Those green eyes widened, though, when he saw Cash and Glen glowering at each other as Glen sipped a spoonful of soup.
“Spence?” Glen nodded, hoping all was well. Spence didn’t say a lot, and at first Glen had worried. Had Damien hired a serial killer in desperation since he was so snowed under with work after Glen was laid up?
But then Glen had spent a little time with the guy and realized Spencer—gruff, growly, sarcastic Spencer—was the kind of guy you had to keep from bringing home kittens.
Literally. Glen had made a deal with the local no-kill shelter that he’d pay to have the animals Spence brought in taken care of and posted on the website, special, because their apartment didn’t allow pets, and Spencer Helmsley ached for lost things. He was also loyal as a Labrador retriever—or a pit bull—and the suspicious look he gave Cash said Cash had pinged his threat-o-meter.
Go figure.
“You,” Spence said to Cash.
“Yeah?” Cash gave him that willing puppy-dog look that Glen estimated kept him out of a lot of bar fights.
“You fucked with his heart, right? You’re the one?”
Cash’s eyes went wide and his lips parted silently, which was apparently all the “yes” Spencer needed.
“Fuck him up again, I’ll fuck you up.” Spencer turned toward the door, and Glen frowned.
“Spence, you don’t have to leave! It’s foggy out there!”
“You got two hours,” Spence said. “Going to the bar. Whatever conversation you two are gonna have, be done before I get back.”
God. No. “Spence, we’re fine. I swear, it’s no big de—”
Spencer poked his head around the hall and met Glen’s eyes, still looking grumpy and mussed. “I would rather walk in on the two of you fucking over the couch than sit down at that table with all the shit you’re not saying. I’ll be back in two hours. Fix it.”
“Don’t get drunk!” Glen snapped.
“I’m petting their fucking dog, Mom!”
Spence shut—not slammed—the door which meant he was being sarcastic and not angry. He was usually sarcastic and not angry, and Glen remembered his conversation with Cash about the voices in your head making you who you were and wondered about Spence Helmsley’s voices.
The guy had become a good friend quickly, and a friend worried.
“Wow,” Cash said, breathing out. “He’s, uh….”
“He’s a royal asshole,” Glen muttered. “It’s why we room together so well.”
Cash let out a weak laugh. “Well, I’m pretty sure you’re not sleeping with him—you’d kill each other fighting to top.”
“Can’t argue,” Glen told him, taking another bite of soup. Silence fell between them, and Cash sighed.
“We’re going to have to… you know. Talk about us sometime.”
“Nope.” Another bite of soup to keep the pain meds from roiling in Glen’s stomach. “No us. I know where your friend is. Do you?”
Cash stared at him, mouth opening and closing. Finally he got his figurative feet underneath him and replied, but Glen couldn’t stop the savage surge of satisfaction from coursing through him. Yeah, you bet Glen had been doing his fucking homework.
“I spent four months looking.”
“You been gone for five,” Glen snapped.
Cash swallowed. “I… uh… spent a month at my mom’s place in Jalisco,” he confessed baldly. “We… we worked some shit out.”
Glen took a breath. Well. Well, that was…. God. It was damned hopeful is what it was, and he’d worked so hard trying to drain all hope through the bottom of the shower.
“That was good,” he said, shoveling in another bite of soup. Cash had broken out a loaf of relatively fresh sourdough bread and was buttering a piece. Without a word, he handed it over to Glen to mop up. “Thanks,” Glen murmured.
“Brielle’s off the coast of Baja,” Cash said.
“On a small island atoll,” Glen agreed. “It’s in the area for environmental reclamation, which pretty much sucks because John Barron—”
“Who’s that?” Cash sounded sincere, and oh, Glen was going to love rubbing some of this in.
“That’s Tranquilizer Piss’s real name.” The one thing they’d managed to agree on before that final defection in the hospital was that calling the asshole who had Cash’s friend “Tranquilo Paz” was too good for him.
Cash’s mouth fell open. “No….”
“Yes. John Francis Barron, born to lower-middle-class parents in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Went AWOL from the Coast Guard with five of his drinking buddies about six years ago. Four years ago, they surfaced in Santa Fe, selling Bibles like all good beginning con men. They got out of it by claiming to be a church swindled by a fraudulent company they, themselves, created. By the time the DA figured it out, they were over the border and out of our hair. Tranquilo Paz was born about a year later, catering to the young children of the ex-pats in Jalisco looking for a way out of the party life.”
“Brielle….” Cash’s face had turned white. “I brought her there—”
“You brought her there because rehab wasn’t working,” Glen said starkly. “You’re not to blame here. And she didn’t leave when she had the chance. That’s on her, not you. I had a friend take some aerial shots, and it looks like he’s got his followers working like madmen to build a similar setup to what he had in Nayarit. It’s hard. They have to ship in lumber, and I think they’ve tapped a pipeline for fresh water. He’s literally pirating resources to despoil an environmental landmark—the place is supposed to be a refuge for seals and birds, so he’s everybody’s asshole right now. But….” Glen took a deep breath; he’d seen the pictures.
“But what?” Cash asked, apprehensive.
“Brielle’s been spotted in Baja, buying food. With guards. I had a PI scout around. She doesn’t seem unhappy, but she doesn’t seem, uhm, drug-free, either. He actually spoke to her, and he said she sounded like she’d been under for a long time. He’s not sure what she’s taking, but when he mentioned your name, she started to cry. She said, ‘God, he got away. He got away. I’m so glad he got away.’”
Cash covered his mouth. “He’s got her drugged,” he whispered. “Oh man. Oh man. All this time—”
“Kid, that earthquake was not your fault either. Neither of them.” As mad as Glen was, he knew that Cash would have been there to keep his promise if the first quake had been the only thing God had thrown at them. “We were in no shape to get her after….”
Cash shook his head and held out his hand. “Just… just… what do we do now?”
“Do?” It was so obvious. “Well, first I have to call Elsie and have her take Spencer’s runs this weekend. Then I have to have Damien fly out from Napa with some of Preston’s dogs—they can meet us in the morning. We can fly down to Baja tomorrow in the Cessna and get her out. If we keep Spencer waiting as our getaway pilot, all we have to do is make the runway and we can get her home.”