Page 9 of The Deeper Game (The Kinky Bank Robbers #3)

“Never with anyone else, baby. Ever.” Thor looked hard into my eyes and reached for my hand. “This thing is as real as it gets.”

This happy feeling of warmth came over me, and I smiled.

Being with my guys felt like being held in the most wonderful way, like being surrounded by an invisible cocoon of love and support from the fiercest and most amazing men on the planet.

Even if I was out somewhere alone, I felt held like that.

I sometimes couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

Thor squeezed my hand. “Anyway, Zeus told Bolo to fuck off, and Bolo got a little creepy about it.”

“Creepy how?”

Thor just shook his head.

“I want to know,” I said. “Don’t infantilize me. We’re partners.”

Thor let go of my hand and watched a squirrel run up one of the tall trees in front of the porch.

“Demeaning. Dehumanizing toward you. As if it shouldn’t matter what you want, or what we want.

Like it’s just a porn thing, what we’ve got going.

It was almost as if Bolo thought he had a right to you.

As though we had a duty to share you. That was Zeus’s impression.

He would’ve put Bolo in the hospital if Odin hadn’t been there to break it up. ”

“He attacked him?”

“Let’s just say Zeus corrected him in his thinking. We thought that was that.”

“You should have told me,” I said. “Does this sort of thing happen a lot?”

“Only the one time,” Thor said.

“So you think it’s him?”

“It seems likely.”

“Is he…what’s his background?” I asked. Meaning criminal background.

“Zeus went into his records. He’s been in for auto theft. He’s a car guy. Odin says car guys are more likely to be predatory, though. It’s not on his record, but it doesn’t mean it’s not in his background. Criminal records tend to reflect less than eight percent of a person’s actual crimes.”

“How do you get a survey like that? Did somebody at Guvvey’s do it?”

“Something like that.”

“Maybe we have to stop doing public stuff,” I said.

The squirrel perched on a tree branch in a kind of waiting mode. The Pacific Ocean sparkled in tiny bright blue patches through the branches.

“Not like we ever start out meaning to do public stuff,” he said.

“We could stop groping each other in public places,” I suggested.

Thor looked at me like I was bonkers.

I smiled.

“Whoever left the package,” he said, “they’ll be made an example of.”

“What does made an example of mean?” I asked.

“Whatever Zeus and Odin decide it means,” Thor said. “They’ll find this guy.”

“Maybe it’s a sign,” I said. “Your hideout’s been here for a while. People are getting to know us.”

“Are you on the Jerba thing again?” he asked.

“There’s a bad apple in the barrel,” I said.

“And we’ll find it and take it out.” Thor patted his lap. “Put your feet up here.”

“I don’t feel like fucking,” I said.

Thor gave me a mock angry look.

“I don’t.”

“Do you not feel like getting your feet rubbed?”

“Yes,” I said. “Wait, no.” I put up my feet. “Whatever answer gets a foot rub.” He started squishing the balls of my feet. I groaned. “Uhhhhh.” The man knew his bones.

Ten minutes and two jelly feet later, I was scanning through diagrams of feathers.

“Crap,” he said, tapping his iPad.

“What?” I asked.

“One of the midwives I back up in Santa Rosa. A risky breech baby delivery.” He started typing. “It would be fine for her to have the baby at home if it wasn’t a breech and if she didn’t have so many health complications.”

“Can’t she go to the clinic?”

“She won’t. Trouble with the law,” he mumbled, typing an email, presumably. “The midwives have been trying to turn the baby, but it’s a no go. I want to help her.” He tapped one last time and sat back. “I feel like she’s family—an outlaw sister. But I was hoping this would be better news.”

“How long until labor?”

“We’ve got three weeks, maybe four. I’m going down there after the Prime. I’ve stashed oxygen and a new monitor with them.”

Thor was so much calmer and way less reckless now that he was making a difference for people. His volunteer work in the clinic meant the world to him.

“Progress on the feather?”

“I’m stumped. It doesn’t match anything online. I mean, it sort of does, but the afterfeather part isn’t quite a pigeon.”

“Looks like we’re taking a trip to the university.”

“Oh, come on. I know you’re keeping me busy so that I don’t worry.”

He stood. “Everything’s important.”

An hour later, we were standing in the cool basement of a large university building asking directions to the ornithology lab from a young woman with a short afro and a tie-dyed shirt.

“There isn’t an ornithology lab,” she informed us.

“How about an ornithology grad student?” I asked.

“We’re paying cash for an ID on a feather,” Thor said.

The woman tilted her head quizzically. “How much?”

“How about three hundred?” Thor asked.

She paused in a way that suggested that was either a very good price or a very bad price. “Yeah, you can get an ID for that,” she said finally.

Good price, then.

She led us to a hallway lined with doors, eventually stopping at one that was covered with cartoons that looked like they were cut out of a newspaper. Most of them were about mountain lions.

“He’s a panther guy,” she explained, “but he knows birds. You have to know birds as a panther guy because panthers eat birds.”

Thor seemed amused by that.

The door was opened by a wiry, outdoorsy looking kid who appeared to be no older than sixteen. “What’s the blood on this?” he asked, examining the feather through the baggie.

“We’re running it. Pig’s blood, we think,” Thor explained. “It was left as a prank, so to speak.”

The guy put the feather under a microscope. “Huh. Not…entirely common.”

“I need everything interesting you can tell me about it.” Thor pulled out a wad of twenties and shelled out $300 to the panther guy and another bunch of money to the woman who found him for us.

“This is really generous,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You need your answer in a hurry or something?” the panther guy asked. “I’ll have to run a very specific round of tests on this one. How does seventy-two hours sound?”

“Can you give it to us in the next forty-eight hours?” He slapped a few more bills onto the table.

The panther guy smiled. Nothing like doing business with bank robbers.