“A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.”
Oscar Wilde
I woke up to a text from Shane summoning me to join a debrief meeting at Cipher Security. In deference to the fact that she and anyone else I encountered in the office would likely be wearing a suit, I dressed in my least holey jeans, a plain white linen shirt, and a long camel topcoat I found in a thrift store in Seattle.
A woman I hadn’t seen before was sitting at the downstairs desk. She looked up when I walked in, studied me for a moment, then picked up the phone. “Anna Collins is here.”
I held my hand out to her and smiled. “Hi, I’m Anna.”
“I know,” she said, shaking my hand. “Darius described the boots.”
I smirked. “Of course he did.”
“He also said you’re beautiful, and fierce, and funny as hell, and he has some things he wants to say to you after the meeting, if you’re interested,” Darius said as he entered the building.
I turned at the sound of his voice, and then my head exploded, but I was too busy laughing to pick up all the bits. Darius wore his usual gorgeous suit and tie combo, but the tie was neon pink and covered in tiny green dinosaurs.
“Nice tie,” the woman said completely without irony.
“Thanks, Dallas,” he said with a smirk. She cracked a smile then, and it transformed her face from pretty to breathtaking.
He motioned for me to lead the way to the hidden door. “It’s a secret staircase kind of day,” he said as I opened the door and preceded him inside.
“You look fabulous,” I said with genuine admiration.
“Yes, I do. I think I’ll wear it to Sunday roast next Monday.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, with fresh laughter at the thought of Silvana’s dress code for her sons. “I’d pay money to see the expression on your mom’s face if you show up with a dinosaur tie.”
“Good, then you’ll come?” He wasn’t teasing anymore, and his voice sounded … hopeful?
I looked over my shoulder at him and giggled at the sight of the dinosaurs dancing on the shiny fabric. “Is there some deeper message to the fact that you’re sporting tiny dinos?”
He raised his eyebrows and looked hopeful. “Maybe?”
I gestured for him to go on, and he took a breath. “I’m told people screw up a lot when they’re learning a new game, and I never really learned how to play this one before.”
“What’s the game?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “Coloring outside the lines. Making it up as I go along. Hide and seek in the dark. Truth or dare,” he said with complete seriousness.
The grin that spread across my face must have been catching, because he got one just as big when I said, sincerely, “I love truth or dare.”
Then he poked my booty with a finger and said, “Go, they’re waiting for us, and the sooner we debrief, the sooner we can take the boat out.”
“Yes!” I ran the last few steps. “Race you!”
“Conference room,” he called as I sprinted down the hall.
I beat him by a mile, and the surprise on everyone’s faces when I burst into the room was worth the dignity points it cost me because I got to see Darius run.
Dan was grinning at Darius’s entrance, and the twitch at the corner of Quinn’s mouth gave away the hint of amusement he may have felt. Maybe.
“Now that we’re all,” Quinn looked pointedly at the dinosaur tie, “here, I’d like to close out our Gray file with the full facts as we know them.”
Once we had all settled with coffees, I told the assembled Cipher team about my aunt’s confession that had been written on the back of her twins painting and the threat of exposure against my sister. Quinn’s scowl deepened at that, and he shot a look at Gabriel. “Follow up with Alex Greene on that will you? Let’s get that file removed.”
I didn’t know who Alex Greene was, but the way he said “removed” made me think there might be some hacking skills involved.
Then Darius filled them in on his scout of the current Gray security system. “McCallum has been nosing around our contracts since he came to town last year,” Dan said, when Darius mentioned the new thermal cameras. “I want you to keep an eye on him and his company.”
“An internal case then?” Darius asked.
“Yeah. I have that itchy-ass feeling it won’t be for long though,” Dan said.
“You may want to get that checked,” I commented before I could stop myself, then screwed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to see the shock on anyone’s face.
But then Dan laughed, and I peeked through my lashes. “Sorry,” I said. “Broken filter.”
“I had mine removed. Fucking thing kept getting in the way of my best lines.”
“Anyway,” Darius continued with the slightest of smiles, “when it was clear to me that Anna was going back into Gray’s mansion to return the fake Manet, I arranged for her to overhear my conversation with Shane about the modifications. We were in a public venue discussing system alterations that we didn’t make to the system of a client that was no longer ours,” Darius continued, his expression serious. “It was well outside acceptable procedure, I’m aware.”
“But in this case, I believe it was warranted,” added Quinn, as though that was the last he wanted to hear on the subject.
I saw surprise and a little relief on Darius’s face, and I realized he had been worried about the breach in protocol. He had not only stepped over his own rules to make sure I got that information, he’d stepped over his company’s rules too. I nudged his foot with mine under the table, then gave him a small smile when he looked at me as he continued.
“Shane and I arrived at the Gray mansion just as Sterling Gray and Colette Collins were leaving, so we did not witness Anna’s rather remarkable free climb up the back of the house to the third floor balcony, nor did we see her entry into the house during the time the alarm was disengaged.”
Dan turned to me. “You free climbed three stories?”
“It’s brick. It wasn’t too hard.”
Darius slid a photo across the table to Dan, and I saw it was of the back of Gray’s mansion and included the Juliet balcony on the upper floor. Taken in the light of day, the climb did look a little daunting.
Dan’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and maybe respect. “Interesting skill set.”
“It’s useful for BASE jumping,” I said with a shrug. “And the odd B&E when a bounty’s being difficult.”
Dan shot a quick look to Quinn, who saw it and seemingly ignored it to turn his gaze back to me. “Describe your plan to return the painting to its frame.”
I went through the steps I’d planned and the ones I’d executed. The only raised eyebrow I got from Quinn was for the T. rex suit. Dan snickered, and Shane shared a look with Gabriel that told me they’d already laughed about it in private. Darius just looked pleased with me the whole time I spoke. He seemed … proud of me? Like maybe I wasn’t just one giant mistake waiting to happen?
Darius continued the story from the point where he and Shane followed Sterling into the mansion, and then we took turns describing the conversation with him after he’d caught me.
Quinn had a follow-up question for Darius about Markham Gray’s current whereabouts, which I answered with a look at my watch. “He’s in his office meeting with a Chinese investment firm about a development he wants to do in the Liaoning province.”
Dan’s eyebrows shot up, but Quinn actually narrowed his gaze. It was the biggest expression I’d seen on his face yet. “And you know this because …?”
“I have a guy,” I said simply.
“She has a guy,” Dan smirked.
I sent Dan a shrug and a smile. “I have people. Actually,” I said, including Darius in my gaze, “I got a message from a reporter in Boston. It’s possible Markham Gray might have some explaining to do about his parties at the Gardner museum thirty years ago. Somehow his name came up in a conversation with a former guard who is giving information to the police.”
“Excellent,” said Quinn. He exchanged some indefinable look with Dan as he stood and buttoned his jacket.
I stood too, because it seemed the polite thing to do.
“Ms. Collins,” he began.
“Anna, please. You know how I feel about Ms. Collins.”
“Anna,” he began again. “As your record remains clear, and given your rather … interesting skill set and connections, we’d like to use your services as a consultant on a per-case basis, with an hourly or weekly rate at market plus twenty percent and expenses. Is that acceptable to you?”
“Is it acceptable to you that I may be sleeping with one of your employees?” I asked out loud, totally on purpose.
The twitch at the corner of Quinn’s mouth indicated his amusement, even if his voice didn’t. “As long as your activities are consensual and not conducted on my time, it is of no interest to me what or who you do.”
I chuckled. “I knew you had a sense of humor under all that—” I waved my hand up and down, “alpha male. Yes, Cipher Security,” I included Dan in my gaze, “I graciously accept your generous offer of consultant work, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
Quinn shook my hand and then turned to Darius. “It seems to me that having a thief’s strategic brain testing a security designer’s plan could be a useful advantage.”
And then Dan stood, shook my hand, and grinned. “Maybe your guys and my guys are the same guys,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said with a grin, “but probably not, since most of my guys aren’t guys.”
Shane laughed at the confusion on Dan’s face as he and Quinn left the room, then she stood to give me a quick hug. “Sparky just built me a climbing foot. Will you teach me how to do what you do?”
I looked up at her. “If your arms get strong enough, with your height you’ll be more Honor-able than even me.”
She looked confused for exactly one second, and then she remembered the name of my D&D character. “Honor-able,” she said, pronouncing ‘able’ like the root word of ability. “Kind of like super-abled, instead of dis-abled,” she continued, with a glance down at her prosthetic leg. Then she looked at Gabriel. “I think I shall henceforth strive to be Honor-able in all things.”
I could see that Shane and I were going to have so much word fun as we figured out how to be friends.
When they were gone, and it was just me, Darius, and the dino tie, I turned to face him. “You mentioned something about a boat?”