Chapter Three
Two Days Later
GSI Headquarters, Virginia
Spiker and Vanka approached Buck Baer’s office door from opposite hallways. The setup reminded him of a reality television show where contestants were pitted against each other.
She had eyed his shorts and T-shirt, but now focused on the duffel bag he’d thrown over his shoulder. “What’s that for?”
Hell, Spiker should’ve told her what he’d decided to do. But their ride back to the East Coast had been tense. He’d talked to no one except for GSI’s HR department—which, now that he thought about it, was probably why they were both there now. “You have a minute to talk?”
She reached for the door handle tersely. “No.”
“My two favorites,” Buck called when the door cracked. “Get in here.”
She left the door open and left Spiker standing with a lot he should’ve already said. He rubbed the back of his neck and joined Vanka at the chairs in front of Buck’s oversized desk.
Their boss crumpled a yellow fast-food bag and chucked it toward a waste basket. It went wide and landed next to another balled-up wrapper.
Spiker dropped the duffel bag and eyed the collection of trash can misses. “Nice shot.”
Buck snorted. “We can’t all be Mr. All-American.”
Mr. All-American? That didn’t come close to describing him. But he could pull it off. Yet another Ken doll title he didn’t like.
“How was the mountain vacation?” Buck smirked.
Buck wanted to trade insults? Screw him. Spiker wasn’t in the mood. He had a plane to catch. “Kiss my ass.”
Buck laughed and choked on his coffee. The scent of whiskey hung in the air.
Spiker leaned back in his chair and wondered if that was a symptom of a bigger problem. “Easy there, big guy.”
“You two kill me.” Buck mopped his spittle with the back of his hand.
Wouldn’t that work out nicely? Spiker would make his flight out of the country and be on his sabbatical before Buck’s body temperature cooled. “You have us here. What do you want?”
Buck’s face soured, as if Spiker had cut off all his fun. “One more job.”
“Nope.” He didn’t have time for Buck’s games. “If you don’t already know, I’m on leave.”
Vanka swiveled in her chair. “Since when?”
Their boss pinched his fingers together and squinted at them in a way that could’ve annoyed a saint. “Consider it a tiny favor.”
Vanka pivoted back to Buck. “We don’t do favors. We follow procedures.”
Spiker gestured to his partner in agreement. “Yup.” Procedures said he was off work and didn’t have to stick around for much longer. “You’re biting into my time, boss. Officially.”
She turned back to him. “What are you talking about?”
Buck snorted. “I don’t give a fuck about your time.”
“Something new,” Spiker muttered.
Buck chuckled like his jackass notoriety was a badge of honor. Such a dick. Spiker chewed the inside of his cheek but offered a hint of tolerance. He was, after all, in the office already. “I’ll help for a couple of hours. After that, I’m gone.”
“Consider yourself back on duty.”
His molars ground together. “For what?”
“A special project.”
Irritation knotted in his stomach. “Like the last one that nearly got us shot down?”
Buck snort-laughed. “You were gonna crash one way or another.”
Spiker hated Buck. He hated his new habit of assigning special projects. They were nightmares, with even fewer resources than usual. Whenever Buck framed them as favors, Spiker now read the jobs as skirting a questionable line.
Damn it. Spiker wasn’t in the slightest mood for this shit.
There was a private island waiting for his arrival.
If he closed his eyes—and ignored Buck’s boozy orders—Spiker could almost sense the sun-warmed, coconut-rum-scented air flowing over his bare shoulders at an island bar.
Torches would light the nights. The days would be lazy and far, far away from GSI and Buck Baer.
“What’s the job?” Vanka asked.
Spiker groaned. If he’d talked to her about this before, she wouldn’t have asked that.
“Ever heard of a heist operator that goes by Robin Hood?” Buck asked.
What was this? Storytime? He refocused his attention and zeroed in on Buck. “No.”
“What’s Robin Hood?” Vanka asked.
Fuckin’ hell, Spiker needed the break. Storytime villains had caught her attention.
“Thought you’d never ask.” Buck leaned back in his chair. The thick leather ground under his weight. A smarmy grin blossomed on his ruddy face. “Robin Hood is a thief who has operated for decades.”
“A thief?” Vanka repeated with the same level of confusion Spiker felt.
They didn’t deal with petty crimes and rinky-dink problems that local police could handle. Spiker tamped his growing aggravation down into something that resembled a chuckle. “Someone steal something of yours, boss?”
Buck laughed along with Spiker. His dark, unruly eyebrows jerked together, though he tried to join in the joke with an amicable chortle.
Vanka tittered, “Missing a bazooka?”
“A tank?” Spiker shrugged.
“If that were the case,” —Buck simmered down— “I would’ve called you two in long before now.”
“So why bring us in on a thief?” Vanka asked.
Buck steepled his fingers and groused, “This Robin Hood fellow likes to take things back.”
She and Spiker missed whatever point Buck was trying to make.
“Like Robin Hood.” Buck rolled his hand as though they should get it. “Who takes from the wealthy and gives to the poor.”
“A thief that gives to the poor…?” Vanka asked slowly. “Er, well.” She lifted her palms up. “Gives what, exactly?”
Buck shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
She crossed her legs slowly and pointedly added, “Yes, it might.”
“Crap from museums. The kind of stuff that you”—Buck gestured to Vanka—“know in your sleep.”
“Let me get this straight.” Spiker inched to the edge of his chair. “You’re telling me that I won’t be on an island because you have a problem with a museum thief—who gives to the poor?”
Vanka snickered. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Spiker glared. Had Buck come up with this to screw with him for requesting an extended leave? He crossed his arms.
“What was that movie?” Vanka’s laughter grew, and she turned to Spiker. “The one with the treasure map on the back of the Constitution?”
He had no idea and didn’t care. Vanka was as close to the truth as his guess had been, but she found the situation hilarious. “We’re going on a treasure hunt.”
“No, we’re not,” Spiker muttered. He was going on vacation.
“If there’s a treasure map—she held up her hands—“that would beat a vacation any day.”
Buck groused. “There’s not a damn treasure map. What are you two, children?”
Her nose scrunched as though her lips had curled around a lemon slice. Vanka didn’t take to reprimands well. She crossed her arms with prim disdain. “No.”
“Now listen up. Robin Hood is a complete ghost. He will require all your expertise.” Buck scowled as if they hadn’t realized the magnitude of their assignment. “No one has been able to nail this devil, and I need it done.”
“You want us to put a bullet between Robin Hood’s eyes?” Her gaze narrowed. “That’s quite a punishment for a crime I don’t entirely understand.”
“Robin Hood steals stolen art and the like.”
Spiker’s eyebrows arched. “Say again.”
“You heard me,” Buck snapped. “And you’re gonna smoke the bastard out.”
Silence settled over them. He and Vanka had found more than their fair share of people who lived in the shadows. They could hunt down wisps, traces, and glimmers of evil. More often than not, their assignments pushed them to complete tasks far beyond simply locating a person.
But in all those cases, Spiker understood the justification.
He appreciated the greater good of society.
Evil walked the earth in the form of dictators, rapists, and traffickers.
He and Vanka had the uncanny ability to eliminate those threats without the baggage that could come with finite solutions from official channels.
But they had never hunted down an art hound, and they certainly didn’t do it when Spiker was supposed to be on sabbatical.
“Why now?” Spiker asked.
“Because I said.”
A low hum of disapproval vibrated from Spiker’s throat.
“And,” Buck added, “because you’re the best.”
“Don’t blow smoke up our arses,” Vanka said.
Buck readjusted himself and pulled the executive chair closer to the desk.
After taking a long swig of his spiked coffee, he sank his elbows onto the top of the polished wood desk, like concrete pillars driven into a riverbed.
“There’s a world of clientele that is there for the taking, so long as we prove ourselves. ”
Alarm bells clanged in Spiker’s head. He tapped his teeth together.
This was the type of problem that had bothered him about their firm.
Spiker saw—or thought he saw—the direction GSI was leaning in recent years, but until right now, he hadn’t been one hundred percent certain that Buck worked both sides of the line.
“Sorry—” Vanka turned to Spiker. “Did I hear this right?”
He wasn’t sure what to say. In the end, everything probably came down to money.
They were handsomely paid. Obscenely. The jobs weren’t always black or white.
Shades of gray existed. Spiker knew that, though he didn’t weigh himself down with the degrees of right and wrong.
All of their jobs were sort of good. They were on the right side of hard, sometimes lethal, choices that had to be made.
This couldn’t be one of those times. “I need to understand this. Prove ourselves to who?”
“Never mind,” Buck backtracked. “That came out all wrong.” He laid his heavy chin on his fists and shifted his weight onto his elbows. “This is simple. We find the asshole who’s stealing from—”
“We heard you.” Vanka’s eyes narrowed. “Stealing something that has already been stolen?”
“Exactly. Find the cause of the headache and fix it. I want a name and a face first.” Buck waved his hand. “Intel is everything. Asset protection is secondary.”
Vanka’s lemon-pursed lips hadn’t relaxed. “So it’s like we’re the police.”
Buck nodded. “With a global jurisdiction.”
This wasn’t a job that would wrap up in a couple of hours or even a couple of days. Spiker could feel his island getaway slipping through his fingers.
“Do this, and, fuck it.” Buck dropped a meaty fist on his desk. “Take the whole year off. With pay. I don’t care. Just get it done.”
“All right.” Vanka pushed to the edge of her seat as if the promise of money had the power to end this agonizing meeting. “We’ll do it.”
Spiker’s glare snapped to her. Of course, they were going to do it, but couldn’t she have bitched and groaned a little more about his canceled mega-vacation? Their mind-reading abilities weren’t up to snuff.
“I don’t know shit about art,” Spiker pointed out.
Buck pointed his index finger at Vanka. “She knows enough about everything to make up for the entire damn office. You run point.”
Spiker rested the back of his head against the chair and couldn’t recall how the coconut air would smell at his tropical paradise.
Reality crashed over him. He didn’t have a home base or even a vehicle right now.
It wasn’t as if sabbaticals were the standard two-week vacation.
He’d taken months off, and in doing so, given a trusted contractor permission to shred his lake house and rebuild it from the studs up. “Where will we be based out of?”
“Wherever,” Buck replied.
“How long? I don’t have a crash pad at the moment,” Spiker added.
“Why?” Vanka asked.
Spiker shrugged. “Major construction.”
“You really were going to take off.” Her eyebrows arched. “As in, whoosh, vanish, for what? Weeks? Months?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“You didn’t tell me—” She corrected herself. “You never take time off.”
“You two bicker like a sexless married couple.” Buck chuckled. “Stay with Vanka. You two get things done faster when you’re attached at the hip. Finish up and get on the first flight to Tahiti or wherever.”
“No,” they said in unison.
Buck laughed. “Fine, what do I care? Waste your precious few minutes commuting.”
Spiker and Vanka had spent the night together on mountainsides, in war zones, and in lavishly decadent hotels.
They’d been undercover as family, and as lovers, they’d spotted for each other’s sniper shots and feigned very intimate moments.
But they’d never crossed the invisible threshold and shared their homes. Odd, now that he thought about it.
He glanced at her and saw in her reaction the same reservations he had.
“Fine,” she agreed. “He’ll stay with me.”
“What?” Spiker choked.
Buck pushed away from the desk and retrieved a legal-size bundle bound by rubber bands. “This is everything you’ll need.”
Vanka scowled. “That’s not much.”
“Wait a minute.” The conversation gave Spiker whiplash. “I didn’t agree to stay—”
“That’s what’s known about Robin Hood. Find him.” Buck gestured to the package and then to Spiker. “And get rid of him.”
Vanka took the files. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Buck grinned like a fuckin’ loon. “Git ’er done and have some fun.” With a tilt of his coffee mug, their boss offered insincere cheers and chugged the last of his whiskey.