Patrick had no idea what Will was getting at by continuing to shamelessly flirt with him, but it was fraying the edges of his willpower. It took all that he had not to follow Will into the dressing room and kiss him senseless until Will was the one feeling embarrassed and caught-out. So the guy was handsome, that didn’t mean Patrick had to keep letting him make a fool of him every ten minutes, did it?

It also didn’t help that Patrick was letting Will closer than he’d let anyone since Aunt Laura’s death. It was out of necessity, but it meant that there were plenty of opportunities for Will to see more of Patrick than Patrick was willing to let him see. When they’d been going over the casino security—the casino that would shortly be hiring Will and from which they would run their con—Will had asked Patrick about a painting, and Patrick had completely slipped up and let himself wax poetic about the goddamn impressionists for what had to have been at least twenty minutes. Will had just stared at him the whole time, a very thoughtful and quiet expression on his face, as if everything that Patrick was saying was fascinating.

The impressionists had always been Aunt Laura’s favorite artists. She’d once told Patrick that if she was ever to steal anything for herself, something to steal and keep forever, it would be The Umbrellas by Renoir.

When Will had asked how Patrick had learned so much, Patrick couldn’t help but picture Aunt Laura’s face. The way she’d smile wistfully at a painting. The way her fingertips would come this close to touching the paint, as if she wanted to caress it. The way she would speak about art in a hushed whisper, like it was reverent. Other people went to church. Aunt Laura went to art museums.

She’d joked that Patrick went to Saville Row, but then, she shouldn’t have made a habit of gifting Patrick suits for his birthday, so she had no leg to stand on.

Patrick had covered himself hastily, snapping something about people learning things from libraries, and they’d continued on, but that had been far too close. He’d been a moment away from spilling everything about Aunt Laura, and to someone who was still a relative stranger. One night of passion and then a business arrangement did not make Will a friend or a confidante or anyone that he could trust. He couldn’t afford to let Will in, especially not on a job like this.

Will stepped out of the dressing room, thankfully now wearing the jeans and shirt that Patrick had gotten him. Of course, this being Monaco, the jeans were 7 for all Mankind and the shirt cost an arm and a leg, but hey, at least it wasn’t that goddamn suit. Patrick didn’t know what he was thinking, buying Will all these stupidly nice clothes that made him look like he was stepping out onto the red carpet. It was going to be torture to stare at him, to see the perfect cut of those suits and know the gorgeous body underneath and not be able to touch.

Sometimes Patrick really hated his decisions.

Will rolled up the sleeves of the button-up shirt, looking more comfortable in it than he had any right to be, seeing as all his old clothes had been Burberry knockoffs and sweatpants. Honestly. Now he was taking to wearing button-up shirts with ease, rolling the sleeves up to expose his forearms and keeping the top couple buttons undone like he could read Patrick’s mind and knew he had a thing for collarbones or something.

It was just possible that Patrick was reading too much into things, but he could blame that on the stress of this upcoming con.

Patrick double-checked that everything was good to go for the suits, gave a last, loving look goodbye to those silver cufflinks he’d been eyeing, and then all but dragged Will out the door.

“I thought you already showed me around,” Will commented. He’d been doing a good job of maintaining the accent Patrick had asked of him, although Patrick had to admit, at least to himself, that there was a certain charm to Will’s natural, rough accent. But the people around them had to get used to seeing Will, and if they heard him sounding differently once he was with their mark, someone might say something. Even a chance comment from a passer-by could ruin everything.

“I did, but now I’m taking you to a few specific places.”

He’d given Will a tour, but it was more of a general one. Now, he was taking Will to places like a gelato shop, a coffee shop, a bookstore, and so on—places that Will could frequent to make himself look like a local and could offer as meeting places to their mark.

Will walked casually alongside Patrick, hands in his pockets, nudging at him with his elbow. “Lighten up, mate,” Will said. “act like we’re friends or something.”

“Technically I’m kind of your boss.”

“Yeah? And I thought you were a proper con man. Stop being so stiff. We’ll attract notice if you keep walking like you’re a tour guide.”

Patrick forced himself to release the tension in his spine and shoulders. “That better?”

Will ran his eyes up and down Patrick’s form, and Patrick tried hard not to blush. “Much better.”

They stopped by the coffee place first, because if Patrick had to keep dealing with this impossible person, he was going to do it with caffeine.

“Coffee, black,” Patrick ordered, only to have Will shove him out of the way.

“He’ll have the hazelnut, actually,” Will said. “And can I get the mocha?”

“You did not just change my coffee order,” Patrick said flatly.

“You’re going to love it,” Will replied. He took the coffee from the barista, giving her a wink that had the girl giggling. Patrick told himself that he wasn’t jealous.

Will handed him his drink. “C’mon, love, just a taste.”

Patrick ignored the pet name and took a sip of the coffee. It was… okay, maybe “amazing” was overdoing it, but still. He’d been drinking his coffee black since… well, since Aunt Laura. It was the way she’d always taken her coffee, and so it was just how Patrick had done it as well. He’d never thought about doing it any other way. And how had Will known that out of all the possible variations and flavors, this would be the kind that Patrick would like?

“It’s good, innit?” Will asked, grinning over his own cup of coffee.

Patrick thought about pretending that he didn’t like it, but he had a feeling that his face had already given the game up. Besides, there was this happy glow to Will’s eyes that Patrick didn’t quite want to take away. “Yeah, it’s good.”

Will beamed at him, a full on smile that lit up his entire face. It made Patrick’s stomach flutter.

“On to the next place, then,” Patrick said, hurrying Will out of the shop before he did something stupid like grin back at him.

He was not going to have a crush on his partner, especially not someone who was a magnet for trouble like Will.

“This place has good gelato,” Patrick said, pointing out the shop. “You should stop by after or before work, and get a scoop.”

“You’re just trying to make me fat,” Will argued. “That way I can’t outrun the police when we’re being chased down for our crimes.”

“If we’re caught in a police chase, then everything has gone horribly wrong and the casino is probably on fire,” Patrick replied.

Will gave a barking laugh. “So he has a sense of humor after all! I knew you had it in you.”

“You don’t have to be condescending about it,” Patrick said, feeling his face heat up. Will clearly had a way with people, as the girl at the coffee shop proved. He smiled and winked as easy as breathing. He’d gotten Patrick to sleep with him, after all. Patrick was only good with people when he was conning them and putting on a persona.

“I’m not.” Will knocked their shoulders together gently. “I’m being serious. You’ve got a good sense of humor, even if it’s a dry one.”

“And you actually sound intelligent, when you put your mind to it,” Patrick replied.

Will laughed at that. “Why do you think I keep my accent when I’m bumming around Europe? I’d be better off sounding vaguely London-ish, right? Or Scottish, I read this thing that said Scottish accents are the most attractive.”

“Clearly they haven’t heard Robin Williams’ skit about Scotland,” Patrick said.

Will pointed at him. “See? That! Right there. You are funny, Patrick No Last Name. You just pretend to be all business all the time.”

“So wait, if it’s easier for you to pretend to not be all…” Patrick waved his hand around, unsure how to put it.

“All chav?” Will asked, smirking.

“Yeah. If it’s easier to just pretend you’re ‘vaguely British,’ or however you put it, why keep up the accent? It tells people exactly where you’re from and that you’re not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“Do you think that?”

Patrick shook his head. “I think you definitely did something stupid in taking my passport, but that’s only because of who I am. After all, you had no idea that I was big in the criminal world. If I’d been anyone else, you’d have been long gone and I’d have been sunk. I think you’re clever. You just need some training and some proper contacts.”

“I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, darling,” Will said, leaning in close and knocking their shoulders together again.

Patrick knew he should pull away, but he was feeling like he was finally making a proper connection with Will and he didn’t want to spoil it. “So why do you do it? You’re deliberately allowing people to underestimate you.”

“That’s why,” Will replied. “People underestimate you, they don’t see you coming. ‘S how I pulled a lot of my take back in London, innit? People talk to me like this, they think, aww he’s nothin’, that chav. They think I’m headed for lockup but for something like a brawl outside a pub, or raidin’ a store, right? They don’t know I’m scannin’ their credit card and gettin’ all their worth.”

Will slipped back into the neutral, more middle-class accent. “If I were to talk like this to them, love, they’d be more cautious around me.”

“They’d be friendlier, too.”

“Who says I need friendship?”

“Says the guy who had to sleep with a man to steal his passport to get out of the country before the police found him. You know, I can’t really believe that they’re still after you. Your heist failed.”

Will shook his head, a sly smile on his face. It made him look both handsome and a little dangerous. Patrick shivered, feeling hot all over. “That’s the thing. It didn’t fail.”

“I read up on you, Will. You and your friends tried to hit a bank. It failed and you all had to flee. Everyone was caught except for you. There’s rumor that someone talked, but given that the police are still after you, I don’t think you’re the chatterbox.”

“No, not me. I don’t talk.”

“Then what succeeded? You didn’t get into the vault, you didn’t get any money.”

“We weren’t after money,” Will explained. “The bank we hit, it’s a part of the biggest banking group in London, one of the biggest banking groups in the whole world. Powerful stuff. The heist was just a distraction. I’m really good at flirting with women, even though I’m gay, and so I went in and chatted up the secretary. I made her feel like she was a part of an exciting movie, y’know, the attractive criminal who’s really kind of a gentleman at heart. I put on a posh accent and everything.

“So while my mates are causing a ruckus, I’m winning her over, and she let me into the computer system.”

“I can’t believe that you’re that good at flirting that this girl gave you, a criminal who’s friends are currently holding her coworkers at gunpoint, access to a huge banking group’s computer system.”

“Oh, really?”

Will glanced around, and Patrick instinctively followed his gaze. They were on a side street, taking a shortcut that Patrick knew to get to a delicious French restaurant near the water. Nobody else was around, and although it was still broad daylight, something about the emptiness of the small street made it seem as intimate as nighttime.

Then Patrick nearly dropped his coffee, because Will was taking a step forward, startling Patrick and making him take an instinctive step back. Another step, and another, and then Will was leaning casually against the wall, almost but not quite bracketing Patrick in. They were basically the same height—Will had maybe an inch on him—but something about Will’s broader body type made him loom over Patrick in that moment. That sly smile was still on his face, and his eyes flicked down to Patrick’s lips and then back up, something knowing in their gaze. They looked green today, Patrick thought nonsensically. Green like a cat’s, like trickery, like magic.

“I’m very good at getting people to do things for me,” Will promised him, voice dark and full of sin. His accent, and the promises in his voice, made Patrick shiver again. Will reached up, his fingertips just barely touching Patrick’s skin, tracing the outline of his jaw. Patrick wanted to lean into the touch, to make Will hold his jaw and tilt it into the angle he wanted, the angle that would be perfect for licking into his mouth.

Then Will pulled away, arching one eyebrow like he knew exactly what this was doing to Patrick, the bastard, and Patrick had to suppress the urge to punch something. Like the wall. Or Will’s face.

“If you’re not going to keep this professional,” Patrick said, pleased that his voice came out even and dry, although he was shaking inside with a heat that just wouldn’t go away, “then I might have to find another partner.”

He expected Will to say something like, “After all the trouble you’ve gone through with me?” Or, “I can tell when you’re bluffing, love,” but instead Will just nodded and shoved his free hand back into his pocket, the other one still holding his coffee.

“Sorry,” he said, and he actually sounded contrite.

“So, the heist, you got into the system,” Patrick said, desperate to change the subject.

“Yup.” They started walking again. “I have a photographic memory, or something close to it. I never tested it, y’know, but I can look at a bunch of numbers and remember them. So I got all the account numbers and shit for a bunch of really rich men. Not naming names, and all that.”

“Of course,” Patrick replied, tightening his jaw to hold in the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“So that’s why the police are after me. Whichever mate spilled the beans also told about what they were having me do while everyone else was being a distraction. But I’ve got the information all up here.” Will tapped his temple. “It was supposed to set me up for life, but…”

“But they probably know who you looked up, so now they’re watching those accounts, so you can’t withdraw from those accounts or steal those identities because the police will be all over you.”

Will nodded, biting his lip, and Patrick could see his hand curling into a fist inside of his pocket. “That job was supposed to set us all up for life, man.”

Patrick could feel Will’s disappointment. He knew how that felt. The one job that Aunt Laura had gotten screwed over on, she’d had the same sort of tension in her shoulders and neck. He’d had to watch her take all of that frustration and anger and hurt and keep it inside, because in their line of business, you couldn’t really get back at someone who screwed you over like that. The process of revenge was exhausting and much more complicated than it was worth, most of the time, and it was just as likely you’d get yourself into deep trouble or worse as it was that you’d end up getting your revenge. This wasn’t an office job where you could go to HR and report the person. This wasn’t a crime you could turn in to the police. When you broke the law, you ran the risk of those who broke it with you screwing you over and leaving you with nothing, which was why it was better not to trust anyone in the first place.

Patrick felt it was only fair he tell that to Will, but instead of warning him about trust, what came out instead was, “I’m sorry.”

Will looked at him in surprise, like he hadn’t expected Patrick to be sympathetic. Patrick felt a curl of shame in his chest. Was he that much of a jerk that Will was surprised when he showed empathy?

“I was screwed over like that once too,” Patrick said. Technically, it was Aunt Laura who was screwed over, but admitting that would mean talking about her, and he wasn’t ready to talk about her with anyone. Once, one of her old buddies, a member of the Albanian mafia and an all around good guy, if a bit rough around the edges, had told Patrick that he’d be there if he ever wanted to talk about it.

That had been ten years ago, right after Aunt Laura had died. He still saw the friend from time to time, but he had never talked to him about it.

He didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to talk about it.

“A few years ago,” he said, although it was twelve years ago, when he’d been seventeen and Aunt Laura had been deathly ill but hadn’t started showing outward signs yet. “I took this job with this one guy. He was a businessman.”

Will snorted.

“No, he really was. He’s not a mafia guy, no ties to cartels or anything like that. That’s something you’ll learn soon enough… the CEOs and stuff of this world, they can be just as shady as the out and out criminals.”

“How do you end up working with a guy like that? How do your paths even cross?”

“Usually it’s because some person, someone with money and power, wants a particular thing that they can’t get legally. Usually that thing is a piece of artwork or something historical, and it’s currently owned by someone else or it’s in a museum.”

“That’s not right,” Will said vehemently. Patrick glanced over at him, and Will seemed startled by his own outburst. “Sorry. Guess I watched too many heist films as a kid, yeah? How to Steal a Million, that sort of thing. Ocean’s Eleven. But in those films it’s all about stealing from the people who already have too much, kind of stealing for good reasons. The people we targeted, me and my mates, they’re people who can afford to lose a few million. What kind of toff hires someone to steal from a museum so he can hang the piece in his office? He can’t even tell anyone it’s the original, can he? ‘Cause then the cops would be all over him. It’s just so he can stroke his own ego. It’s ridiculous. People with money, man, I can never understand them.”

“So you think artwork should be in museums?”

“Sure.” Will shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with people owning art, but selfish people like that who’ll go underhanded to get their way…”

“Well, if the world was full of good people, I’d be out of a job.”

Will chuckled. “True that, love. But don’t you, y’know, do it for the thrill? Or from people who it doesn’t matter? If I was to steal from a museum, see, I’d do it for the challenge. Then I’d send it back to them or something.”

Patrick stared at him, that fluttering feeling back in his stomach. “That is either the most reckless or the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Why can’t it be both?” Will asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Patrick laughed. “You are ridiculous, I hope you know that.”

“Yeah, but you like it.” Will bumped their shoulders together again. Patrick wondered if it was a habit. “You gotta loosen up a little, and until you do, I’ll just be all relaxed and ridiculous for you.”

Patrick snorted, but he couldn’t hide his smile this time.

“So what happened? What did this business guy want?”

Patrick sighed, trying to keep himself from tightening up. He didn’t want anyone, including Will, to see how deeply this affected him. “He wanted me to steal something for him. Some information from a competitor.”

“Do you do that?”

“Not often.”

Aunt Laura had always said that getting into the corporate espionage world was a sure way to get yourself tangled up in a bunch of nonsense that you couldn’t afford. Stick to conning for yourself only, not for some suit.

“Then what did this guy give you that made you take this job?”

It was a fair question, and one that Patrick had pestered Aunt Laura about forever. The answer had been hard to understand at the time. Patrick had been much younger at the time, and had plenty of infatuations, but he’d never been in love. He still hadn’t been, actually. He didn’t understand how someone could do something so risky, give up possibly everything, for someone else.

And then the love of Aunt Laura’s life had betrayed her and he knew that he never wanted to understand any of it because none of it could be worth that.

“I had a friend who owed him a favor, one that the friend couldn’t repay, so I offered to pay the debt instead,” Patrick lied. He’d seen that happen a few times. Someone, usually someone in charge of a mafia group or a similar organization, would need a favor paid. The individual who owed the favor might be in the middle of another con or couldn’t go back to that particular country or some such, and so they’d ask another friend to fill in the favor for them. The friend paid the debt and usually kept the payment or something in exchange.

“Sounds dangerous,” Will noted.

“It can be.” Patrick pointed out the French restaurant. “I hate to be cliché but the duck l’orange there is amazing.”

“I prefer croque monsieur myself,” Will replied, suddenly speaking with a French accent.

Patrick felt his jaw go loose and knew he was gaping at him again. Will laughed, and Patrick had the craziest urge to kiss him, to feel that laugh when it was right up against his mouth.

“Mr. Taron, you are full of surprises,” Patrick acknowledged.

“Good.” Will stopped laughing and was back in his usual accent, but he kept smiling, like he just couldn’t help himself. “I like surprising you. It puts the most adorable look on your face.”

Patrick mentally shook himself and looked away. He was not about to let this get unprofessional...or, more unprofessional than it already was.

“Right. So the job is to infiltrate the headquarters of this guy’s main competitor and get the necessary information. Unfortunately the CEO is notoriously paranoid, so I go in and apply to be his new secretary.”

Will snorted. “I can definitely see you as a secretary. You must have loved color coding everything, booking appointments, all of that Type A personality stuff.”

Patrick glared at him, and Will held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Don’t worry, love, I think it’s cute.”

“You’re not supposed to think it’s anything,” Patrick replied, leading them down another street. “Anyway. I went in as his secretary, and after about a month I’ve earned the guy’s trust. He starts letting me know more passwords, starts leaving sensitive paperwork for me to handle, that sort of thing. Eventually, I was able to get access to the information that my client wanted. I downloaded the information, because I’m not a genius like yourself, and was all set to head out.”

“But something went wrong,” Will said, his voice soft.

Patrick nodded. “Something went wrong.”

He hadn’t been the secretary—Aunt Laura had. But he’d been there, pretending to be a guy from the mailroom. He’d run some basic surveillance as well. However, Laura had told him that he couldn’t afford to interfere directly. It would be far too dangerous if he got caught. They were in deep, and this was nothing like their usual work where they could literally cut and run if they had too.

“The guy who’d hired us, he asked me to send him the information in the mail, so that nobody would see me handing the drive to him. I sent it with the outgoing mail that day.”

As a matter of fact, Aunt Laura had given the envelope right to Patrick, who’d mailed it himself. She’d then stayed up at her desk to finish the work day, acting like everything was normal.

“Turned out, he wanted me to mail it to him so that he could still have the information after he tipped the CEO off about what was going on and the CEO arrested me.”

The client had told the CEO about a disturbing rumor he’d heard from another competitor—overheard it in the lounge of a club that all three men frequented. The client claimed that this third man was the one who’d hired Aunt Laura and the CEO had acted accordingly.

Laura had gotten out by the skin of her teeth, calling in a favor with a powerful art collector who had influence in the local police, and who had arranged to get Laura released.

The art collector had called in that favor later on, asking Laura to steal a painting for him from a museum, replacing it with a forgery that Patrick had painted so that the museum wouldn’t know it was missing.

He’d said that it was too heavy for her to lift. He’d said that she should let him go it alone. Aunt Laura was stubborn though, right to the last and had refused, saying Patrick needed a partner on this. Neither one of them could do this on their own.

She had collapsed in the museum, the strain of carrying the painting too much. Patrick still didn’t know how he’d managed to switch the paintings and get her out without security being alerted. That night was still a blur, like someone had spilled water all over everything to make it cloudy and then had fast-forwarded it. The only thing he could truly remember, the only image that stood out, was his aunt, deathly pale and unconscious.

He knew, logically, that the theft wasn’t what caused her to die. She was dying anyway, but he couldn’t help but feel like the stress of that job and the strain of the physical labor it entailed had pushed her over the edge.

She wouldn’t have had to take the job if she hadn’t had to beg for a favor...and she wouldn’t have had to beg for a favor if she hadn’t been screwed over by that jackass...and she never, ever would have gotten screwed over by that jackass, if she hadn’t been in love with him.

It would never stop making Patrick feel ill. The blood was roaring in his ears right now, making them ring, making him feel dizzy.

“Patrick?” Will put a large, warm hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “You okay?”

Patrick felt a little dizzy. It sounded like Will was speaking from underwater.

“Swear down, man, your face is looking right pale, innit? C’mere, pengting.” Will guided him, and the next thing Patrick knew he was sitting down on someone’s front stoop.

“You’re using the wrong accent,” Patrick said. His words sounded very faint, even to his own ears. He thought he might be sick.

“Sorry.” Will switched back to the more conventional British accent. “I sometimes forget, when I’m emotional.”

“You were emotional?”

“I was worried, wasn’t I?” Will brushed some of Patrick’s hair out of his face. “Don’t look at me like that, love. You just went all still and pale. I thought you were going to keel over or throw up, or something.”

Will plopped down next to him. “That guy really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

Technically he’d done a number on Aunt Laura, but it was all the same to Patrick. “Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

“So what happened, after he told the CEO?”

Patrick explained it, pretending that he had been in Aunt Laura’s shoes. “So then I did the painting swap for the art collector, and I was all in the clear. After that, no more doing favors for anyone.”

“And that one bloke, the one that betrayed you. Did you ever get back at him?”

Patrick shook his head. “Not yet.” The movement made his vision swim a little.

“You need food, you still look like you’re going to keel over on me.” Will stood up, holding out a hand to help haul Patrick to his feet. Patrick didn’t want to think about what it meant that he let Will help him. Whether Will realized it or not, he was seeing a very vulnerable side of Patrick, one that people didn’t usually get to see. He didn’t want to think about what it meant that it was so easy to let Will take care of him.

Will didn’t ask Patrick any more questions, just started talking about his life back in England before he’d had to leave, listing all of his “mates” and going into detail about how he was going to figure out which one of them sold him out and then break the fucker’s face—Will’s words, not Patrick’s.

After a couple of minutes, Patrick realized that Will was leading him to a sandwich place.

“What do you like?” Will asked, walking up to the counter.

“You realize that you have no money so I’m paying for this.”

“Be a stick in the mud about it all you want, but you’re eating.” Will turned to the lady and ordered in some basic French. It wasn’t nearly as good, language wise, as Patrick’s, but his accent was flawless, and apparently that was all it took for the woman behind the counter to start blushing and stammering.

Patrick felt another odd flare of jealousy, even though he knew that Will was not only gay but didn’t mean anything by it—and what good was jealousy, anyway?

Will sat them down at one of the outside tables, and watched Patrick like a hawk until Patrick head eaten all of his food. The entire time, Will kept up a stream of stories, mostly about his travels through Europe while trying to evade the law.

“You’re not my babysitter, you know,” Patrick said. “You don’t have to watch over me.”

“Yeah, but you’re my partner, aren’t you?” Will replied. “You’re the one keeping me safe from the law here. This is the first time I haven’t had to look over my shoulder every five minutes in case a cop spots me.”

“Bribery to the right people will do wonders,” Patrick replied smoothly. It had taken little effort to convince the Monaco police force to back off of Will. They had much bigger fish to fry. “But I’m serious. You might be my partner in this but that doesn’t make you my nanny.”

“If you go down, I go down,” Will said, “and you seem determined not to believe it but I like you, Patrick. You’ve got a stick up your arse and not the fun kind but still. You’re fun, when you want to be. And you were right about my needing you. I want to move up in the world and right now you’re my ticket. It’s in my best interest to keep you alive and well, innit?”

“I knew that’s all I was good for,” Patrick joked, “a meal ticket.”

“Well, that and that pretty face of yours.” Will’s smile widened, revealing a dimple, and Patrick once again had to fight the urge to kiss him. Jesus, one good lay and he started obsessing over the man, what the hell did that say about the state of his sex life?

“Are you interested in getting revenge?” Will asked. “On the guy, I mean. I know I can’t wait to find out who sold me out, ‘cause whoever it was, they sold out all my crew. They was bredren, all of them, and now—even if I could go back to England, y’know, there’d be nobody waiting for me. They’re all in jail, except for whoever talked.”

“How do you not know which one it was?”

“Police kept it real hush-hush,” Will said. “Whoever it was, I think they probably gave them a year, something real light, so it’s still a sentence but a pretty nice one. Keeping you in jail for a short amount of time is better than just letting you walk free right away, ‘cause if they just have you walk, everyone immediately knows you’re the one who said something. But if they keep you in for a year or two, put you in a real nice place, give you privileges, then they can claim they let you out early on good behavior or mistrial or something.”

“So eventually you’ll know who did it, when they release them early.”

“Yeah, but who knows how I’ll find that out. They’re not going to announce it. They kept a lot of details out of the papers, like the information I got. I think the bankers whose stuff I got, they put pressure on the police, you know, to avoid embarrassment or something. They’re not going to say, hey, we let this guy out early!”

“Fair point.”

“So are you? Going to get him back, I mean.”

Patrick debated the possibility of lying to Will. It would definitely be easier. But if he lied now, then he’d have to keep lying, and who knew what information Will might accidentally hear or dig up in the course of their con? Sometimes, honesty was the best policy, and it wasn’t like he had to tell Will the entire truth.

“The guy we’re conning?” Patrick said, waiting until Will caught his eyes. They looked gray in the light right now, which somehow made Will look older, harsher. Like a guy who might actually be good at this whole criminal thing. Once he was certain that he had Will’s undivided attention, he went on.

“He’s the guy who screwed me over.”

Will smiled slowly this time, the look creeping over his face like a sunrise. It was sly, and deadly, and made him devastatingly handsome.

“Well, what are we waiting for, then?”