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Unfortunately, his little brother’s moral compass pointed due north, whereas the rest of the Blackwell clan sat somewhere southwest. The irony of Phin’s bruised morals was that the money they made off the books was the money that paid for his thousand-dollar suits and designer watches. But his little brother’s struggle was real. Zeke might not fully understand Phin’s inner workings, but he respected him and tried to keep him out of that part of the business as much as possible.
Cruz, leaning his butt against the foosball table, studied him. “You look like someone whose rubber ducky drowned.”
He ignored his smart-mouthed brother and belted back the last of his whiskey. “There's something I need to tell you all.”
“Oh, shit,” Phin said, striding to the bar for another drink. “You’re going to piss on my high, aren’t you?”
Rohan raised a brow.
Cruz crossed one ankle over the other. “Don’t keep us in suspense, brother.”
He wished Grams were here. She would be a welcome voice of reason—either for or against taking the job. But she had gone to bed early in order to get enough sleep in before Lynette drove her to an early appointment in Asheville tomorrow morning.
“I’ve lined up another recovery.”
Phin’s jaw hardened. “What sort of recovery?”
“One that if successful might solidify a lucrative, ongoing partnership for BARS.”
“With whom?” Rohan asked.
Heat flushed up the back of his neck as he looked at each of them. Cruz and Rohan’s expressions held only curiosity, but Phin’s grew more mutinous by the second.
It was an expression he knew well. Ash had worn the same one in the months leading up to his defection. Would his announcement cost him—the company—another brother? He was about to find out.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Phin’s face cleared. “Dammit, Zeke. Don’t pull that shit again. I thought from your tone that this was going to be another one of your shadow ops.”
“What are we recovering?” Rohan asked.
“An antiquity.”
“Doesn’t the FBI have an Art Crime Team?”
Damn Rohan and his bottomless hat of useless information. “Right, as always.”
Phin’s head nearly snapped off. “What’s going on, Zeke? Why do they need us?”
He met his little brother’s gaze. “Because we can do something they can’t.”
“Which is?”
He let the silence set between them, let it stretch while Phin’s brilliant mind worked it out.
Phin’s confusion cleared and was replaced by a look of disappointment.
Regret clutched Zeke’s chest for a long moment before he hardened his heart. Phin might not agree with the black ops side of their business, but that didn’t make it wrong.
Justice didn’t always favor law-abiding citizens. BARS retrieved stolen property and gave it back to the rightful owner. Sometimes—most of the time—the retrieval required methods not wholly supported by local, state, or federal laws.
Not wanting to hold anything back, he said, “There’s a level of danger to this one that we haven’t come up against before.”
“What are we stealing back?” Phin asked.
“I don’t know.”
Phin’s eyes flared wide.
