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“When Gracie was sixteen, her bio mom showed up, sick. Dying, actually. She wanted Gracie to come live with her. Momma left it up to my sister, and, much to my shock, Gracie left. She started this club with her mom.”
“That bothered you?”
“At the time, I didn’t understand it. I wanted nothing to do with my bio dad, and my bio mom died long ago, so I might’ve been less than supportive.”
“Less than supportive?”
“I was an asshole. A hurt teenager who didn’t yet have the skills necessary to realize I was also jealous. After Gracie left, she became…” I chew on my next word before spitting it out. “Distant.”
“Distant toward you? Or toward the whole family?”
“Both. We never became truly close again. We might’ve, except she quickly fell in love with a boy. I was shut out completely. That relationship ended badly two years later. She told him about our family.”
“I take it that’s a big no-no.”
“The biggest. It’s kind of like being a spy for the CIA—you can have a family, have a love life, have a regular cover job, but you sure as shit can’t tell your spouse and kids what you’re doing on the side. That decision needs to be approved by Momma and Leland and it’s a rarity. For a good reason, because the problem with Gracie’s ex wasn’t my family. It was him. He was disgusted by what she’d told him. Especially since, by then, they’d had a baby. He threatened to reveal what he knew if she didn’t let him take the kid and go. To keep the family secret, she let them both go.”
Sandesh shakes his head. His mouth tightens. “That’s awful. Poor Gracie. And now your mom is bringing me into the family when she must’ve wished for something like that for herself all those years ago. I take it she’s still single?”
“Yep. Coming from a family of vigilantes limits the dating pool.”
Sandesh snorts, then grows serious as his eyes skim the outside of the club. “Do you think she could’ve become so sour on the family that she’d try to sabotage your mission?”
“Don’t know. Like I said, I’m too close to this. My gut answer is no, but that gut instinct extends to all my siblings.”
Sandesh reaches across the car and squeezes my hand before he climbs out. I join him and we walk across the gravel lot to the back of the club. I like him at my side. It’s nice not only for backup. Especially when all the people I used to trust are now suspect.
Though it’s barely eleven, the club is already open for lunch. An eighties’ Prince song pounds out into the lot. Sandesh digs a knuckle in his ears. “Prince seems a little dated.”
Man has no musical taste. “When Gracie and her mom started the club, they argued over the music. As a compromise, they settled on changing it up. Now, Club When? changes musical eras every eight weeks or so. It’s fun and turned out to be a genius marketing tactic. Enough that she began opening early for food.”
“Ah. Explains the smell of French fries.”
The music, which had sounded loud outside, hits us with a punch once inside the small, crate-stacked back corridor. I expertly avoid a food-carrying waitress and, biting into an onion ring, lead Sandesh to the upstairs offices.
He catches up with me. “How did you get that?”
“Classic distraction. It’s a technique used by pickpockets worldwide and perfected by Momma when dealing with the media.”
“Go on.”
I like sharing this stuff with him. “Sometimes, a pickpocket will pinch a mark, bump into their arm, anything to get their attention away from the area of actual concern. Sometimes, they’ll have an accomplice come up and distract the mark by asking for the time or holding a flyer out to them.”
He frowns. “Okay. You didn’t pinch anyone. And I get how I missed it, I was distracted coming from the light into a new place, but how did you distract her?”
I wink at him. “I didn’t, handsome. You did.”
He shakes his head as I give him the rest of the onion ring.
At the steel number pad by the security door leading upstairs, I wave my wrist. Nothing happens. Oh, right. I wave the other arm. There’s a beep and a warningbeep, beep, beep.
I point at Sandesh’s wrist. “You have to do the same. It reads the number of people out here and won’t open if everyone doesn’t have clearance.”
Still chewing and a lot less cheerful, he puts up his wrist. The pad stops beeping and clicks.
I pull the heavy-as-a-tomb door open, and we head up the stairs.
Behind me, Sandesh studies the closed door before catching up with me and asking, “Blast-proof?”
