Page 5 of The Bounty
Twenty?
Wags had set his alarm so he’d have an hour and a half before their call. He was halfway to replying a fuck off with your early cowboy nonsense when the rest of the lust fog cleared. He must’ve pressed the Snooze button more than once without realizing.
“Fuck you,” he cursed to no one, then peeled himself off the sticky sheets and hauled himself to the shower, reality a far cry from fantasy.
Five
Wags hustled out of the en-suite bathroom, steam licking his heels as he darted across the guest room to his trilling computer. He answered the call, video off. “Give me a minute.”
“You, Theodore George Wagner, are the one who called this meeting.” Marsh’s grumbled full-naming him was belied by his devilish smirk. “At nine o’clock on a school night.”
“It’s still summer break,” Wags grumbled back as he scrounged in his duffel for jeans and a shirt. “School’s not back in session there for another couple of weeks, and from what David told me at the wedding, he should be in Texas until then, helping your moms on the ranch.”
“He’s got you there,” Jax said, the Redemption Inc. hacker appearing in another box onscreen. Their mohawk was no longer dyed red and white as it had been for the Christmas-in-July wedding, but rather bright-orange and black, the local baseball team’s colors, if Wags recalled correctly.
Marsh waved that off. “Beside the point. I want to know why the good inspector is late for his own meeting.”
“Not an inspector anymore.” The termination letter he’d hoped for had in fact arrived ten minutes after he’d left Redemption Inc. HQ. He’d celebrated that night with an overpriced steak and loaded baked potato, all very American. A month and no bounty later, he worried he might have celebrated too soon. Hence the call he’d scheduled with the American cavalry. “Look, it’s six in the morning here, and I just got out of the shower, so unless you want to see me naked…”
Marsh reclined in his chair and removed his reading glasses, tossing them on his desk and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ll pass, thanks. Go get dressed.”
A year ago, the casual dismissal by one of the hottest men he’d ever met would’ve stung. Hell, a month ago, it probably still would have smarted, even though Wags was genuinely happy for his friend who’d found love. But after Friday night in the alley, after the past two days of jerking off to the memory of Blaine’s tongue down his throat, of Blaine’s hard body rutting against his, and after how hard he’d come this morning to the fantasy of where that night might have led, Wags just chuckled.
Dressed, he slid into the chair behind his laptop and turned on his camera.
Marsh winced.
“That bad?” Wags said, raking a hand through his wet hair and pushing the overlong strands out of his face.
“You look like hell, Wags.”
“Well, let’s see… I’ve been from Dublin to Istanbul and back again with a dozen stops in between, only to end up in Vienna, of all fucking places.”
“But hey, at least Sean’s penthouse is nice.”
Nice was an understatement. He glanced out the balcony doors of the Old Town penthouse and spied the Stephansdom towers piercing the colorful morning sky. If Philippe knew he was staying here, he’d probably burn those divorce papers. “Tell Sean I said thanks.”
The last box onscreen flickered to life, Brax appearing with a sleeping auburn-haired child sprawled across his chest. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, his hazel gaze straying adoringly to his daughter. “Someone decided she had to sleep right here.” He ran a hand over her back, and when Lily didn’t budge, he lifted his gaze back to the screen. “So Blaine is in Vienna?”
Wags nodded. “As of last Thursday. Maybe longer. One of my contacts sent up a flare, and I hopped on the train from Munich, where we’d last sighted him.”
“You made contact?”
You could say that…
“Friday night. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself before two Bratva goons scared him off.”
Marsh leaned forward and propped his elbows on his desk. “To where this time?” He had a vested interest in making sure Blaine made it back to the States in time to testify against his father. His firsthand account of Stewart’s illegal activities would all but seal the case against the former congressman.
“Can’t say for certain, but none of his known aliases have left the country, and none of my sources are reporting him elsewhere either.”
“Same on our end,” Jax added. “No surveillance of him anywhere.”
“Do we know why he’s in Vienna?” Brax asked.
While Wags hadn’t been able to find Blaine again, he had found a reason for his presence, that thing that had lured him to the very place he shouldn’t be. “There’s an auction in Old Town later today. I sent Jax the details last night. It’s off-book, no names listed, but word is, there are several one-of-a-kind Pinclers in the auction lot.”
Marsh straightened in his chair. “That’s gotta be it.” The handcrafted chess boxes had played a key role in bringing down Charles and Stewart.
