“Well, shit.” Will sank back into the couch. “So we just… go find someplace and wait for her to tell us where Marcus is.”
“Pretty much.”
“That sounds boring.”
“Well, on a scale of ‘bored senseless’ to ‘dangling off the Port of Montreal Tower,’ I’m kind of okay with it.”
“Says the guy who didn’t actually do the dangling.”
No, but I almost saw you?—
“Just saying, you should probably be onboard with boredom at this point.”
Will’s lips quirked, and he shrugged, but he didn’t gainsay Cole. In fact, they were both silent for a long moment. Just like out on the Grand Quai, it was Will who broke the silence, but at least it wasn’t to ask Cole about his musical tastes this time.
“I think we need to consider what we’re actually doing,” he said. “With this whole—with everything.”
Cole tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Will’s eyes lost focus as he seemed to think about it. Meeting Cole’s gaze again, he asked, “At this point, are we still chasing down the Puffin? Or are we chasing down Marcus?”
Cole swallowed. “Aren’t we doing both?”
“I mean, kind of?” Will shrugged tightly. “But what’s our endgame? Find the Puffin and—I don’t know, give it back to Alders? Or give Marcus a well-deserved beatdown and maybe threaten him within an inch of his life?” He paused. “I’d even be kind of satisfied to see him go to prison if I didn’t think he’d take all of us down with him.”
“Yeah, there is that. Marcus would absolutely dime out every last one of us to get a week taken off his sentence.”
Will snorted. “He’d do it to get fifty cents added to his canteen.”
“You’re not wrong.” Cole chewed the inside of his cheek. “So maybe… I don’t know. Maybe our endgame doesn’t matter yet. We get to Marcus, get the Puffin, and give him something he deserves. After that, we figure out the rest.” He shrugged again. “Maybe it doesn’t really matter what happens next.”
Maybe it didn’t.
But once they found a place to lay low, they were probably going to have plenty of time to think about it.
CHAPTER 11
Will wasn’t thrilled about revealing one of his safehouses to Cole, if only because this was one of his favorites. On the other hand, it was the closest to Montreal—they could drive there in two hours, which seemed kind of important as the bruises from almost falling out a fuckingglass cagebegan to set in, Jesus Christ. The first night it had been bearable, because adrenaline was a hell of a drug, but day two was bad enough he hadn’t wanted to get out of bed in the morning.
Not that he’d let Cole know that. The guy had been kind of twitchy ever since Will’s near-fall, which… Will got it. Cole didn’t have to like Will to not want to see him splashed across the pavement, although it seemed like hemightbe coming around on the liking part.
The thought made Will grin to himself as he recalled what his brother had said about him the last time he’d been home, when his in-laws had gone out of their way to make his favorite dishes his second night back. This was after years of barely tolerating his presence on their ranch. “You grow on people. Like a fungus.”
He’d take it.
Even better, Reed was close enough to meet them at the safehouse tomorrow, which meant they could get serious about hunting down Marcus. Hell, between the two of them, Reed and Cole probably had the skills to hack the CIA. They could find one idiot art thief, even if he was having a run of luck.
Getting over the border was a simple matter of providing the right-wrong passports and looking resigned at having to go back to America. Then Will drove them to the outskirts of Montpelier, down a rural road with a sign that readShelly’s Sugar Shack, and finally stopped in front of the last of four rustic log cabins. That was the one he asked Shelly to keep available for him year-round, and she was happy to do it, given the screaming good deal he gave her on the mortgage on this place. Will parked the rental as quietly as he could, then turned to his companion, who was out cold.
It had been so tempting to start blasting Taylor’s “Shake It Off” the second he realized Cole had fallen asleep, but Will had decided to be merciful instead. It had been hard enough convincing him to come here instead of flying out of the city. Will had only won that argument because neither of them wanted to chance being recognized by people at the airport after the articles about them came out. They didn’t need to carry this publicity back home if they could help it.
Thank fuck Baby Boy didn’t know what had happened. There’d be no stopping him from tearing Will a new one if he did.
Will got out of the car and hunted up the spare key from the pretend pile of moose shit out back—so Vermont—and opened the cabin up. It smelled a little stale, but it wasn’t dusty and the sheets were clean. Good enough. He went back out to the car, opened up Cole’s door, and?—
Almost got head-butted as Cole woke up with a start. “What the hell?” he muttered hoarsely, looking toward the lit cabin with confusion on his groggy face.
“We’re here, honeybee,” Will said.
