Page 2 of Steinbeck
“Yes.That one.”Stein capped the bottle.“The one with the bomb and where I woke up in Germany, my knees blown out.”Only when his body soaked in the sun, like now, could anyone see the straight-line scars down both knees.
“Was she there?”Jack had stood up, shaking out the rag.“At the bombing?”
“Yep.”Stein ran his hand along the tabletop.It needed at least two more coats of stain, plus sanding, but his mother would have the outside table she’d hoped for when she’d plunked down the plans to her oldest sons last weekend.
Maybe he’d finish one project.And he was determined to finish it today, if he could just find that battery in all this mess.
Jack had retrieved his water too.He had spent the last few years as a hero, searching for the lost, before returning home last winter.And now he was sticking around to take over maintenance duties at the inn while their younger brother Doyle found a fresh wind down in the Caribbean, finally restarting his life.
Out of all of them, Doyle deserved a happy ending.
“So you ran into her again?”Jack said after taking a drink.
“Down in Mariposa when I was working for Declan, and then yeah, a month ago when I went to visit Austen.”Not entirely true, but hehadseen Austen.Well, more than seen her.He’d helped rescue her from Cuban pirates, and maybe gotten in over his head in said country, an escapade that had ended poorly.
And landed Phoenix in Cuban custody.It wasn’t his fault, maybe, but...“Let’s just say...”
“No man left behind.”Jack met his gaze.“She means something to you.”
“No.She’s...Like you said, I don’t leave people behind.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jack said.
“I just need to find her.Make sure she’s safe.That’s all.”
“That’s all.”Jack smiled.“So, you’re right.Not a friend.”He took another drink.
Stein shook his head, but for a second, he stood in the shadows of a Spanish-style hotel in Old Havana, Phoenix’s voice soft.“I think you should kiss me.”
No,no, he should not?—
“You okay, bro?You look like you just got bodychecked.”Jack was staring at him.
Right.“Yeah.The fact is, I’ve run into a dead end.I can’t find her.And I know...just know she’s in trouble.”
Jack’s mouth tightened.“Okay, let me see what you’ve got.”
Stein stilled.“Yeah?”And maybe he shouldn’t turn to his brother with so many secrets—but it wasn’t like trouble, as in any of the Russians he suspected of taking her, would show up in Minnesota, at the door of the King’s Inn.
“Okay.My computer is back at the Norbert.”
Jack’s house, a.k.a.private family quarters, a.k.a.part of the family parcel of four homes that encompassed the entirety of the King’s Inn property.All Victorian homes built by their great-great-grandfather, a newspaper baron back in the Gilded Age.
Stein climbed into the driver’s seat of the golf cart, and Jack hopped in on the other side, and they rumbled over to the Norbert, smaller than the main house, but with the same charming apron porch, a turret, five bedrooms, and a small top-floor ballroom, of course.
They pulled up, and Stein headed inside, then up the stairs to his room, the one with the alcove window that overlooked the lake, and grabbed his computer from the writing desk.He went back downstairs to the kitchen with the oval oak table, where Jack was slathering mayo on bread, making himself a ham sandwich.
“I’ll take one of those,” Stein said and sat at the table, booting up his computer.Then he got up and pulled an ice pack from the freezer, wrapped it in a towel, and set it on one of his knees.The cold seeped in and eased the swelling.
He pulled up his latest scan of the Havana port shipyards, looking like a grainy 1970s movie scene, complete with swarthy dockworkers, old Russian GAZ trucks, and ragged palm trees.He half expected Hemingway to saunter onto the screen.
Jack came over, leaned down over his shoulder.“What’s that?”
“I have a hacker friend who got me into a feed of the port.I’ve been going over footage, trying to find a glimpse of her.”
“Why?”Jack returned to the counter.
“I thought she was arrested by Cuban officials, but there’s no record of her arrest.”He opened another file, clicked on the video feed of the few days after she was detained.“Declan used all of his political power, and I even tapped”—well, maybe Jack didn’t need to know that their cousin Colt worked for an off-the-books government agency—“a friend who has connections.She’s not in the system, period.”
