The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(28)

I close my eyes and thump my head against the table. “Yvonne, what are you doing to me?”

“I’m killing you, Smalls.”

I crack open one eye and glare at her.

Vic chuckles and settles into a chair with his own stack of work.

My lists from yesterday are just as depressing as when I left them this morning, but there’s nothing to be done for that. Instead, I keep working, deciphering Eddison’s untidy scrawl to see his progress. It’s Gala’s playlist we’re listening to today, something stately and mournful with drums and cellos and one weeping violin.

My work cell beeps with a text from Eddison. What kind of drink does the apple kid like?

I wonder how Gala will feel about being renamed once enough people hear Vic and Eddison calling her that.

“Eddison is back or almost back,” I report, “and Gala, he’d like to know what kind of drink he can get for you.”

“Oh, he doesn’t have to—”

Yvonne shakes her head. “Just give the woman your order, Gala. It’ll be your turn at some point.”

“Oh. Um, caramel macchiato, please.”

I confirm that Yvonne wants her usual, and answer Eddison. If I ask Vic, he’ll say black coffee, because he’s been an agent long enough to be fully indoctrinated into the theory that real agents (real men?) drink their coffee black and bitter. If I say nothing, Eddison will get him the milky hazelnut and French vanilla concoction he actually loves. When I put down my phone without asking Vic his order, he just rolls his eyes.

Maybe twenty minutes later, I can see Eddison crossing the bullpen to the ramp with a cardboard carrier, followed by a man in a worn coat, the dark blue faded with age. The second man also carries several drinks, and a battered leather bag with a patched strap loops across his chest. I save my progress and close my laptop, turning my notepad over so only the plain cardboard shows. It’s not out of any distrust for Ian, simply protocol we’re supposed to follow for anyone not working the case.

Somehow, Ian looks older than he did just six months ago. The team was ordered to, for the love of God, use some of our accrued vacation time, so Bran and I went down to Tampa to see his parents. It was, all in all, a very strange trip. Being a lapsed Catholic, Easter isn’t really Bran’s thing. Being Jewish, it really isn’t mine. But there we were at Easter mass, his mother giving a vicious smile to anyone stupid enough to comment on our not taking Eucharist or going up for a blessing.

And no trip to Tampa happens without spending time with Ian, drinking cold ginger beer out in the studio he built behind his house after retirement. He makes stained glass there, small pieces usually, either commissions or the kinds of things he can sell at local craft fairs. I’ve bought a few pieces from him for Priya, who adopted her late sister’s fascination with stained glass.

Ian is a little shorter than average, around five and a half feet or so, maybe less, but powerfully built. With the fluffy white beard and curly white hair long enough to keep in a ponytail at the base of his neck, Priya likes to call him Bodybuilder Santa, but only if Bran can’t hear her; it makes him look a little pained. His face is weathered and tanned, startlingly bright green eyes surrounded by a wealth of wrinkles. It’s something in those eyes, though, that makes him look older now. He’s a little over seventy, if I remember correctly, but even with the white hair and weathering, he’s never looked his age. Now he looks beyond his age.

I stand and greet him with a hug as soon as Bran takes the cups from his hands. “Trip go okay?” I ask.

“Smooth enough,” he answers, his accent the kind of watered-down Southern that’s so common around Tampa and St. Petersburg. “How are you, Eliza?”

“Exhausted and in trouble,” Bran answers for me. “She was here all night after promising me she was leaving soon.”

I stick my tongue out at him and pinch the vulnerable ticklish spot on his side, almost at his armpit. He yelps and lurches away, trying not to squeeze the cups and spill the nectar.

Ian smiles, and it lifts nearly ten years off his face.

Which makes me a bit more anxious regarding his reasons for being here so suddenly. Anything that makes him look that worried and old . . .

Lifting one of the drinks from the carrier, Ian squints at the side. “Gala?” he asks, pronouncing it like the event.

“Gala,” she corrects. “Like the apple.”

“That explains the apple-kid comment, then.”

She grins and winks at him, the rhinestones in her glasses winking along with her.

Yvonne accepts her drink with a murmured thank you, and Vic takes his with a glare closely followed by a long, pleased exhalation.

Bran hands me a hot chocolate, which means he’s worried about my caffeine intake. He can never remember which teas are caffeinated and which are calming. His apartment had a list on the inside of a cabinet door, but it got lost or ruined during the move. Me being the one member of the team with blood instead of coffee sludge means the others can never remember how much caffeine is too much for me.

At Bran’s gesture, Ian shrugs out of his coat and bag and settles into a seat to the left of where Bran spent most of yesterday. He unzips the bag and reaches in, but hesitates before pulling anything out.

“Any update from the Smiths?” I ask Bran, to give Ian a moment.

“They picked up the senior Mercers when they were leaving for church,” he answers, absently gathering photos and papers into a neat stack and turning them over to hide the contents.