Page 6 of The Bounty (Redemption Inc.)

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.

“Catherine confirmed,” Jax said. Catherine, Charles’s granddaughter, had eventually turned state’s evidence, and they could consult with her when items such as these made an appearance.

“I was able to cobble together a tentative lot list. I’m pushing that through to the encrypted chat now.

The rest of the items are from the Sanders estate in Salzburg. ”

Wags opened the encrypted document, scratching his scruffy jaw as he scanned the list. Nothing jumped out on his first read-through, but on his second pass, he noticed the item out of place among the other treasures at the same time as Marsh, both of them declaring, “The diary.”

“In Japanese,” Wags added, noting the crucial fact. “Blaine’s mother’s?”

“If I had to guess,” Marsh agreed with a nod. “Claudia Anthony’s father was from Japan. She was fluent. Blaine is too.”

“So let’s assume Blaine is after his mother’s diary. Sentimental value or…”

“ Or ,” Marsh stressed. “Blaine wants to put his father away for good. When Levi and I questioned him last year, he implied his father had something to do with Claudia’s death. That he’d threatened to do the same to Blaine if he didn’t toe the line.”

“But hasn’t Stewart implied the opposite?” Brax said. “That struggles with Blaine at home drove Claudia to suicide?”

Marsh side-eyed his best friend. “I know which Anthony I believe.”

Wags agreed. “Blaine must think there’s proof of his father’s guilt in that diary.”

“Couldn’t he just forge it?” Jax said. “It’s what he does—and he does it incredibly well.”

“He probably wants it for sentimental value too,” Marsh said. “We got the impression he and Claudia were close.”

A united front against his father, until Stewart had silenced one of them and used it to deter the other.

And Wags had thought his father was an arsehole for cutting him off and throwing him out for being gay.

But in no scenario could he imagine his father, as awful as he was, going as far as murder or blackmail.

“Do we think he’ll turn himself in once he has the diary?” Brax asked.

“He went willingly into custody before,” Marsh said. “And stayed there.”

“Until he didn’t,” Wags said, “otherwise I wouldn’t have been traipsing across Europe for the past month.”

“That’s not on us,” Brax said at the same time as Marsh’s, “He bribed one of the custodial officers with bitcoin and a blowjob.”

Wags’s stomach flipped, his nighttime fantasy twisting and contorting into something darker. Was he just another mark? Had Blaine simply been doing what he usually did? Bribing and flirting his way to freedom?

“He wants out of this mess,” Marsh said, drawing Wags’s attention back to him. “Then he wants to move on.”

“Move on to what?” Wags asked.

When silence greeted him, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. “He’s not just a bounty, is he? He’s a prospective asset for Redemption Inc.”

“We all have a vested interest in bringing Blaine home,” Brax said. “Safe and sound.”