“Because catching Danny as he fell out of a window wasn’t enough,” Josh scoffed, and his mother pouted.
“Some would call that reminder in bad taste,” she said.
“What was the other thing you’re trying to convince her of?”Liam asked.
“To find out if I’m having a brother or sister,” Josh said.“It’s driving me and the dads insane.It’s driving Uncle Leon insane.It’s drivingGraceinsane, and he, in turn, is driving usallinsane.Why won’t she eventryto find out?”
Liam’s hand around his waist tightened.“It’s like any good caper, lad.The surprises are half the fun.”
Josh scowled at his mother but returned the squeeze.“You’re pregnant at forty-one, Mom.Isn’t that enough of a surprise?”
“Hush,” she said and then lowered her voice.“But between you and me, Ididhave the test done.I want to find out how long it takes for Danny to break into the medical system and find out.I think he’s already asked Stirling for help.”
Josh chuckled and pulled Liam down on the bench next to her for the last few streaks of sunlight through the gold leaves and what might be their final glimpses of the heartbreak-blue sky of late October before the snows came.
No family was perfect—not even families that looked perfect on the outside.Buthisfamily, as sprawling and unusual as it was, had more than proven itself strong enough for whatever was to come.
And the man by his side had been part of that.Like Felix and Danny, they would have their storms, their disagreements, their rough patches.
But Josh hadn’t only learned thievery and graft from his parents.He’d learned loyalty, kindness, and play, and now he knew Liam had those things in his bones.
The Salingers were a long way from being finished with the world, but for this moment, in his mother’s garden, he and the man he loved had peace, and his family had joy, and as he and Liam had both learned the hard way, peace, love, and joy were the rarest, most vital riches any human could be gifted with, and they couldn’t be hoarded.
They could only be given freely.
Josh Salinger and his family would be giving of their riches for as long as hard work, luck, and a little theft could provide.
Jitters, Jumps and Thieves:
A Long Con Short
“SO, JOSH,”Hunter said at dinner that night.“How you feeling?”
Josh regarded him with mild surprise—and deep exhaustion.Deep undercover in order to lure Kadjic out of hiding, he’d been doing anactualjob while running the op from the mansion, and Hunter could tell he was exhausted.
But so was Hunter.Hunter thought maybe they could, well, solve each other’s problems.
Josh must have seen something of that on Hunter’s face, because he blinked away the sleep—and the headaches that still plagued him after chemo had robbed his body of a lot of his red blood cells—and obviously tried to think.
“That depends,” he said muzzily.“How close are you to an actual murder rap?”
Hunter grimaced.“He doesn’t have a show right now,” he said apologetically.
“I know,” Josh said.
“Chuck and I went out on a run yesterday.We were trying to corner Kadjic’s main drug distributor in Springfield.”
Josh grimaced.Obviously he’d heard about this.“I know.”
“He hid in the trunk, Josh.Chuck and I are buzzing down the road at a buzzillion miles because, well—”
“Chuck is driving,” Josh filled in.
“Yes, and suddenly the back seat of your little roadster pops open and Grace crawls into the car from the trunk and asks for a milkshake.”
Josh’s lips twitched, and Hunter relented.“Yes, it was sort of funny,” he admitted.“But then we track the guy down, and Grace is like… doing grands jetés behind him, and Chuck is trying to lean on the guy and—” Hunter shook his head.“It’s hard to lean on somebody like that when your boyfriend is looking like Peter Fucking Pan.It feels dirty.And IknowGrace is an amoral little asshole who would sneak a lockpick between this guy’s C1 and C2 vertebrae and render him unable to breathe, but… but he’s smiling at me and drinking a milkshake and holding his foot over his head and—”
“I get the picture,” Josh said, his lips still twitching.He’d put on enough weight that Hunter could see the dimple on his cheek popping in and out, and Hunter gave a sigh.
