"Dino's an operator, isn't he?' Alice asked out of the blue one Sunday evening. The silence in the house was getting on her nerves. Nerves that had been stretched to the breaking point prior to Peter's kidnapping, but now they hummed like and overloaded electrical wire.
She almost admitted to Terry the other day that she missed having her sister-in-law around, but then she would have a nervous breakdown dealing with Janice's idiosyncrasies.
"You could say that," Terry replied, a bit surprised. He had been busy planning his next move in the game, so Alice's question threw him a bit. He put down the pencil he was writing with and gave Alice his undivided attention. "I do have to admit that I have heard him called much worse."
"If that's the case," Alice remarked. She was grasping for straws because she loved to hear Terry speak. She found his voice very soothing and would do almost anything to keep him speaking; almost anything to keep the silence at bay. "Then why is he helping you?"
"Because we're mates."
"Tell her the real reason, Ter," Dino said from the doorway of the study. He had been standing there for about five minutes watching his friend and their client.
"For fucks sake, Dino!" Terry snapped.
"You're slipping, pal," Dino retorted not bothered by Terry's outburst. "Maybe that hit you took in Chechnya slowed your reflexes or maybe you're just getting old."
"I'm not the one who turned 40 on his last birthday," Terry tossed back, falling into the banter that was his and Dino's communication style.
Alice looked between the two men. She noted the differences in each man. Terry was stockier; dark skinned with chestnut hair and held himself like a football player. Dino, on the other hand, was lankier, fair-skinned with reddish-gold hair and held himself like a racehorse at the starting gate.
Dino felt Alice studying him and he grinned. "Yeah, I know. I don't look 40."
"You sure as hell don't act it."
Dino shrugged. "So should I tell Alice why I'm helping you?"
"I don't care," Terry muttered. He got up and walked past Alice without looking at her. "I'm going for a beer. You want one?"
"Sure," Dino agreed. He stepped aside and let Terry leave the room.
"I'm sorry I asked," Alice apologized.
"It's alright,' Dino replied. He took Terry's seat next to Alice. "You have a right to know. Terry's just being a shit about it. Me, I don't care so much, but the simple truth is that I owe him my life and I'm repaying that debt by helping him get your husband back."
"There is nothing terrible about that," Alice observed. "Or is there?"
"You are a shrewd cookie," Dino quipped. He picked up the pencil Terry had been writing with and twirled it in his fingers. "Terry still thinks that it was his fault that I almost died. I can honestly say I was too wrapped up in my own head and didn't see until it was too late that we had waltzed right into a carefully laid trap."
"It's still my fault," Terry said from the doorway. He walked in and handed Dino a beer. He gave Alice a glass of wine before settling on the sofa across from Alice. "I was on point and should have seen that tripwire."
Dino sighed and shook his head. He tossed the pencil back onto the desk. "The fact that we are sitting here arguing about this still proves what a moot point that line of thought really is, Ter."
"So what happened?" Alice gently inquired. She sensed that this was a touchy subject for both men and didn't want to see it destroy their friendship, but part of her couldn't help her curiosity.
"It was a clever little booby trap,' Dino murmured. "The person who tripped it didn't get hurt. It was the person behind him who did."
"Yeah," Terry agreed. Rehashing the past had suddenly made his mouth dry, so he took a long pull from his bottle of beer. "And if you hadn't knocked Ben out of the road, he wouldn't be in New York charging enormous amounts of money to wealthy hypochondriacs."
"Semantics," Dino remarked with a dry chuckle. "I couldn't let the medic get killed now could I?"
"You are never going to let me win this argument, are you?"
"Only on the day a snowflake can kick back with Lucifer and enjoy a margarita," Dino remarked. He took a sip of his beer and grimaced. He put the bottle on the desk. He never could get use to the taste of foreign made beer no matter how many times he tried it. "But can we agree that you saved my life, and therefore I'm repaying the debt?"
"Yes," Terry agreed. "And you are also buying dinner."
"You dirty, rotten son of a bitch," Dino growled. He looked over at Alice. "He does this every time. Tricks me into telling the sob story and then I end up buying him dinner."
Alice shot Terry a skeptical look before taking a sip of wine. "So none of it's true?"
"It's true," Terry replied. "It was a simple snatch and grab operation, but the moment we hit the ground it went to shit."
"Something I'm personally going to thank Ian for one of these days," Dino vowed.
"When we pull this off, mate, I'll fly you to London so you can do just that," Terry said with a wicked grin.
"Are you providing bail money?"
"I'll think about it."
"Asshole."
Terry was going to throw something back at Dino when the radio came to life. He saw Alice tense up and clutch at the glass of wine in her hand like it were an anchor.
He knew she couldn't take another session. He also knew that he couldn't watch her go through another session, because it would throw him off stride and enough time had been wasted trying to lower the ransom demand. He looked at Dino and made a slight 'get-her-out-of-here' motion with his head.
Dino picked up on it immediately. "Instead of me buying this sorry excuse for a kangaroo dinner, let's go to the kitchen and see what I can conjure up."
Alice saw through Dino's suggestion, but decided to play along for both men's sake. Besides, she thought, I could get more information about Terry out of Dino. "You cook?"
"I'm not your typical bachelor," Dino said with a soft smile.
"So I'm coming to learn." Alice stood and let Dino lead her from the room.