The Losing Game (24 page)

The doorbell rang. Just as the couple were ready to try out the swing.

“Is the door locked?” Cecile stood frozen, midbuckle.

Thierry’s mouth was full, but his eyes widened enough to see the whites all around his dark brown irises.

“Yes. Please, don’t worry. The doorbell is wired to ring down here as well as upstairs. This basement has more than adequate soundproofing, and both Lois and Kit are home. No one will know you are here.”

Dante wasn’t expecting anyone, and as a rule Kit and Lois didn’t entertain when he had clients in the basement. Discretion was his trademark, particularly when that client was a prominent public figure.

Cecile relaxed. “It’s probably one of those religious groups, trying to make you see the error of your ways.”

“Do you think so?” Dante said. “Perhaps I should invite them down here to join us.”

Thierry made a strangled noise. Cecile and Dante laughed, though Dante was far from amused.

Once closed, the basement door automatically locked. Without a key, it could only be opened from the inside, by turning the latch. Dante was nevertheless concerned. As sounds from the basement didn’t carry up, sounds from above also didn’t carry down. Anything could be going on upstairs. Given the last few days, he didn’t want to speculate.

Seeing that Cecile and Thierry had mastered their attire, Dante asked their permission to excuse himself. “You can call up on the intercom if you need me. Otherwise I’ll be back down here in a couple of minutes.”

“Take your time.” Cecile winked.

“As you wish.”

Dante took a bow and made his leave. Once upstairs, with the door to the basement closed, he called out, “Lois? Kit?”

Along the hallway, the private door to the office opened. Kit poked out her head. “It’s Lucas.”

Lucas sat at Dante’s desk, in front of the array of monitors.

Dante swallowed thickly. “What on earth are you doing here?” His voice came out barely above a whisper. “You aren’t supposed to be leaving the hospital until tomorrow.”

“I checked myself out. I need to talk to you.” He’d shaved away the week’s worth of growth. Beneath, his face was clammy and pale. The light from the monitor screen made him look ghostly.

“I have some custom clients in the basement. I’ll be another twenty minutes at the most.”

“I’ll wait.”

Dante returned to the basement to find the Balons changing back into their clothes. “My apologies.” He couldn’t swallow away the tightness from his throat. “It was a late delivery. Please be assured, no one will see you as you leave.”

The Balons seemed unconcerned. Dante rolled his shoulders and coerced his face into a smile.

After the final matter of the bill was settled and Cecile had made her way upstairs, Thierry drew Dante into a bracing hug. “I’m in your debt.”

“I think not, my friend.” Dante tapped the chip reader. “The transaction was approved.”

“I don’t mean the money.” Thierry clasped Dante by the shoulders. “You must come to see us over Christmas. But no more wagers, huh?”

“No. I’m done with those.”

Thierry looked pleased.

Dante’s feet felt heavy as he climbed the stairs. Cecile departed with the requisite four kisses of a native Parisian, Thierry with the handshake he’d been raised with in England.

After they left, Dante gently shut the basement door and leaned forward until his forehead met the cold wood. His hands followed.

How did Thierry and Cecile do it? What was it about them that made them capable of journeying to this place of absolute and unconditional trust? Of building a marriage that would surely last the ages?

Cecile had said once that the secret was to learn to bend like the willow. She’d said that bending without breaking was what made the willow strong, not weak. Dante was no willow. He was brittle and dense. Like Jim said, he did what he liked no matter what anyone told him.

Had Lucas seen it, finally? If he hadn’t, Dante was going to have to tell him. He couldn’t delay it any longer.

THE FIRST
thing Lucas had noticed, after being shown into Dante’s office, was the pile of poster boards stacked against the wall next to the fireplace. The display boards from Avery’s memorial. With everything else that had gone on, Lucas had forgotten about them. Dante hadn’t, though.

The warmth of Dante’s office didn’t seem to be able to penetrate the aching cold that reached into Lucas’s bones. After he drained the last of his coffee, he was tempted to put his coat back on, but he wanted to make sure Dante understood, loud and clear, that he’d made up his mind. If Dante wanted him, Lucas intended to stay.

Dante had visited Lucas at the hospital daily. He’d given Lucas support and reassurance and asked for nothing in return. He’d even offered him a place to stay for his convalescence. (“There is a spare room, if that would make you more comfortable.”)

Lucas didn’t fully understand Dante. Why he’d done the things he’d done, why he’d bothered with Lucas at all. But through everything, he’d come to care for Dante. He could move past the wager and the surveillance. He just needed to know that from here on, Dante would be honest, that he would grant Lucas the trust that Lucas had placed in him.

Kit (or was it Lois?) sat silently on the sofa, eyes on the unlit fire. Ordinarily Lucas had an exceptional memory for faces, but the light was too low for him to discern finer features. The androgynous jeans and jumper also gave no clue.

“Kit?”

“Yes?”

“Did you know what he was doing?” Lucas pointed to the monitor screens.

“Not at first. But later, yes.” She hugged herself. “You must think we’re terrible people.”

“No.”

“You didn’t ask for….” She frowned. “He doesn’t mean to barge in. I don’t know why he can’t….”

“It’s okay. He’s got a good heart.”

Kit’s smile fell as Dante opened the door. Dante was wearing a pair of tailored trousers and a finely knitted black roll-neck, probably cashmere. It looked very soft, just like the man beneath—no matter how much Dante tried to convince everyone otherwise.

Kit and Dante crossed paths in the middle of the room. She squeezed his hand before she left. Dante joined Lucas at the desk, at a distance from his left shoulder. Lucas had regained some motion in his arm, though his fingers were clumsy and stiff. His arm remained in a sling to support his healing collarbone. The bruising in his face had dulled to a greenish brown, and the swelling had receded. All in all, Lucas didn’t look too gruesome, but he sensed Dante keeping his distance.

“Thank you.” Lucas motioned toward the poster boards next to the fireplace.

“I didn’t want them to be thrown away before you had a chance to collect them.”

“You’ve done so much for me. I really do appreciate it.” Lucas returned his focus to the monitors. “And that you kept up the surveillance. That’s my house. There, and there. And where’s that? Shaw’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Anything to report?”

“No.”

“What do you think it means?”

Dante didn’t answer.

Lucas ran his fingers over the dark wood of the desk. It had some dents and scratches in the surface that had been lacquered over. On the corner, next to the lamp, stood a silver-framed portrait photograph of Dante with Kit and Lois, which must have been taken a good ten years ago. Other than that, the desk was empty.

Over the growing sound of his pulse in his ears, Lucas said, “Maybe it’s time I contacted him.”

“I have to talk to you about that.”

Dante had been adamant in his reassurance that Lucas had nothing to fear from Shaw. Worryingly so—to the point that Lucas had frantically scanned the local news, dreading, and in some terrible part hoping, that Shaw had met an inexplicable and untimely end. Judging by the cameras trained on Shaw’s house, it seemed Lucas’s worry had been misplaced.

Dante went to the drinks cabinet in the corner of the room and poured himself an amber-colored drink from a decanter.

“Do you want something?”

“No.”

Dante sat on one end of the sofa. Lucas rose from the desk chair and sat on the wingback chair opposite, exactly as they had when Lucas came to ask Dante to plan him a murder.

Had it only been four weeks ago? It felt like a hundred years.

“You should lie down. On here.” Dante patted the sofa, then came over to Lucas and removed Lucas’s shoes. His hand lingered on Lucas’s ankle. His thumb grazed his shin. “Please. Get comfortable. Are you warm enough? I could put on the fire.”

Lucas was slowly thawing, but his hands and feet were still cold. “That would be nice.”

Lucas moved to the sofa, resting his head on a plump cushion. Dante lit the fire and hovered by the mantel, looking at Lucas but not quite looking at him. The scene was so markedly different from the last time Lucas had been here. Dante had lost none of his poise or his attractiveness, but like his old desk, he seemed to have lost his shine. His cracks and scratches stood in sharp relief against in the orange glow of the firelight.

“Sit with me,” Lucas said. “Tell me why I don’t have to worry about Shaw.”

Lucas bent his legs, making space. Dante hesitated, then sat on the offered seat. He lifted Lucas’s ankles onto his lap and let his hand rest there, on Lucas’s leg. The fire’s coppery light and heat lulled Lucas. Were it not for the dread—Lucas couldn’t deny the pinpricking notion that Mr. and Mrs. Shaw were lying dead in their beds, their bodies as yet undiscovered—he could have closed his eyes and slept.

Silently, Lucas berated himself. He was overreacting.

Until Dante told Lucas why he no longer needed to worry about Richard Shaw.

Dante might as well have been reading a shopping list. His voice didn’t rise or fall. He expressed no pride or remorse. He didn’t even look at Lucas, to register if Lucas might care, or perhaps feel grateful.

Lucas should have been relieved. Dante had confessed to the relatively minor charge of breaking and entering, the greater charge of threatening the Shaws with a deadly weapon, and the heroic rescue of the gun, now cleverly tucked away in his basement safe. Lucas should have felt grateful this sorry mess was over with. Shouldn’t he?
Shouldn’t he
?

Once again, Dante Okoro saves the day by spectacularly breaking the law
. Not two days after Lucas nearly got himself killed by doing the exact same thing.
Did the man have a death wish of his own? Did he not care about trying to salvage something worthwhile from the catalog of mistakes they’d both made over the last few weeks?

Lucas’s stomach churned, and his blood suddenly warmed, like the onset of a fever. He struggled into a sitting position, drawing his legs under his body, as far away from Dante as he could get. Dante didn’t budge, and that only made Lucas angrier.

“Are you insane? Are you actually fucking insane?”

Dante’s head snapped round. His nostrils flared. “No. If I was, I would have killed them both. His wife first, then him.”

“Oh my God.” Lucas could hardly breathe. “You thought about it, didn’t you?”

“No.” Dante twisted his body toward Lucas and jabbed his finger in the air. “Not for one second. All I did was clean up after you.”

Lucas’s jaw dropped.
The absolute fucking gall of it.
Did Dante really think…? Lucas dropped his feet to the floor and stretched out his legs. If he was going to have to walk out of there, it would help if the blood was circulating around his entire body.

He’d come ready to try to understand Dante. He understood perfectly well now. Dante was a law unto himself. Lucas be damned.

“I honestly don’t know what to say to you.”

“How about thank you?”

The last of Lucas’s chill and tiredness vanished. Inside, he positively flamed.

“No. I’m not going to thank you. When someone asks for your help, that’s one thing. It doesn’t give you the right to spy on them or to interfere in their private business. It doesn’t give you the right to just plough ahead and do what you think’s best without discussing it. The end doesn’t justify the means.”

The tendons in Dante’s jaw tightened. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t say a word. I haven’t finished.” Lucas stood, but he felt lightheaded and had to sit back down on the arm of the sofa. He really didn’t have the energy for a fight, but he would say his piece if it was the last thing he did. “When we first met, I was so enamored with you. A part of me even liked the fact that you seemed to be a take-charge kind of guy. It felt really nice to be with someone who wanted to take care of me for a change. But you know what? It’s a fine line, Dante, and you crossed it.”

Lucas’s mind whirled.

In the hospital, Dante had told Lucas about a wager he’d had with his friends in the summer. Kit had broken into one of their houses and managed to open the man’s safe, stealing its contents before the alarm company had been alerted. Dante had bet that with the proper research and equipment, it could be done, and he’d been right.

Lucas had known at once that there was more to it, but they’d had so much to talk about he hadn’t had the chance to ask.

“Fuck.
Fuck.
Did Avery know about you and Kit burgling your friend’s house?”

Dante might have seemed distant, as if he had closed himself off from Lucas’s verbal onslaught, but he wasn’t. He answered quietly, like a man worn down to the bone.

“No.”

“But she knew what she was doing, sending me here. It wasn’t a misunderstanding, was it?”

Dante sighed.

“Come on.” Now he’d started, Lucas couldn’t stop. “You can answer that one.”

“She said it was a ‘misunderstanding.’”

Maybe she did, but Dante didn’t sound as if he’d believed her.

“There’s more to this. I know it. What else are you not telling me?”

“There are a lot of things I haven’t told you. Everyone has their secrets.”

Avery had known exactly what she was doing when she sent Lucas to Dante. A dreadful knot of heat spiraled from Lucas’s gut to the tips of his fingers and toes. Even the crippled digits in his left hand. He held onto himself. He didn’t need to ask. He didn’t need the answer. Still, the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.