“YOU WENT ON A DATE,” Styx sang in her ear as she walked past him into his hotel room the following day.
It wasn’t the same hotel room he’d stayed in that first time. By her assessment, he moved every three or four days. It was sort of amazing that he managed to make a mess of the place before he’d even been there twenty-four hours.
“It was not a date,” she said, taking off her jacket and throwing it at him, hoping to wipe the stupid grin off his face.
But Styx enjoyed teasing her too much. “Did he kiss you goodnight? Did you get butterflies?”
“Don’t even.” Because just thinking about it turned her stomach. “Byron and Hugo left.” Throwing up both arms, she dropped onto the corner of the bed. “Bastards.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Home,” she whined without disguising her envy. Sliding back on the bed, she pulled off each shoe to throw them on the floor and fold her legs in front of her. “Just like that, they’re leaving the country.” She sighed. “Wish I could just up and leave the country.”
“Maybe you can,” Styx said, retreating toward a table by the window.
She pushed higher to peek over the second bed parallel to the one she occupied. “Can I? Oh, God, please tell me I can.”
With a single finger, he moved aside a brochure to pick something up by its corner. Within seconds she recognized what dangled between his thumb and forefinger.
Her excitement came out in applause. “Oh my God, is it…?” she asked, opening both arms. “Show me!”
Rather than come over, he frisbeed it across to her. It was like every Christmas and birthday came together at once as she opened it up. A passport! Real? No. She’d never had a real passport, but it looked damn good to her.
“Not an easy thing to do these days. You’re in the system and everything.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, looking at the picture of herself that Styx had taken earlier in the week.
“That I had to do a little cross-Atlantic negotiation. It doesn’t matter. It’ll get you into the country. But I can’t promise you can use it more than once.”
“Why not?” she asked, frowning at him. “It looks so good.”
“Yeah, but you’ll only need to use it if you’ve run from Zeus,” he said. “If he takes you home, you don’t need to use that.” Obviously, and she couldn’t let him know that it existed. “If you run from Zeus, he’ll find out you went home and will want to know how. If he finds that in the system… which he will…” He sat on the far side of the parallel bed. “He has the resources to get you on the most wanted list. Putting you on a no-fly list will be cake… And if you’re detained at an airport, escaping isn’t easy, especially if you’re by yourself.”
All made sense and she appreciated the warning. “Thank you,” she said, clasping it to her chest. “Truly. You’ve been amazing.”
“Comes easy to me.”
So did being easy. Nothing fazed Styx. He was sort of like Danny that way.
“It might not matter anyway,” she said. “Byron said something yesterday which gave me a glimmer of hope.”
“What’d he say?”
“That I might only be here for another couple of weeks.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “He said that?”
Her head bobbed side to side. “Hmm… Not exactly. He said that him and Hugo are going to recruit the new Two and Five. Six is going to be there too.” The mention of the Six member who’d revealed Zulu to Zeus brought a growl to his expression. “I know. But I asked if they were coming back here after their meeting. He said it could take a few days or a couple of weeks.” Opening her mouth, she took a deep breath. “But then he said the next time we see each other will probably be at the beta site.”
“The beta site,” he said, taking a few seconds to think about that. “Olympus Beta. You’re thinking if the negotiations will run for a maximum of two weeks, and the next time you’ll see each other is at the beta site, that the two are linked? What’s to stop him taking two weeks for negotiations, then doing his own thing for six months before Beta?”
“I choose to be optimistic,” she said, flopping onto her side, propping her head up with a hand. “When I walked in and saw the suitcases in the hall. My God, I almost screamed. I thought that was it; that I was going back. Thank God I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you don’t want Zeus to know how desperate you are to get away from his hospitality.”
“Did make me think about you though.”
“Me?” he asked, shifting on the bed to sit on the side closest to her, his feet on the floor. “Not in bed this time?”
She grabbed a pillow from above her head and tossed it at him. On a laugh, he caught it.
“I was thinking that if I have to leave in a hurry,” she said, “or if you do, that we don’t have a contingency. We have no way to communicate Stateside.”
“We don’t have to.”
“You’re saying this is like a one-shot deal?”
“I’m saying that if I need you, I’ll find you,” he said. “I already said you’re not that difficult to track.”
“Not in a foreign country where I don’t want to get lost and don’t know anywhere,” she said. “I could disappear in the US, if I wanted to.”
He got up to retrieve a water bottle from the dresser. “Tell that to my brother. He tracked you and your mom down. He ever tell you how?”
She shook her head, rolling onto her back. Daire. His letter was still fresh in her mind. After receiving it the previous day, she’d written back. But her worry was still potent.
“I have to believe I’ll get back there,” she said. “If I let myself dwell on the possibility that I could be here for much longer…”
It didn’t bear thinking about. Being taken somewhere against her will was bad. Being kept there was infuriating. But having freedom that she couldn’t do anything with… Some days it was enough to make her consider jumping off a building. The possibility of running back to Daire was one of her favorite and most vivid fantasies.
Usually, if it snuck in during the day, she’d do whatever she could to chase it away. But at night, in her dreams, they’d been reunited more times than she could count, and in oh so many different, equally salacious, ways.
“Seven klicks west of the beta site, there’s a spot where Harry used to take us fishing.”
“Okay,” she said, swaying his way when he appeared in her peripheral vision to sit on the bed again. “This a nice father, son story?”
He breathed out and smiled. “There’s a rocky outcrop at the base of the highest ridge. Above the grassy bank of the lake. We called it the Ammo Dump because they look like a bunch of different caliber bullets dumped on a few mortar rounds… Anyway…” Tess rolled onto her side again, tucking both hands under her head to listen. “Daire lived there for like a year when he was nine.”
“He lived there?”
Styx nodded. “Harry came down every day they didn’t have missions to train him. Even if he wasn’t there, Harry gave him instructions to follow. Dutiful little soldier always did as told.”
“Alone?” she asked, sitting up in shock. “Harry just left him out there?”
“It was just after you and your mom left Olympus. Things were real strained between Z and H then. Expectations on Daire went through the roof. Harry was frustrated, angry, grieving.”
The story wasn’t going in a good direction. “Harry took it out on Daire,” she whispered.
“Drilled him harder than ever before.”
No wonder Daire hated her. She’d distracted his father, been dubbed the light of his world, and Daire got the thrashing after she vanished from both of their lives.
“Being exiled must have killed him,” she said, doubting there was a worse punishment he could endure.
“Harry doesn’t show his feelings in any way even close to traditional. Putting Daire out there, forcing him to survive on his own… He couldn’t stand to see the boy he loved, his son, sinking deeper into the Olympus abyss. Harry wanted him out of it. Wanted both of them out… He didn’t know how to save either of them. His accord to save you and your mom made it impossible for him to leave. Not that anyone ever did before or since… It included Daire. He could’ve left with you and Carrie, but he chose to stay.”
“With his father,” she said, appreciating the insight into the men’s rocky relationship.
“With Olympus,” Styx said, gulping from the bottle and then putting it down on the nightstand. “You know Harry left to live with you and Carrie when you were about six months old?” She nodded. “That wasn’t sanctioned, he just went… and tried to take Daire. They were walking out, would’ve been gone, free, if Daire hadn’t asked so many questions. When he found out Harry didn’t intend to go back, Daire refused to leave the compound. They got in a fight and Garrick found them… Harry knew the risk, knew what he was doing… Walking away without Daire, that was something neither of them ever got over.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Olympus isn’t the paradise you seem to think it is. You talk about saving it, about building it back up… I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Its mission is to make the world a better place,” she said. “To save lives.”
“Yeah,” he said with a semi-nod. “Sometimes. Other times we’re influencing politics or the stock market. We’re maneuvering our guy into the top spot of some Fortune 500. Yeah, we take out rebels in third world nations who are terrorizing or killing local people. But we also divert aid to areas where our connections are strongest. We liberate abductees, but we assassinate adversaries too. Daire takes his work seriously, all of it. And God knows Harry saved my sorry ass. But sometimes I wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
“If Daire had walked out instead of fighting him, where would they be now? What would they have achieved?”
“Zeus would’ve tracked us eventually.”
“Maybe… but with you, Daire, and Carrie at his side… I don’t think there would be anything beyond Harry’s ability. He was younger than Daire is now when you were born. You have to remember, Harry didn’t want to choose. Zeus forced his hand. He put all of you in impossible positions. You are where you are today because of him.”
“How do you know all this? You were twelve when Harry found you.”
He nodded. “Yeah, when Harry gets too many beers in him, he likes to talk… And like I said, they never got over that moment when Harry walked away from him to go to you… When he chose you over Daire and Daire chose Olympus over his father… Still comes up sometimes.”
“I was six years old,” she muttered, recalling Daire’s words in the control room. “There’s still so much resentment.”
It was made all the worse by the men’s refusal to sit down and be honest with each other. If Daire really understood why Harry was mad that day, he’d see that walking away from the boy he classed as his own broke Harry’s heart. But he could only show the depth of his love in anger and discipline.
Love was weakness. Even Daire told her that.
“So everyone’s an asshole, is that what you’re saying?”
“Zeus is an asshole,” he said. “We’re all puppets in his pop-up theater. Ready to go at his whim twenty-four, seven.”
Confused, she squinted at him. “I’m sorry, did something I said lead you to believe I was a fan of the guy?”
His focus shifted to the passport on the bed. “There’s something in this game called quid pro quo.”
She exhaled. “Quid pro quo is a thing everywhere, not just in Olympus.”
“Okay, so now you have your passport…”
“You want something from me,” she stated. It would’ve been quicker for him just to say that. Though learning more about Daire’s history was always welcome. “What is it?”
“I want to come upstairs.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. Understanding took her back to the argument they’d had more than once. The shock of his request was enough to propel her up off the bed.
“No,” she said, striding to the window. Weren’t they done with that particular conversation? Obviously not. She spun around to face him. “If you kill him, Olympus is over.”
As he rose, he chanted. “Ours is not to wonder why…”
“This can’t be what you want,” she said when he met her eye.
“It’s my mission.”
“No, Harry said it would be your mission. You were still prepping, it wasn’t a go.”
The way his eyes rolled and his head bobbed suggested that was an inconvenient observation he didn’t want brought up.
“Yeah,” Styx said. “I fed myself that line for a while after the Exodus… Doesn’t stick for long.”
“Things have changed,” she said. “You need fresh intel. What if you do it and find out after that Harry didn’t want you to?”
“You don’t want me to do it. And your reasons are nothing to do with Harry. You don’t want me to do it because of Daire.”
She raised a hand toward him. “Doesn’t the story you just told prove why that is? You think he’s mad at you for not telling him about Zulu. He was mad at Harry for agreeing to Zulu because it took his home from him. How do you think he’ll react if you take away his last chance to have it back?”
“I already told you that if Daire wants to kill me, I’ll let him. Killing Zeus is doing him a favor. If he’s going to kill me anyway, why not do him the favor first? Yeah, he might be pissed, but in the long run? Daire and Harry will run Olympus way better than Z ever would.”
“And you’re happy for that to cost you your life? You don’t want to be a part of that future?”
He leaned back against the wall. “I don’t really think much beyond the mission.”
Narrowing the space between them, she spoke slowly. “You should this time. Because even if you’re right, the beta site is slated for demolition. Before they can demo it, they have to—”
“Retrieve Minotaur.”
She nodded, pleased to see his interest grow. “To do that they need…”
“The three keys,” he said, pushing his shoulders off the wall. “We need to know where he’s keeping the Bolt. It will be somewhere close. It’s the link to his power. There’s no way he leaves it somewhere he can’t check on it.”
“That’s good,” she said because it could mean the key was in the apartment. “We need to find the Trident too.”
“Poseidon has that,” he said, but when her head began to shake, his brow lowered. “Zeus took it from him?” Her shake became a nod. “He has two keys… what’s the bet that’s why the beta site is next on the agenda…? He must think he can manipulate Harry into bringing the Scepter. That’s why he’s keeping you close; he’ll take you there and wait for Harry to show up… Though I don’t know why Byron would be there for that…”
Occupied by his own pondering, Styx wandered around. Her blood might be behind the need for Byron’s presence, who knew? And Harry didn’t have the Scepter, so he couldn’t trade it for her life. The thoughts ran through her head, for some reason, the words didn’t come out of her mouth.
Her attention followed his progress to the dresser. “If you think they’re in the apartment, I could look for them.”
“You need time to do that,” he said, turning around to prop himself on the furniture. “And you wouldn’t know where to look. They won’t be somewhere obvious and if he’s worth his salt, which he is, they won’t be together. Still, he’d want them somewhere he could get to them fast, in case he has to bail out.”
Styx had valuable experience. Useful, necessary experience.
“What about tomorrow night?” she asked. “He’s taking me to dinner and to the theater. We’ll be out for hours, and he doesn’t like the staff in the apartment when no one’s home. I can give you my key.”
“Perfect,” he said. “And if I find them, I can stick around to finish the job.”
She pointed a finger. “No. You can’t kill him until we get confirmation from Harry.”
“We?” he asked, scowling. “Are you gonna kill him if daddy tells you to?” When he put it like that… No, she hadn’t ever killed anyone. Her hand dropped as she faltered, which seemed to tell him what he needed to know. “You’ve gotta know this is risky. If he finds out you had anything to do with it…”
“I’m willing to pay that price.” It wasn’t that she wanted to lose her life, but if it took some power from Zeus and gave it to Daire, then she was all for it. “We’ll have to regroup the following day, so you can tell me if you got them.”
“If they’re there, I’ll find them,” he said. “Make sure you’ve packed your essentials before you go out with him. Next morning, you get in a cab and go to the airport… Don’t leave anything incriminating behind, that means burn my brother’s letters if you haven’t already. Keep the passport hidden.”
“I’ll sew it into the lining of my jacket,” she said, omitting the fact that was also where she kept Daire’s letters.
“That,” he said, pointing at her cleavage. Glancing down, she saw only the gift Daire had given her. “You won’t get through security with it. And you’re carry on only, don’t check any bags. If anyone’s watching at the apartment, walk out with what you’ve got on, just like on any other day. Do not raise suspicions or they’ll be at the airport first and you won’t be going anywhere.”
Her fingers curled around the long metal bullet. “What do I do with it if I can’t check a bag?”
“Trash.”
She gasped and actually stepped back, which brought her hard up against the wall. “No! No way.”
“It doesn’t look like any priceless family heirloom, so whatever it is, it can be replaced.”
Being pissed at his suggestion wasn’t fair. In his defense, he didn’t have a clue. Styx didn’t know what it meant to her… or that his brother had given it to her seconds before she tempted him into sleeping with her for the last time.
Marching away from the wall, she kept him in her sights. “My mother’s ashes are in this,” she said, pinching the chain in two fingers to dangle it between them without taking it from her neck. “There’s no way I’ll put it in the trash. I’ll buy a damn suitcase and fill it with clothes before I’d toss her away like that.”
Although there was no sign of an apology in his eyes, he did present his palm. “Give it to me.”
Unsure whether that was a good idea, she grabbed it in her fist again. “No.”
His head fell to the side. “You trust me enough to tell me all kindsa secrets that others would murder to know, but you don’t trust me with your trinket?”
“I don’t even know when I’ll see you again.”
His hand closed. “In Miami,” he stated. “There’s a club called Fox Den; will you remember that?” She nodded. “Go inside, turn right and cross the bridge. There’s a bar, tables, booths, maybe people, ignore all that and go through the curtain marked private on the far wall.”
“The curtain?”
He nodded. “There’ll be guys in there, maybe a lot of them. Tell them you’re a friend of Patch’s.”
Her brows rose. “Patch? Why do they call you Patch?”
One corner of his lips twitched. “They don’t, I’m not Patch. Patch is a woman. She’s a good friend of the guys in there, an ally.”
“And you’re not? What will happen if I say your name?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Will you remember all of that?”
“Yes, but I—”
“Good. Then we meet in Miami.”
His hand opened again, in expectation of the item still in her grip.
On the brink of handing it over, another thought closed her fist again. “What if they’re not there?” she asked. “You said if the keys were there that you would get them, what if they’re not there?”
His obvious frustration came out in an exhale. “You want a signal?” He thought for just a few seconds. “Next to the sink in your bathroom,” he said. “I’ll lay a bottle on its side.”
“A bottle?”
“Yeah, like shampoo or lotion or whatever you have there.”
Nodding, she felt better that there would be a sign they were on the right track. Getting on a plane, fleeing for her life, would be premature if the keys weren’t in the apartment.
If they weren’t there, she and Styx could tail Zeus to find out where else he went. Maybe he had an office outside the apartment. Though he spent so much time in the office at the apartment that she doubted that. Maybe he had a storage facility or something, they could check that out too. Styx would know how. If the key wasn’t at the apartment of course.
“Or we could meet at the airport… do you want to meet at the airport?”
“Traveling together is too obvious,” he said. “And no point me being with you if you’re detained. If we’re separate, I can come save your ass if it gets in a bind.” That was true, though did imply he’d have a way to know if she got in trouble. “You gonna hand it over?”
“You’re not a very compassionate guy,” she said, unlooping the chain from her neck.
Giving it to anyone else felt wrong. But refusing to part with it could prevent her from getting on a plane. Daire would tell her to hand it over… wouldn’t he?
Miami was sort of their town. They’d spent a week living together there before crossing the country to the beta site. Well, her and Danny lived there. It was a different time, but still happy memories.
Putting the bullet in his palm, she let the chain gather around it. “It’s important to me,” she said, her heart aching when she let go of the metal and watched his fist close around it. “Please look after it.”
“Like it was my very own,” he said, putting it in his jeans pocket.
Clasping her hands under her chin, she retreated until the bed met the back of her legs, forcing her to sit down. Returning to the States would be the first step in reconnecting with Daire. Except she wasn’t going back to Nevada, she was going to Florida. It worked out for the best. Seeing each other would only make being apart harder in the long run.
Styx agreeing not to kill Zeus was tentative. They had to be patient. Until they had the Bolt and the Trident in their possession, and they could swing the pendulum of power to her Heart, they had to be patient. Olympus was what he wanted. She’d fight to ensure he had the power to make it everything he wanted it to be.