“After… San Francisco?” I asked.
“Tilly’s bachelor party,” Beau snickered. “Remember?”
“No,” I said, feeling dread curdle in my gut as I remembered the family commitment. “No way.”
“Command performance, I’m afraid,” Mav said before kissing Beau on the head and shoving him off so he could stand up. “Come on. Let’s eat. I hear your siblings squabbling in the driveway.”
“Dad, for real, I can’t go. Aunt Tilly’s whole point in throwing that ridiculous party is to set us all up with people!”
Beau stood and reached out a hand to pull me up. “Aw. Nice use of the word ‘Dad,’ but it’s still not getting you out of this. Tilly played the ‘next year I might be dead’ card, so we’re going.”
I scoffed and followed him to the kitchen, past rows and rows of multicolored salt and pepper shakers of all sizes and shapes. “She’s never gonna die. She drinks from the holy grail.”
Gabe set three huge pizza boxes on the counter. “Tilly texted me and told me that if we don’t show up, she might sign us up for a subscription to blue-cheese-of-the-month again.”
We both shuddered at the memories.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not talking to any men. And I’m sure as hell not kissing any of them.”
Which was, it turned out, just another one of Jett Marian’s lies.
33
LOCKE
It tookme five days to track my prey down.
“Jett Talmadge Marian,” Vox said. “Born and raised in Rabbit Island, South Carolina. Son of Maverick and Beau Marian. Graduated from local public high school and attended the University of Virginia, where he double-majored in global affairs and linguistics. Enjoys long walks on the beach and getting caught in the rain.”
I ignored him the same way I ignored the sunlight glinting off the Manhattan skyline outside my office window and scrolled through the information coming onto my screen.
There was a picture of Jett from his student ID card at UVA, a candid shot of him standing on a dock by a marsh, grinning in the sun, a much younger image of him at a podium in what looked like a high school debate tournament.
And then there was an office ID badge photo of him that looked eerily similar to the way he’d looked after Amsterdam. Skinny and tired.
The company name on the badge was ESP.
“What is Ecumene Stability Project?” I asked, squinting at the address in the financial district.
“An Interpol-related agency,” he said before slurping something through a straw. “Buncha do-gooder special agents.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled for the first time in a week. He didn’t work for the Alvarados. Or any other criminal group. He worked for the good guys.
Kind of.
The Paxis Council did what it did because governments were notoriously bad at it. Self-dealing and rarely prioritizing the welfare of the people they purported to protect.
Agencies like Interpol were rife with corruption and bias, and they were often hamstrung by regulations and “official channels.”
Additionally, intelligence agents were often used up and discarded like pawns in a never-ending game. I hated to imagine Jett becoming jaded over time or, worse, finding himself in inescapable danger. I’d already seen the result of his job conditions once before.
“What would ESP have been doing in Amsterdam three years ago?” I asked, almost to myself.
“No way to know, dude. Undercover shit, most likely.”
Undercover.
Fuck.
