18. Florida Man Romances Stabbing Victim
“ G oodbye, security deposit,” Malia said the moment Rainy got tired of her pounding and finally opened the door to let her into his apartment.
She stared with wide eyes at the living room and kitchen, where every wall had been painted a different vibrant color. The room was packed with mismatched furniture he’d grabbed at flea markets and antique stores; anything he’d found interesting or hadn’t wanted to leave there alone and unwanted. The counter was stacked with secondhand books. There were holes drilled in the ceiling where he’d decided he wanted to install a new light fixture.
“My God,” she said. “You know, before, your apartment screamed sociopath. And now, somehow you’ve managed to go so far in the other direction that you ran right back into sociopath territory.”
“Already regretting letting you in.”
“Too late.” She dropped onto his new couch, which was upholstered in an incredibly loud floral pattern and was deliciously comfortable. “You really did all of this in, what, two and a half weeks?”
Rainy shrugged. Over the several years that he’d owned the place, he’d never wanted to spend more than a night there. In the interval since the disaster down at the docks, he’d ordered in for every meal and only left to go shopping.
“Okay,” Malia said, “ignoring your obvious and mildly concerning manic episode—I bring tidings.”
She flashed her phone screen, where a news article was pulled up. The headline informed him that the sale of Andy Parish’s Miami properties to Hyun-woo Seong had been finalized that morning, and Parish was leaving the city for Louisiana indefinitely.
“Marco says his dad’s in a very, very good mood,” she told him.
Rainy grimaced. “We’ll see.”
In the intervening time, Emilio had sent him a message that made it clear in no uncertain terms that Rainy would be his cut-rate errand boy for the foreseeable future if he wanted to get back into the good graces of his main source of revenue.
“Did he deposit my cut of the liquidation yet?”
Malia nodded. “I’ll funnel it to you tomorrow.”
“Good. All this stuff was expensive as fuck.”
He could use the money from the successful Seong-Espinosa venture, especially now that he wouldn’t be getting the payout for delivering Adler’s head.
Malia was toying with the flared hem of her pant leg where it was crossed over her lap.
“Did you come all the way here just to show me the front page of the Herald? ” he asked.
She scowled. “No, you big lug. I came to say I’m sorry.”
“Wow, come again? The wise and mighty Malia—”
“Don’t push your luck.” She jabbed a finger at him. “I’m not sorry for what I said. I meant all of it. But I’m sorry it drove a wedge between us.”
Rainy grabbed a bag of chips off the counter and dropped into an overstuffed armchair nearby. He crunched a chip loudly. She took this as an invitation to continue.
“I’m going to graduate in the spring, and I am going to get out of this line of work. I’m not taking that back, and I mean it. But as much as I might not want this life, you’re still my friend. I’m sorry I’ve been a crappy one.”
“You haven’t been. You were right,” he admitted. “I was miserable. I—I am miserable, maybe. But I’m not going to hide from it anymore. I can’t keep living like that.”
He tilted back in his chair, let the legs drop back down with a heavy thud. “Did I ever tell you what happened to my mentor, Rezakova? She was before your time.”
Malia shook her head.
“She was the best there ever was. Stone-cold scariest bitch you’d ever meet in your life. Taught me everything I know. And then, when I was just a year or two older than you are now, it all finally caught up to her. She disappeared one night and ended up chopped up into bits scattered all around the city dumpsters. They identified a finger they found in the landfill.”
Malia was starting to look a little queasy.
“You know what she always told me, right up to the day before she died?” Rainy stared up at the ceiling, which he’d painted a pale blue like the summer sky. “She always said that the only way out of this business is through the grave. Maybe she was right. Maybe even if you could get out, the stain would never leave you. Maybe they’d find a way to drag you back in.”
“I have to try,” Malia said.
“I know you do. And when the time comes, I’m going to help you. However I can.”
He lowered his gaze to find Malia smiling at him, soft but firm. He smiled back. Old wounds were forgotten. In the new light of his apartment, things felt fresh and possible.
If anyone could get out of this life scot-free, it was brilliant, iron-willed Malia.
“You really are acting super different,” she said, then drummed her nails on the arm of the couch. “Does it, by chance, have anything to do with the total fucking freak-out Marco said you had down at the docks?”
Rainy winced. “The rumor mill’s gotten hold of that one, hasn’t it?” It never failed to amaze him how much career criminals loved their gossip.
“Oh, yeah. Everyone thinks you lost your marbles, and you haven’t really shown up to dissuade them in the past two weeks. Marco says Julian’s managed to turn his buddies against you.”
The comment blew in a few clouds to darken his sunny mood. He’d have to go back soon, and when he did, he’d have to deal with being in Emilio’s bad graces and the ruins of whatever friendship remained between him and Julian. The thought made him want to hole up in his apartment forever.
Malia eyed him. “Have you, ah, made any visits to the hospital?”
“Really?”
Malia shrugged. “Don’t play dumb. I wasn’t there, but I have reliable sources. I’m told there was tearful clutching.”
“How much has Marco been running his mouth about this?”
“ So much. He’s convinced that you and Adler are going to have a double wedding with him and Sergeant Tessa.”
Rainy scowled. “For the last time: there is nothing going on between us. We fucked a few times. That’s it.”
“God, I didn’t need to know that. But let’s be real, Rainy. I’ve never seen you as obsessed with another human being as you have been the past month. You like him.”
Unbidden, the image of Adler outlined against the dawn, offering him that small, secret smile, flashed through Rainy’s mind. He felt a warm squeeze in his chest, the same one he’d felt when Marco forwarded him a text from Nasrin two and a half weeks ago, letting them know that Adler was out of surgery and expected to make a full recovery.
“Okay,” he admitted, “I like him. But don’t go full Marco on me, okay? That doesn’t mean I’m in love with him, and it definitely doesn’t mean we’re going to date.”
“But it does mean you want to visit him at the hospital.”
God, Rainy was starting to remember why he hadn’t missed her. “I don’t think Seong would be too pleased to see his recent ex-enemy’s favorite hitman show up at the sickbed of his right-hand man.”
“Oh my God,” Malia laughed, “you’re being a total pussy about this, aren’t you?”
“That is a misogynistic expression, young lady.”
“Pussy.”
“For your information, I’ve been busy. Going to see Adler when I already know he’s fine hasn’t exactly been at the top of my list because, again, we’re not fucking dating.”
“So it won’t be a big thing if you just pop over to Mount Sinai to see him.”
“UHealth,” Rainy corrected offhand, and then scowled.
“Right. Hasn’t been on your mind at all.”
Rainy flicked a chip at her.
“You’re such a little shit. This is why Marco’s my favorite.”
“No, he’s not.”
“God, no.”
Malia crossed her arms and legs at the same time as though in a choreographed dance. “Clearly, you’re being a baby about this, so I’m going to stay and bother you until you agree to stop being an idiot and just go talk to him.”
“Oh, really?” Rainy smirked. “Then I guess you’ll have to hear all the nasty details of how he and I fucked in the multipurpose room at work.”
“ Ew, you did not!”
“Oh, yeah. I faced him toward the mirror and put him in my lap and—”
“Ew, God, Jesus, okay, I’m going.” Malia threw her hands up in defeat and then clapped them over her ears as she made a beeline for the door.
“And at Parish’s house,” he called at her retreating back, “he ate me out so hard—”
“I hate you so fucking much,” she said, and closed the door behind her.
In the ensuing quiet, Rainy returned to his chips in peace. He stared at all his new furniture and crunched thoughtfully.
“I’m not going to the fucking hospital,” he said, and got up to get ready to go to the hospital.
He was definitely not nervous to see Adler again after what had transpired at the docks. That definitely wasn’t why he changed his shirt three times before leaving and even dug out some styling mousse to stall for another few minutes by fiddling with his hair. When he arrived at the hospital, he circled for twenty minutes until a parking spot near the front opened up. He was finally driven out of the car and through the front doors by the fact that the sun was almost setting, and visiting hours would probably be over soon.
He felt weird and shaky, like someone had hit a pressure point. The thought of seeing Adler again was thrilling and nerve-wracking and fizzling in a way that made him feel like he needed to slam the lid down on it before it bubbled over.
The lobby reminded him a bit of an airport, with its gray-flecked linoleum floors and long check-in counter. Rainy sidled up to the front desk, sucking hard on a grape-flavored lollipop to mask his nerves.
Apparently, it didn’t work, because the woman behind the desk immediately gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Here to see someone?” she asked. She was wearing scrubs printed with a half-familiar cartoon character that gave Rainy a brief flash of childhood nostalgia. He felt a pathetic urge to let her wrap him up in her big, soft arms.
“Yeah. Um, yes.” He cleared his throat and took out his lollipop, rolling the stick between his fingers. “Nathaniel Adler?”
She clacked away at her keyboard. “Can I ask your relationship, honey?”
Rainy paused. “Friend.”
“All right, friend it is. Real sweet of you to come and visit, especially at the end of the workday.” She clicked her mouse, then frowned. “Looks like your friend’s being released. His bill’s been settled, and he’s being checked out now. He’ll probably be through here in a moment or two, if you want to have a seat and wait.”
“Oh,” Rainy said dumbly. “Oh, okay.” He retreated from the counter and stuck his lollipop compulsively back into his mouth.
Adler was leaving the hospital. It made sense, after over two weeks. Adler was leaving the hospital right now. Probably not by himself. God, why had he let Malia talk him into this? It was a terrible idea.
He was just about to try and make a covert exit when a pair of men turned the corner into the lobby. Rainy clocked Seong first, looking incongruous in a charcoal pinstripe suit with a small duffel slung over his shoulder and a paper pharmacy bag crinkled in one hand. It took him significantly longer to recognize that the man walking next to him in worn jeans and a crewneck sweater was, in fact, Adler.
Rainy froze like a deer faced suddenly with a mountain lion, standing in the middle of the lobby with one damning foot angled toward the door and the other toward the front desk. They halted and stared at him. Adler’s eyebrows inched up toward his hairline. Seong just wrinkled his nose, muttered something, and peeled off toward the counter. Rainy had never wanted to melt into the floor more than he did at that moment.
He was too dumbfounded and embarrassed to reconsider the option of running until Adler was already right in front of him.
Rainy had refused, on the drive over, to rehearse what he was going to say. That had just felt pathetic. Now he was deeply regretting it, because when he opened his mouth, the first thing that fell out was:
“You’re not wearing a suit.”
“I’m not working,” Adler said, and gave him that familiar look that said that Rainy was the dumbest motherfucker to ever live, and Rainy felt like a weight was lifted off his chest.
“You, uh, look good, considering,” he said lamely.
It was true enough, but it didn’t mean Adler didn’t still look like crap. His casual clothing hung off him at starvation angles, and his cheekbones stood out in the pale, gaunt cast of his face. There were dark smudges under his eyes, and his usual sharp air was more queasy and subdued. Instead of predatory, his movements were tentative and unambitious. His hair was greasy. He had a five-o’clock shadow. Rainy wanted to kiss him.
Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to hold on to the text from Marco, to see Adler here in front of him. Rainy needed to reach out and touch him, feel the smooth completeness of his skin and the warmth of his pulse. He hadn’t realized how sick he’d felt, stuck on the image of Adler going limp in his arms, the tactile memory of his blood, hot and sticky, with nothing to replace it.
“I thought I’d drop by,” he explained when Adler didn’t bother replying. “Check up on you.”
“Right. Here I am.”
“Here you are,” Rainy agreed, and it came out on a puff of relief that startled even him. Adler’s face changed at that, softening slightly, but Seong was already back on top of them.
“You’re all cleared to go,” he told Adler. Then he gave Rainy an unimpressed once-over and shot Adler a look that transparently said, Really? This one? “I’m afraid we don’t have time to stay and chat. Leo’s waiting with the car. I’ll call to postpone my dinner another thirty minutes, so—”
“I could drive you home,” Rainy blurted, because maybe he really was the dumbest motherfucker to ever live. When Seong and Adler just stared at him, he blundered on, “I came all this way. And I’m headed uptown anyway.” Which wasn’t true, but Adler shrugged.
“Why not? Then nobody needs to move their schedule around.”
Seong deadpanned his displeasure. “Nat, you know I’ve learned not to underestimate you, but you’re not exactly at full capacity right now. Do I need to remind you who this man is?”
“You planning on killing me tonight?” Adler asked Rainy.
“No.”
“Great. Then it’s settled.” Adler took the duffel and bag of drugs from Seong and dumped them unceremoniously into Rainy’s arms. Rainy had to fumble to keep from dropping them.
“Nat,” Seong protested.
“I’ll be fine,” Adler assured him. “Thank you.”
Seong frowned, but squeezed Adler’s shoulder and nodded. He gave Rainy a dirty look on his way past that threatened the full force of retribution an angry and legally dubious multimillionaire could bring to bear. Then he pulled out his cell and started a call as he ducked out of the lobby.
With his hands occupied with Adler’s stuff, Rainy had no defenses when Adler reached out and stole the lollipop from his mouth. He stuck it between his own teeth with a pleased groan that felt very inappropriate for a hospital waiting room. Rainy raised a questioning brow.
“Doctor says I got to quit smoking again,” Adler explained. Then he gave another satisfied suck and, well, Rainy couldn’t complain.
He deposited Adler’s things in the back seat of his car, politely ignoring the grunt of pain that came from the front when Adler settled into the passenger’s side. Dusk was beginning to fall as he climbed in and started the car.
“Do we need to make any stops?”
Adler shook his head. “I assume you remember where I live?”
Rainy smiled ruefully. “I remember.”
When he pushed up his sleeves to start driving, he felt Adler’s eyes snag on the maroon latticework of scabs down the back of his forearm. The cuts were healing cleanly, but not prettily.
“It’s nothing,” Rainy said, to counter the apology he could see forming on the tip of Adler’s tongue.
As they inched along in traffic, he began to regret more and more not planning some kind of speech. The silence between them was heavy and brittle, full of unspoken things. Even though neither of them had said a word yet, it felt like the aftermath of an argument. That moment on the warehouse floor, where Rainy had held Adler as he died, had said too much, revealed things that couldn’t be reeled back in. They swelled the atmospheric pressure of the car until Rainy’s temples throbbed.
“So,” he said finally, unable to sit in silence any longer. “You and Seong seem… close.”
“Mm.”
“I have to admit, I didn’t really get it before. I mean, I understand loyalty—”
“Do you?”
“—but seven years is a long time to stick around out of loyalty to your boss.” Rainy glanced at Adler. “There’s something else there. I mean, he must have done something to earn that.”
Adler stared straight ahead out the windshield. The city’s first flickers of nighttime neon reflected off the surface of his eyes. “He took me in when you could count all my ribs, when my face made children cry and I needed all the lights on just to sleep, and all he asked in return was that I be loyal and good at my job.”
Rainy wondered, sadly, if that was the most kindness anyone had ever shown him.
They lapsed back into silence for a while as Rainy struggled to think of a neutral direction to steer the conversation in. After five minutes of dead air, Adler flicked on the radio, wrinkled his nose at Rainy’s presets, and immediately started flipping through stations.
“Uh, excuse me? Hands off my car.”
Adler ignored him. He found a country station and settled back, looking pleased. Rainy stared at him, horrified.
“Oh my God.”
“Eyes on the road.”
“What is this?”
“Music,” Adler said, offended.
“Is it?”
Instead of replying, Adler turned up the volume and pointedly started humming along.
“Wow. Remember the ketchup and hot sauce? This is my ketchup and hot sauce.”
Adler just flipped him off and slapped his hand away whenever he attempted to change the station.
As they drew further uptown, a knot of anxiety began to grow in Rainy’s stomach that Adler would just ask to be dropped off before Rainy got up the courage to say… whatever it was he was going to say. His fears were alleviated when they reached Adler’s street and Adler directed him to a covered off-street parking spot. He gathered Adler’s things from the back seat and followed him inside.
Adler only lived on the second floor, but by the time they got to the top of the stairs, he was winded and a little queasy-looking again. Rainy debated whether stepping in to offer him an arm to lean on would result in a black eye or vomit on his shoes or both. In the end, Adler caught his breath on his own and opened the door.
They were immediately rushed by two low, furry shapes. The dogs. Rainy had forgotten about the dogs. They were both German shepherds, one very creaky with a white muzzle and the other bobbling happily along with one leg strapped up in a complicated silver brace.
Adler crouched, wincing, to ruffle their ears and accept disgusting, sloppy dog kisses all over his face.
“This is Dolly,” he told Rainy, indicating the older dog, “and this is Martina.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Rainy told them as they snuffled curiously around his pants.
When Adler instructed them to go, both dogs obediently trotted off to lie down. Rainy paused before following him into the apartment. This was what he’d wanted in the car. It wasn’t like he hadn’t stepped into a hundred strangers’ apartments—whether to fuck them or to kill them. And yet, this felt more intimate than any of those times. Rainy shook himself off and stepped over the threshold before Adler could question him.
It was pretty much what he’d envisioned when he’d tried to imagine a place Adler might live—modern and scrupulously neat. Black leather couch, stainless steel appliances. In the corner was a large potted ficus that was pretentiously healthy. The dogs watched Rainy from a pair of plush beds that took up a questionable amount of the living room.
Rainy trailed Adler into the kitchen, where he set the pharmacy bag down on the counter and started rifling through it while Adler clattered about.
“They hooked you up with the good stuff.” Rainy shook a little orange bottle of oxy at him. “On a scale of one to ten, you want some?”
Adler shook his head. “I’ll wait.”
His tone was brusque and businesslike as ever, but he was moving gingerly. Rainy ached just watching him.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Adler said. He opened a drawer and took out a roll of plastic wrap. “It’s been weeks of sponge baths and shitty hospital bathrooms, and if I don’t get under hot water in the next five minutes, I’m gonna break something.”
Rainy wavered at the counter, unsure of his place. That wasn’t exactly a demand for him to leave, but it wasn’t an invitation for him to stay, either. He shuffled from foot to foot. This was worse than when he’d been thirteen and walking a date home for the very first time, agonizing over whether to kiss her at the door.
“Should I order a pizza?” he hedged, trying to gauge Adler’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.
“No solid foods yet,” Adler lamented. “Apparently, Su-jin left some soup in the fridge, though, if you wanna heat some up.”
Rainy very smoothly and casually avoided fist-pumping in victory and set the opioids down to focus on his new task. Before he could make it to the fridge, though, he was distracted by Adler’s grunt of pain. He’d tried to pull his sweatshirt off and gotten stuck.
“Here.” Rainy carefully removed each of Adler’s arms from the sleeves and lifted the sweater over his head. Adler’s expression when the fabric moved out of the way reminded him of Patoso, utterly indignant at receiving any kind of assistance. Rainy was distracted from mocking him, though, when he looked down.
Under the sweatshirt, Adler’s chest was bare. There was a small white surgical dressing pad stuck on his stomach, just above his navel. Rainy must have made an involuntary sound, because Adler’s expression softened and he allowed himself to be turned. His back was taped up more, two white dressings secured over careful sutures. Rainy’s hand hovered over the skin, hesitant to touch. When he finally laid his palm on Adler’s side, careful to avoid the damage, the puff of breath he let out ruffled the hair at the nape of Adler’s neck.
“You’re okay.” He hadn’t fully believed it until this moment, until he could feel the warmth of Adler’s skin, his tiny shiver as Rainy ghosted a thumb up and down his ribs.
“I’m okay,” Adler confirmed.
Neither of them moved for a long moment. Rainy’s hand stayed heavy on Adler’s side, soaking up the warmth and the small movements and rhythms of a living body. He watched Adler’s shoulders rise and fall with his breath, felt his ribs expand. There were words welling up inexorably from somewhere in Rainy’s chest, filling his throat and pressing against the back of his teeth.
Adler handed him the roll of plastic wrap. “Waterproof me?”
Together, they got his abdomen cocooned in several layers of plastic wrap. Adler padded off, and Rainy lingered in the kitchen.
“You know,” he called, “I almost feel bad. Here I am, left alone to snoop through your stuff, while you haven’t even been in my apartment. Sort of a power imbalance.”
“What makes you think I’ve never been in your apartment?” Adler called from the bathroom.
“What does that mean?”
The door closed.
“Adler, what does that mean?”
The only answer was the sound of the shower turning on. Rainy shook his head and turned to the fridge.
There was a large pot of delicious-smelling soup, which he placed on the stove and set to heating. When he closed the fridge, he noticed that there were a few pieces of paper stuck to the door with magnets. The clumsy, colored-pencil drawings of small children, labeled in lopsided Hangul. On one, a wobbly English hand had written For Uncle Nat.
Rainy poked his head out of the kitchen. The shower was still running, and he could hear the slap of water on skin and tile. In the living room, the two dogs watched him with cocked heads, but didn’t move from their beds.
Rainy went snooping.
One wall of the living room was lined with books that, when approached, turned out to mostly be those crappy spy thrillers they sold in airport convenience stores. There were a few thicker, older tomes of classic Russian literature sprinkled throughout. Rainy pulled one out and flipped it open. On the inside cover, there was a short inscription scrawled in permanent marker. Rainy was pretty sure it was in Russian, but the bold clumsiness definitely signaled a man’s handwriting. He felt a spike of jealousy toward an imagined sexy Russian mafia ex who gifted Adler volumes of Dostoevsky, then promptly realized how stupid and pathetic that was and retreated to the bedroom.
Adler had a king-sized bed with a very tasteful, boring comforter and a plush blanket spread over the foot that was covered in dog hair. Rainy was startled by the click of nails on wood, but it was just the dogs following him from the living room. They leaped up and settled on the blanket, and Rainy stepped back, uneasy. But they just lay there watching him with curiously tilted heads, so he felt safe to resume his invasion of their master’s privacy.
There were condoms and a loaded Glock in the nightstand. The closet was full of suits hanging in crisp garment bags. The dresser was full of T-shirts and jeans. Rainy found a false back in the wardrobe, behind which there were several semi-autos, a large collection of knives, and the case that contained Adler’s sniper rifle. Rainy was about to close the door again when he noticed something glinting on a hook in the gloom. He lifted off the chain and stepped backward for better light.
The dog tags clicked together in the cup of his palm. They were black, with rubberized edges to stop them from clinking too loudly. Rainy smoothed a thumb over one, feeling the shallow indentations in the metal.
ADLER
NATHANIEL T., JR.
9354176954
A POS
BAPTIST
In the bathroom, the shower turned off. Rainy hastily returned the tags to their hook and fled the bedroom for the kitchen, where the soup was just starting to bubble. The dogs followed him and lay back down in the living room.
He’d located some bowls and was ladling out soup when Adler emerged in a cloud of steam. He was wearing an old T-shirt and sweats, and his hair was wet and curling around his ears. He’d shaven. His feet were bare, for Christ’s sake.
“You’re staring,” he observed.
“Yeah,” Rainy said.
Adler wordlessly accepted a bowl of soup and perched on a stool to dig in. Thank God; he looked like he’d lost fifteen pounds in the hospital. Rainy observed him over his own bowl.
In well-worn sweats and bare feet, Adler looked like a totally different person. Warm, soft, touchable. Frighteningly human. Even his scar seemed different, a more natural part of his face. But even in this new and unfamiliar form, Rainy could still see the hallmarks of his Adler. The impeccable posture, the defensive set to his shoulders. The way he watched Rainy closely without actually looking at him, and the slight smug curve of his mouth that meant he knew Rainy was watching him back.
It felt comically obvious now that the Adler whom Rainy had considered his, and the put-together professional one he’d been jealous of at the meeting, and the one here in this apartment weren’t separate people. There had been no reason to be jealous in the first place, because all of those things had always been his Adler. They all fit together, even if he didn’t yet understand all the joints and seams.
Wandering his apartment had been a stark reminder that, as vivid and tangled as this thing between them had grown, Adler was still something of a stranger to him. Rainy knew how he fought and how he fucked, what his nightmares were about and what he asked for when he was about to die. And yet, he’d learned more actual details about Adler’s life in the past hour than he had in the entire time they’d known each other before today.
A positive blood, he thought. Baptist.
Rainy wanted to learn the rest. The thought sat warm and secret, tucked safely behind a rib.
“I think I could use a drink,” he admitted.
“That’s just cruel. I’m not allowed to drink right now.”
“Sad as it may be for you at first, if you get me liquored up, I might let you do all kinds of dirty things to me.”
Adler smirked and stirred his soup. “Sounds like a good time. You sloppy drunk and me with my guts full of stitches.”
To Rainy’s surprise, he stood and crossed to the wooden hutch cabinet that was lined with neatly organized bottles of liquor. He pulled down a shaker.
“What’s your poison?”
“Please, God, anything but absinthe.”
Adler laughed that full, rusty laugh. He filled the shaker with ice and started pouring liquor, hands moving with that professional carelessness Rainy had clocked in the bar on that night that felt like a lifetime ago. In a minute flat, Rainy had a tumbler of hazy, dark-gold liquid sitting on the counter in front of him. Adler batted his hand away when he tried to reach for it.
“Not yet.”
He dug in the fridge and came out with a jar of cherries. He dropped one into Rainy’s glass, then tossed a second in a high arc and caught it in his mouth.
Rainy felt a flash of fondness like a kick in the chest. It punched the breath right out of him.
“What?” Adler asked, catching his expression.
“I was just thinking that I really tried my damnedest not to, but I still can’t help but like you.”
Adler’s smile, for once, wasn’t mean-spirited at all. It crept onto his face shyly and then all at once, like he’d tried to catch it but it had slipped his grasp. The dimples made him look younger.
“Try your drink, Mister Rainy.”
“You’re not trying to payback-roofie me, are you?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
Rainy took a sip and raised his eyebrows. “This is delicious. What is this?”
“Amaretto sour with bourbon.”
“All right, I’ll bite. How did you learn to make drinks like that? There’s nobody who’s that dedicated to a con.”
Adler settled back on his stool. “I used to work as a bartender on the side when I was a kid. It’s still a useful cover, on occasion.”
Rainy jotted this down on his mental list of facts about Adler. It had doubled in length this night alone. Rainy was starting to think he might want it to go on forever.
Thank God for Malia, he thought, and finished his drink.