Page 83 of The Best Trick

“You can’t do it,” I said.

“What if the evidence is bullshit?” Zeus asked. “What if this was a trap from the start with the goal of nabbing you to use you as bait for us? He knows once he has one of us, he has all of us. It could be a full ZOX plan, with Alfred in on it. Didn’t that mystery seem a bit easy to solve?”

“Though to be fair, we arefucking-gbrilliant,” Odin said.

“You said that he recognized the smell of Denko’s sock,” Thor said. “Doris is obviously Denko’s dog. Alfred obviously wasn’t playing around. This thing is real.”

“Okay, maybe Doris is Denko’s dog,” Odin said. “But what if Denko is willing to gamble her in order to capture us? Would you put it past him?”

“That would be pretty extreme,” Thor said.

“Everything about this situation is pretty extreme,” I said, feeling upset.

“If he's trying to pull something, why ask for me? Why not ask for you?” Thor said to me. “You’d be better leverage. We’d crumble right away.”

Zeus barked out a laugh. “We’d never allow Ice to go into a situation like that, and Denko knows it. And Odin and I are trained to fight our way out of situations like that or take a lot of people down trying. You’re a good fighter, Thor, but your training isn’t what ours is. And you walk in, and the fighters come out of the woodwork, and they have us by the balls. And you have one hostage—a dog who you’d never harm in the first place.”

“I just got an awful thought,” I said. “Could he even have adopted Doris just to build this scenario?”

“Listen to yourselves,” Thor said. “You’re paranoid! Did you hear what he said? He doesn't want to be at our mercy again, that’s all.”

“We’d have to break you out of wherever they’d be holding you,” Odin said.

“No, you wouldn’t. I forbid it,” Thor said. “It would be a suicide mission for you.”

“What about you?” I said.

“Unlike you all, I choose to take Denko at his word, and that’s my right,” Thor said. “We like to say we’re all about freedom—shouldn’t I be free to take this chance for us? Shouldn’t I have that option?”

“You're not going,” Zeus said in the finalistic way he sometimes did when he decided things as our leader. “Doris is staying right here. You are, too.”

“Didn't you hear him? He has to put the evidence back if he doesn’t use it. There's a window, and it's closing.”

“So he says,” Odin said.

“Either way, since when did a closed window ever keep us from getting in somewhere?” I asked.

“Once this evidence leaves Denko's hands, it may as well not even exist,” Thor warned. “We need it. This has to end.”

“Does it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Thor said.

My pulse raced. Did he hate our lives so much? I went over and wrapped my arms around Thor. “These have been the best years of my life,” I said. “Can you really not say the same?”

“I can't,” Zeus said. “Wait—I can'tnotsay the same.”

“I can’t not say they have been my best years…” Odin said. “Wait…” He frowned. “Why the fuck did you say it like that, Ice?”

“Just to clarify,” I said breezily, letting Thor go. “We threecansay theyhavebeen the best years of our lives, aka, we can’t not say it, and they wouldn’t have happened without you.”

“You have to say that,” Thor said. “This is what we do, this is what we are amazing at—taking a shit situation and turning it to our advantage. Most people on the run have bad lives, so yes, I'll grant you we turned it to our advantage.”

“You can’t do any better than that? That’s the best you have to say? That we turned a shitty situation to our advantage?” Zeus asked, sort of kidding, but sort of not.

His feelings really were hurt.

Thor just grunted. Usually I could read Thor, but for once I didn't know what he meant. What was the grunt all about? Was it an agreeing grunt or a disagreeing grunt?

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