Page 2 of Rising Storm

The man drove him crazy. He hardly ever spoke and when he did, it was usually something droll and angry.

“You know you don’t have to move out,” Quincy said as he stepped outside and peeked at the ads in front of Gareth. He settled across the table from him, cradling his own cup of coffee. He had his shoulder-length, brown hair pulled back in a short tail and brown scruff on his chin. His friend looked good. He smiled often these days and Gareth had never seen anyone more in love in his life. But Quincy had been moping lately with his boyfriend, Lane, off on a job.

"Why would you want to move out of this house?" Quincy asked. “It’s gorgeous here and, hell, it’s huge enough to hold even more people.”

“I need my own place. If I don’t, I may end up killing that guy.”

“He’s not that bad if you’d take the time to get to know him.”

Gareth just rolled his eyes. “It would help if he didn’t sneer at me first thing in the morning.”

Quincy chuckled and propped his feet on the chair across from him. Gulls cried overhead and a breeze played with his hair, sending wisps to dance about his head. “I’ve never known you not to get along with anyone.”

“He just rubs me the wrong way.”

“Probably because you want to rub him the right way.” Quincy winked. "Come on, the kid is gorgeous and I see the way you look at him."

“He's twenty-four and mature beyond his years, so nowhere near a kid and yeah, I can’t help it. He’s fucking gorgeous.” He thought of Helix standing in the kitchen in nothing more than a pair of jeans with his muscular chest on display, all smooth skin with a couple of intriguing tattoos that made Gareth’s fingers itch to explore. He wanted to shove that long, lean body up against a wall and rile him up. Get a rise out of him. Get him to lose some of that tightly leashed control that never wavered. The man was hotter than the damn sun, but it was all temper. “Too bad about his attitude.”

“So, if I suggest the two of you go on the next out-of-town job, that’s going to be a hard no? Soft one, maybe?”

“A trip with Mr. Miserable? Sounds like the best of times. What are we going after?”

Quincy paused a moment, his stare suddenly piercing. “Rising Storm.”

Everything in Gareth froze as a hard knot of anticipation filled his gut. He sat forward in his chair. “You found it?”

“Yep and I know you spent a long time searching for it. Why?”

Gareth was awash in memories for a moment before he answered. “When I was a teen, I spent a lot of time at a LGBT house called Rising Stars. The name actually ties into that Wolfson Monteague statuette. Rising Storm belonged to my mentor there.” Man, he’d loved that place; loved the rec room and the feeling of belonging he’d felt there.

“That Monteague is worth over three hundred thousand dollars because the artist only did like thirty pieces. What was a mentor at such a place doing with something like that?”

“Larry is a local millionaire who actually set the house up. But he came to me later to help find the stolen statuette and there was nothing to go on. No leads at all and because nothing else was stolen, I didn’t even have other fenced goods to go on. To this day, it’s one of the failures that keeps me up at night.” He frowned. “So if I’m going with Helix, he’s the one who took it? I thought he hadn’t been to Oklahoma.”

“He didn’t take it.”

“Who did?”

Quincy shrugged. “One of the thieves we haven’t found yet.”

“Like Bet?”

“No, though we’re pretty sure he’s in the same area as the statuette. This one had an odd code name. I still can’t believe they all had names from Oliver Twist. I mean, what kind of person has an obsession with that story?”

“Hayrick was herding a group of thieves.” It was Gareth’s turn to shrug. “I can kind of see where it would make sense. Your boyfriend being the Artful Dodger and Helix as Noah Claypole. Now we have Reid, who was obviously Charlie Bates. How’s he doing on that re-steal with Lane? He’s so damn young. I didn’t expect him to do any of them after he cried on the phone.”

“I doubt he’ll do a lot of re-steals, so we might put him on returns.” Quincy eyed him for a moment. “You okay with going on a re-steal since it’ll be your first one?”

“I’m sure the nerves will kick in at some point. If Helix didn’t steal the Monteague, then why is he going?”

“He asked specifically to go on this one.”

“You know why?”

Quincy shook his head. “Haven’t a clue. Maybe it means something to him. The guy spends all his time going through paperwork. Who knows? Maybe this will be something to thaw him out.”

“Doubt it. We’d need the fires of Hell for that.”

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