The Two Gentlemen of Altona (Playing the Fool, #1) Read online

  And rightly so. Because for all his good intentions, Henry didn’t really believe it himself. A lot could happen between now and the trial, and Henry’s good intentions were usually the first thing he jettisoned in a crisis. “You never get involved in something where you can’t just walk away,” Stacy had instructed him once. Good advice.

  Mac leveled a stare at him.

  Henry dropped his gaze back to the sketch artist’s pad. “Oh, and did I mention he only had one eye?”

  Her head snapped up.

  “One eye, a massive scar across his right cheek, and a hook for a hand.”

  The woman looked aghast.

  “Henry.” Mac’s tone was patient, but it nonetheless carried a note of gentle warning.

  Not really a teenager, Mac. Can’t ground me.

  “Sorry. It just, um, it just stops making sense after a while, you know?”

  “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Nobody expects miracles.”

  “It would probably be more miraculous if I had a sugar hit,” Henry suggested.

  “Is that so? Are you planning on blowing my budget on junk food?”

  “Sugar is good for shock,” Henry told him. “That’s why in old movies, if somebody is in shock, they always give them a very sweet, milky tea. If it’s a woman, they slap her too, but that’s probably not medically recommended.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Mac sighed. “When you’re done here, I’ll take you to the candy machine.”

  Oh, a treat if he was a good boy! Seriously, what the hell was it about this outfit? Maybe Mac was less I-don’t-know-if-I-want-to-punch-you-or-fuck-you and a little bit more I-don’t-know-if-I-want-to-fuck-you-or-tuck-you-in. Which was fine. Henry could work with both.

  Mac stared at the CCTV screen. Henry hadn’t moved in ages, and Mac couldn’t shake the impression that he was some sort of master illusionist, and if Mac raced in there now, he’d find Henry had vanished. He breathed a sigh of relief as Henry raised his arm to take another bite of his chocolate bar.

  Shit. He was losing it.

  “Hey.” Val came up beside him. “Still watching The Henry Page Show?”

  “Don’t want to miss a moment.”

  Val watched the screen. “I’d push again for moving him to a safe house, but I see now why we want him close.”

  He glanced at her. “My fault he escaped. He probably would be more secure in a safe house.”

  “Nah. Could’ve happened to any of us.”

  “Except he’d already played me once. Can’t believe I fucking fell for it again.”

  “Mac,” Val said softly. He suddenly flashed back to the night after Jimmy Rasnick’s arrest. They’d celebrated at Mac’s place, on the thin, blue-gray carpet in the living room, the kind of carpet in libraries or waiting rooms. At the time, Mac was questioning his sexuality and Val was questioning how much tequila she could drink without passing out.

  Maybe questioning wasn’t the right word. He had known he liked guys. But it seemed impossible to be attracted to cock for so long and almost never get any. He’d met gay guys in college who’d had sex every night. Every fucking night; sometimes with more than one person. He hadn’t wanted that lifestyle for himself, exactly, but he was curious about it. He’d asked a guy in his dorm, who’d steered him toward a local bar and said, “You don’t find them. They come to you. And on you, and in you . . .”

  Then he’d given Mac one of those looks Mac hated—the kind where a guy sized him up and then just smirked instead of telling him what he was thinking. Mac didn’t have time for bullshit. Didn’t have time for flirting or clubbing or code words. He wanted a man who was stoic, practical. A guy who liked sex, but whose world didn’t revolve around it. He didn’t even have to be all that smart. His female friends had boyfriends who lounged on the sofa and watched football. Who liked beer, not wine, and talked about trade rumors rather than politics.

  He didn’t meet guys like that in the so-called “gay community.” And even on the rare occasions he went to gay bars, men seemed to pass him over. Mac didn’t think he was ugly. But he must have given out a sour, old-before-his-time vibe that repelled men. And yet women liked him. Most of his coworkers were too professional to flirt on the job—or that’s what he’d told himself, before he’d seen Calvin putting the moves on Penny—but outside of work, women smiled at him. They approached him in bars, or gave him a second glance at least.

  And Val, hell, they worked great together. They shared a preference for work over socializing, and they were both driven, sharp, and willing to forgo personal lives to do things like catch Jimmy Rasnick. Jimmy fucking Rasnick. There was a guy who could give Henry some pointers on disappearing. The night Mac and Val celebrated catching him, Mac had felt so fucking close to Val. Not necessarily in a sexual way, just aware that they’d done something brilliant together, that their hard work had paid off. That they’d actually made the world a slightly better place.

  And he’d started to wonder, somewhere in the back of his mind, if he did like women. Maybe he’d just never given them a fair shake. The rest of his thoughts after that hadn’t been terribly articulate. He’d voiced the possibility that he was bi, and Val had giggled—possibly for the first time in her life—and then they were kissing.

  Bad idea. Such a bad idea.

  But at least he knew now that he really was gay.

  He looked at Val. “What have we found out about him? Juvie record?” There had to be a juvie record. It would be an interesting one too. Kids who grew up to be Henry Pages didn’t set cats on fire or smash mailboxes. They didn’t like to get their hands dirty. But shoplifting was usually a good bet.

  “I don’t do guns, Mac. I hate guns.”

  No, but you do plenty of other shit, don’t you?

  He watched Henry finish the chocolate bar.

  “Don’t know. Does his juvie record matter now? Witness, not a prisoner.” Val raised her eyebrows when he looked at her. “Right?”

  “Right. Just curious.”

  “Curious.”

  He didn’t like the way she said it. Maybe she didn’t mean anything by it; maybe he was just projecting. But he didn’t need anyone thinking he was personally curious about Henry. His interest was strictly professional. “So.” He was hoping to change the subject. “How’d Maxfield’s guy know Henry was at the motel?”

  “Someone’s either been following Henry or following us.”

  “You don’t think there’s any chance he staged this?” He didn’t really think so, but with Henry, it didn’t hurt to consider every possibility.

  “Henry? Why would he?”

  “Who knows what that kid’s capable of? Quite a coincidence. He escapes a guy with a gun. He escapes just as we’re arriving.” But Henry hadn’t been faking his fear in the aftermath, Mac was sure of it. And he had taken just the slightest bit of pride in rescuing Henry. He didn’t want to find out he’d been played for a fool.

  Val put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe it’s time for a break.”

  He watched the monitor. “Why’d he keep the phone long enough for us to find him? He’s smarter than that.”

  “I don’t know, Mac. Want to talk about it tomorrow?”

  He wanted to talk about it now. Wanted to talk about how every once in a while he thought he saw something genuine in Henry Page. And then the next moment, he was questioning everything, wondering if that kid on the screen with the wild hair and ridiculous ripped-up shirt was some evil puppet master who held the strings to the entire universe. Feeling like everything he did or said, no matter how spontaneous, was somehow playing right into Henry’s hands.

  “Better yet,” Val said, “we can talk to him about it tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I’ll head out in a few minutes.”

  Val left. He watched Henry, waiting for something to happen. For the holding cell to explode, for Henry to walk through the walls. For him to show up suddenly behind Mac, and for Mac to realize the person on the screen was an imposter, or a Disneylan
d animatronic.

  But all he saw was a lost kid balling up his candy bar wrapper and then opening his hand to look at it, over and over again.

  Mac was late to work the next morning. Which wasn’t like him, but he’d caught a shitty three hours of sleep, overshot the alarm by forty minutes, and had woken up craving coffee. He’d ransacked every cupboard in the kitchen like a drug addict, in case there was a package of dark roast he’d missed back when he’d trashed his stock. Nothing. He’d eaten grapes and a piece of whole wheat toast, his bitterness increasing with every bite.

  His sister, Libby, called while he was in the car, but he didn’t trust himself to talk to her in this mood. Much as he would have liked to ask how she and Brian and Cory were doing. He had a bad habit of using his job as an excuse for letting family fall by the wayside, but damn it, he was busy. He had a sudden vision of himself dying alone in his house with a faded newspaper picture of Jimmy Rasnick staring down at him.

  He parked and made himself breathe deeply a couple of times before getting out of the car.

  When he walked into the office, he heard . . . singing?

  Yep. Everyone was clustered around one of the corner cubicles, and they were all singing “Happy Birthday” to an uncertain but pleased-looking Alex Kingsley. Alex was the forensic accountant. Professor-ish and thick jawed, with a bulky pair of glasses even Henry couldn’t have pulled off, he was easy to overlook. And he seemed to like it that way. At least, that was Mac’s excuse for not talking to him much.

  But looking at Alex now, it was clear he was at least partly grateful for the attention.

  No one who was singing was particularly in tune, except for one person, who had a decent voice. Turned out that was Henry, leaning casually against the inside wall of the cubicle and waving his fingers like a conductor.

  A cake sat on Alex’s desk. A bakery-fresh, decorated cake that said, Happy Birthday, Alex.

  Mac’s head hurt. And it hurt worse with every second the singing went on. He scanned the small crowd for Val, but didn’t see her. She was the only one he trusted to tell him what the fuck, exactly, was going on.

  He strode over to the cubicle just as they finished the song. “What is this?” he demanded. A few of his coworkers looked up nervously. Henry, smirking in the corner, didn’t look nervous at all. He wasn’t wearing makeup anymore. His hair was tamed, and he was wearing his glasses again.

  “It’s, uh, Alex’s birthday,” Jeff said.

  Mac gestured at Henry. “What is he doing up here?”

  “Mac.” Penny stepped toward him, moving a little stiffly. “Val had asked me to show Henry some pictures from our files. See if one of them was the guy from the motel.”

  “And then we were wondering what to do about Alex’s birthday,” Jeff added.

  “We were just gonna do lunch or something,” Lina said. “But then Henry had this idea . . .”

  “I have a friend who owns a bakery.” Henry grinned at Mac. “And she’s got this thing, it’s a cake emergency hotline—”

  “Come here,” Mac interrupted, pointing in front of him. “Right now.”

  Henry’s gaze slid over Mac, then he straightened and walked over. Mac grabbed him by the upper arm and pulled him slightly away from the cubicles. He didn’t make any real effort to ensure they had privacy before he started in on Henry. “I have seriously had it, Henry. I’ve had enough.”

  “You just got here,” Henry said, mock-placatingly. “Eat some cake. Relax.”

  “You think this is funny?” Mac didn’t care if the whole fucking building heard him. “You’re not supposed to be up here hanging out with my coworkers.”

  “But see, they invited me—”

  “You’re supposed to be in your cell, because you can’t be trusted anywhere else. Because you’re a liar, Henry. You may think you’re better than people like Maxfield because you don’t go around blowing people’s brains out, but you’re still a fucking criminal. You hurt people.”

  Henry stared at him. Opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again. “Does this mean I can’t stay for cake? Because I called dibs on one of the frosting roses.”

  He let go of Henry’s arm. “Stay. Stay for all I care. I don’t give a shit where you go, or what happens to you. I’m through playing this pathetic fucking game.”

  He turned and headed for his office. Passed the crowd at Alex’s cubicle without looking at any of them. Once he was inside, he shut the door hard and leaned against it.

  Outside, he heard Henry raise his voice. “Okay, guys, let’s take it from the top! And a one, and a two, and a . . .”

  The singing started up again.

  He closed his eyes. He wanted to strangle the guy.

  Henry was playing the entire office, so why the hell was Mac the only one who looked like a fool?

  If Henry had known that being in FBI custody would be so much fun, he might have let himself get arrested before. He’d had plenty of opportunities. He sat on the edge of Dwayne’s desk, holding a piece of cake in a napkin. Good cake too, but he’d known it would be.

  “So.” Lina sidled up next to him and stared at him intently from behind her glasses. “You read Shakespeare.”

  He gave her his most charming smile. “Everyone should read Shakespeare.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Sure, but not everyone should live it.”

  His smile widened. “Ah, I’ve been busted!”

  By a linguist though. No shame in that.

  “Richard Falstaff,” she said, counting them off her fingers, “Toby Seacoal, and Henry Page. All names mixed and matched from Shakespearean plays.”

  “Not many people would pick up on that.” Henry was genuinely impressed.

  “Well, I might not have,” Lina admitted, “if I hadn’t seen you reading Shakespeare in your cell. You don’t choose the glaringly obvious ones.”

  He laughed. “Caliban Dogberry! Can you imagine?”

  “Benvolio Bottom,” Lina offered.

  “Now that would get me some interesting offers, I’m sure.” He sucked frosting off his fingers. “Have you told Mac?”

  “He should be reading his email any minute now.”

  He wondered how Mac would take it. On balance, he reflected, probably not well at all. And okay, Henry Page wasn’t the name he’d been born with, but it was the name he’d chosen. A nice clean slate of a name, with no baggage, no attachments, and no prior convictions. Henry liked the name. He thought it suited him.

  “Do you think if I take him some cake, he’ll be less angry?”

  “I think if you take him some cake, you’ll come out wearing it.”

  “Worth the risk.” Then he could lick it off me. He headed back to Alex’s desk. Alex was still beaming. Poor Alex. Henry got the impression that he got overlooked a lot. The downside of being an accountant, he supposed, although “forensic accountant” sounded a bit more sexy.

  “Just getting a slice for Mac.” He slipped closer to him. “You know, Alex, I’ll bet it’s you who’s really built the case on Maxfield, right? Followed the money to the source, and all that. But it’s always the guys with the guns who get the credit, am I right?”

  Alex looked flustered. “Oh no, it’s a team effort.”

  Henry waved his hand. “Don’t be so modest! It’s the bean counters and the computer nerds like you and Jeff that really make the difference. Otherwise it’d just be guys like Mac breaking down random doors and yelling at people.”

  Alex snorted with laughter, then ducked his head guiltily.

  Henry levered a slice of cake onto a fresh napkin. “Okay, I’m gonna go give this to Mac, but I’ll be back later to see if there are any leftovers.”

  “I’ll save you a piece.”

  “Thanks!” Henry weaved his way between the cubicles, heading for Mac’s office. He knocked, which was only polite, and pushed the door open without waiting for an answer, which probably wasn’t. “Hi. I’ve come bearing a peace offering. It’s cake.”

  Mac glower
ed at him, then at his computer screen, then back at Henry. “Get in here and close the door.”

  He closed the door, took a seat, and slid the cake over the desk. “It’s vanilla. It’s really good. The frosting is as soft as a baby seal. Or a cloud. Or a baby seal riding a cloud.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Mac’s voice was low.

  “Henry Page. The slightly punk version.”

  “That’s not your real name.”

  “‘What’s in a name?’” Henry asked. “‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”

  “All I smell is bullshit.”

  “Which, to be fair, would also work in this metaphor.” He tilted his head. “What are you most pissed about, Mac? The fact that I use an alias, or the fact that your team likes me better than you? Did you even know it was Alex’s birthday today?”

  Mac narrowed his eyes. “Alex’s birthday is neither here nor there.”

  “Tell that to Alex.”

  “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up!”

  Henry leaned back in his seat and raised his palms.

  “For someone who had a gun pointed at his head yesterday, you’re pretty damn cavalier,” Mac said. “Which I happen to know is also bullshit. You’re scared, Henry, and you fucking should be. That hit man knew exactly where to find you, so I want you to tell me who you called when you left here. I want to know who sold you out.”

  “Nobody on my end.” Henry’s stomach twisted. “They wouldn’t.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I am absolutely sure.” Stacy would never, and Remy . . . shit, no. Remy would do a lot of things for money when he was using, but not that. “My friends are solid. Maybe you need to look a little closer to home.”

  “Right. Because your friends are bound to be upstanding citizens and honest people.”

  “Fuck you.” His composure slipped. For a second, he was truly angry, but then he schooled his features again. “There’s a line, Mac, that friends don’t cross. If you had any, you might know that.”