Shock registered in her cloudy blue eyes.
I glanced at the camera and bluffed for all I was worth. “Boys? I changed my mind. Call the O'Banions. Tell them they can have her.”
She paled, eyes darting from me to the camera and back again. “What are you doing?!”
“Exactly what you wanted. Letting you go. I’m sure the O'Banion boys will be thrilled to see you.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“An entitled little brat like me?” I grinned. “Oh, I think I would.”
“Gwendolyn!” she hissed. “Get back here!”
“No,” I called over my shoulder, heading for the door. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll tell you where the jewelry is!”
I froze with my hand on the knob. When I glanced back at her, she was slumped in her chair, the picture of defeat, her turban tilting precariously to one side.
”I’ll tell you,” she whimpered, putting her head in her hands. “Just… please. Don’t give me to Mickey.”
“Fortune favors the bold!” Hecate cried, rattling her cage with sharp claws. “Fortune favors the bold!”
Damn straight, it did.
* * *
I satin the Gravewatch surveillance room, spinning around on the office chair. The space was impressively high tech, with two tiered levels of computers facing a large bank of monitors that took up one entire wall, showing a wide variety of video feeds. I felt like a secret agent, about to receive the codes for a highly classified mission.
Graham’s hands settled on the backrest of my chair, halting my aimless spinning. He crouched down before me, eyes lit with amusement.
“Ready to go?”
I shook my head, eyes on the monitors over his shoulder. One of them showed the inside of a dimly lit, somewhat dingy bar. A bar, I’d since learned, was none other than The Banshee, home base for the O'Banion family. How Graham and his boys managed to get eyes inside without being caught was a mystery. A mystery I very much wanted to solve, but had thus far gotten no details about. In the face of my best pleading puppy dog expression, Graham had merely leveled me with his standard no-nonsense look and said, “Need-to-know, babe.”
Whatever.
“We can’t leave,” I insisted now. “What if something exciting happens?”
Sawyer, the mega-muscular, blue eyed, blond haired badass sitting at the main computer console, scoffed under his breath. It was clear he didn’t find surveillance duty as thrilling as I did. In fact, the bored-to-death look on his face suggested he’d much rather be out hunting down bond skips or dodging bullets than sitting there, waiting for something to happen.
Graham sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You want to stay here for the rest of eternity or you want dinner?”
“Here for eternity,” I replied instantly.
“Gwen.”
“You take all this—” I gestured around. “—for granted! You’re totally desensitized to the coolness factor.”
Sawyer scoffed again.
“Somehow, I’ll survive,” Graham drawled.
“Fine. Feed me if you must.” I allowed him to drag me to my feet. “You’ll let me come back though, right? Soon? I want to meet the rest of the guys.”
So far, I’d only met the (mostly silent, occasionally scoffing) Sawyer and (somewhat chattier, but definitely not verbose) Welles. Welles was a brunet behemoth with a killer man bun, wicked facial hair, and eyes so bright hazel they were almost gold. I’d barely been able to form words when he closed his massive hand around mine in greeting — and held on a beat too long for Graham’s liking, judging by the scary, deep, growly sound he made before reclaiming me with a firm arm around my shoulders. If I was Welles, I would’ve been intimidated. But Welles had just winked at me as I was dragged away, looking completely unaffected by his disapproving boss.
I could see him now on the monitors. He was in the holding room with Zelda, getting specifics about the location of the stolen jewelry. According to her twisted tale of woe — which she’d unloaded on me about twenty seconds after I threatened to walk out — she’d known she’d never be able to fence the priceless gems anywhere local. Not with the O'Banions watching her every move. So, she’d boxed them up and shipped them to a tiny town somewhere in the boondocks of central Maine, where her sister lived, with plans to drive up there and collect them in a few weeks once things cooled down a bit. That being said, she wasn’t exactly tickled pink when the twins had burst into her motel room and brought her back to town.