Illicit Intent, page 16
“Thanks for getting me, Uncle John.”
“Your father’s ghost would haunt me if I didn’t,” he grinned. “Seamus could forgive a lot of things, but failing to be waiting with a warm greeting and an even warmer shot of whiskey when he walked out of prison was not one of them.”
Patrick looked around the spacious interior of the limousine, then took the glass that John held out for him. He swallowed the whiskey and refilled the glass. As they pulled away, Patrick stared out the window and asked his uncle, “How’s everyone?”
“Good, good. Imogen is due any day. I’m going to be a fecking great grandfather.” He smiled around his whiskey. “Her husband is working for Eoghan. I get the impression Eoghan isn’t impressed. Says the guy spends more time on the golf course than behind his desk. He needs a talking-to.”
“I could have some of my boys pay him a visit.” Patrick grinned.
John scrubbed a hand down his face.
“It was a joke, Uncle John. I’m going straight. I made you a promise. More important, I made myself a promise.”
“That’s good because I got you a job. A friend of mine who’s retired from the force is the head security guard at the Gardner Museum. You know the place? It’s on Evans and Fenway.”
“Never been. Probably drove by it on the way to a Sox game.”
John chuckled. “Yeah, you probably did. Anyway, he was able to fill out the application—omitting some pertinent facts—and you’ve got a job. Night shift to start, but it’s a good job. Easy. Nice pay.”
“Sounds boring,” Patrick said.
“Patrick, you need to thank the Holy Virgin for boring. You hear me?”
“Yeah, sorry Uncle John. I’m grateful, I am. There are worse things in life than getting paid to sleep in a chair.”
“You just spent the last five years learning that lesson.”
“I’m fifty-seven years old. It took me a while, but I get it, I really do. I’m ready for the quiet life.”
“Good man.”
New York City
April 25, present day
Tox stood on Calliope’s doorstep with a smirk. He’d had a long day of meetings, but he wanted to see her. Plus, his ridiculous excuse was too amusing to pass up. Coco was barking up a storm in greeting, and he spied Calliope through the sidelight heading toward the door from the kitchen. She threw open the door and immediately retreated.
“Come in. Come in.”
Tox followed her down the long hall, Coco hot on his heels.
“Your timing couldn’t be better.”
“Why’s that?”
Calliope stood in the kitchen doorway and gestured to the corner where a tiny gray mouse was trapped under a glass bowl. “Help.”
Coco went down to the floor, waiting for the game to begin.
“Shouldn’t you be standing on a chair?” Tox grinned at her.
“Oh, shut up. I’m trying to be this fierce, self-sufficient woman…Argh!!! To be brought down by a stereotype. It’s infuriating.”
Tox set down the small duffle he carried and removed his jacket. He crossed the room, lifted the bowl, and snatched the mouse up in a big fist. “I’ll put him outside.”
“No. You have to kill him. He knows where I live.”
Tox pulled his lips inward to stifle the laugh. “I’m not going to kill Stuart Little.”
Calliope raised a brow. “Don’t be fooled by the innocent act.”
Tox looked down to see a little gray face peeking out of his closed fist, whiskers twitching. “Yeah, he’s a real demon.” He crossed the kitchen, opened the back door, and trotted down the cement steps. Moments later he returned.
“He seems to be heading in another direction so you’re safe.”
Calliope retrieved the bowl on the floor and set it in the sink with a huff. “Probably recruiting his other mouse buddies to invade.” She gave Tox a slow up-and-down. “What brings you by?”
“Oh, I brought back your tube.” He snatched up the duffle he had dropped by the kitchen door and fetched the white plastic tube.
“My tube?”
“Yeah, turns out it won’t work to repair my pipe, so I thought I’d return it.” He gave Calliope an I-know-this-is-a-lame-excuse lopsided smile. “Good thing, too. You can use it for your Habitrail for Mickey and his bangers.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
Tox surveyed the kitchen for the first time and his eyes lit. “You’re cooking?”
“Baking,” she corrected. “I have one living grandparent, my mother’s mother. She’s lived on Aegina her whole life. It’s–”
“I know it.” Aegina was a Greek Island in a part of the world he knew well, from Ukraine to Yemen. “Never been, but I know the area. Some really beautiful spots in the Mediterranean.” Some really ugly ones, too. He boxed up a particularly unpleasant memory from Al Bayda in northern Libya.
“It’s incredible. My yaya’s village is like something out of a nineteenth-century novel—the old men sit outside and complain about the government, the teenagers hawk souvenirs to tourists.” She seemed lost in the memory for a moment. “Anyway, she taught me how to make one thing. Galaktoboureko.”
“Come again?”
She repeated it with a dulcet Greek accent. “Galaktoboureko. It’s a Greek version of a custard pie.”
“I’m listening.”
“We used to make the phyllo dough from scratch. It takes hours, and you have to stretch it a mile long and as thin as paper. She’d hit me with the box if she saw this.” Calliope held up the package of the pre-made pastry. “I don’t make it very much because it’s incredibly sweet and the recipe makes a huge batch, but I love the actual baking. It reminds me of my grandmother and her village. Her kitchen always smells of coffee and cinnamon. Which might explain why, despite the fact that I cannot stand the taste of coffee, I love the smell of it.”
“So this ‘galaxy burrito,’ you say it’s sweet and there’s a lot of it?”
“That’s what you got from the story?”
“I heard it. There was some stuff about cinnamon.”
“What else?”
“A bicycle?”
“There was no bicycle, you lug. Now get over here and help me. You can be my apprentice.”
“Ahhhh, the student has become the master.”
“Can you separate eggs?”
“Sounds easy enough.” He took two eggs from the glass bowl and set one at either end of the island.
“You are a laugh-a-minute. Here.” She placed two bowls in front of him. “Yolks there, whites there.”
Tox fumbled through the first egg, breaking the yolk.
“Here’s the easy way.” Calliope stood close. She cracked an egg on the flat of the granite counter and held it over one of the bowls then she tipped the raw egg into her hand. The white slid through the gaps between her fingers, the yolk remained, nestled gently in the cradle of her palm. She reached across his football field of a chest and deposited the yolk in the other bowl.
“Got it?”
He repeated the procedure while she remained beside him. They both watched intently while the viscous white ran over and through his long fingers and plopped into the bowl beneath. Then he deposited the yolk in the adjacent one.
“It broke.”
“That’s okay. I only try to keep the yolks intact so I can count how many eggs I’ve done. I get a little fizzy in the kitchen.”
“Fizzy?”
“You know.” She made jazz-hands by her head and rolled her eyes. “I’m not the best multitasker.”
“Lucky for you I’m an awesome multitasker. I once triaged a guy while driving.”
She didn’t allow the gravity of the comment to sink in.
“Another opposite. Do we have anything in common?”
“I also hate coffee. I mean I’ll choke it down if I have to, but bleh.” Tox scrunched up his face.
“Right? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. It doesn’t taste good.”
“So, there you go.”
“A relationship built on a mutual hatred of coffee. Could work.”
“Relationship?”
“In the broadest sense of the word,” Calliope hastened. “I mean, I expressed my feelings in the tree and again on our date and was rebuffed. I just meant in terms of two people interacting. Connecting.”
“Interacting. Connecting.” Tox nailed her with a stare that liquified her bones. “And what do you mean by rebuffed?”
“I told you I wanted you to kiss me the other day in the tree, and you said, and I quote, ‘Noted.’”
“Honestly, I was worried I would fall out of the tree if I kissed you up there. You have this way of making me lose my head.”
“So lose it.”
“Yeah, no.”
“And our date the other night?” Calliope asked while returning to her task with a shake of her head. “Lay the sheets of phyllo one at a time in the pan. Brush each sheet with the melted butter. Here.”
She handed him the brush. Rather than taking it, he took her. With one hand at her nape and the other on the small of her back, he planted a kiss…on her forehead.
“Miller Buchanan. So help me God, I will knee you in the nuts and friend zone you for all eternity if you don’t…”
The rest of the sentence was trapped in her mouth by Tox’s lips. He kissed her with surprising finesse, exploring her lips with gentle pressure before coaxing her mouth open with a sweep of his tongue. He spun her and pressed her back to the stainless-steel door of the refrigerator. He had to bend slightly to reach her and she arched her back to fill the gap. He pulled on her lower lip with gentle teeth and worked his way down her jaw to her neck. In the nook at her clavicle, he inhaled through his nose then bit her again with enough force to drive her to her toes.
Each part of her body pushed against his at the upward motion, providing a detailed topography of the man she embraced. If her eyes had been open, they would have popped out of their sockets. She rubbed against him as he returned to her mouth, gliding his tongue in and out as he held her, simultaneously creating and easing an ache within her.
Tox called time. He held her by the shoulders at arm’s length. He was breathing hard, his pupils blown, his face flushed, and yet, something about the kiss had been guarded. It was nothing Calliope could articulate, more of a feeling she had. The kiss was intense, passionate… polished. That was the word that bothered her. It was a Hollywood kiss—the perfect use of lips and tongue. It had left her reeling, but something told her Tox unleashed would be a whole lot messier and a whole lot hotter.
Calliope stood stunned by his restraint; she was about to haul him to her bedroom, baking be damned. She was drowning in a haze of want, but Tox had broken the spell.
“Between the sheets?” Tox asked, his voice rough.
“Okay,” she murmured.
“What?”
“What?” she repeated.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Hmm? Never mind.” What were we talking about?
“Brush the butter between the sheets?” He couldn’t hide the smirk that crept across his face.
Calliope wouldn’t be cowed quite so easily. She composed herself on a deep inhale.
“Yes. Long, smooth strokes. You want the sheets to glisten.” She licked her lips.
Tox cleared his throat. “Copy that.”
He took a step back and turned to the island, sliding the baking pan around so he stood at the short end of the counter, concealing his lower body. The grace of the movement broke when the pan hit the bowl of uncracked eggs, upending it and sending eggs rolling across the granite, a few dropping to the floor with a splat. Calliope stifled a snort as Tox scrambled to retrieve them, dropping another as it squirted from his palm. She grabbed some paper towels and bent to clean up the mess.
“From Mexican soap opera to Japanese game show in the blink of an eye.”
Tox just stared at the top of her head as she gathered the shells and mopped up the mess. Calliope’s response was a unique combination of practical and emotional, efficient and amused. Tox was always either one or the other. He envied that ability in her, briefly saddened that it was a trait he seemed to lack. So, true to form, the practical side took over, and he went back to buttering pastry.
When the custard was prepared and poured and the pan placed in the oven to bake, Calliope grabbed a copper saucepan from the hanging rack. She moved from the cupboard to the pantry, from the sink to the stove, from the refrigerator to the counter.
“You really are a hummingbird.”
Calliope wiped some custard from her fingers with a dishtowel. “You know, I’ve never actually seen one?”
“A hummingbird?”
She spoke as she rifled through a spice rack hanging on the wall. “I thought I saw one once hiking in the Peruvian Andes, but it was just a really big bug. I’ve seen videos and stuff, but never live and in person.”
She lifted one shoulder and returned to her task. “Damn, I forgot the nutmeg.”
Tox quirked a brow.
“It’s not traditional but my grandmother puts a pinch of nutmeg and some orange zest in the syrup that goes on top. She’d put her fingers to the side of her mouth like she was sharing something top secret, and then she’d whisper to me, ‘panta megalyteri gefsi,’ always more flavor. She said her galaktoboureko kept her husband’s fire lit for forty years.”
“Well then, nutmeg it is. You stay where you are if that’s even possible. I’ll get it. Where do I go?”
“There’s a specialty store on Henry Street, about three blocks up. It has bunches of dried peppers hanging from the awning. You can’t miss it. Get the whole seeds. I like to grate it myself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Here.” She fished a spare key from a hook on the pantry door and dropped it in his open palm.
He dropped a quick kiss on her lips and headed for the door. “I’ll take Coco. She’s scratching at the door.”
Calliope stood there for a moment and pressed her hand to her mouth. In a strange way that parting kiss had floored her more than the scorching kiss he had delivered the first time. It was intimate in an entirely different way. She imagined that kiss as they parted ways on a street corner or as he left the table at a restaurant to grab drinks at the bar. It was the type of kiss bred from familiarity and reassurance. And she liked it more than she cared to admit.
Tox leashed up Coco and disappeared out the door. She smiled after him and set about cleaning the mess from their baking and settled into her Tox fantasy. A few minutes later, a nondescript sound had her looking up. She was instantly startled from her daydream by the three frighteningly familiar men standing in her kitchen, and a fourth who looked even more menacing than the others.
The one in front who Calliope recognized as the man from the paint company van plucked up the white plastic cylinder Tox had returned. Without looking at it, he banged it on the wooden farm table twice, causing Calliope to jump and tremble. Then he hurled it across the room where it bounced off the wall with a bang and rolled to a stop at the base of the kitchen island.
“Let’s all stay calm.” The man she assumed to be the leader urged Painter-Man to stand down. “Do what you’re told, and you won’t get hurt.”
“What do you want?”
“Unlock your phone.”
“What?”
“Question my instructions again and I’ll cut off your thumb and use it to unlock it myself.” His associate brandished an evil-looking hunting knife.
Calliope unlocked the new iPhone she had purchased to replace the one that had disappeared from her armband the day she was chased by these very men. She spun the device toward them. Painter-Man jerked his head to the side by way of ordering Thug Two to retrieve the phone. After snatching it off the kitchen island, Thug Two opened Calliope’s photos.
“It’s empty.” Thug Two held up the screen showing the boss the empty folder.
“This isn’t the right phone.” The head honcho spun the phone back to her.
“It’s a new phone. I haven’t taken any pictures or downloaded my old ones.”
“Where is the old phone?”
Truth be told, she didn’t exactly know. It had fallen out of her armband at some point during her harrowing run. She flashed for a moment to the suspicious neighbor. He had squeezed her arm right over the phone case as he had walked away. It didn’t really matter at this point. Like Socrates, all she knew was that she knew nothing.
“Danny, I think our girl has too many fingers. They’re distracting her from answering my questions.”
Thug Two, the Danny Thug, nodded. He started walking around the kitchen island toward Calliope. Painter-Man headed the other way to cut her off, tapping the serrated steel blade on the counter in a slow, steady rhythm. Calliope glanced toward the only unguarded exit, and the leader moved to the back of the room to stand by the back door. “You’re not leaving until I get the phone you were using that night. How many pieces you leave in is up to you.”
Thug Three stood at the opening between the kitchen and dining room, a perverse look of excitement on his face as Thug Two grabbed her wrist and pressed her palm to the counter. A scream froze in her throat.
“Wait, wait. Please just give me a second. Take my phone. Take the broken work phone in the junk drawer. Take whatever you want.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
The next sixty seconds were a complete blur.
A black shadow streaked across the floor and felled Thug Two. Calliope watched as Coco, still dragging her leash, latched her fierce jaw around the man’s throat, dripping saliva and growling like a wild beast. The man lay frozen, for fear that any slight movement would cause the dog to complete the bite through his neck.
Thug Three took a step forward to see if he could help his comrade. Unwilling to tangle with the rottweiler, he simply stood and watched. Tox slipped silently through the open pocket doors that separated the dining room from the kitchen and knocked the man unconscious with a vicious blow to the temple. Calliope snatched up her phone and called 911. By the time she looked up, the leader had disappeared out the back door.
