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Chapter Text

1)

Laurent found her bleeding in the streets of Cairo. She had a gun in her hand, a dead man at her feet, and five million gineih in a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Laurent strolled right up to her, whistling like an asshole, and she nearly shot him right then and there, but she stayed her hand because his presence confused her. He looked so out of place. Rich white man foreigner, taking in the view. He looked unarmed, but totally comfortable with his surroundings. He wasn’t part of the baltagiya she had just robbed blind.

He was smart, though—he didn’t try to smile at her. If he had, she would’ve aimed lower and shot him in the dick.

“Bonsoir,” he said. “Je ne vous dérange pas, j'espère?”

“I don’t speak French,” she replied in crisp, standard Arabic, and pointed the gun at his forehead.

“Ah,” he said. He raised his hands carefully. In Arabic with a heavy French accent, he said: “My name is Laurent Thierry. I’m a trader of special goods. I’d like to hire you for a job. And you,” he looked around at the bloodstained alleyway, “clearly didn’t make an exit plan.”

She held the gun steady. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“The first step in any good job is making your exit plan.” He swooped one hand in the air, making a swoosh sound, like a little boy. “No point in taking the goods if you can’t enjoy them later.”

“So you’re a thief.”

“I’m a trader.” At this, he did smile. It was an insincere, magazine-cover smile. “I sell people hopes and dreams, and in exchange, I take all the money they’re worth. Fair’s fair, with the villains I target.”

“Oh, I see. A conman.” She narrowed her eyes. “Even worse. What do you want with me?”

“I told you, I want to hire you. I heard that you were the best mercenary in the Middle East. I need skills like yours for my next job.”

“Why should I care?”

“Well, I can think of three reasons. Number one,” he said, and put his hand in his breast pocket. She tensed. Slowly, meeting her eyes, he pulled a set of car keys out and jingled them in the air. “The baltagiya will get here soon, and you don’t have an exit plan.”

“I could shoot you, steal your car, and go.” She shrugged. “Now I have an exit plan.”

His eyes never left her face. “Number two, you’re not after the money. You’re after retribution. The gang you stole from committed terrible crimes, and you wanted to punish them. But you don’t feel satisfied, because you know the gangs are being paid off by the police, and there are a lot of gangs out there.” He tossed the car keys in the air and caught them with a flourish. “What if I told you my next job is the police?” He pointed at the duffel bag. “I’ll even sweeten the deal. I guarantee you a cut ten times larger than that when the job is over.”

Despite herself, she was taken aback. She didn’t like this smooth-talking white man, with the cool eyes that knew too much and the head full of hot air. But it had been a long, long time since she’d had an honest conversation with another person. And she was so, so tired. “You can’t swindle the police for 50 million gineih,” she said, taking the bait.

He smiled again. “Baby, I still get half the cut. I’m going to swindle the police for 100 million.”

That was just stupid. But his sheer confidence was amusing, if nothing else. “Don’t call me baby,” she said. “What if I don’t believe you?”

“Then that’s alright. There’s still number three.” His eyes seemed to bore into her. “You don’t have an exit plan because you don’t want an exit plan. You want to be reckless and dangerous. You want the bad guys to catch up with you. Baby, you’re living like this because you want to die.”

She struck out like a scorpion. Her fist slammed into Laurent’s nose, and in the next second she had him pinned on the ground, the barrel of her gun between his eyes. He blinked up at her, dazed.

“Call me baby one more time,” she growled, “and I’ll blast your brains out.”

He blinked a few more times. “Yes. I apologize.”

“You don’t know a thing about me. I don’t know you, I don’t trust you, I don’t respect you. Why should I listen to a word you say?”

He just looked into her eyes, calm and still as a photograph. “Because I’m going to give you what you want,” he said. “If you die when you’re helping me, I promise it’ll be in a blaze of glory. And I’ll make sure the villains pay.”

She thought about this.

After a while, she lowered her gun and let him up.

“You’re crazy enough to at least make this interesting,” she said. “Let’s go. Tell me what you need me to do.”

2)

They ended up getting LE 200 million from the bastards. That was their first job together. Then there was another job. And another. She still didn’t like Laurent, but she appreciated that if there was one thing he was really serious about, it was his jobs. Bombastic, ambitious cons that should have collapsed under their own baggage, but somehow succeeded anyways. He was also good at picking piece-of-shit targets who she enjoyed twisting the knife into. He had an incredibly light touch—no bloodshed, no traces left behind. She thought this would make the jobs boring, but they weren’t. He kept his promise. There was at least one heart-pounding, lightning-fast moment in each job that temporarily filled the empty space that the war had torn open in her.

She did like Cynthia Moore, though. And from the looks of it, Laurent liked her too. Besides the apparently endless number of contacts Laurent had in the international conmen network, and the occasional Iraqi gun for hire, his core team was always himself and Cynthia. Who knew why Cynthia put up with Laurent, but she was clever and fun and surprisingly sweet. She didn’t seem to mind reigning in his worst impulses when he started improvising on jobs. She was his match when it came to grifting.

“How did you meet Laurent?” she asked Cynthia. They were both a little drunk, celebrating after a successful getaway, and it was one of her better days. Cynthia smiled at her. It was a remarkably similar smile as Laurent’s.

“Oh. Well, you see, I stole an island,” Cynthia said. She indicated the beach condo they were in and the postcard sunset horizon. “Then a French tourist came along and asked to rent my new beach out. Little did I know that his fellow guests were ivory cartel owners, and he was using me to run a con on them.” She gazed into the distance fondly. “He hosts so many parties here, sometimes I think he only wants me for my island.”

She eyed Cynthia suspiciously. “Are you sleeping with him?” she asked, point blank.

Cynthia startled. And then she threw back her head and laughed. She had a nice laugh. “Darling, are you jealous?”

“Gross,” she deadpanned.

Cynthia’s eyes danced with mirth. “No. He’s not my type. Although he has slept with half the other conmen he’s worked with, in case you’re interested.”

“I’m really not.” She waved her hand at Cynthia. “I just don’t get…you. And him. The two of you.”

“We’re both grifters, that’s all. Birds of a feather.”

She thought about this. Cynthia sprawled on the couch artfully, gently swirling a flute of gold champagne, watching her with warm brown eyes. She looked like a woman from a Renaissance painting.

“Would you like me to teach you how to seduce a mark?” Cynthia asked.

She frowned, a little caught off guard. “I can’t do that. I have too many scars.”

“Oh, darling. That doesn’t matter.” Cynthia’s eyes traveled down and up over her body, lingering on her thighs, her collarbones. A faint flush dusted her pale cheeks. “You’re beautiful,” she said in a husky voice. “You could launch a thousand ships and more, with that face.”

At the compliment, she felt her skin prickle with warmth. There was a time when she would have wanted to hear that; she had craved the audience’s applause, telling her over and over again that she was beautiful, perfect, so skilled. But beauty wasn’t really something she aspired to, anymore. She wanted power. She wanted to make bad people hurt. This was just another knife hidden in her boot.

“Alright,” she agreed. “Show me your tricks.”

Together, they picked an English name for her. Abigail Jones, Abby for short. It rolled off the tongue, easy to remember, and revealed nothing about herself. Cynthia showed her how to hold her body, how to cut her hair, how to lean in when a man was speaking. They practiced smiling. They practiced acting stupid. They practiced acting smart.

“But always have ground rules,” Cynthia told her. “This is important, darling. Keep in mind the things that you won’t let a mark do, even for a job. If anyone crosses that line, make them back off. If you ever feel in danger, get out. Stay safe. Respect your own rules, your own control over your body.” She smiled kindly. “Always have an exit plan.”

The newly renamed Abigail Jones proved to be an exceptional grifter, like she was exceptional at everything else she put her body through. Laurent started giving her assignments other than violence and fast cars. Abby thought she would mind, but she didn’t, really. When men she hated touched her, she didn’t feel anything, not even disgust. The only thing that made her feel anything was the thrill of impending death. Then it would all surge to the surface like a brief flash of hot sunlight—her shame, her fear, her rage, her triumph. It never lasted long enough. Most of the time, she did try to follow Cynthia’s ground rules, but she probably didn’t take as much care as she should.

Laurent noticed. He was good at noticing things, unfortunately. In the middle of a job, while she was trying to seduce an especially unsavory mafia boss, Laurent suddenly pulled her out. He nearly ruined the whole con extracting her from the situation and bringing her back to their hotel.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she hissed at him. Talking to the mafia boss all day, letting his sweaty hands roam over her skin, she had felt trapped in her mind, reckless for catastrophe. She wanted it to be over with already.

“I didn’t like where things were going,” he said. “I didn’t think you were in control.”

She snarled. “I was doing my job. I could’ve handled it!”

“I know you could have,” Laurent said smoothly. He rolled up his sleeves and poured himself a glass of wine. He was such an asshole. She hated him.

“Then why did you pull me out?”

He smiled falsely at her. “I just hate to see talent wasted. There’s always another opportunity, Abby. There’s always a way out. If there’s something you don’t want to do, I’ll fix the plan so you don’t need to. It would be perfectly alright.”

“Fuck you,” Abby spat. “What do you know about what I want?”

He set the wine glass down with a clink. “Do you really want me to answer that?” he asked quietly.

Abby grimaced. Laurent always knew everything, the arrogant bastard. His eyes saw straight through her.

Laurent smiled again. “You’re free to do as you please. From now on, I won’t stop you. But is this really how you want to die?”

She went into her private hotel room and slammed the door behind her.

Fine. Fine. Laurent was right. She had been taking unnecessary, stupid risks, and she had lost control. It was a good thing for both her and the con that he had pulled her out before she got too deep. She wouldn’t make that mistake with this mafia boss again.

Laurent was wrong about one thing, though. Some traps had no way out. She would never be able to escape her pain, her exile, the way her own brain constantly betrayed her with useless memories and inexplicable emotions. Her only form of relief was the thrill of the con. And it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

3)

Abby carried the Japanese man’s body from their car over to the Hollywood sign. Laurent didn’t lift a finger to help, which was typical of him. He just handed her a long, sturdy rope, looked up at the sign, and beamed like a movie star.

“Isn’t this excessive?” Abby asked. “Even for you.”

“Nonsense,” Laurent said. “Only the best for our Edamame. We want to leave a lasting impression.”

He was really, weirdly excited. She’d never seen him smile so much when he wasn’t actively conning someone. It was just Abby here, and the unconscious Japanese man.

Well, whatever. She tied the man by his feet and strung him up from the giant Y, where he dangled upside-down like a limp fish. “Careful,” Laurent called up at her, “we don’t want to accidentally crack his darling skull open.”

“I don’t actually care,” Abby pointed out. She secured the rope and stood next to Laurent to wait for the man to wake up. Laurent craned his neck to watch him, eyes glinting.

“What’s so special about him, anyway?” she asked.

“Ah, c’était un coup de foudre,” he sighed. “Edamura Makoto. He followed me to Los Angeles on his own. I was going to start negotiations in Japan, but I didn’t even need to say anything. He just stole a plane ticket and sat next to me for 12 hours without complaining once. I think he was trying to impress me. This will be so much fun.”

“I think he just sounds like an idiot,” Abby said.

At that point, Edamura Makoto woke up.

Throughout the whole Los Angeles con, Laurent was absolutely insufferable. He couldn’t take his eyes off the man. After Edamame started staying at Salvador’s house, Laurent kept sending Abby to sneak in at night and check on him. Then he would act cool and pretend not to care about what she and Edamame had talked about, when she knew, she knew, he was dying to know every word exchanged. She gave him one-syllable updates on purpose. Cynthia was too deep into the con to send them regular updates, but she told Abby that she felt like Laurent was treating the Cassano job as secondary and putting the Edamame job first. Cynthia had a mean streak, though, so she just thought it was funny. Abby mostly thought it was stupid.

As for Edamame himself—well, Abby wasn’t impressed. Even though he was a conman with a criminal record, his face had this wide-eyed, innocent softness to it that she didn’t like. He was inexperienced, competitive, and tended to jump before he looked. It wasn’t a very good combination. She thought it would be easier to just tell him what the plan was, but Cynthia and Laurent outvoted her. So instead the three of them had to drag him kicking and screaming into the last stage of the con.

And of course, Edamame threw a wrench in it at the last minute. The whole thing went off the rails in truly cinematic fashion.

Everything was going smoothly up till that point. The LAPD was dancing to their tune. Eddie Cassano thought the FBI had gotten him. Ten million dollars in cash and a bunch of fake drugs were on the table. The red paint pellets slammed into her and Laurent to the sound of machine-gun fire. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. Her heart sang. This was the moment in the con she lived for, play-acting war and death until she felt somewhat whole again. She crumpled to the ground, Laurent politely curling around her so he could pour fake blood over them both, and let her thoughts go empty.

And then Edamame started freaking out and picked up a gun.

The loaded gun she had taken from Salvador. The very real, very not-part-of-the-con gun.

Edamame grabbed Cynthia and held the gun to her temple, and Abby jerked, preparing to get up and wrestle the gun away. A hand landed heavily next to her face. Laurent pinned her down under his arm, his face the perfect facsimile of a fresh corpse. She hissed under her breath at him—the plan was blown, Cynthia was in danger, Abby needed to move—but he just twitched his lips in the slightest smile. Wait, he was telling her. The con is still alive.

That was when she noticed that Eddie Cassano was gone. The steam containers around them started to creak and groan.

“كس امك” she whispered. She grabbed Laurent, who fluttered his eyes open in surprise, and tucked her body neatly under his belly for protection. “Cover your head.”

Cynthia shouted a warning. The pressure in the tanks reached their screaming limit, and the warehouse exploded.

In the wreckage, Abby was the first one to recover. After checking that Laurent was still breathing, she started to stand, but then dropped down when she saw Cassano hobble to his feet. Edamame followed soon after. He was shouting something like “Stop! You bastard!” that was getting garbled in his weird accent. He looked wild around the eyes, and he was crying a little. But he pursued Cassano with exhausted, furious determination.

Huh. She hadn’t known the babyface had it in him.

Salazar woke up and went after Edamame. Abby waited until the coast was clear, then climbed to her feet. She picked through the rubble until she reached Cynthia and the rest of Team “FBI.” She brushed the dust carefully out of Cynthia’s face and hair, then shook her awake.

“Fucking shite,” Cynthia said, sitting bolt upright. She clutched her head and groaned. “What the bloody hell just happened?”

“The mark blew up the building,” Abby informed her. “Laurent is out. But the con is still alive. Get the crew together, we’re improvising.”

What followed was an hour of constant adrenaline rush. Somehow, they managed to pull through. The money was transferred, they sent Salazar off with instructions on how to make a plea bargain, and then they were speeding toward Laurent’s private jet in an unmarked van to make their getaway. Greg, who had played FBI #2, was driving. Laurent was rubbing the last of the fake blood out of his hair. Some of it might be real blood, actually. He had been unconscious for a few minutes.

“I just think it’s sweet,” Laurent cooed. “Edamame got so upset when we died. He really cared about Salazar too. And the part where he started talking about justice! Comme c’est mignon.”

“He’s unstable,” Abby shot back. “Emotional. Doesn’t think through the consequences.”

“And all you had to do was lie there like a brick at the end,” Cynthia added with a pout. “Abby and I had to pull everything back from the brink of disaster. You’re lucky nobody got seriously hurt, and Anderson and his guys stayed knocked out long enough for us to clean up the set.”

“That’s what makes it fun though! The plot twists. The drama. The suspense! You need a little danger to make things real. And anyways, I designed the lab to make an explosion as safe as possible.”

Veronica, who had played FBI #1, rolled her eyes. “Come off it! There’s no way you actually predicted those tankers would explode while we were still in the building.”

Laurent just smiled his plastic smile at them. It was impossible, as always, to tell exactly how much he had planned, and how much was just him flying by the seat of his pants. For the sake of her sanity, Abby liked to assume it was more the latter. But sometimes he said things that made her think: you genius, manipulative bastard.

Cynthia probably felt the same way. It was why, despite how incredibly annoying Laurent could be, the two of them kept coming back to work for him, again and again. Nobody else put together cons like he did.

Abby got on her knees and looked behind her, to where Edamame was lying in the backseat, still unconscious. His neck was at an awkward angle. He looked small and harmless, and utterly incapable of the kind of brazen fire she’d seen earlier that night.

“I don’t want him on the team,” she muttered.

Cynthia turned to look at her, surprised. “No? Why not? I thought he did quite well, all things considered.”

Abby didn’t know how to say it. She just knew that things worked between the three of them, her and Cynthia and Laurent. She almost felt like she belonged somewhere, for the first time in a long time. And adding this newcomer in the mix would change things. She didn’t know if she was ready for that.

“He makes you reckless,” she told Laurent, sitting back down. “He’s going to push you into taking higher risks, bigger cons. You think it’ll impress him, but it won’t. He just tried to turn us into the FBI. He’s not like us. Give him up, Laurent.”

The van fell quiet. Cynthia was watching Laurent. Laurent was smiling out the window, fiddling with the ring on his necklace.

“I won a bet,” he said playfully. “So he owes me one con at least. But you’re right.” He kicked back and laced his hands behind his head, closing his eyes, the picture of serenity. “I’ll let him decide what he wants to do next. If he wants nothing to do with me, then I won’t even protest. I’ll give him a graceful exit.”

Somehow, she doubted that.

Chapter Text

4)

Every gambler had their superstitions. Laurent had his ring. Cynthia had the tin box of British candy she kept in the fridge of their hotel rooms—always put on the same shelf, never opened. Abby had her old ballerina’s medal, which she kept in her emergency safe along with a 1911 Commander pistol and 5,000 US dollars. She didn’t know about the others, but for Abby, if she wasn’t sure about signing up for a job, she would roll the medal down a flat surface and see which side landed up. Backside up: don’t take the job, it wouldn’t be worth the risk. Dancer side up: take the job, and damn the consequences.

When Laurent told her what he wanted her to do in Singapore, she rolled the medal. It landed dancer side up.

Edamame, obviously, had his gacha toys. Abby felt this was childish, but all superstitions were a little childish, and anyways, they suited him. He was so openly earnest about the layers of prophetic meaning he found in these little green plastic figures. He was painfully naïve, for a professional liar.

When Laurent heard that Edamame had landed on Cynthia’s island, he vanished for half an hour before returning with Edamame’s latest gacha toy in hand: a nameless Japanese peasant.

“This is horrible,” Laurent said morosely. He wiggled the little toy in his fingers. “Look what honest living has done to our Edamame. His talent is going to complete waste. We must rescue him!”

“He’s going to be angry when he finds out you’ve stolen that,” Cynthia chided, passing out their Team Confidence uniforms.

“If I’m doing my job, he’ll be so swept up in the con that he won’t even notice it’s gone,” Laurent said.

Abby took off her shirt and threw it violently into Laurent’s face. Laurent sputtered. Cynthia blushed delicately. Abby grabbed her pilot’s uniform and put it on.

“Your job is the Ibrahims, not your bean boy,” she snapped. “Stop thinking with your dick and focus already. If you’re going to be even worse than you were in Los Angeles, I’m leaving now.”

“You wound me,” he said with a glittering smile. Damn it, now that Edamame was back, Laurent was smiling too much again. “There’s no need to worry about that. You just concentrate on flying, superstar.”

Abby flipped him off.

From the beginning of the con, Abby had been on edge. Ironically, she had no issues with gunfire and explosions, even though that was where she got most of her scars. Things that reminded her of serving in the army actually made her feel calm. Her body knew exactly what it was doing; all her training clicked into place, and her mind coldly analyzed the danger. If it was something harmless, like a car backfiring or a firework going off, she could compartmentalize in a second and move on.

The sound of an airplane flying overhead—for some reason, that was different.

When she had her first flying lesson, years ago, she hadn’t been able to stop shaking. It took her weeks before she could take off and land without throwing up. Now, training for the Pathfinder Air Race, she started getting sudden panic attacks when doing completely ordinary things: buying snacks at the convenience store, brushing her teeth. She didn’t get out of bed for much besides working out and training. She didn’t get a lot of sleep, either. The weight of the entire sky seemed to crush down on her shoulders, at all times, an inescapable pressure, and it only got heavier when she flew. She nearly blacked out in the air once.

“Are you alright?” Cynthia had asked at one point.

“I’m fine,” Abby said flatly.

A fine wrinkle appeared between Cynthia’s perfect eyebrows. “I mean, professionally. Are you sure you can do this?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Abby snapped. “I can do it.”

Cynthia looked at Laurent. Laurent just shrugged.

“I promised that I wouldn’t stop her,” was all he said. And so the discussion was over.

Abby didn’t know why she was doing this to herself.

She took her ballerina medal out of the safe and started carrying it around in her pocket. She knew exactly why she was doing this to herself.

In short, Abby did not have the energy to deal with Laurent’s weird thing for Edamame on top of an already complicated job. It was going to be worse than Los Angeles, she already knew. The entire time Edamame was in prison, Laurent wouldn’t stop talking about him. Oh, dear Edamame, I thought he’d ask me to break him out of prison by now—but he’s truly determined to stay! Oh, remember our friend, well they gave him a buzzcut and it’s a crime against that sweet face! Oh, remember Edamame, he started fixing cars as part of the prison slave labor force, and he actually enjoys it, imagine that! But I do like a man who knows how to use his hands. And on and on. He paid Kudo an extravagant amount of money to keep tabs on Edamame in prison. He personally visited Nakanoshima in Japan and paid the old swindler even more money to take Edamame under his wing. He became fluent in Japanese. It was possible that he came up with the entire Singapore job solely because Edamame knew how to “use his hands.” Laurent was just like that sometimes.

As the three of them walked to the warehouse with the airplanes, Abby heard Edamame chattering away. He sounded proud and happy. His accent had, if anything, gotten thicker, but she could understand enough to tell how corny his lines were. The other (fake) mechanics on their team were gamely nodding along.

Laurent clapped his hands and called out to Edamame.

Edamame, again, was unimpressed. Edamame, again, was utterly shocked that the world would lie to him. Edamame, again, tried to act like he was above it all, even though he was just as rotten to the core as the rest.

She hated that about him.

Abby grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to the plane. Edamame yelped, and pinwheeled his arms wildly.

“Wait, wait, where are you taking me?” he shrieked. “I don’t want to fly. Seriously, I’m good! I’ll stay down here!”

“You think you know planes? Then prove it,” she snarled, and hauled him into the cockpit after her. In the cramped space, they crashed into each other like bowling pins. He kept flailing, and Abby had to dodge his elbows several times before she grabbed his shoulders and forced him to sit still.

Laurent appeared beside the plane, two helmets dangling from his hand. “Edamame’s first flight, is it? How exciting,” he said, rocking on his heels like a kid at the candy store. He handed Abby her helmet.

“Laurent! Stop laughing and get me out of here!” Edamame hissed, sticking his head out of the cockpit.

Laurent smiled, a flash of white teeth. He reached out and tucked Edamame’s hair behind his ear. Edamame froze.

“頑張って” Laurent said affectionately, and shoved the helmet over Edamame’s head.

Edamame yowled and smacked Laurent’s hands away. “You suck!” he accused, collapsing back into the cockpit dramatically. “I can’t believe you. God!”

“Stop squirming,” Abby snapped. She shoved his legs away from the pilot controls. He ended up awkwardly half-sitting in her lap, limbs crammed against the window. She could feel him trembling minutely.

Abby put her helmet on. “Is my voice coming in clear?” Laurent asked in her ear. She glanced out the window, to where Laurent was tapping his earpiece.

“Roger,” she replied.

“I hate you so much,” Edamame’s voice chimed in.

Laurent gave them both a thumbs-up. “I’ll take that as a yes. Have fun up there!”

Abby started preparing the plane to take off. Edamame turned and looked into her eyes pleadingly. “Abby,” he said in a low, sincere voice. “I’m putting my life in your hands. So, please…fly safely?”

Despite it all, she felt a sudden, brief pang of protectiveness over him. Ugh. He might be a terrible conman, but he did know how to employ those big brown eyes to maximum effect. She clenched her teeth and tightened her grip on the throttle lever.

And then she smiled at him. It was a terrifying, serial-killer smile. Edamame’s face went pale.

“Safe isn’t my style,” she said.

She took off. By the time she started doing the first rolls, Edamame was already screaming.

It was satisfying enough to make her almost forget the crushing weight of the sky.

5)

The con was going fine. Probably. Abby wasn’t really…there, mentally, but it was probably going fine. Cynthia was handling most of the social stuff anyways. It didn’t matter. They didn’t talk about it.

More importantly, the team felt off, and it was all Edamame’s fault. They had barely walked into their hotel room in Singapore when the man-child started freaking out.

“There are two beds,” Edamame said. He said it like it was the worst betrayal that he had suffered all day, like he had opened the door and stepped into a pile of dogshit. “Laurent. Why are there two beds?”

Laurent took off his sunglasses and blinked innocently. “Because it’s a suite?”

“No, no, no. There are two beds.” Edamame gesticulated wildly. “And there are four of us! Don’t you see the problem, Laurent!?”

Abby rolled her eyes. “None of us have designs on your virtue, chill out.”

Cynthia had a coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like, “Most of us, at least.”

Edamame’s shoulders shot up to his ears. “This isn’t about that!” he sputtered. “This is about privacy! I need my privacy!”

“Why, so you can jerk off?”

Edamame made a choking sound. Abby ignored him and turned to Cynthia. “Want to share a bed with me?”

“I’d love to,” Cynthia said cheerfully. “Laurent gets clingy in his sleep.”

“Yeah, it’s annoying,” Abby agreed.

“Au contraire! I am a delightful bed partner,” Laurent protested. “Nobody else has ever complained.”

“This is not happening!” Edamame shrieked. He grabbed his suitcase and started to wheel it toward the door. “I will not be sleeping in the same bed as this, this…”

“Slut?” Abby suggested.

“I just have a lot of love to go around,” Laurent said.

“Smug bastard,” Edamame hissed, and thundered out of the room.

In the ensuing silence, Cynthia tapped a lacquered finger to her lips. “You’re right, he probably is a virgin,” she said thoughtfully.

Abby crossed her arms. “Good riddance. I hope he sleeps in the streets and gets mugged.”

But Laurent still had his eyes on the door, a smile lingering on his face. After a moment, he took out his phone and started texting someone. His smile widened.

“Looks like Edamame is going to get his own room,” he said, and put his phone away. “My dastardly plan worked! I get a king bed all for myself.”

But of course, inevitably, Edamame spent most of his time in their suite working on the con. And when it was late at night, and Edamame was yawning over the computer trying to rig the race for Abby, all it took from Laurent was a gentle word and a sleight of hand, and Edamame was trailing him into the bedroom anyways. So much for not sleeping with the smug bastard.

The worst part was that they probably weren’t even going to fuck. Abby could tell from the look on Laurent’s face. He literally just wanted to sleep in the same bed as Edamame.

“This is ridiculous,” Abby muttered under her breath, watching the door shut behind them. She got up and joined Cynthia in getting ready for bed. Cynthia raised her eyebrows at the look on her face.

“Something happen?” Cynthia asked, and then gargled toothpaste.

The thing was, Laurent had never outright lied to Abby. Not once. He was careful, in fact, to be straightforward with what he wanted from her and to answer any questions she asked. It couldn’t be easy for a scoundrel like him to be honest, but Abby would never have tolerated anything less, and they both knew it. Laurent always had a decent job for Abby. It was one of the few things in her life that she had come to trust.

Now, though, Laurent was different. Every time Edamame did literally anything, Laurent’s eyes would snap to his face and stick there like a fly to honey, tracking him around the room. Laurent started to relax his instructions, staying vague with the information he revealed, giving Edamame plenty of room to improvise in his role. He was playing a game. He was guiding Edamame through the next steps of their dance. The con was only part of it—Abby and Cynthia were only part of it.

It was all so elaborate, so unnecessarily convoluted, like a Rube Goldberg version of a relationship. And it was all so stupid, and she was tired of it.

 “What does Laurent see in him?” Abby asked. “He’s just some guy. He’s nothing special. He shouldn’t even be here.”

Cynthia spat out her toothpaste and wiped her mouth. She blinked down at Abby.

“Darling,” she said. The way she said it put Abby on instant alert. “Are you jealous of the soybean? Over Laurent?”

Abby whipped her head around so hard she maybe pulled something.

“No,” she said. “That is not what is happening here.”

“Sure,” Cynthia said, a sparkle in her eye. “You’re not jealous. Not even a little bit.”

“I am annoyed. Because he’s getting in the way of my job.”

But it was too late. Cynthia was a glutton for drama, and she wouldn’t be shaken off so easily. “So this is why you’ve never liked him. You’re worried he’ll steal Laurent away and mess up the team. It all makes so much sense now.”

“I am not worried,” she hissed. “We are not a team. I don’t even like Laurent. Edamame can have him for all I care.”

“Nobody likes Laurent,” Cynthia said appeasingly. She set down her toothbrush and pushed back her hair. “You know, Abby, for what it’s worth, I think Edamame actually respects you. Of the three of us, he likes you the most.”

“Well, he shouldn’t,” Abby said harshly. “He should be afraid of me.”

Cynthia smiled at her in the bathroom mirror. “He’s a little afraid of you, too. But mostly, I think he’s lonely.”

Abby scowled at her reflection.

Lonely. What a joke.

“He’s going to ruin the con,” Abby said. “Like he did in Los Angeles. I can just feel it.”

The next morning, Laurent draped across the couch like a heroine in a Victorian novel, an arm thrown dramatically across his forehead.

“Edamame kicks in his sleep,” he said morosely. “And hogs the blankets.”

“Well nobody asked you to share the bed,” Edamame hissed. And then he blushed, just a little, on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. Abby narrowed her eyes at him. Before anybody could say anything else, Edamame rushed out of the suite, yelling something about getting them breakfast.

Laurent sat up and watched him go. He looked like he hadn’t slept a wink. But he was also smiling faintly, pleased with himself, like the cat that got the cream.

Things only went downhill from there.

Abby flew some more. Laurent flirted some more. The weight of the sky got heavier. Edamame became the Ibrahims’ engineer.

Abby saw Lewis Mueller’s face for the first time.

She cornered Laurent while he was in the shower.

“Are you doing this on purpose?” she demanded.

She had hoped to catch him off guard, but he was unfortunately blasé about being naked in front of her. When it was clear she wasn’t going to get him a towel, he walked out and grabbed one himself. “Doing what on purpose?” he asked, wiping his face.

“You have a file on me too,” she said, and it was not a question. “You know what this means to me. The planes. The army. All of it.”

“Well, sure. But I thought you wanted to die?” Laurent asked, almost teasingly.

Abby didn’t say anything.

“You can back out of the con if you’d like. But we both know you’re staying.” His smile was like the clean edge of a knife. “I’ll text you my files on Lewis. Don’t stay up too late reading them.”

She didn’t know why he was doing this to her.

She knew exactly why he was doing this to her. Because he was a bastard. Because he was a sociopathic adrenaline junkie, and he got dangerous when he was bored. Because he had a new toy in Edamame, so he didn’t care anymore if he pushed her until she broke. Because he thought it would be fun.

They didn’t talk about it.

Instead, Abby stayed up all night reviewing Mueller’s files. The summer nights in Singapore became hotter and thicker, overripe on her skin, like half-rotted mangoes left on the branch. The sky wanted to eat her. It was so heavy—she didn’t understand how her body hadn’t crumpled under all that emptiness. The sky followed her everywhere now, even when she wasn’t flying. It pressed upon her, blue-black like a bruise. She was never going to escape the weight of the sky, the weight of being who she was.

And so Abby put on her cap, slipped a knife in her shoe, and went to war.

Mueller didn’t put up a fight at first. He must have felt it, though—that she was angry, angry down to her bones. She was thrumming with adrenaline and a terrible sort of joy, her whole body geared to kill or be killed.

When they stopped in the middle of a quiet street, Mueller matched her anger. He stood up and met her, eye to eye. He taunted her, dared her to kill him. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t stop. She threw him to the ground and raised the knife.

Edamame crashed into her with all the grace of a car wreck.

It was, frankly, a miracle that she didn’t slit his throat. Her body was a clarion call for danger. In the state she was in, just a touch on the shoulder would have been enough to make her react like she was being attacked and plunge her knife into someone’s belly. But his eyes saved him—he looked at her with wide, panicked eyes, and Abby caught herself just in time to freeze the knife above his throat.

She felt suddenly confused.

Edamame just looked up at her from the ground, panting. The knife touched the soft skin of his throat. She could feel him trembling under her, and his rapid, terrified pulse.

Something changed, at that moment. Something within herself.

Abby did not kill Lewis Mueller. She got up and walked back to the hotel alone, leaving Edamame to deal with Mueller and his wife in the fallout. She didn’t talk to anyone about what happened.

But she started to keep tabs on Edamame. She followed him when he went to meet Isabelle Mueller, and she made sure he got back to the hotel safely. She felt…not guilty, exactly. But perhaps a little responsible for him. She had almost killed an innocent man. He had looked her in the eye while she held his life in her hands. What was she supposed to do with that?

On the rooftop of the Marina Bay Sands, Abby thought about what she wanted. She had been so angry for so long. She held the little foreign gacha toy in hand, and wondered if she had it in her to move on.

Edamame came to find her. When she asked, he told her who the gacha toy was—she immediately forgot the Japanese name, but she could understand Edamame’s explanation. She had turned her back on the world to fight for her beliefs, too.

Cynthia was right, Abby realized. Edamame liked her. For some weird reason. He honestly wanted to talk to her.

“Listen, I have an idea,” he said, abruptly. “I talked to Clark today, and his relationship with Lewis might actually be something we can use. There’s a small, tiny chance it might ruin the con, but I think it’ll be worth it. Are you in?”

She looked at him sidelong. A breeze moved in the air—cool and fresh, a reprieve from the oppressive heat.

He was totally going to ruin the con.

“I won’t tell Laurent if you won’t,” she said.

They talked to Lewis and Isabelle Mueller, and it was…okay. Nobody got hurt. Once Abby allowed herself to think of Lewis as a real human being, she realized how similar they were. In fact, he was probably the only person in this building who understood her pain.

On some level, she had known this from the moment she first saw his face. He was ex-military, like her. Just like her, he had become a soldier out of love for his country, as an act of grief-stricken rage, only to be chewed up and spit out, and now all he had to show for it were scars and ghosts in his conscience. He, too, knew that the only exit plan from this shitshow of a ruined life was a one-way ticket to the morgue. She had hated him, she thought, because he was the one who had made her this way.

But maybe there was another path. Maybe they had both missed something.

“Okay,” Edamame said, cutting through the tension in the room. He leaned forward and smiled a practiced smile at Lewis and Isabelle. He was about to con them, Abby realized. He was a liar after all, through and through. But incongruously, his eyes were full of warmth. “Let’s gamble. Lewis, you take Abby’s place and race Clark in the finals. I wager this con that you’ll win. Do you take the bet?”

Afterwards, Abby did her usual ritual. She rolled her old ballerina medal. If it landed backside up, she would return to that old role she hated, and keep fighting in a war that only existed in her mind. Dancer side up, and she would try to let this years-old vendetta go.

Here’s a secret. Unlike mere gamblers, con artists cheat. They only make bets when they know they’re going to win.

Here’s a secret. Abby’s ballerina medal had warped from the violence of the bombing. Because of its shape, when she rolled it down a flat surface, it always landed dancer side up.

This game was rigged. Abby was always going to take that chance.

After the results from the Air Race were in, Abby took a deep breath. It felt like—like she hadn’t breathed in a long, long time. Edamame stayed beside her, a calm and quiet presence. He wasn’t annoying at all, actually. They walked back together to face the music, expecting the rest of the team to be angry at them for ruining the con. But when they arrived, the set had already been cleared, and purple film was peeling off the glass windows. Everyone had scattered.

Laurent, the asshole, was three steps ahead of them. Of course he was. Abby shouldn’t have been surprised. Laurent was the best con artist she had ever met—he never played fair.

Sam Ibrahim came for them, guns blazing, and cut off their only exit route. They were trapped. It was kind of a stupid way to go, but she supposed it could have been worse. Laurent had kept his promise, more or less. She felt tired, burnt out. Without her war, there wasn’t much left for her to live for, anyways. And she was secretly grateful that she wouldn’t have to die alone.

But Edamame confronted her face to face. There was a brazen fire in his eyes, something crazy and unhinged. He grabbed her without warning and hurtled them out the shattered window. Bullets and glass rained after them.

The narrow confines of the room vanished. Suddenly, all around her was sky, sky, sky. For a second, the air was knocked out of her lungs, and she felt panic closing in. There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to save her.

Then she felt Edamame squeeze his arms around her waist so tight it hurt. She sucked in a sharp breath.

She got ahold of herself, and remembered that she was still in her pilot’s uniform. She clamped her legs securely around him and deployed her parachute. With a lurch, their fall slowed.

Edamame still clung to her. His face was buried somewhere in her stomach. She could feel his whole body shaking like a leaf. He really had put his life in her hands, hadn’t he? He had gambled everything that she wouldn’t let him fall.

It felt like trust.

There was a moment there, drifting toward the waters far below, where she just looked at the sunset splashing across the city. It was so beautiful. Shockingly beautiful. Perhaps she had always loved high places, and just never thought about it until now. Her lungs filled with air.

The walls that had trapped her all this time—where had they gone? It was like they had never existed, had never been real. The world around her was an open expanse. She could go anywhere she wanted, do anything, be anyone. That was the truth.

For the first time, she felt utterly weightless.

6)

Abby and Edamame staggered onto the deck of Laurent’s getaway cruise ship. The rest of the team expressed some concern, but Abby didn’t pay much attention. She was too busy feeling—happy. She guessed she felt happy. It was a bit like blood flowing back into her fingers after they’d been numb for a while, prickly and overly warm. She felt off balance, in a good way.

She declared the closest private cabin to be hers, and made a beeline toward it. Edamame trailed after her. His legs were wobbly from the adrenaline rush, and it made him look drunk, like a newborn foal. At the door to the cabin, he pulled the most pitiful puppy dog face.

“Are you—um…do you…Abby,” he said.

Abby felt another bubble of laughter rise in her chest. She let it out. He was just so ridiculous, this man. He stared at her face as she laughed.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she informed him. “And then I’m going to sleep.”

Edamame nodded. “That sounds great. I should leave you to it. I just.” He blinked. Abby watched in amazement as he started to cry again. “I’m just really glad you’re okay,” he blubbered.

Abby laughed again. She wondered how long this weird high would last.

“You can hang out here,” she told him. “If you want to stay that badly.”

He visibly brightened. “It won’t be weird?” he asked.

“Everything about you is already weird,” she said. “Go take a shower first, you’re dripping everywhere. Then come back. And bring food, I’m going to be hungry.”

Abby showered and changed into something warm and dry. The adrenaline was leaching out of her body, but the happy feeling stayed. She sat down on the bed, and then just stared into space for a while, letting herself feel things about what had just happened. She had a lot of feelings, it turned out. She had kind of forgotten she was capable of having so many.

A knock on the door. Abby let Edamame in. He looked sheepish, but too exhausted to be nervous. He was holding two plastic cartons of rice noodles. He had changed into shorts and a soft-looking shirt.

They didn’t say anything at first. Abby sat back down on the bed, and Edamame sat next to her, handing her the noodles. They ate ravenously. Edamame cleaned up, and then sort of teetered and collapsed backward onto the bed, staring vaguely at the ceiling. They breathed in companionable silence for a while.

“What was that guy’s name again?” Abby asked.

Edamame twitched. He blinked like he was half asleep. “What?”

“The Japanese guy who was like Brutus.”

“Like who?”

“Brutus. Guy who killed Caesar?”

“Oh. Oh, yeah.” He yawned. “Akechi Mitsuhide. He was a samurai in the Sengoku period.”

Abby repeated the name to herself under her breath a few times, until she was sure she had memorized it.

“I guess I had fun, too,” Edamame said after another long silence.

“You going to start jumping off of buildings for kicks?”

He snorted. “No, definitely not. I’m still afraid of heights.” He closed his eyes. “Being outside Japan is nice, though. All these new experiences.”

She turned and looked at him. “You travel a lot before?”

“Nah. First time I ever left the country was when I met you guys in Los Angeles.”

So, when he impulse-chased Laurent across the Pacific Ocean? Huh. That was…interesting. Maybe Laurent’s crush was less one-sided than she thought.

“And then you went to prison,” she said.

“And then I went to prison,” he agreed.

Abby had been to six countries by the time she was 23, and that was before she became a conman. She was fluent in four languages and knew eight different martial arts. She had also been imprisoned twice, once in the war, and once (briefly, as part of Laurent’s con) in Cairo.

Edamame’s world must be so small, she realized.

“What do you like about being outside Japan?” she asked.

He smiled a little. “It’s sort of freeing, I think. I used to feel so trapped. But out here I can be whoever I want to be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Japan.” He laughed bashfully. “I guess it’s just—I didn’t know I could feel all these things, until I came out here and sort of let myself feel them. So I’m grateful for that at least.”

She stared at him. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

Damn. What a pair they made.

She tugged the blanket, and he made a noise of complaint and rolled so she could free the blanket. She crawled into bed and draped the blanket over them both. She curled under the covers, facing him. He rolled onto his back and blinked at her drowsily. It was only a twin size bed, barely big enough to fit them both, so their limbs came close enough that she could feel his warmth.

“Are you going back to Japan now that the con is over?” she asked him.

“Hmm. I dunno.” His eyelids drooped. His words slurred, and his accent thickened nearly to the point of unintelligibility. “I’ll have to think about it. And you? What do you want to do, now that you’re free?”

Now that she was free. What a way to phrase the question.

Edamame fell asleep while Abby thought about her answer. Soon, Abby dropped off too. Edamame did not kick in his sleep—maybe he was just too tired that night—but he definitely did hog the blankets. She didn’t really mind, though.

In the morning, Abby was woken up by a soft knock at the door. Edamame slept on. She slipped out of bed and opened the door quietly.

Laurent leaned against the doorframe outside, deliberately casual. He smiled his plastic smile at her before his eyes darted past, to the Edamame-shaped lump on the bed.

“We’ll be docking soon,” he said, refocusing on her. “Everything alright with you two, I hope?”

She shrugged, also deliberately casual. She was kind of annoyed with him. “I guess so.”

Laurent hummed. His face remained as pleasant as always, but his fingers twitched toward the ring on his necklace, a surprisingly obvious tell. Something was bothering him.

“All’s well that ends well, wouldn’t you say?” he said.

She shrugged again. “Sure.” He had fucked with her head for months and nearly gotten the both of them killed, but sure. It had turned out okay, so she wasn’t going to strangle him in his sleep.

But she didn’t trust him anymore. She never really had. She didn’t owe him a thing. She stared him down, her face closed.

Laurent stepped back, conceding the ground. He flicked his sunglasses open with one hand and put them on.

“So what’s your plan now?” he asked casually. “Go back to the States? Pick up extreme skiing, or maybe dirt biking?”

“Actually,” said Abby. She heard Edamame waking up behind her, shuffling around in bed. She smiled a little. “I’m going to take a vacation.”

Chapter Text

7)

Therapy was weird. She didn’t tell anyone about it, which meant she couldn’t ask anyone for advice, so her first session felt like flying blind. Her first therapist had only ever worked with American veterans before and actually had the gall to ask about her relationship with God—the Christian one. She walked out before her half-hour was up. It was also ridiculously expensive, and it wasn’t like she had health insurance.

The second therapist was better, though.

The panic attacks had stopped entirely after she jumped out the window in Singapore. But the walls came back sometimes, darkening the edges of her mind. Gradually, she learned new coping mechanisms that did not involve driving a motorcycle off a cliff. Once, she was even able to talk about the war without wanting to kill someone. She bought what looked like a hack-and-slash videogame, and ended up crying for an hour straight after watching the opening cutscene where the player character had a funeral for his wife. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. Emotions were weird.

When she felt she was ready, Abby made contact with the Muellers.

She and Lewis—they were cool. She still preferred to talk to Isabelle. Abby explained what she needed from them. The Muellers were accustomed to working in the gray zones of international law, so they pointed her toward some good contacts.

In New York, Abby sat down with a lawyer and said, “I want to make a donation.”

Over the years, Abby had amassed over half a billion dollars in cash, and then she had done the equivalent of shoving it under a mattress. Sometimes she took a bit out to binge on her latest thrill ride, but other than that, it all sat there untouched. It was stupid and wasteful. At the time, Abby hadn’t seen any reason to care.

The New York lawyer worked out how to make sure Abby’s money would pass any legal inspections, and then how to distribute it while staying anonymous. Abby picked two NGOs doing work in Iraq, the Muellers’ charitable foundation, and a couple smaller groups led by refugees and women in the Middle East.

Her lawyer, Najah, noticed her choices and smiled warmly. “Are you from Iraq?”

Abby nodded.

“I emigrated from there a long time ago.” And then she said, in the same Baghdadi Arabic dialect that Abby’s parents had spoken, “Thank you for what you’re doing, daughter.”

Something in Abby’s chest seized. It took her a while before she could speak again. Hesitantly, almost like speaking a foreign language, she responded in her mother tongue: “I’m just being selfish. This is for me.”

Najah shook her head. “I still visit family in Baghdad every year. They say that, perhaps, the country is starting to heal—but we need young people like you. What you are doing is deeply important.”

Abby stared at her. “Do you…” Fuck, her pulse was suddenly racing. She grimaced and got ahold of herself. “So you can go back? Whenever you want?”

“Yes. Though I do have to be careful about it.” Najah frowned slightly. “I did notice you only have U.S. citizenship. Would you like me to help you apply for a visa to visit Iraq?”

Abby hadn’t left Iraq on the best of terms.

It was after she had been released by the U.S. occupying forces. Her memories of that time were—not very coherent. She remembered stumbling down the streets ruined by suicide bombs and blocked off by T-walls, rubble picked clean of anything valuable. She had been looking for someone, or maybe just something, a safe place, a moment to rest, she wasn’t sure. But she had looked around and suddenly realized that she didn’t know where she was. She had been born in this city, and now she couldn’t recognize it.

That’s when she knew: the country I love is dead. My family is dead. My friends in the army are dead. If anyone who knew me still survives, they must believe I’m dead, too.

Am I really alive? Or is this hell?

After that, Abby deserted the army. She betrayed her country and fled with other refugees across the border. She hadn’t been back since. Maybe she could have stayed on, tried to help the remaining people keep fighting or start to rebuild—but she was a coward.

Beneath the anger, what Abby truly felt was a deep and boundless shame.

“I don’t know if I want to go back,” she said, staring at her knees. “I left for a reason. I don’t know if going back would be worth it.”

Najah looked at her with understanding. “That’s alright. If you ever want the option, just let me know. It takes several months to confirm a visa, anyways.”

Abby nodded.

But, see—Laurent was wrong. Abby had never wanted to die. All she ever wanted was to be able to live again. Now she finally knew what that meant.

She wanted to be brave. She wanted to be better. She wanted to do things that made her happy.

She found the old ballerina medal in her pocket, and gripped it tight.

“My real name isn’t Abigail Jones,” she said. “The passport’s fake. I’m still an Iraqi citizen. Probably.”

Najah blinked in surprise. “Oh, I had no idea. It’s an excellent forgery,” she said, taking it in stride.

“It’s easier to cross the border if I’m an Iraqi citizen, right?” Abby pushed on. “But I don’t have any documents under my real name anymore. I think…I want those back. Just in case, in the future, I want to return.”

Najah nodded, her eyes sharpening with focus. “That, I can certainly help you with. Could you tell me your original name?”

She told her.

When Edamame’s call came, Abby had given away everything except her medal, the pistol, and $5,000. She felt…good. Lighter than she had been in a long time.

She booked a one-way plane ticket to France.

8)

Nice, France was—well, it was nice. Edamame was still a nerd, but something about his presence made the city feel different. She visited his boarding house, and found herself thinking: yeah, this is an Edamame kind of place. She’d never associated a place with a person before. He made her coffee and introduced her to Sebastian and Marie, and showed off what little French he had managed to pick up, which was truly atrocious.

She did think the coffee was good.

The job was good too. During her vacation, she had seriously considered quitting altogether. Breaking the law and getting into shootouts with criminals were definitely things her therapist would put under the “unhealthy” column of available coping mechanisms. But at the end of the day, Abby genuinely enjoyed it—the power in her body, the quick tempo of her mind, and the satisfaction of a trap falling into place. She didn’t think she would take on another outside job again. But with Edamame, and this team she respected…yeah, Abby was willing to take the plunge. And it felt good. They were doing good.

There was one thing Abby could do without, though, and that was Laurent pulling his shit again.

Nice, France became London, UK. €25,000 ballooned into £70,000,000. The con went brilliantly, too brilliantly, a fairy tale revenge story.

And now Cynthia was drunk.

Actually, scratch that. Cynthia had been more or less drunk for the past couple months, ever since she saw James Coleman’s face. So Abby revised her assessment.

Cynthia wasn’t drunk. She was absolutely plastered.

The post-con party to celebrate the £100,000,000 haul started out dignified enough. But Cynthia kept bringing out another bottle of wine, and then another, and then another, and then she started getting creative with cocktails, and everyone was only too happy to partake. By midnight Kudo was sobbing about his ex-wife and kids, and Shi-won and Cynthia were furiously arguing about which of them had received the best oral sex.

Abby got hungry when she was drunk. She worked steadily on consuming her second platter of sliced cheese and fruit, only half paying attention to the drama around her.

“Edamame!” Cynthia slurred, getting up and doing a disaster of a pirouette around the room. “You tell her that I’m right!”

Edamame looked up at Cynthia from where he was sprawled on the couch, vaguely patting Kudo’s knee. “Right about what?” he asked dazedly.

“About my skills in love!” The word love seemed to inspire something in Cynthia. She spun in a circle again, increasingly off-balance. “Love is cheap. I don’t need love. Who needs love? I have grown and matured.” She wobbled on her heels, then kicked off her shoes angrily. “I made love my bitch! Fuck you, Thomas!”

Shi-won raised her glass. “Cheers to that! Love is a bitch! Love is a bitch! Fuck Thomas!”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Edamame muttered. He sat up and started to take his bowtie off, but was having extreme difficulty coordinating his fingers.

Long pale fingers closed around his. “Let me,” Laurent said smoothly. At some point, he had taken off his suit jacket and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. He looked a little flushed, but was still annoyingly put-together.

Edamame, instead of pulling away, leaned in and buried his nose in Laurent’s hair. Laurent made a face like he was trying not to laugh.

“Is that…” Edamame flopped back against the couch. He glared at Laurent. “Is that perfume?”

“Eau de cologne, technically,” Laurent said.

“Men can wear perfume?” Edamame asked in a tone of wonder, obviously not listening. “I thought you just smelled like that or something.” He ran his fingers through Laurent’s hair. “What the fuck,” he said seriously. “Why is it so soft.”

Laurent broke composure long enough to snort, but quickly reigned it in. He slipped the bowtie loose and unwound the fabric from Edamame’s neck. “Are you calling me pretty, Edamame?”

Edamame squinted. “That’s not fair. Everyone thinks you’re pretty.”

“I think he’s ugly, actually,” Abby interjected.

Edamame startled and drew back his hand. He stared at her like he’d forgotten she was there, sitting right next to him, popping grapes into her mouth.

“But Edamame thinks I’m pretty,” Laurent said, preening. “He likes my hair.”

“It’s—it’s the only good thing about you,” Edamame stammered.

Laurent finally couldn’t hold it in anymore and howled with laughter, clutching his stomach. “Tu es tellement mignon, que j’ai envie de te croquer!”

Edamame blushed to the tips of his ears. “Shut up! Whatever you said, it’s not true!”

“What’re les tourtereaux having so much fun about?” Cynthia demanded. She dropped onto the couch, squishing herself between Abby and Edamame. Abby scooted an inch to make room. Meanwhile, Shi-won sat down on the floor and started passionately insulting Kudo’s ex-wife in Japanese.

“Edamame likes my hair,” Laurent said proudly.

“No I don’t,” Edamame said hastily. “I hate it. It’s awful.”

Cynthia draped herself sloppily over Edamame. Edamame squeaked.

“You’d better watch yourself, little man,” she whispered in his ear. “The big bad wolf wants to eat you up.”

“Cynthia, you’re going to scare him off,” Laurent protested. “Look, he’s panicking.”

Edamame, indeed, looked like he was seconds away from another freak-out. Abby ate a cracker.

Cynthia rested her chin on Edamame’s shoulder and pouted at Laurent. “What’s wrong, ma puce? Jealous of what we have together?” She turned and kissed Edamame on the cheek.

“Cynthia!” Edamame yelped, pushing her away.

Cynthia laughed and backed off. “Just a peck, darling. I was just saying hello!”

“Stop teasing me,” Edamame groaned.

“But you’re so fun to tease!”

She reached for Abby’s cheese platter. Abby pulled the platter away and bared her teeth. Cynthia reached for another glass of wine instead.

There was a faint smear of red gloss on Edamame’s cheek from Cynthia’s lipstick. Laurent rested his elbow on the back of the couch and leaned his head against his hand, staring at it.

“Cynthia, are you mad at me?” Laurent asked.

“What’s that?” She smiled sweetly at him. “Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you, hmm? Think I should be mad at you?”

“I really couldn’t say.” His eyes darkened with intent, fixed on the smear of red lipstick. “But now you’ve gone and made me jealous.”

He moved closer in a sort of—rippling motion. Even Abby was impressed at the technique. His shirt artfully revealed his chest in a sharp V, and his mouth parted invitingly. Edamame went very, very still.

“I don’t like to be jealous,” Laurent purred.

He leaned in, lowering his lips toward Edamame’s cheek.

Edamame shot his foot out. It landed hard on Laurent’s shin. Laurent jerked back, and then buried his face in his hands in silent suffering.

“No!” Edamame shouted. “I’m not falling for it this time!”

He jumped up and onto the table, knocking over several empty bottles of wine. Abby rescued her cheese platter. Cynthia sipped her wine and watched the scene unfold.

Edamame pointed a finger at Laurent dramatically.

“I will not be—seduced by you again!” he yelled. “Never again! So you can take your stupid hair and perfume and blue eyes, and, and, and fuck off! Bastard! Leave me alone!”

Announcement finished, he leaped off the table and careened out the door like a man possessed.

Once the door swung shut, Cynthia started to laugh. “This is the one for you? Really? Really, Laurent?”

Shi-won whistled. “You’ve been rejected, boy!”

Laurent dropped back his head against the couch, his eyes closed. “Ah, such cruelty,” he sighed. “The pain in my leg is only matched by the pain in my heart.”

“Like you have a heart,” Cynthia said bitterly. She tossed back the rest of the wine. “Good for Edamame. He dodged a bullet.”

Laurent reached up and closed his hand around the ring on his necklace. With his eyes still closed, he said, “He forgot his coat.”

Something about the way he said it made Abby pause before eating another slice of cheese. She glanced out the window. Sure enough, it was snowing. It was just a light dusting, one of the last snows of the year, but nights in London were still bitterly cold.

Abby sighed deeply and set down her cheese platter. Laurent was going to owe her one for this.

She dressed up, grabbed Edamame’s coat and hat, and headed out. Edamame hadn’t gotten far. He was just pacing back and forth in front of the hotel building, rubbing his arms, muttering to himself. Wordlessly, Abby handed him the coat and hat.

“Thanks,” Edamame mumbled, and put them on. Abby watched him in silence for a while, as he stomped his feet to keep warm and glared up and down the street.

“You coming back in?” Abby asked.

After a long second, Edamame shook his head.

“Then let’s go,” Abby said. “I’m freezing my ass off here.”

They ended up at Thomas’s tiny apartment, because Edamame gravitated toward familiarity when he was upset, apparently. It probably wasn’t the smartest decision, but Abby was too drunk to care about being smart. Thomas had cleaned up somewhat, but the place still smelled strongly of paint and canned beans. He let them in, nervously not meeting their eyes.

“Is something wrong? Did the painting…”

“The con went great,” Abby said irritably. “Coleman’s ruined. We just needed a place to crash tonight. Don’t ask unnecessary questions.”

 “Uhhhh, okay…?” Thomas said.

Good enough for Abby. She dropped onto the bed, coat and shoes and all. Edamame, barely conscious at this point, crawled in next to her.

“…Goodnight?” Thomas said faintly.

Abby fell asleep almost instantly.

The next morning, Abby woke up to the sound of Edamame apologizing profusely.

“I am so sorry, Thomas,” he was saying. “I can’t believe we just barged in like that. Nothing’s wrong, I promise. It wasn’t even a big deal or anything, we were just drunk. Can I pay you back somehow?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Thomas. “Glad I could help. I’m just relieved that nothing’s wrong.”

Abby regretted her decisions of the previous night greatly. She had a crick in her neck, a pounding headache, and her bladder felt like it was going to burst. Sleeping in full winter garb was very uncomfortable. Thomas’s apartment sucked. Why had she gone with Edamame? He was a grown-ass man, she should’ve just given him his coat and let him find a place on his own. Or made him stop throwing his stupid tantrum and dragged him back into the hotel. Shit, Edamame was infecting Abby with his stupidity.

“’M gonna fucking kill you,” Abby grumbled.

“Hey, Abby,” Edamame said warmly. “Good morning.”

Abby used Thomas’s bathroom, and then Edamame made them all coffee, and Abby felt somewhat less inclined toward homicidal rage. She was, however, eager to leave. She wanted to brush her teeth, and then eat her weight in croissants and sausages.

“So, you were…drunk last night?” Thomas asked. He faced Edamame when he was speaking. He tended to shrink away from Abby.

“Yeah, got carried away when we were celebrating,” Edamame said breezily. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. I hope we didn’t disturb you too much?”

Thomas chuckled nervously. “Well, I couldn’t really sleep when you were…” he gestured awkwardly at the bed.

“Oh, shit,” Edamame said, looking genuinely guilty. “I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot.”

“You are,” Abby agreed.

“No, it’s okay,” Thomas said. “I just spent the night painting.” His face suddenly lit up. “Look, I made these!”

He held out two tiny, palm-sized canvases.

“It’s thanks to you I was able to clear my debts and start painting again.” He ducked his head. “I’m very grateful.”

The paintings were of two figures walking together in the snow. They would have been perfect copies of each other, but the lighting was different: one used a daytime setting, and the other was at night.

Abby knew art. She just wasn’t the sentimental type, so she usually didn’t bother to pay attention. Now, however, she took the daylight painting and gave it a proper look.

It felt similar to the Montoya painting, if a lot rougher. She could see the pencil lines. Some parts where the paint was thicker were still wet. But the shapes were soft and abstract, and the colors on the snow melted in warm pinks and oranges, a delicate gradient. Looking closely, she could see that the footprints of the two figures led from opposite directions. But now they were walking side by side, at least for the moment. The shadows they cast were dark and striking.

The more she looked at the painting, the calmer she felt.

Edamame took the nighttime painting. In this one, the snow was colored a harsh, cold blue. It was hard to see the figures’ footprints in the swirling darkness. But a lamp lit the figures’ faces yellow, and against the shadows, they seemed to glow, their features sharp and distinct.

“Keep them,” Thomas said. “As a gift.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” said Edamame, immediately trying to hand back the painting. “These must be worth so much—they’re beautiful, Thomas!”

Thomas laughed. “They’re just quick sketches. They wouldn’t sell for anything.” He gave Edamame a shy smile. “You took a chance with a low-life like me. I feel like I can start over now. Become who I’ve always wanted to be. So…please. Keep them.”

Edamame was still admiring his painting as they walked back to the hotel. He glanced over at Abby.

“What do you think of yours?” he asked.

Abby shrugged. “It’s some paint on a canvas.”

He reached out. “If you don’t want it, then I’ll—"

She smacked his hand away. “Back off. It’s mine now.”

He snorted. “Okay.”

When they got back, everyone pretended like last night hadn’t happened. This was to be expected. They were con artists. They didn’t talk about things. Laurent was back to his usual flirtation levels, and Cynthia bemoaned her hangover. Kudo was still sleeping, and Shi-won had gone to get breakfast. Edamame flipped everyone off, and went to change his clothes.

But Abby did notice, a little later, that some of her donations to charity had mysteriously doubled overnight. Someone had just funneled a lot of money into her private accounts.

She decided to consider her and Laurent as even.

9)

Back in Nice, Edamame was dithering about whether he wanted to stay in France or not. Cynthia was still in London. Kudo and Shi-won had flown back to Japan. Laurent was lazing about in Edamame’s boarding house, reading the local newspaper and chatting to Sebastian.

“Hey, Abby,” Edamame said. “You want to go out somewhere?”

Abby didn’t have anything better to do at the moment; she’d just been fucking around on her phone. She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Aw, am I not invited?” Laurent said.

Edamame gave him the stink eye. “Like anyone would want to spend time with you.”

Edamame headed out first and started talking to Marie at the door. As Abby grabbed her coat, Laurent said, “Abby.”

His voice was quiet, and the tone felt…off. Abby paused.

Laurent was watching her strangely. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind.

“I don’t like to be jealous,” he said. And then he smiled that meaningless smile of his. “But I know when to fold. You two have fun.”

He turned peaceably back to his newspaper.

Abby stepped outside with Edamame, perturbed. What the hell was that about?

Edamame showed Abby the rest of his regular haunts, his favorite tourist traps, the little out-of-the-way shops and restaurants. She understood that he was saying goodbye to the city. So he had made up his mind, it seemed.

They were walking down Rue Droite, eating socca with their hands, when it finally hit her.

She stopped walking. Edamame stopped a few seconds later and turned to look at her.

“This isn’t a date,” she said.

He blinked. And then it hit him, too. His eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Oh! Oh, god, no. I didn’t mean it to be,” he said frantically. “Did I offend you?”

“No, it’s fine, shut up.” She started walking again. A little nervously, Edamame kept walking too. “Laurent is just an asshole.”

Edamame barked a laugh. “Well, yeah. But what does that have to do with anything? Did he say something?”

Abby frowned to herself.

She really didn’t want to talk about it. She’d spent decades not talking about it. That was how their team did things, it was how they worked. They were all world champions at not talking about it.

But not talking about it hadn’t gotten Abby very far. If there was one thing she had learned from therapy, it was to be brave. And sometimes, being brave meant talking about it.

“Listen, Edamame,” she said. “You need to figure out this thing with Laurent. You keep letting him push your buttons, and then you keep freaking out when he does. It’s starting to really annoy me.”

Edamame just stared at her for a long moment.

“I thought it might’ve been just the hair, but you really have changed,” he said.

She flipped him the bird.

“No, you’re right, I’m sorry.” He turned away and hunched his shoulders. “You’re right. I…”

He trailed off. They kept walking, as the sun began to set over Old Town. Abby finished eating her socca.

“He makes me feel like I’m losing my mind,” he finally said. “I don’t like it.”

“Then make him stop,” she said tersely.

He bit his lip and wouldn’t look at her.

“You don’t want him to stop, do you?”

Edamame groaned. “Can we please talk about something else? Anything else. Literally anything else.”

She scoffed. “You’re such a virgin.”

“Again with that! You’re always going on about that!” He glared out at the street, his shoulders tense. “What, is there something wrong with being a virgin?”

Abby rolled her eyes. She plucked Edamame’s unfinished socca from his hands and bit into it. “No.”

He relaxed. After a while, he started speaking again.

“I was a—what do you call it? A social reject? Ever since I started high school. I had a lot of friends before that, but suddenly everyone turned on me. It didn’t matter what I did. They knew who I was. And my mother…well, after I graduated, I had other things to worry about. And you know that I’ve spent years in jail. Nobody’s ever bothered to even look at me.”

He turned to Abby, his eyes bright.

“I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Abby finished the food, and swallowed. “You’ve been pretty okay at improvising so far.”

His lips twitched in a smile. “Thanks.”

“Just—treat it like a con, I guess. I don’t know. What’s your end goal here?”

He shrugged. “I mean—I used to have this sort of fantasy, I guess? I wanted to settle down with a nice girl, start a normal family, have a normal life.”

She shot him an unimpressed look. “And would you have been happy?”

He thought about it. And then he smiled, a sharp, rueful grin. “Not even for a day.”

Well, there you have it, then.

“But why did it have to be him?” Edamame sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Of all the people. He’s such a bastard.”

“He did seduce you, apparently.”

He blushed. “That was just—suit shopping—it doesn’t count,” he stammered.

She snorted. “Whatever, virgin.” She crumpled up their used napkins and lobbed them into a trash can as they passed. “I could take care of that if you want, you know.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“The whole virgin thing.” When he just looked confused, Abby sighed. “I’m offering to have sex with you so you won’t be a virgin anymore.”

Edamame walked into a lamp. “Oh my god,” he said.

“It’s not a big deal. Don’t freak out.”

“It is a big deal! And I’m not freaking out!” he said, totally freaking out. “Abby, you know that I’m gay, right?”

“I’m not really big on labels.”

“Okay well whatever I am, I still wouldn’t want it like that! You’re—you’re my friend. But I want it to mean something more than that.”

Abby suddenly got the urge to laugh. It still surprised her when that happened. So she threw back her head and laughed.

Edamame looked offended.

“I get it,” she said. “You’re a romantic.”

“Yes,” he said, blushing again. “I am.”

“You want your first time to have feelings.”

“Yes! Is there something wrong with that!?” Amazingly, Edamame looked like he was about to cry.

Abby couldn’t relate. Sex was, frankly, kind of boring to her, and she’d never thought feelings were an important part of it. But now she felt maybe a tiny bit bad. She punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“No,” Abby said, looking him in the eye. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

The walked in silence for a little while.

“What do you think I should do?” Edamame asked.

“I’m not here to tell you what to do,” she said. “I don’t care what you do, as long as you deal with this before it blows up in all our faces.”

“Right,” he said. “Makes sense.” He rubbed his shoulder, and then nudged her gently with his elbow. “Hey—thanks. For the talk. I know you don’t like this feelings stuff.”

“I really don’t,” she agreed. “This sucked. Don’t make me do this again.”

He laughed. “Okay.” He looked up and took a breath, watching the sun bleed red over the skyline. “Could you call me Makoto?”

This seemed like a pretty abrupt segue to Abby. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“I just want my friends to call me Makoto. It’s a—Japanese thing, I guess.”

That seemed reasonable. “Fine.” It wasn’t like she referred to him by name often, anyways.

And then she realized: shit. They really were friends. How the hell had that happened?

She thought about Akechi Mitsuhide. She thought about taking a leap of faith together into the Singapore sky. She thought about the pair of paintings Thomas had given them, dark and light, smelling of turpentine and safflower.

It wasn’t…bad, being friends.

“I have an Arabic name,” she offered. “Don’t tell anyone else.”

Makoto’s entire face brightened. He looked at her with the full force of his puppy dog eyes, eagerly waiting.

“My name’s أميرة نور الدين” she said.

He opened his mouth, and something that couldn’t even be called a language came out.

“Ugh. No. Stop.”

She drilled him on the proper pronunciation of her name for a solid five minutes.

“Amira,” he finally said, triumphantly.

She nodded. And then she smiled.

Friends could be good, actually.

10)

“So what’s your exit plan?”

Laurent didn’t jump. So the asshole was awake, after all. He lifted the sketchbook from his face and squinted up at her.

“Didn’t think I’d see you here,” he said.

He gestured at the sweeping coastline of Nice. It was an unusually warm Saturday for March. Nearby, tourists and children frolicked on the beach. The real tourist season would come soon, and then the city would be packed. The team was all leaving France before then.

“Have you been stalking me? Should I be concerned?”

“You have a thing for the ocean,” she said. “You weren’t hard to find.”

“Ah.” He closed the sketchbook. “I’ve been caught out, I see.”

“Answer my question.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”

That was a lie. She spelled it out for him anyway.

“Edamura Makoto is a con of yours. And the first step in any good con is making your exit plan.” She cocked her head. “What happens if this thing gets FUBAR?”

“It won’t,” he said serenely.

She stared him down. He smiled up and refused to fold.

“Let me be more specific,” she said. “What happens if Makoto decides to leave for good?”

“So he’s Makoto now.” He settled back into the beach chair. “I’ll con him into coming back, of course.”

She sighed. “And then what? What happens when the con is done?”

“Then we’ll all go on our merry ways.”

“And you’ll be happy with that?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really, Abby, why the sudden compassion? I never took you for the friendly type.”

“Well, I’m friends with Makoto now, apparently,” she said, and scowled. “Isn’t this what you planned? For me to get invested in all his fucking drama?”

“You give me too much credit.” His eyes went a little distant, and his smile softened. “That was all him, Abby. I’m always surprised at his ability to connect with people.”

She had never seen that look on his face before.

“You two are friends, then?” he asked. Casual, casual, like it was all just a joke. “You’ll let me keep playing with him, I hope?”

She was suddenly sick of this. She stopped pulling her punches.

“I couldn’t care less what you two do,” she said in a low voice. “You’re the one who isn’t thinking straight. What happens if he ever actually says yes?”

“I—”

And then he knew. She could see the moment it hit him. He froze, his eyes trapped somewhere on the horizon, his teeth clicking shut.

“Surprised? Yeah, I thought so,” she said flatly. “He’s got you worse than me. You’re in too deep, Laurent.”

Laurent didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe. Whatever complex, absurd machinery lived in his head was currently crashing and burning.

Con artists didn’t have friends. They didn’t get attached. Relationships were tools, only good for as long as they served a purpose, and then they were dropped in exchange for something better. People came fast and went fast. In a game full of liars, you had to be prepared to shuffle your cards quick.

Chasing someone was fine and all. If you needed to, you could just stop.

Falling in love was a completely different beast.

“You don’t have an exit plan for this,” she said. “It’s barely even a con to you anymore. You’ve been dragging your feet and coming up with all this unnecessary shit, because you don’t want the con to end.”

And because she was still angry about Singapore, and because she did enjoy twisting the knife into bad men, she added:

“Be honest with yourself. If he ever decides to chase you back, you’ll never be able to escape.”

She left him there, white-knuckling the beach chair like she’d just pulled the rug out from under him. She walked along the beach, breathing deeply, enjoying the wind in her hair and the sun on her face. She was totally free. She knew who she was. And she had a friend, a real friend.

The rest, she decided, would be up to them. It was out of her hands now.

In the meantime, she would keep learning how to be happy. She could climb the Grand Canyon, get her documents in order, watch a movie and let herself cry. This was her life, and it was worth living. It was worth all the pain and suffering, all the confusion and uncertainty. It was worth the mistakes and the regrets. She could change, she could make it work. And so it was always going to be worth it.

She faced the future with all her lion's heart.