explosions.”
Hayden pockets the blade and steps forward. “Tell him the rest of it, Declan.”
Silas takes one look at the scowl on Hayden’s face and then turns back to me in confusion. “What did you do?”
“That job wasn’t an anonymous one,” I say carefully, trying to figure out how to put it into words without sounding harsh. “I took a payout from some very powerful people to get us started.”
“What he means,” Hayden says, his voice low and dangerous, “is that despite our protests and feelings, he went with someone he knew we would not agree with and then kept it from us.”
Silas closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “You went through the fucking cartel for money.” He says it like a statement, not a question.
I nod silently and wait for the yelling, but it never comes.
Silas opens his eyes and there’s a slight smirk turning up the corner of his mouth. “I already knew that. Declan, dude, I’m a hacker. I know every fucking porn site you’ve ever subscribed to.”
My mouth drops open and Hayden barks out a laugh beside me. Silas rounds on him next. “Don’t even get me started on your browser history. Why do you even need to know the suction capability of the latest shop vac?”
I choke on a laugh and we all just stare at each other in stunned silence. Then I pull my twin into a tight embrace, squeezing gently. “I’ve fucking missed you.” I look up to see Hayden trying to sneak away. “No you don’t.” I reach out and grab him too, pulling him into the embrace.
Hayden stiffens for a brief second before one of his arms snakes around me, the other around Silas. “Don’t ever fucking do that again, Si. I mean it.”
I let them go and step back, my eyes immediately going to the corner of the room by the door. “So, about that elephant.”
“Lizard!” Silas calls as he walks over to his bike and drags the tips of his fingers along the sleek, black metal frame. Hector did a great job of getting it back to its former glory. There’s not even a scratch on it.
Hayden stalks over to the corner and gathers the giant thing up. It’s so large that it makes holding it and trying to look around it awkward. “It’s clearly a Cubone,” he snaps and stuffs it under his arm, revealing his scowling face. “And it’s for Emelia. It’s her favorite.”
I chuckle and roll my eyes as he marches the giant stuffed Pokemon into the house and slams the door behind him. I’m basically trying to keep toddlers alive at this point, and it’s even harder because they know how to use lethal weapons.