Neck & Neck (7 page)

It was only after he exited the bathroom and heard a second knock that he realized it was coming not from the door leading to the hallway but the door that connected his suite to the one Russell and Max were sharing. Nevertheless, he yanked a pinstriped oxford shirt out of the closet and shrugged it on before tugging the door open. It wasn’t locked—Russell could have just come right in—but each man respected the other’s privacy enough not to intrude without knocking first. It was a courtesy even Max remembered to uphold.

But it was Russell on the other side of the door this time, looking like a man who was headed out for the evening. His pale blond hair was perfectly groomed, he’d just shaven, and he was dressed in khaki trousers, a white dress shirt, and a navy blue sport coat with brass buttons.

“What?” Finn said by way of a greeting. “Did you forget where you parked your yacht?”

Russell grinned. “No, it’s anchored in Cinnamon Bay at the moment. I loaned it to Frøydis and some of her friends.”

Frøydis was a supermodel whose name in Norwegian translated to “Goddess.” Considering the fact that she was six two with ice blue eyes and white blond hair, the name should have been perfect for her. And it would be, were she not, in fact, from Hoboken and actually named Frances.

“You sure that’s wise?” Finn asked. “The last time you loaned something to Frøydis and her friends, she sold it and they divvied up the cash between them.”

Russell shrugged. “It was just a Bugatti.”

Right. “You sure the yacht will still be there when you need it back?” Finn asked.

Russell shrugged again but said nothing.

Of course, Finn thought. It was just a Neorion. He shook his head slowly. “You’re not even in love with her, Russell.”

“No, but she’s a hell of a lot of fun.”

“No, she isn’t. She sleeps twelve hours a day, then lets other people dress her and brush her hair and put on her makeup, then makes her living walking, then eats a meal that consists of two cabbage leaves, three peas, and a carrot sliver.”

Again, Russell’s only response was a shrug.

“Look, I know you’re never going to find another woman like Marti,” Finn said. “But the least you could do is date women who can hold a halfway coherent conversation with you.”

This time Russell shook his head. “You’re just jealous because you’ve never dated a woman whose name has an
o
with a slash through it.”

“Neither have you,” Finn pointed out.

Once again, Russell went back to his shrugging.

So Finn asked, “Where are you going tonight?” Russell had given him the night off, but Finn still wanted to know the other man’s agenda.

“Dinner first, then a club or two.”

Or ten,
Finn added to himself. “Specifically?” he asked.

“I really don’t know. I’m going to turn myself over to the capable hands of the driver you hired for me, since he’s a native and should know where all the best places are located.”

Right,
Finn thought. Russell had specifically asked for a driver who could find all the best strip clubs in town, which meant it was going to be a late night for all concerned.

“Who’s going with you?” Finn asked.

Russell sighed in the way that indicated Finn was hovering like an overprotective mom.
Too bad,
Finn thought. It was his job to be responsible for Russell. And since, for the past eighteen months, Russell had been using his newfound wealth to reclaim the youth he’d been denied as a youth, that left Finn to hover like an overprotective mom. At least, that’s how he and Russell thought Finn was behaving. Neither had really had a mom who hovered over them when they were kids, which went a long way toward explaining why Russell was using his newfound wealth to reclaim the youth he’d been denied as a youth.

Finn could have done likewise, but, frankly, he had no desire to return to that time of his life, even if he could relive it differently. The man he was today was a sum of his life experiences, and he liked, for the most part, the man he was today. Had he been a happy teenager who never knew adversity, he would be someone else entirely. And he couldn’t imagine being anyone else.

Russell, on the other hand, wanted to be
any
one else and had wanted that, probably, since Marti’s death. During those too-short years with her, Russell had been the happiest Finn had ever seen him, and that was long before the Mulholland billions—or even the Mulholland millions—had started rolling in. He’d been wildly in love with his wife and baby son, and for a few months after Max’s birth, it had just looked like his life would be perfect forever. Then came Marti’s diagnosis, then her death, and after that . . .

Well, Russell had just started to pull away after that. From everything. And everyone. Even Max. Finn knew Russell loved his son. A lot. Which, maybe, was the very reason he kept his distance from the kid. Because he remembered how much it had hurt to lose Marti. And some part of him recognized that losing a child would hurt even more. Not that Finn was a psychologist by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn’t take a degree in human behavior to figure that out. It only took watching your best friend go through the worst time in his life.

So while Finn was being a hovering mother to Russell, he did his best to be some kind of father figure to Max, too. So did the other guys who worked security. And Russell, to be fair, spent as much time with his son as he could. Or, at least as much as he dared. Their passion for gaming was the glue that bound them, and they shared as much as they could of that world.

Russell also did his best to set a decent example for Max, mostly by keeping his
in
decent behavior confined to after-hours. He rarely introduced his son to the women he was dating, and the low profile he did his best to keep prevented him from being the target of too many lurid tabloid stories. Anything Max might read about his father was easily dismissed as—and Finn had spent a lot of time wording this explanation—“rumor and innuendo generated by a disgruntled media.” And, hey, anything printed about Russell
was
often rumor and innuendo generated by a disgruntled media.

Never mind that the reality was often rumor and innuendo for a reason, not to mention lurid. As far as Max was concerned, his father was no worse behaved than anyone else’s. And really, considering the behavior of some of the fathers of the kids Max ran around with—and some of the mothers, too, for that matter—Russell was a paragon of virtue.

“Come on,” Finn cajoled that paragon now. “Out with it. Where are you going?”

Russell ticked off a list of destinations whose names had enough
X
s and
Z
s in them to qualify for an obscure Eastern European language. Yep, it was going to be a loooooong night.

“And who’s going with you?” he asked further.

“Stoller and Franklin,” Russell replied obediently.

Finn nodded. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to keep Russell both safe and in line. “And what are Max’s plans for the evening?”

“I believe he said something about checking out an extreme sports park not far from here,” Russell told him. “It’s supposed to be one of the best in the country. He left about an hour ago with Hernandez and Moseby, who both looked equally delighted to be spending the evening shredding. Whatever the hell that is.”

Finn had already known about Max’s interest in the park, so he’d sent Moseby over earlier to scope out the location. It wasn’t the most secure place in the world, but Max ought to be okay with his entourage. It helped that the kid wasn’t highly recognized, because he was almost never photographed by the media, thanks to everyone who worked security. And puberty had hit him so hard over the past year and a half that the fourteen-year-old Max bore little resemblance to the twelve-year-old who had been on the podium with his father on the much-publicized night Mulholland Games had announced the development of the GameViper. Max had shot up six inches in the past year alone and had dropped about ten pounds of leftover baby fat. His outdoor and beach life had bleached his hair from the dark brown he’d inherited from his mother to a sun-streaked chestnut that was nothing like his dad’s. There was little chance anyone would peg Max as Russell Mulholland’s kid. Still, Finn wasn’t taking any chances. And neither would Russell.

“I told him he has to be back by ten,” Russell said. “That tutor from his school who came with us isn’t lightening up on the homework load just because Max is missing class for two weeks. So he still has to abide by his usual weekend bedtime.”

“And what about you?” Finn asked. “Do you have a curfew, too?”

Russell tossed him a disgusted look. “I don’t know, Mom, do I?”

“Just try to be home before dawn this time, okay?”

For the first time during their exchange, Russell grew serious. “With Max here? You know better than to even ask.”

True enough, Finn thought. Russell only stayed out all night if Max was spending the night with a friend or his grandparents. And he never brought women home with him. Russell might stay out ’til the wee hours, but if Max woke up when he came in and saw how late it was, his father would tell him he’d just been having so much fun he’d lost track of time. Which would be true. He just wouldn’t tell Max that the fun had been sexual in nature. Not that Max probably wouldn’t be able to figure that out for himself. But at least Russell was trying.

Okay, okay, Finn thought. So Russell wasn’t exactly in the running for the Father of the Year Award, and he was moving farther and farther away from it—and his son—every year. It was a defense mechanism on his part, Finn told himself. And anyway, now that Max was growing up and becoming more independent, he’d started to pull away from Russell, too, the way a healthy adolescent kid should. Of course, Russell had probably made that easier on the kid by never allowing him to get too close in the first place, but . . .

Well, hell,
Finn thought. Suffice it to say that, these days, both Mulhollands were acting like adolescents. Which was weird on Russell’s part, since Finn could remember plenty of nights when they were stuck in that group home where they had lain in their bunk beds—Finn on top, Russell on the bottom—talking about how much better their lives would be once they were grown-ups. How they couldn’t wait to not be teenagers anymore, because no one took you seriously when you were a teenager, and the whole world was out to get you.

Then again, in some ways, the whole world was kind of out to get Russell now, so maybe he thought retreating back to that netherworld of adolescence would be a good place to hide.

Ah, screw it. Russell was who he was, and Finn was who he was. As happened so often in life, they’d taken different paths only to wind up at the same destination. To this day, they still approached things differently, even though they had identical goals. Keep the Mulhollands safe, and keep their secrets secret. Finn, at least, would do what he could to ensure that.

“Just behave yourself,” he told Russell, hoping that would help him do his part, too.

“I always behave,” his friend replied.

It was only after Russell had returned to his room and closed the door behind himself that Finn realized his last sentence could have meant anything.

 

 

AT ONE A.M., FINN WAS ALONE IN HIS ROOM, AND Russell still hadn’t returned. He’d heard Max come in around nine, then the kid had spent a couple of hours playing Super Mario. Finn would recognize that overly cheerful, computer-generated music anywhere. Unfortunately. Try as he might, he’d never developed the interest in gaming that the Mulhollands had. Not even for the ones that weren’t overly cheerful. Call him crazy, but he’d rather watch hockey anytime. Of course, you couldn’t fire bazookas or blow people up in hockey—not and stay within the rules of the NHL, anyway—but at least the blood was real.

At the moment, all was quiet in the next room, indicating that Max was asleep and Russell still wasn’t home. Finn ambled over to the minibar and withdrew a third beer, relishing the hiss of the cap as he twisted it off and savoring the first cold swallow. It was a rare Saturday night that he had off from work, mostly because weekends were when Russell was at his rowdiest, and he didn’t trust his friend’s safety to anyone but himself. But the last week had been especially grueling with all the preparation for the trip to Louisville, what with having to check up on everyone Russell and Max would be meeting with, and anyone they
might
be meeting with, and everyplace they were going, and anyplace they
might
be going. Add to it the fact that Finn hadn’t taken a day off in more than three years, and Russell hadn’t had to do much cajoling to get his head of security to take some time for himself.

And what had Finn done with that time to himself? He’d spent it cooped up in his hotel room—alone—watching TV. Yeah, okay, the room—
suite
, he corrected himself, still unaccustomed to staying in hotel
suites
, as opposed to hotel
rooms
—was pretty damned nice, with its dark wood paneling and Early Imperial Despot furnishings. And yeah, on the TV had been a boxing match he’d been looking forward to for a long time. But the point remained that Finn’s nights off weren’t exactly anything to write home about, which, now that he thought about it, might be why he took so few nights off.

For some reason, that made him think about Natalie Beckett, and he reached into the back pocket of his jeans for the invitation that was still jammed there. He set the beer on the desk and unfolded the heavy vellum paper, smoothing it out until the invitation lay open beside the beer. But where he would have expected there to be an elegantly scripted, formally worded summons for the prospective guest, instead, the card was inscribed in a funky font that described what actually sounded like a very good time.

A costume party,
he thought as he set the invitation down on the desk.
Jeez, did people still have those these days outside Halloween?
Finn didn’t think he’d ever been to a costume party, not even as a kid. He thought back. Nope. Not one. Then again, when you grew up the way he had, parties were few and far between. Whenever Finn got together with other kids, it had been to throw rocks at bottles in vacant lots or knock flattened cans down alleys with broomsticks. Then, later, to smoke cigarettes and drink vodka that someone had stolen, respectively, from his old lady’s purse and his old man’s liquor cabinet. To this day, Finn could not abide the smell of Virginia Slims or the taste of Smirnoff.