At that moment one of Liam’s fellow agents rounded the corner, and Liam gestured at the groaning armed man.
“Cuff him,” he said imperiously, as though he knew exactly what had happened when all he knew for sure was that the thug with the knife was bad news.When that guy had been secured, he bent next to the bleeding man on the ground, and almost cried to recognize his phantom thief, the giver of crayons and bread.
“Hello, my friend,” he said softly, wincing at the mess of blood on the man’s midsection.“What happened to you here?”
“Kadjic,” gasped the man.“Didn’t like it when I jumped on Yuri’s back.Said he’d teach me manners.Good thing he forgot how to spell.”
“Spell?”Liam glanced up at Carter, his counterpart.
Carter shrugged and spoke into his comms, asking for medical assistance while the boozy, youngish man with the curly hair and the charm—and the blue velveteen harem pants and vest of an expensively dressed Aladdin—tried to talk.
“His name.My flesh.I think he forgot the d.”
Liam stared at him in horror, squatting to take his hand regardless of protocol.“Weren’t you his boyfriend?”he asked baldly, and that earned him a blood-flecked smile.Nicked lung,Liam thought, and prayed the medics would arrive soon.
“Right up until—” The man gasped.“—I stopped Yuri from killing Antoine Couvier’s son.”He squeezed his eyes closed.“I didn’t know he’d kill Antoine.Poor Antoine… seemed like such a gentle man.Fucking booze.I should have known.”
Liam smoothed his hand over the man’s brow, wanting to give comfort, until it hit him.“His son!”he gasped.“Did he get away?”
Aladdin nodded.“Nicked the paint in his bag.You can see it.Green.Like grass.”He let out a little sob.“Like home.”
Liam could see the man losing consciousness and thought,I should arrest him for art theft.He must be Lightfingers—he must be!But Andre Kadjic had just tried to carve his initials in the man’s ribs—after he’d choked out the thug who’d killed Antoine Couvier and gone after his son.
That was a lot of valor in their little thief, Liam thought.Arresting him now would be a poor way to repay him.
At that moment the medics arrived in a small, old white-painted van with a red cross on the front.Liam moved out of the way to let them work, getting the location of the hospital from the driver before he went to talk to Carter.
“What’d he say?”the man asked, stepping aside so a medic could treat the still-groaning mob muscle on the ground.
“Said Kadjic ordered his man to kill Antoine Couvier and then the man’s son.L… little guy couldn’t stop Couvier’s death, but he did manage to choke out the hired help while the kid got away.”Liam glanced around at the dark that had fallen dreadfully fast.“Poor kid,” he muttered.“Must be scared to death.”
Carter, a fortyish veteran with the hide of a Komodo dragon, gave a snort.“Not for long.If Kadjic finds him, he’ll be dead!”
Liam’s heart started pounding in his ears.He may have moved out of his mother’s flat, but that didn’t mean he didn’t miss the whole stinking lot of them.How old would the boy be?He’d been what?Six?Seven?When his father had first gone on the run after tipping the authorities off to one of Kadjic’s operations via a clever flaw in their forged documents.That would make Etienne twelve now.Liam could see his own little brother, Caleb, with spidery arms and legs, thin wrists and ankles, and that sort of perpetually super-excited/super-confused expression that a lot of boys that age seemed to have.
“We need to find him,” he said, trying not to let his panic show.
Carter looked around as though there were listening devices on the dirt streets, the clay walls, the colorful canopies set up to temper the brutal daytime sun that only blocked the stars now.
“If we do find him,” he said softly, “he needs todisappear, you hear me?So he doesn’tdisappear.”
Liam blinked.“Any ideas where he shoulddisappearto?”he asked, realizing that Carter had just suggested waggling their fingers and making a material witness go away to save the boy’s life.It was an unexpectedly human move from the seemingly implacable Carter, but maybe Carter had memories of children he loved too.
“Talk to your Aladdin friend,” Carter said.“He seems to feel some obligation to the boy.But first let’s find him.”
It took them all night.
The green paint helped, but the boy had been wily—and fast.Over, around, through—he must have hit every street in Morocco before finally crawling into a back alley and curling up, head on his knees, to sleep.
The eyes the boy turned to Liam when he approached were unutterably weary… but grateful.
Liam stashed the boy in his own small flat to sleep, bathe, recover, while he went to see how their Aladdin friend was doing.Tienne—as he gave his own name—seemed to be in a sort of fugue state.Liam didn’t think he’d run, but he had Carter come over to keep him company anyway.Carter promised to sleep on the couch all day and maybe get them food, which for Carter was a declaration of responsibility.
Aladdin was waking up from surgery when Liam showed up in his room in the early afternoon, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to cadge some scrubs from the attending orderly so he could slip out the back door.
“Oh-ho, now!”Liam said cheerfully.“That’s no way to repay the man who rescued you, is it?”
He got a sour look in return.“Rescue me?Are you serious?After trying to drink myself to death for a year, I finally found a shortcut.Youcheatedme is what you did.I could have been happy and dead by now.”
