Page 5 of Business vs. Pleasure

God, he hated it when Ricardo had a point. “Fine.” He turned on his heel and stalked back over to the elevator, smashing the button so hard it made his finger hurt.

“Take the Land Rover.”

“Whatever.” Obviously he was going to take the Land Rover; it was the only one that had run-flat tires on. Jesus, did Ricardo think he’d gotten stupid since they’d stopped working as hitmen?

Fuck that.

August would be lying if he said that having the space for as many cars as he wanted wasn’t fun. That they only owned five was entirely down to Ricardo’s parsimonious sensibilities.

“Where are you even going to drive them all on Malta?” he’d asked more than once, and that was a good point. Of the five they owned, though, the Land Rover was the most practical for work situations like this one. It could handle the terrain, its computer was connected to the house’s security system so August didn’t have to fuss with his phone while he was driving, and it could survive being shot at with a rocket launcher—they’d tested it. What more could a man need?

Checking for the would-be sneak’s car was a rote sort of errand. There was just one place for miles it could be, and so August had plenty of time to stew about the rest of the afternoon while he drove out to the ruins.

So, his husband was bored. His husband was bored and Heidi knew about it, and damn her, she’d lean on that if she thought she could tempt him out of retirement. Ricardo had brought her huge commissions in his heyday, and August knew she’d been against the very idea of him taking himself out of the game.

But Heidi alone wouldn’t be enough to draw him back. Ricardo might be having a mid-life crisis, but he wouldn’t go off and take a job without telling August about it.

He wouldn’t.

Right? He totally wouldn’t make an excuse to go see his family in Barcelona while telling August to host his sister at the house for a while and actually set himself up instead in a Tokyo skyscraper with a target in his sights a quarter of a mile away.

He wouldn’t fuck up his sleep schedule by calling August from a different time zone at a time when August wouldn’t suspect anything, then stalk his target until the perfect shot opened up.

He wouldn’t overlook some crucial detail that he would have seen if he’d been better rested and end up getting cornered on a high-speed train and have to shoot his way out of the compartment and jump out of a window, hoping against hope that he survived the landing.

No, August never obsessed about these sorts of scenarios late at night while staring at his sleeping husband’s face, why?

His phone buzzed. August blinked and looked down at it.

Ricardo

Anything?

Shit, he was at the ruins already? He’d made the short drive in a total fugue state. That…wasn’t great. August cast his eyes around the ancient temple complex, a little surprised the nearby parking lot was empty today. Admittedly, these weren’t the flashiest temples out there, having been badly excavated by mainland Europeans back in the mid-1800s, but they were a regular stop for tourists.

Not today, it seemed. The recent rains must have scared any takers off.

No.

Then he had an accomplice.

“Duh,” August muttered, but he refrained from texting as much. Obviously someone else must have moved the car the man had come with; the coastline was too rugged here for a beach landing, unless their would-be intruder was really into rock climbing.

I’m heading back.

He got a thumbs-up emoji, which normally would make him smile because it was such an elder millennial move, but right now August wasn’t in the mood. He stared at the phone, then out at the stormy skyline ahead of him, and considered the potential paths ahead of them.

Malta in the winter wasn’t their favorite place to be, if only because it was wetter than the rest of the year. He and Ricardo had made it a point these last few years to travel when it got rainy and miserable here. It wouldn’t be strange for them to take a trip.

Possibly to the States, shitty as it was there right now.

Possibly to check in with Heidi and see if there was anything to the idea that someone was creeping up on their records on RateYourHit.com. Which seemed impossible, quite frankly, but…

Fine. Fine. August pulled up the website and checked the rankings. There was Ricardo at the top, which he wasn’t sore about, shut up, no, he totally wasn’t. There was August, cushy right below him, his reviews full of the flair his work merited. And there…

The NightRaven? He snorted. What a pretentious shit of a name, the sort of thing a pretentious shit of a person would come up with. Active for six months, that was all, and yet⁠—

Damn. The NightRaven had flown up the rankings fast.