Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) by Shelley Singer

iceberg or the whole shebang? Were they one cell in a national network? International? Royal seemed to think they had big-time bad-ass connections all over the place. Maybe they did, but I wasn’t sure they could get it together to make a long-distance phone call.
    I had a sudden image: guys like Steve, half a dozen of them in as many cities, running secret idiot-societies, e-mailing each other at night, and pretending to make plans for world domination they couldn’t possibly carry out with the personnel they attracted. I thought I’d hold onto that image.
    Pete Ebner was watching me.
    He got up from his folding chair and marched over to where I stood with Royal.
    “Royal knows he’s supposed to pick his guests carefully. I hope that’s the case with you?”
    I curled my lip, Elvis-style.
    “Listen, Royal mentioned there was this party, and you said I could come, so I came. I like you guys’ ideas. I think it’s time we turned things around a little.” Was I protesting too much? Should I keep the political proclamations down?
    “Yeah? How far are you willing to go personally to do that?”
    “Far as I need to. Time we stopped the bastards before they stop us.” Any old bastards; fill in the blanks. “Support the Command any way I can. Do what’s needed. That’s what I’m willing to do.”
    Talk about getting in character.
    He quirked a fuzzy blond eyebrow and lifted half his mouth in an unpleasant smile.
    “You want to cook us supper?”
    Royal laughed. I didn’t. Ebner probably insulted the warriors by calling them “girls.”
    “Whatever it takes. But there are things I’m better at.”
    “Maybe we’ll talk about that later.”
    By this time, the room had filled up. A few more adults, six or seven kids who were either warriors or hangers-on. Did they allow hangers-on? Technically, I thought, I was one.
    “You want to sit in, here, that’s okay. As long as you know that everything— everything— we say stays in this room. Royal—” he pointed a finger at the kid’s chest “—Jason messes up, you pay for it.” Ebner turned away.
    Tough. Scary. But if he was worried about tales being told, that could mean I’d actually hear something useful during this impressive social event.
    Royal got busy with his friends, punching shoulders and looking masculine; Pete had returned to his seat beside Red. Floyd saw me, gave me an index-finger salute, but kept on talking to Karl. Hal and Helen, our hosts, were taking a break from their duties, standing side by side in the doorway of the kitchen. So pale, so colorless, so quiet. Suddenly the lyrics to “St. James Infirmary” started running through my head. I joined them.
    “Nice turnout.”
    Helen nodded. They both looked at me as if we hadn’t been introduced fifteen minutes before.
    “My name’s Jason? Jason Dormeister. Royal’s cousin?”
    “Yeah, we know,” Hal said, flickering a quick smile my way.
    “You host a lot of these soirees?”
    Helen frowned. Maybe she disapproved of the foreign word.
    “We all have our ways of contributing. We feel that it’s our duty to entertain the warriors. Show them we care about them.”
    “Sure, I can understand that. Do you have other kinds of meetings here too?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Oh, I don’t know— just besides parties for the warriors.”
    “We do whatever we can.”
    “I was kind of surprised,” Hal said abruptly, “to see you here tonight.”
    “Why’s that?”
    He shook his head. “Well, we’re real careful about who gets to come to things. But Pete seems to think you’re okay.”
    My take on this was that Pete did not at all think I was okay, but had decided to try me out, or Steve and Red had decided that after our chat at Thor’s. This could be some kind of test, or maybe they just needed new members badly enough to take a chance. Once again, I went with the possibility I liked the best. They needed members. Desperately.
    “So does Floyd. Think you’re okay. And