“Devin,” she said, turning to him, “my guess is whatever you stole is more dangerous than proprietary secrets. Yes?”
He sighed, but said, “Yeah.”
“Seeing as Pseudonym’s just fired me,” she went on, “I’m no longer obligated to protect them – especially if they’re doing something as bad as I think they might be. You’re about to be in deep shit, I’m afraid. Tell us what you did and let us help you.”
One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “And why would you do that, sweetheart?”
Eden sighed. “One part professional curiosity, one part owing Charlie a favor.”
Fox felt his brows shoot up.
“Also, if you ever call me ‘sweetheart’ again, you’ll be eating through a feeding tube.”
Devin laughed. “Foxy, why did you break up with this one again?”
Fox smiled wanly, noting the way Eden made a pointed effort not to look in his direction. Now didn’t feel like the right time to point out that it had been her who’d left him, and not the other way around.
Four
The folder looked innocuous enough, the standard brown kind that fit into a larger accordion folder. The tab read 1966.
But then Devin flipped it open, and Fox felt the synapses in his brain light up like an electrical storm. His father’s face stared up at him from the first page – a shaved head, wild eyes set in his expressionless face, and fifty years younger.
Project Emerald, he read. And then: Subject Nine.
He was glad he was sitting down, his mind spinning so fast he was light-headed. When he glanced across the coffee table, Devin was giving him a wry smile that was almost sad. “Spoiler alert, kid. My name’s not really Devin Green.”
Not surprising, no, but the news was painful all the same. One more lie to add the heap that cast a long shadow over all his children.
Fox swallowed and said, “Alright,” hating the dazed sound of his voice.
He went back to the file. It listed Devin’s – not Devin’s? – age, height, weight, and blood type. Followed by a list that read Test 1, Test 2, Test 3, and so on, each accompanied by a checkmark or a dash. There were only two dashes; the rest were all checkmarks.
“What are these tests?” Fox asked, and thankfully his voice had returned to normal.
“They vary. Some were actual medical tests. Some skills training shit. Torture training. All that fun shit.”
Fox swallowed. “Okay. What for?”
When he risked a glance, he saw his dad raise a single brow. “Where do you think I learned all the shit I taught you?”
“You didn’t teach me. Abe did.”
Devin rolled his eyes. “And where do you think Abe came from, huh? You think there’s just a shop where you can buy Israeli special forces soldiers to mentor your son? There’s not.”
Eden, like always, cut right to the heart of the matter. “You were a hired gun.”
“Oh darling, I was more than that.”
“Don’t call her that,” Fox said the same moment Eden said, “What did I say about nicknames?”
Unperturbed, Devin said, “There were thirteen of us. Orphans, all, pulled out of the orphanages before we could walk. We grew up in barracks and labs, and basements. Lots of basements.” He shrugged. “They fed us, doctored us. And trained us.”
“Oh…kay,” Fox said, brain struggling to catch up. “Hang on, you were–”
Devin grinned. “I was just Nine until I got out. I got my name off a headstone, forged the paperwork I needed. The rest you know.”
Eden’s expression was pinched. “You were raised by the military?” She sounded skeptical.
Fox was skeptical as fuck. Mainly because his father was such a beautiful liar.
But also…it made sense. In the way that everyone insane made sense when it came to the man.
Devin said, “Oh no, the military never knew we existed. Not at large, anyway. This was a very small group of retired officers and researchers. Some doctors. Special government program, the kind that doesn’t exist on paper.”
“Right,” Eden said, tone more confident than her expression.
Silence reigned a long moment. There was a clock somewhere, because Fox could hear it ticking.
“You really are an assassin,” Fox said after a while. “For real.”
Devin smiled. “A good one, too.”
“Fuck.”
“Okay,” Eden said, shaking her head, getting back on track. “Let’s say all of that’s true.”
Devin’s brows tucked down, clearly offended.
“Let’s say it is,” she continued. “What’s that got to do with Pseudonym?”
Devin stood. “You’ve got your video, I’ve got mine. Hold on.”
After he left the room, Fox turned sideways on the couch and found Eden doing the same thing, her dark eyes saucer-wide, and excitement-bright.
“Is he serious?” she asked. “Or is this another lie?”
“He’s serious. I think.” He shrugged when her gaze narrowed. “He generally saves his biggest, stupidest lies for the women he’s trying to shag. He mostly tells me the truth.” Even when a lie would have been kinder to a heartbroken child who wanted to spend time with his daddy. But that was neither here nor there.
Eden sighed. “This was just supposed to be an easy case. Lord.” She glanced away, slumping back deeper into the couch, some of the real her bleeding through the professional façade.
Fox diverted his gaze before he became enraptured.
Devin returned carrying an open laptop that he set on the coffee table, facing the two of them. A video was already pulled up, paused and waiting. “This is from one of the security cameras at my old flat.” He clicked Play and the grainy footage came to life.
“The camera was on top of the fridge,” Devin explained, and Fox could tell, the way it was just above eye-level. It provided a clear view of the front door, which swung open to reveal three men dressed in black tac gear, the dark shapes of rifles visible in their hands.
“Well those aren’t bobbies,” Eden said. “Where were you at the time?”
“At the pub. I saw ‘em skulking around a few weeks before, so I installed the cameras.”
On the screen, the operatives, whoever they were, swept through the lounge and kitchen, flipping sofa cushions and emptying the bookshelf.
“They ripped my favorite skin mag to bits,” Devin lamented.
“Your life is a skin mag, Dad,” Fox said.
The operatives pulled out dresser drawers and dumped the contents on the floor, pawed through papers and odds and ends. This went on for several minutes, and they finally left empty-handed.
“What were they looking for?” Eden asked.
“This, I expect.” He pulled a flash drive from his jeans pocket.
Eden held out her hand and Devin put the drive in it. Fox had never seen his father give anyone anything – except a baby. Or nine. The gift that kept on giving.
When she plugged it in, the drive proved to be a list of names and addresses. Fox scanned it at first with minimal interest, but then his own name popped out at him.
Charles William Fox.
“What the fuck?”
“Those are the names and last known addresses of all thirteen operatives, their spouses, and children.”
And grandchildren, too, apparently, because Michelle’s name was down near the bottom.
Fox nearly choked on his anger. “Pseudonym had this?”
“What? No. Of course not. This is mine.”
“Why do you have it?” Eden said something in a calm, warning tone, but he didn’t hear it, shooting to his feet. “What part of having your bloody granddaughter’s name and address on a flash drive people are trying to steal is a good idea?”
“They didn’t steal it though, did they?” Devin said. “You think I’m that stupid?”
“I think you’re that careless. You don’t give a shit about any of us bastards.”
“Hey.” The first no
te of anger crept into Devin’s voice. “I would never let this fall into the wrong hands.”
“Then why do you have it in the first place?”
“It was Three’s – it was Morgan’s idea. I can never remember his bloody name. Morgan said, after One and Two got picked up, that we ought to make a contingency plan. A way for the others to help whoever was left should anything happen. That was back in the early eighties, when this was still on paper.” He flicked a nail against the drive. “We’ve all kept ours up to date ever since. Just in case.”
“Two weeks ago,” Devin said, looking serious, “Morgan left me a message. ‘Get the file,’ he said. I went by his flat, and he was gone. Not a trace. Empty, smelled of bleach, and a realtor’s lockbox on the front door.”
“He bolted?” Eden asked.
“Or Pseudonym got him.”
Fox rubbed his temples. He needed so much more whiskey. “You’re gonna have to explain this. In detail. It’s making me dizzy.”
“You–” he started, and Eden’s phone rang.
Then the window shattered.
~*~
Fox didn’t know if he ought to kick himself for not thinking to pull the drapes, or his dad for flustering him so badly that the thought never crossed his mind. Proof positive that being related to Devin Green – or whatever the hell his name was – would get a man killed.
The glass shattered the same moment Fox felt the whiff of a sniper round zipping past his face. If he hadn’t moved that moment, it would have taken the end of his nose off.
Sloppy sniper work, to be honest. Albie would have been appalled.
“Sniper,” he said, voice finally, thoroughly calm, because family revelations had shaken him to the core, but this he could handle.
“Noticed,” Devin said, equally calm, as he launched himself over the back of his chair with the dexterity of a much younger man.
“Shit!” Eden said, and vaulted over the back of the sofa.
Fox landed next to her, close enough to feel the hot, rapid pulse of her breath on his face.
“Clearly, you were followed,” he told her.
“I was careful.” She closed her eyes in a moment of intense frustration – with herself; he knew her well enough to know that. “And Mum had eyes on us. How in the–” She went silent as three more rounds popped through the open window, thunking into the sheetrock, shattering something porcelain. “We’ve got to get out.”
“Excellent idea.”
Fox peeked around the end of the sofa and met his dad’s gaze. Devin (Not Devin? Whatever, it was too confusing, his fucking name was Devin, alright?) looked put-out, but not worried. “Not through the door,” he said, and then mouthed bedroom. In case the place was bugged.
Fox nodded. “Right.” He took Eden’s wrist in his hand – her pulse thumped wildly against his fingers – and tugged her in that direction. “Come on, the old man says it’s this way.”
They belly-crawled their way into the master as the sniper continued to shoot blind through the window. Suppressive fire, Fox guessed, or else the guy was the worst sniper on earth. If it was suppressive, then that meant there was a team on the way up. Limited window – they needed to hurry.
“Just like the good old days, huh?” he asked Eden.
She snorted. “They were never good.”
Ouch.
Devin shuffled in, bent double, faster and more flexible than he had a right to be at this age. “Here, Charlie, help me with this,” he urged, going to the nightstand and shoving it to the side.
Fox did, and beneath the heavy piece of furniture – really heavy, had to be a hidden gun safe – there was a rug, and under that, a trapdoor. “Clever.”
“Isn’t it though?”
It was a heavy trapdoor and it took both of them to lift it, the underside the smooth white sheetrock of the ceiling in the unit below.
“Here.” Fox reached for Eden, but she waved him off, braced both hands on the edge and slid down feet-first, graceful as ever.
Devin smirked. “Don’t think she’s glad to see you, son.”
“Bite my ass, Dad.” He followed her down…
And landed in a pink bedroom full of pink furniture, where a little girl in a pink princess dress sat at a small pink table surrounded by stuffed animals, pink ceramic teapot held in one hand, imaginary tea overrunning the cup in front of her. She stared at them, gobsmacked.
“Hello, love,” Eden said, managing a smile and a wave. “We’ll just be out of your hair, then.”
Devin landed with a thump. “Christ, all this pink.”
“Get moving.” Fox put a hand between his shoulder blades and shoved, following Eden out of the girl’s bedroom and into a hallway that led into a kitchen identical in floorplan to Devin’s upstairs, but overrun with homey knickknacks and silk flowers.
A woman, presumably the girl’s mother, shrieked and threw a plastic cup at them as they passed.
“Sorry, sorry,” Eden said, wincing, shielding her head with a hand. “We’ll see ourselves out.”
They did, and once they were in the relative quiet of the corridor, Fox could hear thundering footsteps one floor up.
“That’ll be the reinforcements,” Devin said with a wry look to the ceiling.
They took the emergency stairs in the back, concrete and musty and dimly lit. Eden led the charge, light-footed as a doe, making a quick call on her phone as they went. Muttered, “Good,” and slipped the device back in her pocket.
“Who are you calling?” Fox asked, only half-exasperated, the other half curious.
“My assistant.”
His snappy comeback died in his threat when he nearly turned an ankle on the next step. Shit. He needed to pay more attention.
Behind him, Devin smothered a laugh, the shithead.
By the time they reached the ground floor, Fox was internally cursing all the time he spent drinking, smoking, and eating Darla’s cooking. He didn’t look out of shape in the mirror, but he wasn’t as spry and sharp as he used to be.
Eden held up a staying hand and pushed the door open a fraction, letting in a ribbon of gray afternoon light. She peeked through the gap and then pushed the door wide. “Come on. Ride’s here.”
And it was.
A dusty black Pontiac GTO sat at the curb, engine rumbling as it idled, windows cranked down, dual exhaust pipes shaking. The sight of it was so totally American and incongruous against the London backdrop that Fox faltered a step.
Eden seemed unfazed, though, opening up the passenger door and folding the seat down. “Hop in, boys.”
Okay. Well. They hopped.
Once he’d slid across the hot vinyl seat, he was struck by the completely American smell of the machine too: motor oil, Armor All, hamburgers and fries. And when he looked up over the back of the front seat, he got the biggest shock of all. The driver was a woman. Head full of dirty-blond waves, retro Ray-Bans, cute little snub nose, jeans and a white t-shirt. She spared them a glance over her shoulder, shades sliding down so she could peer at them with big blue eyes.
Then she turned to Eden, who was sliding into the flipped-back-into-place front seat and slamming the door. “This is the ex you get all weepy about when you drink too much?” She sounded skeptical, and also American. Southern, at that.
“Not now, Axe, just drive.”
The girl shrugged and put the car in Drive. “Alright, I’m gonna ask about it later, though.”
Eden sighed.
The car peeled away from the curb with a squeal.
Five
“Well, this is cozy,” Devin said, peering around the workroom in the back of Maude’s.
“Fuck off,” Albie snapped. “Don’t touch that.”
His father lifted his hands in melodramatic compliance. “Touchy, touchy, alright. I won’t hurt your precious furniture.”
Albie turned to his thrice-damned brother. “Explain.”
Five minutes ago, Albie had been trying to sell an indecisive woman a wingback chair
when someone started knocking loud and insistent on the shop’s back door. The kind of racket the police would have made if they’d known he was holding over a million dollars in illegal weapons in his secret bolt hole under the workshop. The customer had given him a startled look, and when he excused himself, it was all he could do not to run to the back door. He’d made sure the trap door was well hidden under its rubber mat, and answered the door with a polite smile on his face…only to find Fox. And Dad. And Eden, and a strange woman he’d never met before.
“Let us in, asshole,” Fox had said, and shoved his way inside.
Dad had clapped him on the shoulder and given him the sort of grin that got him into women’s knickers. “Good to see you, son.”
“Sorry about this,” Eden said as she passed.
The other girl, the blond, gave him an assessing look, but said nothing.
Alright then.
It took him at least two minutes to usher the customer out with his deepest apologies, and then lock the door, turn the sign around, and pull the curtains. He pulled the curtain between the front and back of the shop closed too, just to make sure. Threw all five deadbolts on the alley door.
Now he wanted some answers.
Fox heaved a tired-sounding sigh. “We were at this asshole’s flat and someone started trying to snipe us through the window.”
“Hey,” Devin protested.
“We got away, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Albie echoed. “And then you thought, ‘I know what’s a good idea. Let’s lead these wankers back to Albie’s place.’ Yeah? Thanks for that.”
“I’m sorry, Albie, but I didn’t know where else we could go,” Eden said. She looked, if not rattled, then tired, and that was odd in and of itself. This was serious, then. “They had eyes on Devin’s flat, which makes me think they probably have eyes on my office, too, since I was withholding intel.” She slumped down into a half-finished chair and pushed both hands through her hair. It was the most out of sorts he’d ever seen her.
Albie looked to the blond – well, dirty blond. All sorts of shades, those boho waves all the American girls wore in magazines. “Who are you?”
Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Page 3
