“Did you get all napped up?”Grace asked as they followed Josh into the room.
“Yes,” Josh told him.“I take it you’ve got ideas?”
“Somany ideas.”Grace laughed manically.“I may need to fidget, though.And is anybody still hungry?”
“I’ll go get snacks,” Hunter muttered.
“Should we call Stirling and Molly?”Grace asked.“You and Stirling do the thing—”
Josh grunted and pulled out his phone.In a moment he said, “Stirling, yes.Tienne and Danny are plotting together.Molly and Chuck are working on something.Carl, Lucius, and Tor are grouped up, but Michael’s going home because he’s got to outfit the planes and start charting flight plans as we give them to him.And Marco’sbringingsnacks, so Hunter, choose your group.”
Hunter gave Grace an unhappy frown.“Molly and Chuck are going to be doing munitions, transpo, and muscle,” he said.“That’s my area, but….”
Grace rolled his eyes.“But you need to be here to grab me by the scruff of the neck.Except you don’t.I’m not going to do anything dangeroustonight,” he said.And then he gave Josh a sneaky smile.“Except let our hamsters loose and watch them play.”
Josh laughed and then glanced at Liam.“Where didyouwant to play?”he asked.“Everybody’s going to need you in the next two weeks.Judging by what I’ve seen of Danny’s list, we’re going to have to become experts in international law overnight.”
And for a moment Liam wanted to go see what the others were working on.But not tonight.
“Tomorrow,” he said softly.“Tonight I want to be here.”
A sort of luminosity broke through Josh’s pure on-the-job expression.“Sure,” he said.“Here is good.”
So Liam grabbed his own laptop, pretty sure he was going to be doing a lot of “No, we can’t do that stunt Tom Cruise did in that one Mission Impossible movie, because I don’t want any of you dead” and settled in for the night.
Landing Gear
“JOSH—JOSH,luv.Time to wake up.We’re almost there.”
Josh groaned and rolled into Liam’s warmth, wondering where this delicious feeling of safety, of security, had been all his life.The heady smells of aftershave and wool had settled into his bones during the commercial flight, and since they were in first class on an overnight, their closeness had been guaranteed.
It was the first downtime they’d had in the two weeks since the big planning meeting, and with the exception of a few hours stolen deliciously in the downtown apartment, they had been intensely busy.
Josh’s ability to plan all night, work out in the morning, and then run scenarios for the next twelve hours, was not what it had been the year before.
“No,” he mumbled.“Wanna stay right here.”
And oh!Liam’s arm around his shoulders, like ithadn’tbeen on the yacht when Josh had needed it so badly but had denied them, because needing wasn’t loving, dammit.But now it was everything he’d wanted.But more because theyhadshared those delicious private hours, that sweet possession, those moments of bare skin, gazing into each other’s eyes, and growing sober after laughter—those moments made them more, put into place all Josh had dreamed they could be.
“Come on, luv,” Liam murmured.“You wake up now, we’ll get through customs, and I’ll get you to my flat.My brother’s there.He’s stocked the place up, aired it out.You’ll be able to sleep off the jet lag, and you’ll be ready for the day after tomorrow.”
“Fuuuuuuuuck….”
Because while the back end of the plan was subject to change, the first two phases were locked in and ready to go.But Josh and Liam needed to be in place.They’d draw attention to Lightfingers, Kadjic would be hopefully tracked to their location, and while they got the hell out of Dodge (or Paris, as the plan called for), something else—something big—would go down on the other side of the world.
But it was early morning now, which meant Josh got a day to rest, and, he had to admit, for him and Liam to be what theyhadn’tbeen able to be in the mansion: alone.
Still, Josh couldn’t help but feel a sense of homecoming after they disembarked.Liam summoned a cab, and they were on their way to the once industrialized and impoverished East End.
“A lot of it was still slums when I was younger,” Liam said, taking in the refurbished lines of pointed-roof brick buildings, and Josh nodded.
“I remember Danny and Felix were careful around Brick Lane and Whitechapel,” Josh replied, those moments from his childhood when his family had been in Europe making for a happy memory.“But every year we returned they said the place was getting better and better.Banglatown is one of Danny’s favorite places now—he used to write me about it, about the food and the color and the people.”Josh had kept every postcard, every letter.When his mother and Felix had finally divorced, they’d had a sort of private family celebration that Felix could finally come quietly out of a closet he’d never meant to live in.Felix—who had probably been missing Danny at that moment more than he’d miss breathing—had gotten a wee bit drunk, one of the very few times Josh could remember that happening.Josh had run to his room and pulled out his shoeboxes full of letters, grabbing some of the more recent—including postcards from Banglatown.
Now, Josh wondered if Danny hadn’t been to the East End to visit Liam, and the thought made him smile.
“Yeah,” Liam said, but his own voice held hints of melancholy.“My dad had thought he was born to be a dock worker, and then when the neighborhood changed, when the jobs changed, he didn’t know where he was anymore.It’s one of the things, I think, that made it so hard to be himself.”
“Mm….”Josh gave him a sidelong glance.If he was an open book when it came to falling for cops, he knew Liam was the same about wanting tobeone.Funny, how such an old-fashioned symbol for stability, for peace, still held weight, even though history had born out that law enforcement was often the most lawless establishment of all.“I’m sorry about that,” he said.“That’s… hard.”
