“Are you doing a raid?”Josh asked.“Without me?”
“No,” Stirling said, still very focused on the screen.“We’re all building up our characters so we can wipe the floor with you.”
Josh snorted.“No.No.Not going to happen.Has never happened.Will never happen.Grace, watch out, Molly’s orc is going to—”
They all grimaced as Grace’s character—a lissome elf—separated into two pieces and toppled in a pile of animated blood and gore.
“Wow,” Grace said.“We’re on the same team.”
“We’re building our characters,” Molly said primly.“All’s fair in—Tienne!You little bugger!”But she said it with pride.
“You told me,” Tienne said, his accented voice sounding extremely pleased.“You told me to practice being ruthless in video games, so I did.You weren’t paying attention.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Molly said.“And you’re totally forgiven.We want you to live, that’s all.”
“Harsh,” Liam said in Josh’s ear.
“Well, he wanted to be in on going after Kadjic,” Josh said.“I think Molly’s been giving him ruthlessness lessons.”
“I’m good at it,” Molly said, tilting her head over her shoulder so she could beam at them from one of three couches, all facing the screen.Her hair—mounds of red spiral curls with separate curls dyed in a dark rainbow of streaks—was bundled up on her crown for video games, but Josh had no doubt she’d have it down after she dressed for dinner.Molly was a talented actress—and strong and aggressive enough to be muscle when Chuck, Hunter, and Carl were otherwise occupied—but she was also a beautiful young woman.While she complained copiously that all the men at the Glencoe mansion (besides Leon, of course) seemed to be gay, Josh was sort of glad she hadn’t settled on anybody yet, because nobody seemed good enough for her.
But speaking of Chuck, Hunter, and Carl….
“Where’s our muscle?”Josh asked.“And is Carl going to bring Michael?”
“Chuck and Hunter are running an errand,” Grace said.“And by running an errand, I mean chasing down Celeste’s drug dealer and getting him to spill about her finances.”
“She spends ten percent of her trust payout on coke every month,” Josh said, not sure whether to be disgusted with the woman or to feel bad for her.So much potential, so much waste.“We knew that when I got the gig.”
“Yes,” Grace said patiently, “but her dealer works for somebody, and they were hoping he’d have a line on where Kadjic disappeared to after he dodged the FBI.”
“Ooh, good idea,” Josh said.“What about Carl?”
“He’s at the airport, picking Michael up.”Carl’s boyfriend, Michael Carmody, was also their mechanic, and he kept their assorted vehicles, including their planes, maintained and ready to roll at a moment’s notice.Josh’s little silver sportster was currently parked in the mansion garage, but he knew for certain that during the painfully uncertain fall and the long winter and spring, Michael had kept his car sheltered in the big airplane hangar they rented out and had kept it tuned up, cleaned, and ready to roll while Josh had been too weak to pick up a spoon, much less drive.
“Okay, so after dinner, then?”Josh asked, making sure.
“I’m sorry,” Stirling said, his customary dry humor making a sly appearance.“Did cancer slow your ability to plotandplay video games?”
Batting her eyelashes, Molly held out a controller and patted the open spot on the couch next to her.She was sitting on the good couch—Tienne and Stirling were on the bad couch that spilled all the occupants to the broken springs in the center, and Grace was sprawled on three beanbags on the floor.
Josh took the end of the good couch, and Liam, to his surprise, set the sliders down on the coffee table, grabbed one for himself, along with a napkin, and made himself comfortable on the carpet near Josh’s feet.
“You want to play?”Josh asked, but he was already pulling up his character and outfitting it, taking his cues from the practice adventure everybody else had played.
“An elf?”Liam asked.
“He likes to be pretty,” Grace said.“He’s vain.You should know that about him.”
Josh felt Liam’s hand encircle his ankle.
“I’m aware,” he said.
“Forget pretty,” Josh told them.“What else am I missing about last night?”
What followed was something he and the crew had done many times, which was to debrief while splitting their attention elsewhere.It drove some people absolutely batshit—but for Josh and his friends, it became a training ground for paying attention to all the things at once.Incoming information, environmental dangers, strategy pivots, all of it swirled around them like their characters swirling around on the screen.
By the time the training adventure was over, Josh had heard every bit of gossip Molly and Hunter had picked up while working the catering floor, including who in the crowd had known Kadjic was coming and how they felt about that.Besides chasing down Kadjic’s phone leads, Stirling had spent the morning doing thorough background checks on those folks and cross-referencing those names with people who used some of Celeste’s other services—her drug dealer, her company’s research and development team, their political analysts—to see where the power structures lay.Josh added to this knowledge with things he’d picked up working in Celeste’s employ, and Stirling and Grace, when not moving their characters from place to place, picked up tablets lying next to them and added the information to a shared document.
