Regret shadowed his face before he steeled his gaze. “While you were off thrill-seeking, I was stuck taking care of business.” He didn’t have to add stuck with Mother. That came through loud and clear.
“Your business sucks.” She crutched to the door but when she reached the hallway she stopped and spoke without looking back. “No matter what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night, it’s not okay to kidnap people for profit. And, yes, zombies are people. So get over yourself, Andrew.” With that she hurried down the hall.
“The business was all I had!” he shouted after her, voice shaking with long pent-up emotion. “You found a way out and never looked back. Maybe I needed—” He broke off, turned away. “Fuck,” he breathed.
Needed . . . an escape? A way out? A new life? It was obvious he loved his sister and wanted out of his mother’s shadow. Andrew’s armor had a chink in it, though I had no idea how big of one.
I cleared my throat. “This is the perfect opportunity to walk away from Saberton, y’know.” His shoulders sagged. Maybe, I thought. Just maybe.
He drew himself up and faced me, his expression all cool business again. “Walk away from Saberton,” he echoed, voice stiff. “You believe this is a perfect opportunity for me to walk away from a career I love and my grandfather’s legacy?”
Crap. Me and my big mouth. I fumbled for anything to say that could possibly salvage the moment, but in the next instant his composure crumbled, as if he simply didn’t have the energy to maintain it.
“Saberton is my life,” Andrew said, voice rough. “It’s who I am. I can’t abandon it. I can’t—not even to get away from our mother.” A soft sigh escaped him. “Julia’s talents made it easy for her to stay away.” He spoke with soft precision, as if trying to win an old argument with himself. “My talents bound me in close. It’s simply how it is.”
A sudden wave of unexpected sympathy left me at a loss for words. Julia/Naomi had left her family behind but could still keep doing the covert ops spy adventure shit she loved. She changed employers, but the job itself remained pretty much the same. It had never even occurred to me that Andrew might love what he did just as much—probably because the whole financial-business-power-tie-boardroom thing seemed tedious and dry and dull to me. Yet for Andrew to “walk away” was a much bigger sacrifice, I realized with chagrin. I didn’t know a lot about the business world, but somehow I doubted he’d be able to step right into another high-level position anywhere else. Plus, anywhere else wouldn’t be Saberton.
A quick glance at Brian told me he’d realized the same thing, though there wasn’t much sympathy in his eyes. Sighing, I looked back to Andrew, but he’d managed to regain his bearing in those few seconds and spoke before I could.
“We have an agreement,” he stated. “I’ll help get Griffin and Marcus Ivanov out in exchange for my release. That’s it. And we have that only because I know it’s in Saberton’s best interests to not give Jane Pennington a reason to fuck us over, even though my mother doesn’t see it my way.”
Best interests? My sympathy vanished like a popped soap bubble. “Whatever,” I snapped. “You look like shit and need to get your ass cleaned up before we walk you into Saberton Tower.”
Brian gestured toward the door. “Come on, Saber,” he said. “Once we take care of that we’ll meet with Gentry to make the final plan.”
With that, I left the guys to their business and headed downstairs. Naomi sat on the sofa in the living room with her foot propped on the coffee table.
“Just like old times,” she said with a weak smile.
“You gonna be okay?”
“Sure. Old shit. New twist.” But she let out a long sigh. “We used to be so close. I played games with my grandfather that turned into real work. Andrew was the so-called responsible one, focused on boring stuff.”
“Boring to you,” I put in. “I get the feeling he really likes it.”
A grimace flashed over her face. “Yeah, he does. Now,” she added. “We were groomed for our talents—and our roles—when we were kids. I was lucky and loved mine. He learned to love his.” She bit her lip. “I never thought I’d abandoned him, but I guess in a way I did.”
“You can’t beat yourself up over it,” I said. “He’s a grown man who makes his own choices.”
“Andrew is Andrew. I’m used to it.” A determined expression settled across her face, though I now suspected that Tough Determination was as much of a fake front as Andrew’s Cool and Unruffled Businessman. “Once we get Marcus and Kyle back I’ll have room to rant about my brother’s priorities,” she continued.
“Right.” I gave her a quick hug. “Gotta go check in with Pierce on the plan.” I started to turn away then paused. “You have any tweezers?”
She gave me a baffled look, but dug a pair out of her bag and handed them over.
“Thanks. I’ll bring them back before we leave.” I didn’t know the plan yet, but I knew that part of it depended on Pierce passing himself off as the real Pierce Gentry.
I found Pierce in the garage. The SUV was gone, and in its place was a white cargo van. He closed the van’s back doors and looked over at me.
“Angel? Is something wrong?”
Grinning, I waggled the tweezers at him. “Let’s go, dude. We got some eyebrows to tame.”
Chapter 32
This is what my life has become. Stuffed into the bottom of a garbage bin.
It was a clean one, at least, and pretty darn roomy, for a garbage bin. Pierce and Brian had muttered stuff about specs and load capacity and two cubic yards, blah blah. About three feet deep with a footprint a smidge smaller than a hospital bed, it was basically a big ass blue industrial plastic mini-dumpster on wheels.
I’d been curled up inside of it for the last few minutes, or ever since we crossed the river heading into midtown Manhattan toward Saberton’s headquarters. The not-bad part was Brian curled up inside it as well. Spooning me, in fact, which I couldn’t help enjoying on a primitive physical level even though I considered Brian to be in the special category reserved for Best Friends and Big Brothers.
In turn, I spooned a blanket-covered selection of tools we figured might come in handy, and, for a slightly lumpy pillow, I had an insulated lunch box containing a few baggies of diced brains, since we were down to only three packets remaining from the lab. Maybe it’s a good thing Philip had to stay behind with Dr. Nikas, I mused. Philip was a pretty big guy, and I had a hard time imagining him and Brian cuddled up in the dumpster.
“Entering the garage now, folks,” Pierce said, interrupting my mental wanderings, which was probably a damn good thing considering the direction they were headed. I felt the van turn, and then some bumps, followed by a sense of going down a slight incline. “We have our plan, but everyone needs to keep their senses sharp,” he continued. “Anything could change at any time.”
The van backed up, stopped, and the engine died. Brian shifted positions behind me slightly, and I bit down on an insane need to giggle.
“What’s wrong?” Brian whispered.
“You’re poking me in the butt!”
He made a strangled sound, and I couldn’t tell if it was laughter or exasperation. Possibly both. “It’s my gun. Sorry.”
I clamped both hands over my mouth and shook with laughter.
“Not that kind of gun, you dork!”
The back doors of the van opened, and I quickly got myself under control.