Chapter 12

 

 

JANET WAS going to stay with Aruna and Liam for the foreseeable future; she could do her job from there just as well as she could from Georgetown, and now she would have lots more people to help her. She was also considering moving to LA to be close to Min, and since Min still owned her condo in Santa Monica, she could move Janet in there easy with, she said… her mother.

“Your mother?” I asked Min, horrified.

“What?” Min was defensive. “My mother would love it, and so would Janet.”

“Ohmygod, I love your mother,” Janet almost cried, “and she would love to take care of Cody.”

“Yes, she would,” Min agreed, smirking at me.

I looked to Catherine for help.

“Oh, I’m with you,” she said, hands up. “I’d rather be lobotomized.”

Jensen stuck up for Min’s mom, but she patted him and told him he didn’t have to work so hard. “They all know her, honey. Don’t worry about it.”

He was certain Catherine and I just needed to be more open-minded.

“Uh-huh,” I said, only to find Ian scowling at me. “What?”

“Min’s mother is lovely,” he asserted. “Jensen’s right. You need to give her a break.”

I glanced over at Min.

She coughed. “The last time Ian and I were on Skype, she was over, and they got to talking,” she explained. “Did you know Ian is, like, a Korean food savant?”

I turned back to Ian.

“What? I like Korean food. What do you think I ate when I was stationed in Seoul?”

“I’m outta here,” I announced, getting up from Aruna’s huge dining room table. “I’m leaving my husband here to do dishes.”

And suddenly I was being smothered with hugs and kisses, and there was no way I was getting out of the house anytime soon.

Eventually Min and Jensen took Catherine downtown with them to the Four Seasons for the night. We all agreed to reconvene for breakfast the following morning before the three of them flew out.

Ian and I cabbed it home with Chickie and had the driver drop us a couple blocks from home so we could get our werewolf’s walk in.

“So who were you talking to before we left this morning?” I asked as I walked beside Ian, his arm around my shoulder.

“Kage. I needed to let him know we were flying.”

“And he must’ve let you tell people that you were there on official business.”

“He did.”

I grunted.

“What?”

“It’s not like him to break the rules.”

“It wasn’t rule-breaking, though, right? It was just being able to say, ‘I’m here as a federal marshal, not just as Ian Doyle.’”

“Still, that was nice of him.”

“I’m in his direct chain of command now. He has to do stuff for me; it’s part of picking me in the first place.”

I chuckled.

“What? It is.”

“I guess you—Ian?”

He had stopped walking and didn’t let me take another step forward. As I looked down the street toward our house, four other houses between us and it, I saw a man sitting on our front stoop.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“I don’t—”

“Oh no, wait,” I said as the man stood up and waved to me. “I know him. That’s Efrem Lahm from Homeland.”

“Who?”

“Efrem Lahm,” I repeated, waving back. “I met him in Phoenix at the hospital when I went in the ambulance with the Guzman kids.”

“And what is he doing here?”

“I don’t know, baby. Let’s go ask.”

Ian wasn’t thrilled, but the closer we got, and when Efrem came down the steps and stood on the sidewalk, looking crisp and polished in a cashmere trench coat, dress pants, and Prada wingtips, but not in any way threatening, Ian calmed. Seeing also, up close, that Ian had easily fifty pounds of muscle on the smaller, more delicate man, helped put him even more at ease.

“Efrem,” I greeted when we got close, hand out, reaching.

He took my hand, shook warmly, and then repeated the motion when I introduced him to Ian.

“It’s nice to see you,” I said as he pet Chickie. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“This is going to sound odd, but I need you to bear with me.”

“Course.”

With that he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a beautiful antique gold pocket watch and passed it to me.

I turned it over in my hands, opened the case, and saw the inscription. It was simple, just the words For Miro with the initials CH underneath. I took a breath before I lifted my head to meet his green gaze.

“The fuck is this?” Ian asked coldly, on edge, there to protect me, glancing around the street, scanning for a threat.

“Efrem?” I questioned, squeezing the watch in my hand, not about to let it go and wanting to at the exact same time. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“What you have there is an eighteen-karat-gold Phillippe Patek chronograph pocket watch that has a matching eighteen-karat-gold watch chain with the key to Doctor Craig Hartley’s safe on the other end.”

“His safe?”

“Yes.”

“Explain.”

He cleared his throat, pivoted, and waved to someone on the other side of the street.

A moment ago Ian and I had just scanned the street for other people, and there was no one else there. But evidently there had been, and that someone managed to evade our notice until now, obviously put Ian on edge. Briefly he looked scared, almost panicked, but just as quickly, he squinted and his expression grew irritated. “Harris?” he said after a second.

“Doyle,” whoever Harris was called back from the shadows. I couldn’t see anybody at all, but apparently Ian could.

“What’s the deal?”

“I wasn’t sure what you’d heard. I didn’t want to spook you, plus your husband knows Ef, so I figured that was the best way to make contact.”

“We were in Afghanistan together,” Ian said, hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “We’re good.”

And with that, a stunning man stepped out of the darkness he’d blended so well into, looked both ways, and then jogged across the street to us.

He had warm eyes of the most unusual color, like a spring green with gold all swirled together. When he got close, he held out his hand for Ian, who took it quickly.

“I apologize for the subterfuge,” Harris said, addressing me. “I just didn’t know if your husband would shoot me on sight.”

I glanced at Ian. “Why would you do that?”

“Because this man used to be a CIA operative, and the last I heard, he was a contract killer, so I would have assumed that Hartley’s last request was to put you in the ground.”

“Which couldn’t be further from the truth,” Harris informed us both. “He left that in my care with orders that it be delivered to you the moment he died.”

“You knew him?” I asked.

“Only by reputation. We never actually spoke. I’m now the curator of a service that clients use to deposit things for safekeeping, and that’s what this watch was. There were instructions for it to be delivered as soon as possible after his death was announced. I wasn’t notified until this morning, but I came as quickly as possible.”

I nodded. “May I ask the name of your business?”

“There’s not a name, per se. It’s just a service where people—”

“Criminals,” I suggested.

“Some, yes,” he allowed, his voice deep and resonant, “but not all.”

“I’m sorry, that was rude. Please go on.”

“People entrust me with all manner of treasures, and I hold on to them until they remove them or I’m asked to do something else.”

“Huh.”

I turned back to Ian. “What?”

He moved closer to Harris, studying his face. “You know what you sound like.”

“No, what?” he asked, but he smiled, which was weird.

“That’s a real thing? The Vault is real?”

“You didn’t think it was?”

Ian shrugged. “It’s a fairy tale. Stuff like that doesn’t actually exist.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, as it were,” Harris said, grinning at Ian, passing him a card I hadn’t even seen him holding. But maybe ex–CIA operatives were good with the whole sleight-of-hand thing. “If you ever want a job… or if you need help outside of what you can do… feel free.”

Ian took the card and met Harris’s remarkable eyes. “Thank you.”

Harris turned back to me. “The key opens an actual vault in Switzerland, so you’ll have to travel if you want to look through Dr. Hartley’s possessions.”

“Okay.”

“He didn’t want the bank’s information coming with the key in case you were pressured into surrendering both to the authorities. So if you decide you want to go through it, use the card I gave your husband, call me, and I’ll have someone meet you in Zürich and take you to the bank.”

“And that’s all part of the process?”

“It’s the process that Dr. Hartley set up specifically for you. My understanding is that even with the key, if it’s not you with the key, there’s no entry.”

“And if I never go?”

“Then I suspect that the contents of his vault will simply remain there until the bank itself is torn down, though I think the oldest bank in Switzerland was built back in the 1800s, so it may outlive you.”

“And if that happens?”

“Then that’s not your worry anymore, now is it?”

I nodded. “True.”

“Anyway, you let me know,” he said kindly, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder before looking at Ian. “And you as well.”

Ian gave him a nod.

“I don’t know if I should thank you for bringing me the watch or not.”

“I’m glad it was given into my keeping so I could meet you. It’s been my pleasure.”

“And mine,” I said, offering him my hand. “Any friend of Ian’s.”

“Friend might be a stretch.” Harris smiled one more time, and wow, it struck me again that he was a really handsome man.

“Good to see you, Miro,” Efrem said quickly, patting my shoulder, “and to meet you, Ian.”

“You as well,” Ian said as he shook Harris’s hand and then Efrem’s before they turned and headed back across the street, then down the sidewalk. They must have parked on another street, because they turned at the next corner and disappeared from view.

“It’s cold for them to not have parked closer,” I said, draping my arm around Ian’s neck.

“Fuckin’ Harris,” he growled.

“What?”

“If he wanted us dead, you know how easy that would be for him?”

“Why would he want us dead? He seemed like a good guy.”

“Jesus, Miro, your life is filled with scary-ass men.”

“No,” I corrected him. “My life is full of one good man with a scary skill set.”

He grunted.

I tightened my arm, curling him close so I could kiss his cheek and then his lips, playfully biting his lower lip, sucking on it before letting go.

“What’re you gonna do with the watch?”

“Go put it in our safety deposit box on Monday. I don’t want it in the house, but I don’t want to lose it either.”

“Good plan. I’ll go with you.”

Inside our Greystone, I carefully put Hartley’s watch in the pocket of my topcoat to be ready for Monday, then started stripping.

“Hey,” I said, a thought hitting me, walking over to the railing to look down into the living room. “You never got to finish about Lorcan. What’s going on with that?”

Ian walked over by the couch so I could see him. “My father was pissed because Lorcan has to do a thousand hours of community service, volunteer at one of those free legal help places for the next six months, and submit to biweekly drug testing for the next two years.”

I leaned over on the railing. “That’s the deal Stafford gave you?”

“Yep.”

“That’s really fuckin’ great.”

“Yeah, no shit, but my father says that he didn’t pay for him to go to the University of Chicago Law School to use his degree to help drug addicts and prostitutes.”

“What?”

“I know. He’s living in a bad seventies police drama—who does he think does drugs, just poor people in the ghetto?”

“Lorcan should be kissing Stafford’s ass.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And so, what, you and Stafford are buddies now?”

“‘Buddies’ is pushing it, but I think we’re gonna work together, yeah.”

“Huh. The marshals and the DEA,” I said, grinning. “Lookit you already building bridges and shit.”

“That’s what Kage hired me to do, jackass. Build fuckin’ bridges.”

“Oh, you diplomat, you.”

He flipped me off and went back to the kitchen, and I heard him talk to Chickie. “Oh, you do not need to go out, it’s like twenty degrees out there, you stupid dog.”

And it was nice, after the craziness my life had been over the past two days, to hear the normalcy of Ian arguing with our werewolf.

“I love my life,” I yelled down to him.

“That’s lucky ’cause you’re stuck with it.”

“And I love you.”

“Same principle applies.”

Lucky.

 

 

IT HAD to be early in the morning when I woke because it was still dark outside. The sheet and heavy quilt were tucked around me, and I realized the temperature had dropped and my skin was icy. Ian had gotten up to turn off the lights at some point, and it was nice, serene in the quiet and dark. I heard the toilet flush, and then he was back in bed, diving under the covers, snuggled to my back, his face in my hair as it started to rain outside. I could hear the drops pelting the skylight, and my sigh was long.

“What?”

“I’m having a perfect moment.”

“Jesus, you’re easy to please.”

“Shuddup and go back to sleep.”

He made a contented noise and fell silent.

I had almost drifted off.

“Hey.”

I grunted.

“I love you too. Marrying you was smartest thing I ever fuckin’ did.”

“Oh, you romantic, you,” I said, turning my head to kiss him over my shoulder.

He made sure to find my lips in the dark.