When he’d been gone two hours, Marie knew he had probably made it to the airport. She sat out on the cliffs and puffed at the thin cigar her uncle had offered her, a guilty pleasure she rarely indulged in. She took her time with each inhale and then let the smoke circle her as she slowly exhaled.
She liked watching the storm roll over the horizon. The dark clouds tumbled with each other as if trying to win a race. With the sun barely above her line of sight, she knew it wouldn’t be long before the light of day would disappear.
“He didn’t stay long,” Uncle Bert said from above her. “What happened?”
Marie glanced up. “Nothing. Something came up at work. That’s all.”
“You could have left with him. Why did you stay?”
Why hadn’t she gone?
“Two reasons, I guess.” She scooted over as he hobbled down the steps to her level and sat. His warmth radiated to her, and she shivered. She moved closer, and then he put his arm around her and pulled her into his side. She rested her head on his shoulder. “He isn’t sure about me yet. I wanted to give him a chance to think about us.”
“Hm. Never a good idea, dear.”
She laughed. “Maybe not. But then there was you.”
“Me?”
“Yes,” she answered. “You haven’t been honest with me. I want the truth.”
He hummed first, coughing from deep in his chest. “I’m dying, Marie. Stage four cancer. Liver turned on me, baby.”
Her brain function stopped, falling off completely. The cigar dropped from her fingers.
Quick as a lick, he picked it up off her lap before it could burn.
“What do you mean? Stage four?” Her throat was tightening, as if swelling shut. “I’ll take you to the doctors.” She moved to get up, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. She ripped her hand from his. “There’s a clinic in Raleigh. The university is there. Studies are being done. Why didn’t you tell me? Have you started treatment?”
“No, Marie.” He squeezed her hand. “There’s no treatment for me.”
“Of course there is. People are surviving cancer all the time.”
“Not this time.”
“Why—”
He took her chin in his hand. “Because it’s too much. It’s in the liver and the lungs and the kidneys and up in the brain. I’m a ticking time bomb, girl.”
She paused. “Are you in pain?” She forced down the need to cry, but a tear slipped out. And when one fell, it became pointless to stop the next and the next.
Uncle Bert patted her back. “Come on now. Show me the strong girl who lived beyond her own parents’ deaths.”
She cried, a sob breaking from deep inside of her. She couldn’t stop. Her shoulders shook. And anger broke her. “How long have you known? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could have come home. Are you in pain?”
“No, baby. I’m not in too much pain. And the doc gave me some meds.” He rubbed a hand on her arm. “But I don’t got much time, either. Couple months.”
How selfish could she be? All she could think was that she was going to be alone. Her entire family was going to be gone. Her chin shook as she wiped at the tears. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I need you to do something for me.”
She nodded as another sob escaped, and she sucked in a breath.
“Get the armband, Marie. Take it. For me. For your parents.” His grip tightened. “Take it to our special place, once and for all. Put it to rest, so this doesn’t happen anymore.”
“Do it with me,” she said with a shaky smile, even as fear shot through her at the realization her people were dying—had died—over this piece of gold. “One last heist.”
But he shook his head. “You do this one alone, baby.”
She’d planned to, and in the last day had changed her mind about doing it at all. Malcolm had gotten to her, but this changed everything. She had to get that armband back. Healing powers. Odd legends and myths. Nothing mattered now except fulfilling her uncle’s last wish.
She had no choice. “I’ll get it for you, Uncle Bert.”
***
He’d been sitting for almost six hours; his flight delayed two times so far because of weather. He was tempted to ride out the storm back at Marie’s. Rumor was they would for sure be in the air before ten o’clock. He sat forward and touched his toes, stretching his back at the same time.
His phone buzzed in his leg pocket and he pulled it out only to find an unknown Sacramento number. “Hello, Malcolm here.”
“Malcolm Daniel with Hawk Elite?”
“Yes, sir. Zack Benson, right?” He leaned forward on the seat and rested his elbows on his knees. “You were at the symposium on the use of droids as guards. Must have been four years ago now. Los Angeles?”
“Good memory. I thought your name was familiar. Hell, I’m sure I’ve got your business card around here somewhere.” He sounded pretty chill for a man who’d been fired from an account not long ago. “You ready to move west yet?”
Malcolm chuckled. “No comment. How about you? You ready to merge with Hawk Elite? Two offices? Twice the clientele? Twice the manpower? More money? We could really use you.”
“You mean use me to handle your West Coast clients, like Vladimir Dimitru?” The sneer came through plain and clear.
“The guy’s a douche,” Malcolm agreed. “Hawk’s up to something, and I have a suspicion he’s holding out for the feds. Ain’t no way he takes on a client like this guy because he can make a few bucks. He has to have a reason.”
Benson’s answering silence sent a chill through Malcolm. “He wanted me to put in video and audio feed through his entire house,” Benson said. “He paid particular attention to the guest wing, installing at least three cameras per bedroom and a few of the bathrooms, too.” A shuffling in the background pulled Benson from the conversation, and Malcolm heard another muffled voice. “Lena, mi querida. Come get Alejandro, por favor.”
More muffled speaking in the background.
“Sorry. I’m calling from home. It’s a bit of madhouse right now. My sister-in-law is in town.”
Malcolm waited again, and a door slammed.
“Okay. That’s better,” Benson said, laughing. “Look, he fired us. No doubt about it, there were things I wasn’t going to do for this creep.”
Creep. Exactly like he and Marie had both felt, making the assessment a unanimous vote.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Benson continued, “the way he had his house rigged, he was either getting ready to produce a bunch of porn, or maybe he was a Peeping Tom when family came to town. All I knew was that doing business with him made me feel dirty. I’d already put together a separation packet when he came forward with his dissolution papers. Was fine by me. I had my lawyer look at them very closely. I didn’t want anything coming back to bite me in the ass. His name came up in the papers shortly after. He’d acquired some old Romanian pieces, brought over from the old country, which I believe you couriered.”
“Yeah, sort of,” Malcolm said, thinking about Marie and Albert, and a conversation by the fire. One about magic and treasures…and family feuds.
“Like a good boy, Vladimir gave them up to a museum for a few months, before hoarding them back into his dungeon.”
“Shit.” Those items would be marked for provenance, which would make it even harder for Marie and Bert to reclaim them.
“Oh, no. That’s just the icing. There’s more. The FBI has a man on the inside. Vlady’s been under investigation for human trafficking.”
“Fuck.” Malcolm’s vocabulary had been reduced to one-syllable words. “Finish it,” he demanded, knowing that there had to be something even bigger.
“Not long after, some old guy comes to my Sacramento office. This was a few months ago? Claims some asshole stole a family heirloom. A bracelet, which loops around his dear niece’s arm four times.”
Malcolm’s heart pounded hard. “Shit. Bert Bălan?”
“Yeah,” Benson said. “You know the guy?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Put me on speed dial, Malcolm. You need anything, you call.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Malcolm sat there for a minute. Go? Stay? Trust Marie wasn’t going to follow a wild idea back to the Dimitru mansion? “Fuck.”
His phone beeped again, and this time it was a software notification. “Fuck.”
The lady next to him glared at him.
“Sorry. Talking to myself.” He opened his bag and pulled out his laptop. The woman got up with a huff and moved down the row.
Malcolm shoved aside her offense. He was too busy to worry about it right now. His computer came awake with a series of noises, and he shut the sound off before clicking through and looking for the tab with the flag.
Dimitru.
“Damn it, Marie.”
There was activity at the Dimitru mansion. Someone had deactivated the security system. Thousand bucks said it was his sweet, “reformed” little Marie. “Fuck.”
He expected the anger, but the twisting in his gut, the weird feeling of hurt, had him clamoring to get his emotions in check. He didn’t need this kind of chaos.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.