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“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Exactly as I said.” He stood and offered his hand to his wife. “Shall we be on our way?”
I stood as he had and offered my hand to Calla. “Here I thought I was the only one who’d be courting you this evening,” I whispered.
“Remember that thing I said about feeling out of my element?” she whispered.
“I do.”
“Right now, I’m wishing we’d opted for Fiji.”
9
SPIDER
“Where’s this party?” I leaned over in the backseat of the SUV and asked Calla when Rile appeared to be taking us to the middle of nowhere.
“It’s called the Long Branch. Hammer and his wife, Maeve, own it.”
“Where Steel was a bouncer?”
“The very place.”
“Fury’s husband was a bouncer there too,” said Rile, glancing over his shoulder.
I’d heard the story of how Tres was in the States and met Fury at a bar where the Invincibles hung out. I hit my forehead with my palm. “The Long Branch. Of course,” I mumbled.
“Piecing it all together?” Calla asked, smiling.
God, she took my breath away. I covered her hand with mine. She turned it and wove our fingers together.
Rile pulled into the spot obviously left for him by the main entrance in the otherwise packed parking lot.
“It looks as though the party has started without us,” he said as he held the door and waved us inside.
“Wow,” I heard Calla say. “It looks beautiful.”
While I’d never been in the bar before, I agreed the space was festive. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but not something of this size. Even from the outside, it didn’t appear quite as massive.
The bar itself had to hold one hundred people, plus the high-top-table seating. To the left of it was a dining room with at least fifty tables. Directly in front of where we stood, there was a giant dance floor and a stage, where a band was playing. I wondered if the rows of strung lights above it were a permanent fixture or part of the Christmas decorations throughout the place.
As we walked over to the bar to get a drink, the band stopped playing and Rile asked if he could have everyone’s attention. Rather than ordering, we walked out to the dance floor with the rest of the guests.
Decker Ashford, Keon Edgemon, and Miles Stone—known as Grinder in the intelligence community—stood beside Rile on the stage.
“Don’t be shy. Come forward so I can see you,” Rile said, motioning for everyone to move closer to the stage. I looked to the left and right of it, where two Christmas trees stood. Each had to be fifty feet tall, and not only were they decorated; there were gifts under them, or at least wrapped boxes made to look like gifts.
Once everyone moved toward the stage, Rile stepped up to the mic and cleared his throat. “I want to thank everyone for being here tonight. Some of you have traveled from far and wide.” He looked over at Grinder, then shaded his eyes and peered at the dance floor. “Pia?”
“Here,” I heard a voice say and saw a hand go up, but I didn’t get a good look at the woman who’d raised it.
“I want to thank you for convincing my friend that traveling during the holidays wasn’t as dreadful as he’d anticipated.”
“The use of your Bombardier helped, Rile,” she shouted back.
“It is always available for you and Grinder, Pia. Whenever you wish to leave your magical villa in Val d’Orcia.”
“Have you been?” I leaned forward and whispered in Calla’s ear. She shook her head. “We should go sometime,” I added.
