Ezra had finally gotten to the ER. He’d not needed surgery on his hand, but it was done up in a cast that his kids had covered with pink Sharpie kisses and dinosaurs. That Ezra didn’t seem to give a crap what anyone thought about that was the most likeable thing about him as far as Grade could tell.
“No,” Ezra said. He grabbed a leg of chicken from the bucket on the table. “They grabbed Clay instead.”
“What?” Grade blurted. The kick of concern startled him a bit. It wasn’t professional at all. “Is he OK?”
Ezra took a bite of chicken and wiped his mouth on a napkin. “They ran him off the road, so probably not,” he said. “But Harry has eyes on the place they took him, so we just have to hope that the rest of the plan will still work. You sure you can get into Charity’s house?”
Grade hesitated. It felt wrong. The thought of Clay being injured made him feel sick to his stomach, and more than just the usual queasiness from watching someone get hurt.
“If you want to help him,” Ezra said, “make the plan work.”
Grade took a deep breath, fished the keys out of his pocket, and dangled them from his finger.
“And as long as we get them back to the office by four, there’s no reason for anyone to know we have them,” he said. “Let’s go.”
***
They’d been at the judge’s house for an hour when the sound of a car outside drew Grade to the window. He twitched the curtains back and peered out over the dark gardens. The gates at the end of the drive opened, and a silver BMW drove through them.
“She’s here,” he said.
Ezra tossed him the keys.
“I’ll keep her busy,” he said. “You go down and keep the gates open.”
Grade took the servants’ entrance out again and lingered in the doorway while he waited for Charity to haul her laptop and bag into the house. Once the door closed behind her, he headed down the drive to the gates. They didn’t have to worry about the cameras. Grade supposed that Charity had a lot of guests she didn’t care to have on video.
The cleaners had their own fob. Grade pressed it as he got close, and the gates swung slowly open again. He waited.
And waited.
He’d just started to fidget, his foot jittering as he imagined that everything had gone wrong, when the gold Lexus drove around the corner. Grade sighed in relief and stepped back to let it drive through the gates. Then he followed them up the drive to the big double garage.
The Lexus pulled up into the corner, and the engine died. After a second, the driver’s side opened and Harry got out in a set of PPE.
Grade’s stomach sank.
Then Clay scrambled awkwardly out of the passenger side in a similar outfit. Grade exhaled in shaky relief. His chest hurt. He started toward Clay and then hesitated. Give him a dead body to desecrate and he was confident, but social interactions were different.
“Fuck it,” he muttered to himself. He ran over to Clay and pulled him into a quick, fierce kiss. Paper rustled as he pressed his body against it. Then he leaned back, one hand cupped around Clay’s face, and tried to shove his brain back into work mode. “Did everything go according to plan?”
Clay grinned and dragged him back into a kiss, longer and more appreciative this time, until Harry pointedly cleared his throat.
“Everything except my knee,” he said. “I think I tore something. Let’s get out of here.”
He slung an arm over Grade’s shoulder and used him for support as they limped out of the garage and over to the nice black SUV that Ezra had stolen earlier that day. Grade got Clay into the back and let Harry take the front seat while he crawled in next to Clay.
After a couple of minutes, Ezra came out of the house. He had a black sleeve over his broken hand.
He swung up into the passenger side of the car and slapped the dash. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Did she see you?” Grade asked.
Ezra pulled the chloroform rag out of his sleeve and threw it into the glove compartment.
“No,” he said. “Not that it matters.”
Grade waited until they were on the road, nearly to where they turned off, before he called the police on a burner phone.
