Steal the Day (Thieves #2)(42)

“Not at all,” he replied intensely. “I told you a long time ago I would give you what you need. You need commitment. I haven’t slept with anyone but you since we met. I have no intentions to.”

Neil had fallen silent, probably in the belief that the minute I remembered he was there, I would put the kibosh on the entire discussion. He seriously underestimated my need to keep Dev talking. Besides, he was my gay husband, and I’d end up telling him everything later on anyway.

I stepped on the gas as we entered the rolling foothills of the Ozarks. The trees were a canvas of oranges, reds, and browns. The scenery was beautiful, and I didn’t really care about a bit of it.

“What if I didn’t need commitment?” I needed to set that pothole to see if he would fall in.

His eyes became suspicious slits. “Then I would figure out what it is you do need, and I would give it to you. I still would have no intentions of sleeping with other women. I’m content where I sleep now. I don’t need a ton of women, Zoey. I just need the right one.”

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. I was happy neither of the boys had wanted to drive. The fact that I had something to stare at was very helpful. “And you treated all your former girlfriends with such kindness?”

Dev grimaced and his hand played with the five-o’clock shadow on his face. He’d started the day clean shaven, but the hours had pulled that sexy beard out of his skin. I loved it. He hated it because it proved him less a Fae than he would like to be. “See, you keep putting an ‘s’ on the end of the word girlfriend. You are trying to be jealous of women who never existed. I slept with a lot of women, but I didn’t have relationships with them. They were fun and I like to think I pleased them, but I never had any intention of permanence with them. Let me make this plain. In the six years since I left the sithein, I’ve had exactly one girlfriend. Her name is Zoey, and right now she is being a pain in my ass.”

I smiled and chose to continue to watch the road. I knew what his expression looked like. It would be that slightly put-out look he got any time I tried to get him to talk about his past. Well, he better get used to it because we were about to spend a lot of time together. I intended to find out a few things. There was a voice in the back of my head sending out a warning. This was why you didn’t sleep with the people you worked with. This was why you tried to keep those relationships on a business level. My father’s best friend had been George Donovan, Daniel’s father, and a master thief. Dad didn’t work with George. I wasn’t following my father’s sound advice.

“You need to take this exit.” Neil looked down at the road atlas. After we bought our trusty new van, Daniel had made sure any identifying marks, including the GPS that came with many new cars, were wiped out. We lived off the grid, and when the grid tried to encroach, we were pretty ruthless about beating it back.

It was another hour until we reached our destination. I pulled the van into the small cemetery we’d found. I spent much of the last week trying to plan a tight heist. I was thwarted by the fact that, while Felicity knew who had the Revelation, she wasn’t sure where it was being kept. For someone who, at least according to legend was all-seeing, she really didn’t know shit. What we did know was that the Revelation was held by one Mary Jo Renfro. She was the owner and operator of the Hideawhile Bideawhile Bed and Breakfast, situated in a very remote section of the Ozarks. There was next to nothing out here, and that B&B was the only place to stay for thirty miles. They specialized in honeymoons. We came to the conclusion that me, my husband, my lover, my gay husband, and his boyfriend would probably stand out if we decided to ask for a group rate.

It’s always easier to have truly excellent intelligence. More likely than not the intelligence a client gathers is crap at best, complete lies at worst. There’s a reason the client is paying top dollar for services. If the item was easy to steal, the client would more than likely steal it for themselves and save on my rates. In some cases, there’s information the client would prefer to keep to themselves. This usually ends in me having to think on my feet. In my line of work, you have to be flexible and you have to do your due diligence. Daniel, while pressing firmly for all due diligence in our collection of information, was not happy about the flexibility required to do so.

Mary Jo Renfro, owner of above mentioned B&B, also owned a small farm four miles north of her business. It was off the beaten track and therefore a fairly decent place to hide one’s valuables. The Revelation had to be in either the B&B or on the farm. It was perfectly logical to split our resources in order to pin down the location of the item. The question then had been who would go where? It made sense that Dev and I would book a room, and Daniel, Neil, and Chad would check out the farm. Reason dictated that Dev and I made the only believable newlywed couple as Daniel couldn’t be seen during the day, same thing with Chad, and Neil was hopelessly, helplessly incapable of looking like he wanted to sleep with me.

While all of this was the reasonable conclusion, it didn’t make my husband a happy man.

His accommodations for the duration of the job weren’t going to put him in a better mood. The cemetery was a small place with no more than fifty headstones, all of them from the turn of the century. There were two small mausoleums, each etched with the name of what I suspected would be some local family of note. The cemetery had fallen into disuse and disrepair. It was far enough away from everything that I was sure visitations, even for artistic purposes, were rare. It was exactly what we needed. It would provide adequate cover for our vamps during the daylight hours. That didn’t mean Daniel would be happy about sleeping in a graveyard, especially while Dev was sleeping in a heart-shaped bed with me.