Page 1 of Steinbeck (The Minnesota Kingstons #5)

ONE

What if this was the rest of his life?

Sweaty, covered in grime, reeking of frustration, rooting around the dungeon of his father’s workshop, hunting for, well, in this case, a battery.

But Steinbeck might as well have been hunting for his future. For hope. For anything that could jostle loose a fragment of a lead as to where?—

“You find it yet?”

His brother Jack stood in the open doorway, an outline against the bright light of the hot August day, the scant breeze off the lake not enough to stir the heat of the old shed.

Humidity sheened Jack’s skin, plastering to it the sawdust and woodchips that also littered Stein’s slickened skin.

The place smelled of its vintage, humble beginnings as a wooden garage built in the thirties.

Stein longed for the fresh, salty breezes of the ocean. “No. Are you sure Dad kept the extra battery in here?”

In here might have been a vague term, given the mess of tools that were scattered across the worn, chipped workbench, intermingling with old gum wrappers, rusty nails, oily bolts, crumpled sandpaper, and tangled wire.

“He said it’s here.”

Steinbeck shook his head, pushing against the old drawer until it groaned against its runner, caught, and wedged sideways.

He gave it another shove, but it only jerked and stuck again, and he bit back a word as he lifted his hands in surrender.

“For the love. I don’t know how he can find anything in this disaster.

” He pulled the drawer back out and reworked it in.

Then opened the one below it. “This is like walking into a time warp. Grandpa’s been gone for years, and still”—he pulled out an aftermarket service manual of a 1973 Alfa Romeo Spider, the pages coffee stained and wrinkled, as if the old man had set one of his cracked I Love Minnesota mugs on it while studying the schematic of the dual side-draft carburetor that had endlessly plagued him—“it smells like stale coffee and old oil in here.”

“And varnish and dirt. Grandpa must have spent thousands of hours in here. Wow, I miss him.” Jack came into the room, shirtless, wearing a pair of paint-stained khaki shorts and beat-up runners. “Forget the battery. We’ll recharge the one we have.”

“I wanted to get the table done today.” Steinbeck closed the drawer and shoved past Jack into the sunlight and beyond, to the shade of the towering cottonwoods and birch that arched over the maintenance area of the King’s Inn compound.

A twelve-foot table, handmade, stained white, awaiting a second layer of sanding, stood on the cracked concrete driveway.

The story of Steinbeck’s life—another unfinished project.

Finally a breeze, and he stopped, hands on his hips, staring out across the impossibly lush, meticulously kept back lawn— good job, Jack —to the deep indigo lake, where a handful of guests sat on the long dock or in lounge chairs on the sandy beach.

The perfect getaway. Or prison, depending on your view.

The wind skimmed over his body, the scent, just barely lifting from the lake, carrying with it not only the white pine but the aroma of his mother’s fresh-baked bread in the kitchen of the nearby Victorian home-slash-inn.

Steinbeck’s stomach growled.

“You’re a real peach today,” Jack said, turning his ball cap around.

Stein’s brother needed a haircut and maybe a shave, but he’d been spending long hours at a nearby rented garage, working hard remodeling a city-bus-turned-mobile-home, so maybe he didn’t care about his appearance.

Stein could nearly smell the wanderlust emanating from his older brother.

“No word on your missing friend?” Jack asked.

Missing. Friend. Two words that didn’t exactly describe Phoenix. First—not missing but captured . Imprisoned, and yes, missing because, according to his contacts, no one had seen her since she landed in Cuban custody nearly a month ago.

His gut tightened. She was valuable. And tough. And would hold out?—

Nope. He blew out a breath. “She’s not my friend . We worked together.”

Jack had walked over to the table, started to wipe off the last layer of sawdust with a clean rag. “Yep.”

“Really. We knew each other—well, in a different life.”

“When you were active duty.”

Steinbeck grabbed a thermos of water, took a drink. It went down cool in his throat, loosened the simmer in his chest. “Yeah. Met her on an op in Poland.”

Jack stood up. “Wait—not the?—”

“Yes. That one.” Stein capped the bottle. “The one with the bomb and where I woke up in Germany, my knees blown out.” Only when his body soaked in the sun, like now, could anyone see the straight-line scars down both knees.

“Was she there?” Jack had stood up, shaking out the rag. “At the bombing?”

“Yep.” Stein ran his hand along the tabletop. It needed at least two more coats of stain, plus sanding, but his mother would have the outside table she’d hoped for when she’d plunked down the plans to her oldest sons last weekend.

Maybe he’d finish one project. And he was determined to finish it today, if he could just find that battery in all this mess.

Jack had retrieved his water too. He had spent the last few years as a hero, searching for the lost, before returning home last winter.

And now he was sticking around to take over maintenance duties at the inn while their younger brother Doyle found a fresh wind down in the Caribbean, finally restarting his life.

Out of all of them, Doyle deserved a happy ending.

“So you ran into her again?” Jack said after taking a drink.

“Down in Mariposa when I was working for Declan, and then yeah, a month ago when I went to visit Austen.” Not entirely true, but he had seen Austen.

Well, more than seen her. He’d helped rescue her from Cuban pirates, and maybe gotten in over his head in said country, an escapade that had ended poorly.

And landed Phoenix in Cuban custody. It wasn’t his fault, maybe, but... “Let’s just say...”

“No man left behind.” Jack met his gaze. “She means something to you.”

“No. She’s... Like you said, I don’t leave people behind.”

“Mm-hmm,” Jack said.

“I just need to find her. Make sure she’s safe. That’s all.”

“That’s all.” Jack smiled. “So, you’re right. Not a friend.” He took another drink.

Stein shook his head, but for a second, he stood in the shadows of a Spanish-style hotel in Old Havana, Phoenix’s voice soft. “I think you should kiss me.”

No, no , he should not?—

“You okay, bro? You look like you just got bodychecked.” Jack was staring at him.

Right. “Yeah. The fact is, I’ve run into a dead end. I can’t find her. And I know... just know she’s in trouble.”

Jack’s mouth tightened. “Okay, let me see what you’ve got.”

Stein stilled. “Yeah?” And maybe he shouldn’t turn to his brother with so many secrets—but it wasn’t like trouble, as in any of the Russians he suspected of taking her, would show up in Minnesota, at the door of the King’s Inn.

“Okay. My computer is back at the Norbert.”

Jack’s house, a.k.a. private family quarters, a.k.a. part of the family parcel of four homes that encompassed the entirety of the King’s Inn property. All Victorian homes built by their great-great-grandfather, a newspaper baron back in the Gilded Age.

Stein climbed into the driver’s seat of the golf cart, and Jack hopped in on the other side, and they rumbled over to the Norbert, smaller than the main house, but with the same charming apron porch, a turret, five bedrooms, and a small top-floor ballroom, of course.

They pulled up, and Stein headed inside, then up the stairs to his room, the one with the alcove window that overlooked the lake, and grabbed his computer from the writing desk.

He went back downstairs to the kitchen with the oval oak table, where Jack was slathering mayo on bread, making himself a ham sandwich.

“I’ll take one of those,” Stein said and sat at the table, booting up his computer. Then he got up and pulled an ice pack from the freezer, wrapped it in a towel, and set it on one of his knees. The cold seeped in and eased the swelling.

He pulled up his latest scan of the Havana port shipyards, looking like a grainy 1970s movie scene, complete with swarthy dockworkers, old Russian GAZ trucks, and ragged palm trees. He half expected Hemingway to saunter onto the screen.

Jack came over, leaned down over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“I have a hacker friend who got me into a feed of the port. I’ve been going over footage, trying to find a glimpse of her.”

“Why?” Jack returned to the counter.

“I thought she was arrested by Cuban officials, but there’s no record of her arrest.” He opened another file, clicked on the video feed of the few days after she was detained.

“Declan used all of his political power, and I even tapped”—well, maybe Jack didn’t need to know that their cousin Colt worked for an off-the-books government agency—“a friend who has connections. She’s not in the system, period. ”

“So where is she?” Jack set a sandwich on a napkin in front of Stein.

“Thanks. Not sure. She might have escaped, but my gut says she was taken by the Russian mob. Maybe put on a ship.”

Silence, a whole beat, and he glanced at Jack as he picked up the sandwich.

“To Russia?” Jack said. “The mob? Really?”

“Mm-hmm.” Stein took a bite, let the video scroll. Grainy and black-and-white. Mostly forklifts moving crates down the long pier, another shot of cranes lifting shipping containers onto cargo ships.

Please, God, don’t let her be in one of those containers.

“We ran into mob-types in our escape from Cuba, and they even pirated Declan’s ship?—”

“Your life is like an action movie.”

He glanced at Jack. “You do see me in the kitchen, eating lunch, icing my knee, covered in sawdust?” He raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a time-out.”

“My entire life reduced to waiting for a battery to charge.” He glanced at the screen. “She’s gone. Vanished into the cogs of the Russian Mafia and... I’m sitting here eating a ham sandwich.”