“Hope you’re on the card later tonight for women’s wrestling,” I said to the two of them. “Otherwise, that would be a complete waste of makeup.”
In my street life I made money playing speed chess with pigeons disguised as tourists. My entrance line was the equivalent of moving a white pawn to E4 as a game opener. Because with Raven and Jo the best strategy was something like the Sicilian Dragon. Direct offense. Something you should never do unless you’re prepared for continued carnage on both sides of the board.
“Better bring up your translating app,” Jo said to Raven. Jo’s mixed heritage gave her an amazing exotic vibe that always took me a substantial amount of effort to ignore. “He’s speaking idiot already.”
Bentley swung his head from Jo to Raven. She was dark-haired and intense—no surprise, given her name.
“Jo,” Raven said. “That’s so totally not appropriate. Look at Jace. Wonderful. Intelligent. So clearly filled with love for all humans.” She paused. “Oh, wait. The lying competition is tomorrow night.”
“I need to up my meds,” I said. “Maybe that way something you say will strike me as funny.”
“Or,” Jo said, “maybe it’s time to—”
“Time to talk about the reason we’re here tonight,” Bentley said.
Apparently he wasn’t enjoying our witty banter.
He pushed his swivel chair away from his desk. Bentley loved that swivel chair. Gave him a chance to spin in circles without effort.
His feet didn’t get in the way because they didn’t reach the floor.
Bentley was born with a recessive-gene thing. Both parents have to have the dormant recessive gene, and both have to pass along the recessive gene. Mom passes it down and Dad doesn’t, you’re okay. Dad passes it down and Mom doesn’t, you’re okay. One in four chance, then, that the throw of the dice at conception lands with both passing it down. When that happens, you’re insensitive to your body’s growth hormones. Short version of the explanation, you’re short and you stay short. Along with that comes a prominent forehead and a pushed-in nasal bridge.
It’s called Laron syndrome. Dwarfism. Bentley did his own fighting, but from behind computer monitors that literally and metaphorically hid him from the world. Not difficult to guess what a therapist would make of that.
“At least you didn’t text out Code Red,” Raven said, pretending it had never been her idea to use it in the first place.
“Be okay to get rid of the whole Batcave thing too,” Jo said to Bentley. “Or was that an unoriginal fantasy belonging to your Diva Boy brother?”
I opened my mouth to fire back, but Bentley jumped in again.
“Let’s stick to business,” he said, turning to me. “Bro, we haven’t seen a lot of you lately. Got a private project happening? Anything we can help you with?”
I shook my head. It just hurt, knowing how much Bentley trusted me.
“It can’t be work that’s taking Jace away from us,” Jo said. “Unless primping in front of a mirror counts as work.”
“Well then,” I snapped back, “clearly you’re unemployed.”
“Hey,” Jo said. “That’s dangerously close to body shaming.”
“Also,” Raven said, “contradicts your first statement about our makeup.”
She grinned. So did Jo. I was no match for them.
“If I had a gavel, I’d be banging the table,” Bentley said. “I wanted you to watch something that came to us via the forum.”
As in chat-room forums. Bentley monitored the Internet for any discussions that involved Team Retribution.
“It was a video request,” he said. “I think it’s worth getting involved. But it might drag us into the corporate world, which, sadly, is still biased toward males with nice threads and flashy watches. My vote is Jace fronts it. He’s used to sparring with lawyers and bean counters.”
“Guess being a trust-fund kid is good for something,” Raven said.
“Happy to let him deal with that crap,” Jo said. “Roll the video.”
Bentley flipped a screen around. His fingers raced on the keyboard, and he brought up a link.
A girl’s face filled the screen. Okay, not quite a girl. My age. Long blond hair. Big blue eyes. Tears trickling down her cheeks.
And very, very attractive.
“My name is Deanna Steele,” she began. “I don’t know who else I can turn to for help.”
Going suit-and-tie was a sacrifice I would have to make, I told myself. If we were the only ones left to turn to, what choice did I have?