The Deeper Game (Taken Hostage by Hunky Bank Robbers Book 3) (13 page)

“He won’t admit it,” Odin said.

“I know, but did you think it was too easy?” Zeus asked. “Did it feel too easy?”

“Hmm,” Odin said.

Zeus grunted.

“You’re not suggesting we postpone the Prime because we’re awesome in ferreting out our enemies, are you?” Thor asked.

“It felt easy. And the frame job on Ingvey—that was off,” Zeus said, ever the instinctual one. His gaze fell to me. “It can’t hurt to make sure. It felt easy.”

“Though it
was
easy relative to the shit we do now,” Odin said. “Running down criminals is much easier than knocking off the most
fucking-g
well-protected structures in the Western hemisphere.” Odin flicked water at Zeus. “You, my friend, are unused to easy work.”

“Why
can’t
it be easy?” I asked. “Why can’t that be a goal? Don’t you guys deserve better?”

Thor groaned. “Is this the Tunisian island again?”

“It’s being good to yourselves,” I said. “You’ve messed with your enemies, but where does it end?”

Odin frowned.

“She’s picked out an island for us to retire on,” Thor explained.

Zeus furrowed his brow. “You knew this was what you were signing on for when you joined us, Isis,” he said, seeming troubled. “Are you regretting—”

“No! Of course not,” I said. “I wouldn’t go back and change a thing. I’m with you one hundred percent, you know that.”

“It’s our moral obligation to
fucking-g
make them wish we were dead, Isis. What possible reason would we have to abandon it?” Odin stared into the dark trees. “You are not with us if you suggest we abandon our sworn work.”

“It’s
because
I’m with you that I’m suggesting you maybe look at that.”

Because I love you,
I thought.

I needed to tell them how much I loved them—each of them individually, and them together. But not in the middle of an argument.

I knew they loved each other, too. They thought they were saying it with their matching tattoos, but it wasn’t the same thing. Especially now that they’d soon be emblazoning that stupid
You WISH we were dead, Motherfuckers
motto on our arms. That wasn’t about love.

“We can’t just fade away and let them win,” Zeus said.

I thought again about their talents and intelligence. What they’d given up. It made me feel desperately sad—too sad to sit there one second longer. I wanted, suddenly, to be alone. “Excuse me, you know? For wanting some fucking peace and happiness for you.” I shot up out of the tub, grabbed a towel, and headed toward the sliding door.

Stupid me thinking I could walk away from an argument with my stubborn guys. Heavy footfalls shook the wooden slats of the porch behind me; heavy hands grabbed me and picked me up.

I tried to wriggle out of Zeus’s arms, but he had me. “Screw you, I’m not going back in the tub.”

“No choice,” Zeus said, climbing back down into the hot water. He settled me on his lap and held me there, arms like a vice.

Odin’s gaze was sharp. “We will have peace
and
we will have vengeance,” he said. “We take what we want, Isis. And we are not going to fade away in some retirement paradise fishing like old men. You don’t want that life any more than we do. You of all people don’t want a life without thrills.”

“What about the thrills of making your own meaning? Remember what Matteo said at Guvvey’s? If you spend your life reacting to somebody, they control you as much as if you spend your life obeying them.”

“That’s not what he said.” Odin said. “You added something.”

“Giving ZOX pain is the opposite of obeying them,” Zeus said. “We’re doing the Prime next week.”

Odin swished his foot, brown toes forming a knobby fin, moving through the water. “You may not agree with that decision, but if you’re participating, we need you committed—one hundred percent there. Are you there or not? That’s the question on the table right now.”

“Of course I’m there a hundred percent.”

“He’s right. We need you there fully,” Zeus said, keeping his massive arms around me, a prison and a cocoon. “It’s okay if you’re not. I’m sure one of the Gigis would fill in if you felt apprehensive. We can’t go in with you half into it, that’s the thing. This is the Prime.”

“One of the
Gigis
?” My belly nearly sunk through the floor of the tub. “You see me as interchangeable with the
Gigis?”

“Of course not,” Thor said quickly.

“That’s what it sounded like!”

“You could never be replaced,” Thor said.

“They’re pros and they know how to rip off a place, that’s all,” Zeus said, warm in my ear. “So you wouldn’t have to feel bad if you didn’t want to—”

“I don’t need the Gigis filling in for me!” I wriggled out of Zeus’s hold. Or more, he finally let me go. “I’m all in,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, but it hurt that he’d even suggested it. “I just think
live for vengeance
is a shitty long-term strategy, that’s all.”

Odin gave me a look I couldn’t read. In our normal life, my current attitude might merit some erotic punishment. The fact that it was off the table showed the seriousness of this conversation.

“I’m always in,” I added. “And the Gigis don’t have half the allegiance to you guys that I do. I can’t believe you would suggest it—”

“He was just giving you an out,” Thor said.

“I don’t need an out. I’d tell you if I wasn’t into playing my role a hundred fucking percent. I need you guys to trust I’d speak up on that.”

“We trust you, goddess,” Zeus said.

“Maybe not if you think I’d endanger you by being half-ass on a heist. You guys look out for me, but this thing goes both ways.”

Odin came to me through the water and pressed a warm, wet hand to my cheek. “You were trying to talk us into quitting, goddess,” he whispered. “You know what that feels like? It feels like
you
want to quit.”

I understood, now. I’d scared them. I felt badly. “I never want to quit.” I put my hand over his, sandwiching it onto my cheek, wondering suddenly if Venus had tried to get them to quit. I know she’d fucked up a robbery shortly before her suicide. “I don’t want to quit, I swear. I love our life,” I said, remembering the day I got the cloud and lightning tattoo to match theirs. How it made us a family. Us as the four bolts coming out of the cloud. How proud I felt.

Odin trailed his hand down my slick shoulder. “Our commitment to each other is how we survive as a pack.”

“I know,” I said. It was how they knew they’d always go back for each other. How they knew they could count on each other. Odin didn’t use the word
pack
lightly. They were like the human version of a werewolf pack from the books I loved, fighting to the death for each other. “Talking about the island, that isn’t me pulling away. It’s me thinking about Travis on that stretcher today and hating that it could be one of you someday. It’s me wanting to be with you forever, no matter what. I’m with you on everything. Always.”

“Goddess,” Zeus said, turning my head and kissing me.

Out the corner of my eye, I saw Odin float back to his spot in the tub. He seemed unconvinced.

Thor squeezed in next to me, resting a hand on my thigh under the water.

“And you’ll get the tattoo?” Odin asked.

“Of course,” I said, even though the idea of those negative words on my skin bothered me.

A lot.

Maybe I could still at least talk them out of that. Or find something better for the tattoo to say, something positive and badass. There was still time.

Odin’s dark, wet hair shone in the moonlight. “
You WISH we were dead, Motherfuckers.
“ He watched my eyes. “It’s time to finish them. This week.”

“Whatever we do, I’m in,” I said smoothly. The heist was a few days off, and there was a lot to do yet. Surely he wouldn’t want to spend time on lengthy tattooing sessions.

His eyes glittered in dark.

Odin and Thor and I were sitting out on the bank two days later, squished together in the front seat, when Thor’s phone rang. He stared at the number, perplexed, and then answered, somewhat standoffishly. “Yeah?”

Not a lot of people had our numbers.

“Oh, right. Yeah,” he said. The caller went on and on—you could hear the rambling tones, though not the words. Thor thanked and him told him he’d courier over some money, and then he cut the connection. “Our panther guy,” he said, “from the university. The results on the feather.” The feather was over seventy years old, apparently, and from an eagle. The panther guy and his colleagues thought that it might be from an old taxidermy piece, judging from the dust and dirt pattern.

“That’s weird,” Odin said.

“What’s weird?” Thor asked.

Odin frowned. “There was no taxidermy in Travis’s place. Or his mother’s.”

“Maybe it was there and you didn’t see it,” Thor said.

“No, there
wouldn’t
be any,” Odin said. “Ever. All the dirt and dust? Those two wouldn’t let a stuffed eagle within a hundred feet of their place.”

Thor furrowed his brow.

Odin swore under his breath.

Zeus and Odin had paid a visit to Travis in the prison hospital the night before.

Travis had denied being the stalker, but Zeus and Odin had expected him to deny it. I’d asked them if they were convinced.
“He was drugged up,”
Zeus had said simply.

Odin hadn’t liked it. “
You can see so little in a drugged man’s eyes,”
he’d said. But the circumstantial evidence was there. The paper was in his dumpster. He bought the shoes. He’d done that type of crime in the past.

Odin stared out at the bank steps. It was nearly eleven; almost time again for my deposit. “On one hand, it makes no sense he’d use such a dirty object when he’s practically germ-phobic, judging from the many hand sanitizers. But I could make a case for it.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“That he keeps a
fucking-g
vice grip of sterility over his home and thoughts, that he associates functions of the body, and in particular anything sexual, with dirt and sin. Therefore, he would seek out something horribly besmirched as a gift to you.”

“And as we know, there’s no better way to a girl’s heart than a horribly besmirched gift,” I said.

“Or else it wasn’t him,” Thor said.

“We didn’t get a confession, it’s true,” Odin said. “But in any investigative work, unlike police shows, it typically
is
the obvious that is the solution. And since he’s been inside, Isis hasn’t had any contact from her stalker. There were two communications from the stalker within twenty-four hours, but nothing for two days now. That’s a clue in and of itself.”

“Should we wait to be sure?” Thor asked. “Considering the day after tomorrow…”
We hit the Prime.
He didn’t have to finish that sentence. We were eating, breathing, and sleeping the Prime.

Odin watched a pair of blonde women in pink track suits cross the road. He considered this for some time.

“When I was a boy,” Odin said, “my brother and I used to fish in this lake in the High Atlas Mountains. Right off the shore.” He went on—the color of the water. The smell of the air. The fishing poles he and his brother had made.

As discreetly as I could, I slid my eyes to Thor, just to check his expression. His face was perfectly neutral, but I suspected he was just as surprised as I was—and not only about Morocco having lakes. Odin never talked about his childhood. Zeus and Thor had figured out that Odin’s mother was crazy and his father had left, but nothing much beyond it. Odin’s using the term
my family
made me think this story could be from before his father had left.

“My brother and I dipped our lines into a patch of dark water and waited,” he said. “But then we heard the loud splash of a massive fish jumping some thirty paces down the shore. We pulled out our lines and ran to that spot and put in our lines to fish there. Soon after, we heard a large fish, perhaps the same, jump in the water near where we had first been. We pulled out our lines and ran back to our original spot and fished there, hoping to catch this fish. And then it happened again. The sound of a fish, jumping in the new spot. We were running back and forth like fools.”

“Somebody throwing rocks,” I guessed.

Odin regarded the bank with a dark look. “My
mother
throwing rocks. Making fools of us. We didn’t realize it until we heard her screeching with laughter.”

“That’s mean,” I said.

“Not at all,” Odin said. “It was one of the few valuable lessons she taught us. Proceed with confidence. Know that you chose the path you chose for a reason. Don’t let the plunk of stones down the shoreline distract you, or you will forever be running back and forth like fools.”

Thor and I sat silently. Sure, okay, it was a good thing to bear in mind, not to chase willy nilly after every passing notion, but it seemed a horrible thing for a mother to do. And then laugh.

“This taxidermy information. Perhaps it is a stone,” Odin said quietly.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He turned back to meet my eyes. “An island in Tunisia. That is a stone.”

“You made your point on that,” I said.

“Did I?” he asked.

I gave him a look. “I need to do my deposit,” I said, gathering my things. I slipped out the back and onto the sunny sidewalk.

Making a bank deposit is far easier when you don’t have vibrating implements along for the ride.

Less fun, but much easier. I guess this made me the horse running on dry land now.

I went in and out as I had on so many days, wearing my wig of fabulous long blonde hair with a fabulous outfit. The fifteen-minute window was still as soft as ever. The guard flirted with the far-end teller. The desk clerks checked their phones and everything loosened up as soon as the evil overlord took his break. I thought unfondly of my old bank boss, an unfortunate cross between a gross perv and a greedy megalomaniac, and I realized I should be thankful for him. If it hadn’t been for his lecherous and greedy ways, I wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with my guys. Maybe I would’ve tried to defend the bank against robbers instead of helping them.

Sure, I didn’t like that the Prime Royale would be so difficult and possibly dangerous, and I definitely didn’t like this new tattoo idea, but my guys needed me, and I would do anything for them.