“He’s pretending.It’s all an act.”Sawyer stared around the room.“Come on, you guys didn’t buy that whole ‘He made me straight on my mission’ story, did you?”
Aiden gaped at him, which suggested maybe he, at least,hadbelieved.Dean’s round face creased with uncertainty.But Quinn didn’t react, and Beckett snorted.
“Tried to get in his pants?”Sawyer asked with a smirk.
Beckett straightened like he might snap something back.Instead, after a moment, he laughed.“I didn’ttry.But I wondered why he didn’t…pay more attention.”
“Babe,” Quinn said in an underbreath.
“What?He didn’t look at my ass, not even once.”
Sawyer’s smirk had gotten bigger.“Yeah, well, that’s not the only thing he lied about.He definitely didn’t go to Argentina on his mission.I said something to him in Spanish once, and he just stared at me.Didn’t understand a single word.So, I kept talking.You could see it in his face he didn’t like it, so I kept going, bullshitting him, waiting to see if he’d admit he didn’t know what I was saying.Finally, he told me that President Fitzpatrick had made a rule that we only spoke in English at group meetings, and he’d appreciate it if I’d follow the rules.”
“If he didn’t know Gerald from his mission,” Tean said, “and he wasn’t gay, what was he doing here?”
“Raking in money,” Sawyer said.“Like, a ton of it.”
“What do you mean?”Jem asked.
“Guess who handled all the money?”Sawyer said.
“Stephen?”Tean asked.
“No,” Aiden said, but the word was shrill, like he knew he’d already lost an argument.“We wrote the checks out to an LLC.”
“But we gave the checks to Stephen,” Dean said miserably.
“How much?”Jem asked.
“Five hundred dollars a month.”
“Holy shit.”
“Youpaid five hundred dollars a month,” Sawyer said.“Aiden, how much were you paying, buddy?”
Aiden stiffened, but he didn’t answer.
“Aiden,” Sawyer said, “was paying—”
“Don’t tell them!”
“—a thousand dollars a month.It was supposed to be twelve hundred, but he got a discount for paying for the year in advance.”
For the first time since Tean had met the wiry man, Aiden’s face grew splotchy.He pressed his hands over his eyes and shook his head.
“Jesus,” Jem said.
“I’ll bet you anything Nora and Tafton were paying more,” Sawyer said in an offhand tone.
“They were,” Dean said.
“Dean,” Mckell said.
“He’s dead,” Dean said with surprising harshness.“It’s not like he cares.He and Nora were complaining about money being tight, and he said something about how he could have bought a new car with the money they were spending on this.And he’d only been coming for six or eight months.”
“But that’s so much more than the price on the website,” Tean said.
“Stephen said that was just the starting price.There are different packages.”
