“A… dalliance,” Danny said, inclining his head.He sobered.“I’m going to have to leave him soon.He knows it.”
Liam nodded.“I’m going to ask—is Felix, perhaps, tall and blond?”
Danny grimaced.“You mean because Carl is tall and blond?”
“Yes, and Kadjic is—”
“Not,” Danny finished blandly.“Yes.Kadjic was a petty little tyrant.He was cruel and violent, and I felt like deserved that.”He blew out a breath.“You know, they have a perfectly adequate therapy program here.I’m sure I’ve covered this.”
Liam nodded and sighed.“All I’m saying, Danny, is that… it sounds like your family was doing the best it could.Maybe don’t try so hard to forget him is all.”
Danny rolled his eyes.“I can hardly forget him if I’m going to be going back to Chicago to see Josh and Tienne whiledodginghim at the same time, can I?”
Liam gave him a flat look.“That’s mature.”
“I’ll take my little revenges where I can.”Danny sniffed.Then, soberly, he said, “But this next trip isn’t to see them, so avoiding the whole fam damily should be easy.”
Liam cocked his head.“What are you going to do?”
He would start to identify that special little lip curl Danny made when he was planning to do something DCI Liam Craig, currently assigned to Interpol, could not condone.
“An old friend of the family died,” he said, and Liam heard the lie.Whoever had died, Danny wasn’t sorry in the least to hear he was dead.“And I must pay my respects.Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” he added with a rakish smile, and Liam, who had come to trust Lightfingers on some base level, didn’t.He wasn’t going after Kadjic.If he stole something, it was something the victims could afford or probably deserved to have stolen.And as for being caught?Even if Liam decided to bring him in for suspected crimes, what did he have to convict?A boozy smile and an impish wink at a not-really-a-crime scene?
And so it went.
They would meet every so often, usually because Danny was nearby (he managed to keep tabs on Liam although Liam had no idea whereDannywould be), and they would catch up.Liam’s love life (usually dismal) and Danny’s (he had a parade of lovers whom he left on good terms) were discussed, and then the heart of the meeting.
Pictures.Usually candids: Josh, his friend Grace, Tienne.Even Felix and Julia, taken in secret, who did not disappoint.
By the time Danny and Felix reunited—in a suitably spectacular and public fashion—and Danny contacted Liam about making an arrest for averybad person, Liam felt like they were a second family.He would visit his mum and his siblings, and if the visit was long enough, they would usually ask him, “Hey, how’s Lightfingers?Any new stories?”
Always.Always with Danny there were stories.
And as the boys grew, many of the stories centered around them.Liam watched with interest as the pictures on Danny’s phone grew from children to teenagers to adults—well and truly.Tienne, so shy and blond as to be nearly transparent, even when smiling for the camera.Josh’s friend Grace, vibrant and pulsating,demandingattention for his beauty, his intelligence, his wildness.Stirling and Molly, Josh and Grace’s friends since middle school—Stirling compact and intense, Molly exuberant, with a glorious cascade of red ringlets and a muscular grace and beauty that could conquer any obstacle.
And Josh himself, who while not related to Danny by blood, seemed to have inherited everything—his build, his fierce intelligence, his impish sense of humor—from the man who had stolen parenthood from thin air and lavished it on him.
After the reunion, Danny and his new “crew” seemed to be getting on swimmingly doing the same thing Danny had done on his own—but on a larger scale.Evening the odds.Liam enjoyed their exchanges even more now that Danny was officially “Benjamin Morgan.”Having a home, a family, people to care for, young adults to mentor, seemed to bring out the greatness Liam had seen from the very first, obscured as it was by alcohol and despair.
But still… he had not been prepared for that first meeting with Josh.
He’d arrived in the middle of a firefight, and then along with the rest of the crew, had waited with bated breath as a bruiser named Chuck had disconnected a bomb from the electronics-filled van where Stirling and Josh had been trapped.
When it was time to open the van’s doors, Liam had stepped up, because that’s what you did when you were law enforcement, right?You stepped up?
And Josh Salinger, sick from his first round of chemo, had all but fainted into his arms.
But not before gazing into Liam’s eyes with a fiercely intelligent, kind, and clever expression, his dark brown eyes limpid with pain and avid with curiosity.
Liam had held him until they’d secured a vehicle and, under the guise of solicitous concern, had managed to hover over the boy for the rest of the night.
The next six months had been… odd.
Josh wasn’t merelysick,he was all but dying.Danny had called Liam one night in early November, because he didn’t have a sponsor to call, to confess that after a long, terrible week when the rest of the crew was off chasing murder birds, Josh had been in the hospital, literally fighting for his life.
Only Danny and Felix knew.Josh had begged them to send his mother away, and they had, but the burden of being Felix’s strength, of being Josh’s, was almost enough to make Danny break a then ten-year-old vow to never drink again.
And Liam had stayed in touch, calling Danny, calling Felix, being included in the crew’s adventures and almost coyly insinuating himself into Josh Salinger’s life.
