Heist Royale (Thieves’ Gambit #2)

Chapter Six

Six

Arriving in New Orleans during the biggest party of the year was more chaotic than I was prepared for.

It took me a whole thirty minutes just to fight my way through Louis Armstrong Airport, decked out in purple and green, to the rideshare pickup area, only to find the nearest Uber wouldn’t be available for an hour. A guy in a Throw Me Something Mister sequined T-shirt and a woman with a jester hat got into a shoving match at the back of the dizzyingly long taxi queue. The worker at one of the rental car kiosks laughed under her feathered mask when I asked if there was anything available.

Could you blame me for hot-wiring a Prius from the long-term parking lot?

Mylo and Kyung-soon had beat me by a day somehow, and their texts since I’d landed weren’t super helpful.

Mylo

are you out of the airport? We’re waiting at the Airbnb. (Pin dropped)

Hey we’re going to get beignets meet us at this cafe (Pin dropped)

Left the cafe. Saved you some beignets

Kyung-soon ate ur beignets

Kyung-soon

Mylo ate your beignets

Mylo

Meet us at this wax museum (Pin dropped)

They’re closed. Now we’re going here (Pin dropped)

Nvm we broke into the wax museum meet us here (Pin dropped)

We got chased out of the wax museum we’ll meet you here (Pin dropped)

After a two-hour-long game of tag, I finally managed to catch up. The last pin dropped led me to a strip mall in Metairie, one of New Orleans’s swankier boroughs, where I found myself walking into a low-lit, laughter-and-chime-filled place called Throwback.

A huge, two-story arcade. I didn’t see any giant touch screens or dance games; instead there were rows of standing quarter machines. Ah, I got it now. Throwback . A vintage arcade.

I moved around the floor, dodging between kids running with glow sticks, waiters wearing Mardi Gras beads and jester hats, and honestly way too many older folks slurping colorful slushies, all insisting that they were the best at this game back in the day. I found Mylo hunched over a Pac-Man console.

At least, I thought it was Mylo.

“?’Scuse me, sir, have you seen my friend?”

He jumped, then immediately got eaten by a ghost. Luckily, he didn’t seem to care.

“Yo!” Mylo knocked the breath out of me with a bear hug. “Ross Quest in the flesh again! You’re shorter than I remembered.”

I snuggled into him for a beat longer than necessary. I just got friends to snuggle into. There’d been way too few of these moments in my life. I could probably count them on one hand. If Diane got what she wanted, I was going to die pitifully unhugged.

“Are you okay?” Mylo tried to pull back. Apparently when you start squeezing the life out of someone while contemplating your mortality, they notice.

I blinked back any tears as I let him go. “Yeah. You’re, uh, more clean-cut than I remember. What the hell happened to your hair?”

I’d thought he was growing it out. At least that was what I remembered from the last time we FaceTimed a week ago. But now he’d chopped most of the shoulder-length glory into a short-cropped, young-gentleman style. He’d even dyed it a dashing russet brown. No trademark loose-hanging suspenders. Less eyeliner too. If it hadn’t been for the distressed jeans and T-shirt, I’d have thought he’d been body-snatched.

Mylo ignored my weird huggy moment for now and let his shoulders slump. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He rustled his hair, only for it to settle neatly back into place. “I got this long con coming up at UCLA next semester. I told you, don’t you remember?”

He had? Was I paying attention? “Yeah. Slipped my mind.”

“I had to interview a few days ago. Must look like a presentable young man.” He stuck a finger in his mouth and gagged.

“Right…”

“Do I look that bad?”

“No, I just wasn’t expecting a prelaw student.”

With how pale he got, you’d have thought I told him he looked like a goblin.

“But, you know, on your day off. With a hangover,” I added.

“I’ll take it.” He gestured to the machine behind him. “Wanna play? I need more quarters, though.” He scanned for any staff, then gestured for me to guard the machine. With lightning-fast talent, he twirled a certain familiar pen out of his pocket and lasered open just the right spot in the back of the machine. A basket of quarters sat inside. He gave me a handful and collected a handful for himself. A few seconds later, he had the piece clicked back in place and I was starting my very first game of Pac-Man .

I was not good at it.

Gobbling up dots? Could do. Avoiding the pesky little ghosts? Not so much.

“There aren’t any, like, secret rows I can sneak into?” I complained.

“Is the great escape artist Ross Quest having trouble getting through a single screen of Pac-Man ? This is not how I predicted things going.”

I groaned, dropping my forehead on the console after getting hit with the Game Over screen for the fifteenth time.

“Get away from the screen before you waste hours there. Trust me, I know.” Kyung-soon, carrying a sickly-sweet-smelling paper bag in one hand, twinkle-waved at me with the other. At least she looked the same. Well, except—

“Am I the only one who didn’t get a haircut?”

Her copper-color hair stopped just above the headphones around her neck now. Still familiarly frizzy, though.

She shrugged. “I did it first. Mylo’s the copycat.”

Mylo sniffed the air. “You got more beignets!”

Kyung-soon jerked them away before Mylo could grab the bag. “For Ross. Eat them before he steals them too.”

We made our way to a peeling faux-leather booth in the back. After making Mylo watch with hungry eyes as I ate one puffy, powdered-sugar-caked beignet, I was merciful and shared the bag. Kyung-soon had dumped the contents of her backpack on the table and was fiddling with a transparent sticker with wiring running through it. She caught me eyeing it and sighed. “Biometric sensor. I didn’t know it was assembly-required.”

“That’s her way of saying she accidentally spent twelve grand on a pile of junk.”

“It is not!” Kyung-soon insisted. She was comparing the device to a picture on her phone. “I trust the engineer who sold it to me. She’s a friend of my mentor’s. Once this is done, I’ll be able to get past any biometric lock, so long as I have a sample from the target.” As an example, she pressed my thumb over the center of the sticker. My skin tingled, and a light on Kyung-soon’s phone flashed before sputtering out.

“If only it was actually functional,” Mylo said, lips coated with powdered sugar. He nodded toward me. “Anyways. What’s your catastrophe?”

I frowned. How did he jump to catastrophe?

Mylo and Kyung-soon exchanged a look. “Why else would you be here in person? It’s not like you just wanted to see us,” Kyung-soon said.

I opened my mouth, but Mylo beat me.

“You must have twisted Count’s arm for a break, since we all know she wasn’t gonna be, like, yeah, go take your two weeks PTO, no prob. And if you did that, then it must be for something important,” Mylo explained.

Well, that was better than telling me I’m the friend who always has problems. We’d have to make sure that wasn’t what they actually thought later.

I spilled about everything. Baron, being sort-of kidnapped, Count being a way bigger fish than I’d assumed, and the vote of no confidence Baron was trying to initiate. Oh, and, you know, Devroe’s mom still being hell-bent on wiping my fam off the face of the earth.

Mylo rubbed his chin. “I always suspected Count was at the top of the organization.”

“No, you didn’t,” Kyung-soon said.

“Well, it makes sense now. Those power suits she wears don’t exactly scream underling.” Mylo took a breath. “What makes you think this Baron dude is going to be better than her, though?”

“I don’t care who’s ‘better.’ I care who’s on my side.” My phone buzzed.

Devroe

Count said you took some days. Missing you already

Haven’t been to New Orleans in a while. Maybe I’ll follow you.

I muted the conversation. How the hell did he know where I went?

Kyung-soon licked her teeth. My phone had been on the table; they’d clearly read the texts too. “Diane is Devroe’s mother. What is Baron going to do to someone who’s been working for an enemy if he takes over?”

“I dunno. Does it matter? I’m a little more worried about stopping her, not her retirement plan.”

“Okay, but…we shouldn’t participate in anything that’s going to hurt her.”

“Hurt her ? The woman that tried to get Devroe to have the organization blow me and my family’s brains out six months ago?”

“Devroe’s our friend,” Kyung-soon said quietly. “If we told him about—”

“He’s not our friend!” I yelled, louder than I meant to. A lady with a toddler gave me a stank look.

“Devroe is a playboy traitor who might maybe have enough empathy to back out on family genocide, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was manipulating us throughout the entire Gambit and now he’s just holding this wish over my head, and for all we know he’s already well aware what his mom’s been up to. We’re not telling him about this. End of conversation.”

Kyung-soon folded her arms. “Sure. Your decision is final. All of our relationships should get greenlit by Ross Quest first. Everything revolves around you, anyway.”

I balked. “What does that mean?”

Kyung-soon stayed silent. We just glared at each other.

“Aaannyways.” Mylo looked to Kyung-soon. “Maybe we don’t tell Devroe, for practicality, don’t want this getting leaked back to Count, but…” He turned his attention to me. “Maybe you hit up Baron and make sure he’s not going to have all his political enemies beheaded at the end of this? Or at least not the mom of the guy who, for whatever reason, decided not to have you and your family murdered? Seems kinda fair if you’re getting lifetime protection in return? Eh?” He gave us both a goofy smile.

“Fine,” we said in unison. Only Kyung-soon answered in Korean.

“I don’t know what that means,” I said without thinking. I had been learning Korean like I promised, but letting her know I’d been loyal enough to learn a whole-ass language for her when she couldn’t even get behind shunning my ex-crush-turned-almost-murderer was too pathetic.

Kyung-soon got up and slid her headphones on. “Text me the details.” She left.

“That wasn’t cool, Ross,” Mylo said, and I felt like a real jerk for a second. Wasn’t I just lamenting all the time with friends I was going to miss out on if Diane got what she wanted?

I bit my lip, suddenly regretting how impulsive I’d been. “I’ll say sorry later.” I could probably catch her now, but…ugh, awkward.

“Okay, but— Never mind.” Mylo clapped as if nothing had happened. “No worries. She’ll be back. Now, didn’t you mention this job involves costumes?”