“You’re the right person for the job, so if you think Curran needs to like you for you to effectively keep him alive, then by all means, court his favor.”
“Court his favor?” I asked, eyebrows raised.
Quinn regarded me steadily. “My wife has been reading Regency romance novels to escape the news.”
“As one does,” I said with a nod. Either Janey had begun speaking like a nineteenth-century Englishwoman herself, or she’d been reading passages out loud to her husband.
I left before my boss could see how much I appreciated that mental image.
4
Dallas
“Invisibility is a superpower.”
Dallas
* * *
Oliver Curran surprised me. Not the significant social media presence, which I’d expected from such an annoyingly good-looking, Canada Goose–wearing hipster. Or that all his vacations were spent with beautiful people in exotic locations. Or even that he was never photographed with the same woman twice. No, the surprising thing about Oliver Curran was that I had to revise my expectations of his hipsterman status because besides being a card-carrying tech geek, he also fit the corporate wunderkind type.
He’d gone to Harvard, where his mom—a major activist for broad-spectrum environmental policy reform—was an alumna. He dropped out after cashing in on some software he created, and spent the last few years creating photo apps—everything from filters that changed your appearance to fit a cartoon character to something that inserted your picture into scenes from movies. And apparently, he’d made another boatload of money selling all the filter and face-swap tech. I knew Alex Greene would dig deeper into the money side, so my job was to figure out the man I’d be protecting.
Oliver’s Instagram account was the most revealing in that regard. The photographs were all surprisingly well-shot and interesting, and his feed was full of surfing trips and island adventures with pretty people. The people were different in each location though, and I wondered if he traveled with friends or just made them wherever he went.
He was tagged in lots of photos with beautiful women, which fit the apparently charming flirt I’d met, but none of the women made it into his own feed. If I had a social media feed, there would have been no people in it at all—just wilderness and animals probably, or maybe some of my sister’s food. Interestingly, there were a bunch of photographs of food in Oliver’s Instagram feed too—mostly ramen dishes that looked complicated and homemade, which reminded me that I needed to replace the groceries he’d left behind.
I shoved my laptop inside my backpack and slung it over one shoulder. Darius was just stepping out of the paneled staircase door in the lobby ahead of me as I exited the elevator.
“Hold up,” I said to get his attention. He waited for me to catch up, and we both nodded to Kendra, Gabriel’s sister, who had taken a part-time job with us while she finished law school. Her nose was buried in a bar review textbook as usual, and she threw us a distracted wave as we walked toward the exit.
“Have you heard from Oliver Curran about doing a security assessment on his place?” I asked my sometime-partner whose wife called him her Disney prince. She wasn’t wrong about his looks, and I had the sudden thought that his eyes would flash if he were ever angry and his teeth would probably gleam when he turned on the charm.
“I have. I’ll be going there tomorrow.” Darius had a way of speaking that told me his first language hadn’t been English. My grandfather had the same slightly formal way with his own English.
“Any chance I could get his address from you? It didn’t come up in the basic searches, and I need to return something to him.” We all had security clearances on par with most military intelligence services, so I wasn’t worried about the propriety of asking for it, but I did have a pang of conscience about not sharing exactly what I’d be returning.
Darius pulled out his phone. “Sure.” He scrolled through his contacts and then shared Curran’s info.
“Thanks,” I said, as it popped into my messages. “What do you know about him? Quinn wants me to work with him if he comes back to us.”
Darius shrugged. “I don’t know him. His friend, Sterling Gray, is a client I know well enough as he’s dating Anna’s sister, so I can guess that Oliver Curran probably fits into Sterling’s workaholic, play-hard, privileged set quite well. Apart from that, I haven’t bothered to look. I expect that the examination of his home will tell me more, though. I’ll let you know what I find.”
“I appreciate it. Tell Anna I said hi,” I said as I turned toward the L.
“Dallas?” he said, before I’d gone more than a few steps.
I turned back. “Yeah?”
“Is everything well?” He seemed to fumble for words, which was so unlike him I didn’t immediately answer that yes, everything was fine. It always was, even if it wasn’t. “You’ve been … distant.” He exhaled, as if even that much prying was too much. It was, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I was in Mexico with the political activist and her family, and before that I was in England with the diplomat. That’s pretty distant.”
He hesitated, and I made myself stay still while he figured out if he was going to dig deeper. I didn’t want to evade his questions, because I genuinely liked Darius, but whatever instinct he’d had about me that had prompted his asking was not something I was inclined to examine out loud on the street … or at all.
He finally shrugged and gave me one of those blinding smiles he did so well. “Come have dinner with us soon, okay? Tell us about Mexico.”
“Sure,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel. It seemed to be enough though, and this time he let me walk away.
It was nearly dark when I emerged from the train at Division station, and colder than usual as the lake-chilled wind snaked its way down wide boulevards. Chicagoans hunched into their parkas and walked with single-minded focus toward the warmth that beckoned from indoors, and even I could admit it was a welcome respite from the wind to step into the fancy market where Oliver had shopped the day before.
I pictured the contents of the grocery bag I’d rescued, and then filled my basket with two steaks, vegetables, fresh bread, and various snacks. I tried not to flinch when the cashier rang up the total, and consoled myself with the fact that at least he hadn’t gotten wine.
Oliver Curran lived just around the corner from the alley where the Russian redhat had attacked us, and I was glad to see heavy-duty locks on the steel-reinforced front door. I was also impressed to note a high-end security camera aimed at the front, and therefore not surprised that it took so long for Oliver to answer the door. He had probably seen me and then debated with himself whether or not to acknowledge my presence.
“Hold on,” he said. The wary expression on his face made it clear he hadn’t decided if I was friend or foe. I stayed silent until he did.
Then I saw the wireless earbuds in his ears and realized he held his cell phone in his hand.
“Oh, you’re on the phone,” I said, embarrassed. The “hold on” hadn’t been for me.