Chapter One: Hell or High Water

I huddled deeper in my jacket. What had promised to be a perfectly mild Atlanta spring evening had sharpened into something with teeth. I knew this was how it happened—that the soft promise was merely a lure, a temptation, a sweetly scented trap.

Trey was experiencing none of my discomfort. He seemed to have an internal thermostat that adjusted to any weather, so he never shivered or got ice blue lips or hunched over with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Which is why I was grateful he was on camera duty instead of me.

Except I really wanted to be on camera duty.

“Do you see them?” I said.

Trey didn’t move. He had the camera on a tripod, his eye close to the viewfinder. He’d explained that it was the best surveillance camera currently on the market. Auto-focus, superior resolution and stabilization, increased zoom.

“I have them in frame,” he said.

He looked for all the world like the sniper he’d once been, a job that required patience, calm, and an almost supernatural ability to stay still and focused. Of course being a sniper also required other knowledge, like the physics of bullets. It required a bull’s eye on the medula oblongata or perhaps center mass, depending. Bloody work in the follow through, but the essential skill was the ability to lie in wait, and Trey was very very good at this.

“What’s happening down there?” I said.

“They’re talking.”

“Talking like chit chat or talking like something’s about to happen?”

“The former.”

“Are you sure—”

“Tai.” He didn’t move a muscle. “I really need to concentrate. We don’t want to miss this.”

We, he said. As if I could do anything but stand there. I didn’t have former sniper on my résumé, so the surveillance work went to him, which made sense, I couldn’t argue that it didn’t.

But still.

I shoved my hands deeper in my pockets. Piedmont Park was quieter than usual, only a few runners, one couple pushing a stroller, two dog walkers. They passed the Lake Clare Meer overlook without stopping.

Our subjects, however, stood shoulder to shoulder in the wrought iron semi-circle, silhouetted against the silver water and the Midtown skyline, their backs to us. This was not the photo we were waiting for. But our photo was coming, and coming soon.

“Will the light hold out?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. We discussed this at length.”

“I’m just—”

“Tai. I need to concentrate.”

I stopped talking and focused on the couple below us, one of them unaware of our presence, the other very aware. He’d hired us, after all, to capture this moment, this once-in-a-lifetime moment. And that meant Trey—the one with the expertise—was working the camera instead of me.

“Come on, Rico,” I whispered, “the light is fading.”

Trey ignored me. The light was perfect, and he knew it.

Apparently, so did Rico. Because this was the moment he turned to Dante. I wanted to grab Trey’s shoulder. I didn’t grab Trey’s shoulder. I did, however, bounce on the balls of my feet.

“Here it comes,” I said.

Trey clicked off the first shot. “I know.”

The sun was a drizzle of honey and orange and cinnamon, ocher and carnelian, not yet purple, not a hint of pink, a 24-caret sunset.

And then Rico took Dante’s hand. And then he dropped to one knee, which I did not see coming, and Dante put his hand to his mouth. And then they were enveloped in that charmed light, the golden hour, a circle of just the two of them, and Dante was nodding, and Rico was smiling.

He stood and wrapped his arms around Dante—slight and slim and practically engulfed in the embrace—who took off his glasses and wiped his eyes, but didn’t let go of Rico.

“Can we go down there now?” I said.

Trey stayed behind the camera. “Not yet. Rico will give the signal.”

“But—”

“Wait for the signal.”

I wanted to bolt from behind the shrubbery, but I didn’t, I waited, and it was so hard because every molecule in me was vibrating. And then Rico turned and gave us the thumbs up, a wide grin like a field of sunflowers on his face.

Trey stood upright. “All right. You can—”

But I was already running to them.

♦ ♦ ♦

Afterward, we ended up going out to dinner and then at Trey’s. He wanted to go through the photographs, and so did Dante, so Rico and I made two old fashioneds and took them out on the terrace. It was fully dark now.

“What’s next?” I said.

Rico propped his feet on the railing. “Ring shopping. Then whatever is next on the to-do list Dante made on the car ride over. He’s picking out a photo now for the save-the-dates.”

“Don’t you want to weigh in?”

“Nah. He’ll pick a good one. Right now I just want to bask.”

The same skyline at the overlook was before us, only from a different angle, and the sky was liquid black—starless—the moon just cresting in the east. The city was adazzle, but we felt far removed from it on the 35th floor. I could see Trey and Dante through the French doors, side by side at the computer, the light surrounding them in a warm halo.

Rico sipped his drink. “So it’s official? You live here now?”

“Mostly. I still have the apartment above the shop—the office, I mean, I gotta stop calling it the shop. But I usually end up coming back here.”

“I’d come back here too. It doesn’t smell like gunpowder and burnt coffee and unwashed white men.”

It did not, that was true. I still dabbled in the Civil War antique market. I’d honed my research skill in the relic trade, after all. And people were happier paying me a thousand dollars to find a circa-1865 presentation sword than to take photographs that proved their husband was cheating on them.

But the rest of Dexter’s shop—the muskets and handguns and black powder—were no longer a part of my business. I’d sold the lot of it to other sutler shops in the area, and what I hadn’t sold, I’d given to my former assistant so that he could carry on the trade himself. I hadn’t made much profit, but it was been nest egg enough for the tools of my new trade, including a very expensive camera that captured long-range images with crisp precision.

“Thanks for doing this,” Rico said. “I was for real when I said I’d pay you for the assignment.”

I laughed. “And I was for real when I said you can’t afford me. Well, you can afford me. I’m still an apprentice. But you can’t afford Trey.”

Rico rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “So what’s it like having your boyfriend be the boss of you?”

I felt myself prickle. “He’s not the boss of me. He’s the license holder for the agency—our agency, the two of us equal partners—but the state of Georgia requires paperwork—”

“I’m playing with you, don’t get your back up.” He elbowed me lightly. “Seriously though, I appreciate you. Y’all did good.”

“We did, didn’t we? Dante didn’t even know we were there.”

“I barely knew you were there.”

“Trey is good at many things, but he’s especially good at being sneaky.”

Inside the apartment, Dante laughed. He was on the phone—his sister, Rico said—his slender hands waving about, grinning, practically bouncing in his enthusiasm. He was cheerful and talkative—a good match for Rico, who tended toward brooding and grumpy at times—but when he was onstage with the symphony, he was utterly serious, his double bass sonorous in his expert hands.

Trey looked up from the computer, and his eyes met mine. I smiled at him, and he tilted his head, the corner of his mouth curving. And then Dante shoved at the phone at him, and Trey looked startled but accepted it good-naturedly.

“You ever thought about taking the plunge?” Rico said.

“Pfft. You make it sound like a ride at Disney World.”

“C’mon. You and Trey are long-haul truckers, and you both know it. Why not make it official?”

I rested my glass on my stomach. “Things are good the way they are. Very very good. Why would I tamper with that?”

“Says the woman who loves to tamper.”

“Except with this. Except with him.”

I glanced over my shoulder where Trey was back on task, sorting the photos he’d taken, frowning occasionally but mostly looking pleased. He was comfortable with Rico and Dante because they knew his history—the accident, the brain trauma, the recovery—and didn’t demand some performance of perfection from him. He could be his emotionally restrained, somewhat stiff, definitely reticent authentic self.

“And how does Trey feel?”

“Trey would very much like to make it official. But he swears it’s not a deal-breaker, that he’s very happy being unofficially official.”

“You believe him?”

“Sure. He’s sneaky, but honest.” I swirled ice cubes in my glass. “Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the night we met.”

“I know. You called me that night, said you were being stalked by some hot security guy.”

“I was. And we’re celebrating the anniversary of that auspicious stalking by ordering out and staying in and not going anywhere near a crime scene.”

Rico harrumphed. “What happened to the Tai Randolph who met the crack of dawn with her shoes in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other?”

I laughed. “She met a man who made staying home much more attractive.”

“I can’t argue with that. That man is fine as hell.” Rico held his glass toward me. “Here’s to me and you and the men who love us. We are some lucky bitches.”

I clinked my glass with his. “Hell yeah, we are.”

At that moment, Dante waved for Rico to come back in the living room. He waved back and pushed himself to standing, then offered me his hand.

“Come on,” he said. “That champagne ain’t gonna finish itself.”

I was reaching for him when my phone rang. I peered at the screen.

“It’s Eric,” I said.

Rico paused. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“No, it’s just...you go on ahead. Save me some bubbly.”

Rico continued inside, closing the French doors behind himself. My brother hardly ever called me, and whatever warm surprise I felt was tempered by a less pleasant flush of anxiety for the exact same reason.

I answered as soon as the door shut. “Hey, you. What exotic location are you calling me from now?”

“Virginia Highland.”

“Wait, you’re here? You’re never here.”

“Except that I am. I just got in.” A long pause. “You have a minute to talk?”

“What’s wrong?”

Another hesitation. “It’s a long story.”

I looked over my shoulder. Rico and Dante had left Trey at the computer and were sitting on the sofa now, hands intertwined in Rico’s lap. Trey saw me looking and narrowed his eyes. Everything okay? I nodded and held up a finger. I’ll be there in a sec.

I leaned back in my chair as the wind kicked up, knife-edged now. “I got time. What’s up?”

Eric cleared this throat. “So . . . I think I need to hire you. Professionally. As a detective.”