Page 122 of Under Cover
Tienne looked up from the desk in his dorm room, where he sat with his forging equipment, and wondered if he could will the ground to simply swallow him up.
“Josh?” There, large as life—andsixteen—stood the son of his benefactors, along with Josh’s best friend, Dylan “Grace” Li.
Tienne had seen Danny since that night in Marrakech—many times in fact. He’d shown up the daybeforeTienne’s birthday dinner with the rest of the family, or the weekbeforeChristmas. Once a year he showed up a few days after Josh’s birthday, and Tienne had understood that this was part of Danny and Felix’s doomed love affair. Felix and Julia lived in a mansion, raising Josh and Josh’s friend, Grace, while Danny snuck into their home like a thief and spent time with the boy he loved like his own son.
And also with Tienne, whom he treated with kindness and affection and unfailing thoughtfulness.
Tienne would look at him and see his father—not perfect, but kind. Fierce when he was needed to protect his child. Pining for a lover he could never have, although Tienne’s father had lost his mother in death.
He would have gone with Danny, no matter how imperfect his life may have been, but Danny was hoping Tienne could have the family Danny left behind.
Tienne was not good enough for that family. He thought Julia and Felix and Josh lived a fairy tale life—right up until Josh Salinger made his way into Tienne’s dorm room/workshop when Tienne had all his forging equipment laid out on his floor.
“Hey, Tienne,” Grace said, peeking from behind Josh’s shoulder and blinking at him in delight. “Good to see you. You’re a criminal too?”
Josh elbowed him, and as compact and graceful as Julia and Felix’s dark-eyed, dark-haired son may have been, the elbow was no joke. “The only criminal thing I’m going to do today is drop you off a building if you don’t shut up,” he said.
Grace—ethereally beautiful and a constant pain in the ass—smiled with all his teeth. “You promise that and promise that, and not once have I been dropped off a building.” He blinked his tawny eyes at Tienne, and his smile relaxed. “And dropping me off a building doesn’t change the fact that Tienne is here, making fake IDs, when your mother swears he’s an angel who can do no wrong.”
Josh laughed, but the look he turned toward Tienne was kind.
“You couldn’t be that bad if Danny sent you,” he said, and Tienne felt his face turn red.
“How do you know—”
“Danny and I write,” Josh said, surprising Tienne very much. Josh put his finger to his lips. “Shh. It’s supposed to be a secret, but everybody knows. One of those weird family things. Anyway, he asks me how you’re doing and worries because you’re alone. He reallydoeswish you’d take my mother’s invitation to heart, you know. She wouldn’t offer if she didn’t mean it.”
Tienne flushed more and looked away. “I….” He didn’t know how to say that he didn’t know what to do with that much kindness. Instead, he scowled and peered back at Josh through the hair that had grown long again. “But what are you doing here? I…. You… why do you need my services?” he asked finally, resorting to the language of thieves because he had nothing else to explain this.
Josh looked exasperated—but not with Tienne. “Thank God, I got a tip from a guy at our school that ‘some guy at the AI is the best.’ Genius here”—he nodded at Grace—“left our last set of IDs in the club. I had to cancel all the cards I used with them too!”
Tienne blinked, stunned at this level of thievery from someone his age. “Who made you fake cards!” he cried.
“Oh, they were real cards,” Josh said, affronted. “They were made out to fake names. Are you kidding? Felix showed me how to hide my money when I was ten.” He sighed. “I was going to go after Danny, and he was trying to show me how hard it would be to trace him. I learned alotthe summer Danny left.”
Tienne frowned, putting the timeline together. If Josh was sixteen now, and Danny had left when he’d been ten, then he must have been gone the better part of a year before the encounter in the alleyway.
Uneasily, he wondered if Felix and Josh knew how close Danny had come to death that night, on Tienne’s account, and decided he wouldn’t ever tell them.
And then what Josh saidreallycaught up with him.
“Your father knows how to… tolie. To scam? To steal?”
Josh laughed kindly. “Well,yeah. Uncle Danny taught him and my mother all they know. But what you’re doing here….” He trailed off delicately and made motions with his hands.
And Tienne couldn’t help it—this was the first honest thing he’d been allowed to say about his father since he’d arrived in America by plane. “My father did this,” he said. “It kept us fed and gave us money to paint.” Some of his joy faded. “In the end, I think it got him killed.” He shook that off. “But I never knew your family… they would understand.”
Josh crouched down and regarded Tienne closely. “Was that why you never moved in like my mother wanted?”
Tienne shook his head, unable to explain, and Josh let out a sigh. “Never mind,” he said, giving Tienne the uncomfortable feeling that Josh knew much more that he wasn’t telling. “Forgive me for prying. Now, if you could get Grace and me our IDs, and some for Stirling and Molly too—hey, do you do fake credit cards as well?”
Tienne glanced up happily. It was a newly acquired skill. “Indeed!”
“Excellent.” He gave a rather quiet smile then. “And I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to tell my father about your little enterprise. No, no, don’t worry. He won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to do. But that way he’ll be ready with lawyers should you get busted, you know, that sort of thing.”
Tienne sniffed. “Of all the things my father and I worried about, police were not among them.”
“Professional pride,” Josh said, and he and Grace nodded with such understanding, Tienne wondered what sort of “profession” they’d been active in. “We get it. But there can be dangerous people in these gigs, and if Dad knows now, he can help get you out of a mess. And if you keep wanting to do it, he can get you business. All sorts of things. He has friends who need green cards, passports for people who would like to see their families. He really doesn’t like the guy he uses now—says he’s way too seedy, and my dad doesn’t trust him. So if your work is any good….”
“We were the best,” Tienne said without conceit. “It has taken me some time here. Your papers, your electronics, they’re different. But my father was the best, and I worked with him until….” He swallowed. “Until I came here.”
Josh laughed. “Well, excellent. You know, it would figure. I didn’t think Uncle Danny would take someone boring under his wing.”
Tienne had laughed then, taking it as the compliment it was. But as the years progressed, and Felix brought him more and more business, all of it protected under a layer of anonymity, none of it as edgy and dangerous as his father’s business with Kadjic, he came to realize that it had been yet another sally of the Salinger family, trying to let him know he was not alone.
It was not until Danny’s return—and his and Felix’s rather spectacular reunion—that Tienne truly began to take that idea to heart.