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“Where is Paris?”
“I don’t know.” He rested his cheek in the valley between Icarus’s shoulder blades. “Mac hid him somewhere. The less people who know, the better.”
Hands folded over Adam’s, Icarus didn’t speak for several long minutes. When he finally did, his voice was hoarse, struggling around a lump in his throat Adam could feel him fighting. “I failed her.”
“She’s still alive.” He loosened his arms enough to nudge Icarus around in them. “You were going to go to her before I returned to your apartment the other night?”
Icarus closed his eyes and nodded.
Adam would have felt more guilt if this right here, Icarus in his arms, didn’t feel like a fate none of them, including she, could escape. “Why did you continue to stay away?”
He rested his forehead on Adam’s. “She’s part of a hacker collective. I didn’t want anything to happen to those around her like what happened to Canton. I couldn’t put her in that situation again.”
“The fact you didn’t shut off your senses and still totally ignored my bleeding hands earlier tells me you wouldn’t. Also the fact you haven’t killed Robin yet.”
Icarus’s chuckle was a welcome sound. Adam leaned back to see if the smile reached his eyes. Not quite, but he was more firmly on the stable side of the precipice now. Not so close to the abyss.
Taking Icarus by the hand, Adam led him to the bed still shoved in the corner, the coziest spot that Icarus, in the short amount of time he’d been there, had made his own. “She was in trouble the last time you were in Portola?”
“Yeah, several months back,” Icarus said as he lowered himself next to Adam. “Hacked the wrong person.”
“Vincent?”
“No, a different job. Unrelated.”
But was it? “Could that be what this is now?” he speculated aloud. “A hack gone wrong? Maybe he’d been implicated back then?” Or more likely, given the escalation of Vincent’s efforts... “Or Vincent wants her to hack someone? No connection to us.” That would be the best-case scenario. Would be more likely to result in a fast and simple meet and a fast and clean extraction.
“That makes sense, but how does Atlas figure in? We assumed he sent that picture, but what if it was her?” Icarus traced the nearly healed cuts on Adam’s hand. “I’m sure it was him who told Vincent to send me to you. What else does he know? Does he know how we’re all connected?”
“Did he know when you were in Portola last or why?”
He shook his head. “He’d have no reason to. He wasn’t a client then, and like I said, she’s good at cleaning up my messes. I’m sure she’d try to clean this up herself if she could do so without drawing undue attention to herself or me.”
Utter devotion, the two of them walking a ridiculously high tightrope for three decades with virtually no safety nets.
Safety net. Fuck!
Adam’s stomach roiled. “That’s why you had the supply of Daylight?”
“Always kept an emergency vial on hand.”
“That you wasted on me.”
Icarus’s reply was swift, the grip on Adam’s hand almost painful. “Not a waste. No matter what happens, I do not regret that decision.”
“I’ll make sure of it.” Adam lifted their joined hands and kissed the back of Icarus’s. Then brought his lips to Icarus’s, kissing those too, making a promise. “I’ll bring her back to you.”
THIRTY-ONE
Adam wantedto know who picked this location. Portola University’s main quad was wide open, very public, and very crowded, especially at four in the afternoon. Knowing who picked the when and where would tell them a lot about how this meet would go.
Vincent was a showy motherfucker, but doing his business in this broad a daylight seemed too showy, even for him. He got away with what he did because he did it in foggy, no-rules YB. Portola was a cesspool, but it was a temperate one with a high-gloss veneer, its seedy underbelly more carefully hidden. It was maybe what Vincent aimed to be, but he wasn’t there yet. Unless he’d amassed—stolen—more power than they realized. Unless he thought himself invincible already, which was a truly frightening proposition.
If that horror had not yet come to pass, and Vincent hadn’t picked this location, then was it Mary? Did she think it would be safer? If Vincent had contacted her about a job, if he wanted her skills badly enough, then it would make sense for her to set the terms of a meet. But if she was being blackmailed into working for him, which was Vincent’s usual MO, then Adam doubted she had the leverage to dictate the when and where.
Which left Atlas. They were so far from knowing anything about the warlock’s motives that it was... suspect. Who was he trying to protect with this location? Vincent or himself? Or Mary? Did he know Mary was connected to Icarus? Had he told Vincent? Had Vincent then made the connection to the people who wanted to kill him? Was Atlas shoving Vincent or Mary into the open for a possible hit? While taking a shot at Vincent was sorely tempting, Adam couldn’t make revenge his top priority today. He’d promised to rescue Mary. And despite how desperately he wanted to end Vincent and his operation, Adam couldn’t do it here. This was not the Canyon Lands. This was a location full of people, of humans, of potential victims. Which Atlas was counting on too, if he was the one who’d picked this location.
If he was going to show at all. It was ten past four, and there was no sign of any of them.
