There was a pause as Danny waited for the woman to do what he asked.Then after a brief, tearful entreaty on the other end of the line, Danny replied in an equally fractured voice, “Sweetheart, I’m a mess.I can’t come home like this.Do you think I want the boy to see me like this?I can’t… I can’t come back to Fox when I’m looking up to see rock bottom.I… a man has his pride.”
He broke on the word “pride,” and Liam had a terrible sense of how much this conversation was costing him.
That tearful voice again, but with an edge of control.They were both pulling themselves together.
“There’s a boy,” Danny said.“Our boy’s age.He’s… he’s seen terrible things.He needs shelter.I… I have no idea if he understands family like we do.He may prefer boarding school—” Danny paused.“Art, I think.He and his father make—made—beautiful art.That is the only thing I know about him.But he needs home.Someplace that is home.You… I may not be able to come back, but he’s got no sins to repent.He needs somebody, and I- I can’t be that somebody.Not now.”
There was a digestive silence, and then the voice, calmer now, in charge.
“I’ll give the phone to my young copper friend—” A sudden look of disgust.“No, I didn’t get nicked.My God, woman, cut a man when he’s down.He is….”Danny gave Liam a beseeching glance.“He is a friend.And he’s doing this boy a big favor shipping him to you.He’ll need another name and ID.I’ll….”Danny let out a breathy sigh and seemed to sag even more against the bed.
Gently, Liam took the phone from his fingers and gestured for him to lie down to rest.This man had just come out of surgery—and, as he’d told the woman on the phone, he had to look up to see rock bottom.
“Hello?”Liam said softly.“This is Agent Liam Craig, Interpol.Your friend here—”
“Danny?”she said, and while her voice was thick, it was also begging for confirmation.
“Danny,” he confirmed when the figure in the bed nodded.“He’s been helping us in an investigation, and the boy… he’s at risk.I don’t know if you’re equipped to deal with someone who needs a new identity—”
“Oh, you leave that part to us,” she said, so dryly Liam had to wonder at her background with Danny Lightfingers, the thief.“But Danny—”
“Please,” Danny said, shivering in what was probably his first shock of the DTs.“Please don’t tell her.”
“He needs to dry out,” Liam said.“Don’t worry.I can find him a place.”
“Tell her not to tell Felix,” Danny whispered.“Not anything.Just shelter the boy.”
“He….”Liam swallowed, realizing that here was when he put himself between two lovers.“He requests that you don’t tell Felix.”
“Fucking aces,” Julia said acidly.“Tell him….”Her venom only lasted four words.“Tell him he can come home anytime.”
“I’ll do that,” Liam said.“Here’s my number.”He rattled it off.“I’ll call you with travel information—”
“What does the boy have?”she asked.“Does he need anything?”
“He needs everything,” Liam told her, thinking of the backpack, which had been sliced by the murderer’s knife and had bled its contents, including the green paint, all over the streets of Morocco.“I don’t think he’s got a spare pair of skivvies to call his own.”
“Poor baby,” she said, and her compassion was real.“Contact me in an hour with a place to send money, and I’ll see that you get him kitted out and on a plane to Chicago.I’ve got to get my son off to school and speak to my husband, but we’ll get this sorted.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to warn her again not to speak to Felix, whoever he was to her, but she signed off, and the line went dead.
He handed the phone back to Lightfingers, who unconsciously cradled it to his chest.
“She’s… formidable,” he said and was amused by Lightfingers’s adamant nod.
“She is.”He closed his eyes.“I hate to turn the boy loose, but if anybody can offer him shelter, she and Fox can.”
“Is she your sister?”he asked.Something about their familiarity, their pained separation, spoke deeply of family.
Danny Lightfingers let out a fractured laugh.“Lover’s wife,” he said, with a bitter smile at Liam’s surprise.“It’s not as sordid as you’re thinking.She….”He shuddered.“She needed to escape.She was pregnant, and her father would have beaten her to death if he’d found out.So we married her off to Felix.”And then, to Liam’s everlasting wonder, he saw Danny Lightfingers smile.He was huddling in the bed, in pain and detoxing, and he smiled.
He looked like a fallen angel.
“And she had the baby, and we were a family.And it was really wonderful.”Then a tear escaped from eyes he’d squeezed shut.“The boy… he’s ten now.Just went to his party.Snuck in, hugged him, left him a gift, snuck out.So smart.Kind.Light of my life.”
“Why’d you leave?”Liam asked, his heart hurting.
“’Cause that’s all I ever was to them,” Danny whispered, and he wasDannynow, whatever his last name.He was young—Liam would find out later he was barely thirty—and he was sad and lonely and in pain.“I was the thing that crept in their windows, made love to Fox, played games with the boy, hugged my sister… crept out.It’s cold in the shadows, young copper.Pretty soon I needed the scotch to warm my heart so it would beat.None of it was any way to live.”
