Page 104 of Play With Me

My eyes go wide. Jude’s other brother is here? In Switzerland? Next to us at the bar in our resort??

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Griff apologizes. “Not that I did, you just came barreling in here.” His eyes are on Jude, but he angles them to me. “Sorry, Nora. I was going to make myself known, but it seemed like you were going to say something to me before golden boy came in like a bat outta hell.”

My cheeks heat. I was going to hit on Jude’s brother, is what I was going to do. “Hi,” I croak.

Jude’s on his feet, striding over to his brother. “Can’t just call first like a normal person?”

Griffin’s up too and they’re doing a big bear hug embrace with back pats. Jude’s got an inch or so on his brother, but Griffin’s broader, his muscly form more rough and wide while Jude’s is strong and lean.

Griff thrusts a hand out to me after, and when he shakes it, I feel like my arm’s going to wiggle off. “Hi,” I squeak.

I like Griff, I just hardly know him. I’ve only met him a few times. The rest is apocryphal.

“What the hell are you doing here, man?” Jude asks, coming back around to my other side. “Were you just in the area?”

“Sort of. Liechtenstein,” Griff says.

Jude frowns. “Licked her what?”

I press my lips together, trying not to laugh. “Jude, you must remember it from our geography lesson on the train, right?”

“Nora taught me a thing or two on the train over,” Jude says, winking.

My stomach flips and I know my face is red.

Luckily, Griff doesn’t seem to give a shit what our status is. “I’ve got a client who was looking for a place to lay low.” Griffin’s eyes go across the room to where a nerdy-looking man in his fifties, with glasses as thick as mine, sits hunched in the corner of the room, his menu held up in front of him. The man’s eyes dart over to Griffin’s, and he seems to stiffen when he sees us. But Griffin gives him a hand signal and he nods, looking back at his menu.

“This seemed like a place with discretion.”

“Yeah, this is a strict no-paparazzi zone.” Jude nods. Only Jude would know that.

Nobody knows what Griffin does, and Jude says he thinks there isn’t just one thing. He’s got a cabin out in the forest near Quince Valley, with a big garage or workshop attached to it where he makes stuff. For a while, Jude and his siblings speculated that he worked for some kind of security firm. At one point, Jude was convinced he disarmed bombs. He built his own radio when he was seven years old and always knew right away who did it in any whodunit.

But it’s clear to me that right now he’s playing protector to this guy.

“So are you his bodyguard?” Jude asks, pointing his chin at Griffin’s charge.

“Nah. Just transport.”

Now the man is digging through a messenger bag next to him. There’s something familiar about him at that angle, looking slightly away. “Gosh, he looks almost like—” I say, peering closer.

I snap my eyes back to Griff’s. “Wait, is that…”

“Yeah,” Griff says.

The man’s hair is a different color, and he’s shaved the goatee, but I recognize him as the man who’s been plastered all over the news back in the UK—a whistleblower for a big corporation accused of corporate fraud.

“Who?” Jude asks.

“The most wanted man in Europe right now! Not for a crime,” I clarify, explaining the situation to Jude as best I can.

“Oh yeah, they were talking about him at that party,” Jude says.

“But heisin danger,” Griff says.

“Is it safe for him to be out in the open like this?” I whisper, glancing around us. There’s no one sitting too close. But still. “Everyone’s looking for him.”

“Probably not,” Griff says, unaffected. “But I was hungry.”

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