Raven walked unsteadily, drunk on emotion, and Axelle took her elbow and steered her gently toward a patch of empty wall where they could sit down on a pair of overturned plastic crates.
A big pantry, but the edges closed in thanks to the presence of the Dogs. A huge guy Axelle had heard referred to as Shallie. Phillip. That guy Nicky who’d helped interrogate the sniper kid, who looked like he had a rap sheet as long as her arm. A few of the younger ones, hips cocked, and shoulders jacked up, trying to look bigger than they were. But they all stood back, even the president.
It was Albie who walked into the room and spawned a hush. All murmured side conversation quieted.
He wore a white t-shirt and dress slacks tucked, absurdly, into above-the-ankle harness boots. His flak vest. By all rights he should have looked ridiculous. Laughable, even.
But that wasn’t the case at all. Everyone in the small room seemed to lean forward – even Axelle, much to her chagrin. Clive picked up his head, eyes widening, but Axelle wasn’t looking at him. No, her gaze was trained on the tightly bunched muscles in Albie’s arms, in his back, visible as his shirt shifted over his skin. He would have hated the comparison, probably, but there was an air of a detective about him, competent, quietly furious, but totally in control.
It was strikingly attractive.
“Alright.” Albie grabbed a spare chair and dragged it over, set it down in front of Clive’s, backward, with a loud clunk. He straddled its seat, and as he dropped down into it, he leaned over the back and snatched the tape off Clive’s mouth with a deft flick of his wrist.
Sharp ripping sound as it let go of skin, and Clive gave a low shout.
“Shut up,” Albie said. He tossed the tape away and fixed Clive with a look that, even from a distance, and even without being on the receiving end of it, Axelle felt like nails raking down the back of her neck. A predatory look. “I’m going to ask you questions about who you are, what you’re doing involved with Pseudonym, and what happened to my little sister. Every time you hesitate, Nicky’s going to spur you on.”
The big man cracked his knuckles.
“If you lie, I’ll break your fingers. One finger for each lie.” He said it matter-of-fact, like he was rattling off the weather report, and somehow that made it worse than any posturing or snarling.
It seemed effective, too, judging by the way Clive’s throat jumped as he swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, just a breath. “Okay. But–” Albie arched a single brow and the man flinched, but pressed on. “They threatened me. Said they’d kill me.”
Albie tipped his head, and his gaze went from assessing…to downright canine. That black dog patch they all wore wasn’t a joke, she was coming to realize. “So will we.”
“They know where my mum lives. My sister. Her children.”
“Imagine that: we both have a sister in danger. Only, mine’s sixteen, and she’s already been snatched. So.” He tipped his head.
Nicky stepped forward and punched Clive in the jaw.
His head snapped around, and he let out a deep, shocked sound that turned into a strangled yell.
“I – I,” he gasped. “I didn’t–”
“Shut up,” Albie said again, firmer, and Clive shut up. He slowly turned back to face his interrogator, working his jaw side to side with a wince. “Now, we’ll start simple, and work our way up to the harder questions. Yeah?”
Clive wet his lips. A fine tremor took him, across his whole body. “Yeah.”
“Is Clive Mahoney your real name?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really the CEO of Gleaux?”
“Yes.”
“When did you get the job?”
“Three years ago. I’d worked as a manager for a small financial firm before that.”
“Small? That’s a big step up.”
He shrugged as best he could with his hands bound behind his back. “I was qualified. I went for three different interviews.”
“Why’d you want the job?”
“The money.”
“Big man salary? Or under the table money?”
His brows twitched. “Salary.”
“Really.”
“I had access to a car and driver, too, and a big bonus every Christmas. Gifts. But all of it was above board. No under the table shit.”
Raven leaned sideways into Axelle, drawing her attention. “They wanted a pretty face,” she whispered. “Someone who’d set people at ease. Charm them.” When Axelle stole a sideways glance, she found Raven’s lips pursed in something like disgust – probably with herself. “Someone smart enough to handle meetings, but stupid enough not to go snooping and ask too many questions.”
“He’d fit the bill, then,” Axelle whispered back.
They’d been quiet, but Clive noticed them, and his eyes strayed toward them, white-edged and wild, those of a prey animal caught in a snare. But still curious, for all that.
“I sent three of our best into your office today,” Albie said, snagging his attention again, and Axelle realized he was talking about them. Raven, and Vivian, and her. Three of their best. “But you were ready for them. You invited them there.”
Clive’s gaze shifted back and forth across Albie’s face, a fast flicker. He breathed through an open mouth; fresh sweat had popped up on his face, shiny as donut glaze. “I – I didn’t want to. Please understand that. This wasn’t – none of this – was my idea. I didn’t want to go through with any of it.”
“You had men in the upper floors. Armed men, with tac gear. Very professional. What were they going to do?”
Clive hesitated.
Albie dipped his head again, and Nicky stepped forward.
“Wait!” Clive gasped. He wet his lips again; it didn’t seem to be doing much good. His voice was sticky, his mouth obviously dry. “Wait, please. They…” He bared all his teeth in a dramatic wince. “I don’t know what they meant to do. Probably – probably just capture them. Use them as leverage. I don’t think they meant to – meant to kill them.”
“You don’t think,” Albie deadpanned.
“No…”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I can’t ask these people questions. That’s not how it works.”
“Then how does it work?”
“I follow their orders. I put my head down, and do what I’m told, and they leave me and my family alone.”
“And pay you a shit-ton of money.”
He made a face. “That doesn’t matter anymore. That’s why I took the job, yeah, but once I’d been there a while, and the threats started, all I wanted was to get away.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I’ve just told you: I couldn’t!”
“Did you try?”
Clive worked his mouth a few times, and his gaze slid away.
“So Raven and the girls,” Albie said. “They were going to kill them.”
Voice small: “I really don’t think so. No. I don’t know.”
Not to agree with the asshole, but Axelle really didn’t think so either. Eden had been shot at, yes, that first day, but the little sister – Cassandra – had been taken, rather than caught in a drive-by. That suggested hostage to Axelle. They wanted Devin, and they would use his children as leverage.
“You called Raven and invited her,” Albie said. “Why? How did they know about her?”
And here, a sneering little smile touched Clive’s mouth; something like confidence straightened his spine a fraction. “Don’t you know? That day Raven showed up at Ryan’s office, asking about Gleaux – soon as she pulled out of the parking garage, a whole fleet of bikes pulled out in front and behind her. A regular outlaw escort. The way I heard it, there’d been rumors, sure, but no one knew for a fact that she had ties to the Lean Dogs. That confirmed it. And there’s only one reason a class act like Raven would have a thing to do with your lot.”
“Damn it,” Raven muttered. “I knew it.”
“Ryan Anderson is in on this, too?” Albie asked.
<
br /> “In some way, I guess. You’d have to tie her up and smack her around to get the real truth, though, ‘cause I don’t know it.”
Unprompted, Nicky stepped in and slapped him, open-handed, but hard.
“Ahh!” Clive shouted, ducking away too late, eyes squeezing shut. “What was that for?”
“For your shit attitude,” Albie deadpanned. “I need the names and contact numbers of your handlers, all of them.”
Clive heaved a sigh. “Fine.”
One of the young ones handed Albie a pad and pen, and Axelle realized that was more or less it. A few hits, but no broken fingers, no spray of blood. Was Clive that easy? Or was Albie that good?
Raven stood up, fast and sudden, and left the pantry. Long strides, not trying to sneak out. Axelle noted the way Clive’s gaze caught on her, and followed her out before she got to her own feet, and shot the man a murderous gaze. When he finally noted her, and startled back in his chair, it gave her a small measure of satisfaction.
Raven was taller than her, legs longer, and she could walk much faster. By the time Axelle caught up with her on the other side of the kitchen, Raven was rooting through one of the big industrial freezers.
“You alright?”
Raven straightened, frosted bottle of vodka in-hand. “Yeah. Let’s get smashed.”
Twenty-Three
“Understand something,” Morgan said, once they were all seated, holding cups of hot, spiked cider that Nora had brought them with a grudging look. “I didn’t know all of this at the time. I’ve managed to piece it together bit-by-bit over the last thirty-some-odd years, and I’m confident that it’s the truth, but I acknowledge there are things that I’ll never know. Maybe even that I don’t want to know.
“Project Emerald wasn’t a military experiment, but it was to have military applications. From what I’ve gathered, the government contracted a highly experimental neutral third party to come up with weaponized humans. Not soldiers, let’s be clear about that. These were assassins, designed to blend in, to infiltrate, to kill, and carry out delicate plots that couldn’t be handled by bombs and waves of shock troops. This organization didn’t even have a name, but was a group of doctors and military professionals who’d all been discharged for behavioral reasons. People who the military didn’t trust to responsibly carry out orders and shape the next generation of young troops. Wild cards.
“Based on the files I read, their plan was to get hold of children – actual babies – and raise them as assassins from the ground up. Never coddle them, or give them sweets, or let them think they were loved. No play-dates, and crayons, or–”
“Jesus,” Eden whispered with great feeling. “Jesus Christ.”
“You get the gist,” Morgan said with a shrug. “We were all brought up with training and lessons on warfare, and spy tactics. We didn’t think anything of it, for so long. It was the only life we’d known. We were prepared, in every way, to serve the Crown in this way – that’s what they told us, anyway.
“What actually happened was that someone high-up, outside of the project, found out what was going on and shut it down. Shut it down hard. Everything was disbanded, and we were turned loose.
“They didn’t want to turn us loose, mind. Not all of them. There was some debate amongst our handlers. The scientists and doctors, the ones who’d put all the work into developing us, hated the idea of destroying their years and years of work. Certainly, we could be repurposed, they argued. But the ones in charge – the chief of which was a bloke who always told us to call him Morris – wanted us put down. We knew too much. We were live ordnance with the pins pulled, ready to go off in their eyes.
“Doc Hannaford got us out. And once we were loose, there was no stopping us. They’d trained us too well, and we were too resourceful. Once we were in the wind, that was it.
“We didn’t have names as such, so we all adopted identities. Scrambled about a bit, but all eventually figured out what we wanted to do, and how to do it. We were trained to kill diplomats and kings; crafting resumes wasn’t any big deal. We found workarounds for drug tests – anything that required blood, or hair, or piss, or fingerprints. Anything that might ping in a database somewhere. And things were quiet for a long, long time.
“But then Pseudonym started up.
“I didn’t – none of us knew, at first, that it was at all related to Project Emerald. Why would we? It was just this massive corporation, lots of smaller businesses and divisions under its umbrella.
“I was still working for MI5 when I found out what it really was. A bomb threat got called in: suspicious package in one of the parliament offices. Turned out to be a fake, but it had been left on purpose to scare everyone: mission accomplished on that front. It was sloppily done, and we caught up with the perp three days later. He was some grungy druggie piece of shit, living out of his mum’s flat. Conspiracy theorist, you know? Hated the government, wanted to give everyone a good rattle. He had a whole bulletin board full of intended targets – we took it in for evidence. And one of my techs put a list together so we could go check out those places, ask if they’d had threats, warn them, you know. The Pseudonym main offices – big shiny skyscraper – were there. I had time, so I went myself. Turns out they’d had other threats. The president wanted to talk to me. Would I mind taking the lift up to the penthouse and having a chat with him? Sure. So, I did. And guess who the president was.
“He was about a hundred years old, but I’d recognize that face anywhere: it was Morris.”
“You’re shitting me,” Fox said.
Morgan shook his head. “He recognized me, too. I thought the old bugger might have an aneurism right there. We kept it short. I was polite. And then I got the fuck out of there. When I got home that night, Nora said there’d been a black car parked on the street for an hour. We packed up and left our townhouse that night. I quit my job over the bloody phone.”
“You disappeared,” Eden said. She sounded numb. “No one would give us any explanation–”
“Because I hadn’t given one. I got in contact with the rest of the boys, and I went down deep. Things were quiet for a while.”
“Then why did Dad get involved?” Fox asked. His heart pounded, a steady, sustainable canter.
Morgan held up a finger. Getting to that. “I did some digging on the sly, called in some favors with old friends, that sort of thing. Pseudonym was, at that point, making a killing all on its own, but to start with, it got off the ground with a massive flood of cash. From the government.”
“Why?” Eden and Fox asked together.
“From what I’ve managed to dig up, I think they’re trying to reboot Project Emerald. That’s the only thing that explains wanting Morris. Only this time, they’re covering their tracks better, and they’re insulating themselves with all these legitimate companies, making themselves indispensable.” He snorted. “Kind of like the Lean Dogs that way.”
“I was trying to figure out if they had our old files,” Devin said. “That would prove something. They did, and I took them, and now, well.” He shrugged. “Here we are.”
Fox took a breath. Another. Let it all sink in. “Fuck,” he finally said. “Just…fuck.”
“They’ve got our trail this time,” Morgan said grimly. “And they won’t let us get away again. We’re too much a liability on multiple fronts.”
It was…a lot. A whole lot. The others started talking, half low and urgent, half as dazed as he felt. He couldn’t deal with that noise at the moment, so he retreated within his thoughts, deep down, and threw up a mental screen against distractions. Wiped the slate clean and properly thought about it.
At its core, Pseudonym wasn’t a massive conglomerate, or a government conspiracy, or a boogeyman; it was a snake, one that needed its head cut off. A familiar problem for Fox. That was what he did for the club, after all. This snake was bigger, meaner, and far more venomous. But the same basic principle applied: someone was threatening his family, and it was time to go to work.
<
br /> “Okay, so how do I kill them?” he asked.
Everyone looked at him.
“What?” Morgan said.
Abe chuckled.
Morgan, frowning: “I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“No. No, it’s really not. These wankers are a problem. A big one I’ll grant you – but a problem. I kill problems. Point me in the right direction, and pull the trigger.”
Abe’s smile was small, but pleased.
Devin looked openly proud.
Morgan kept frowning.
Fox tried to catch Eden’s gaze, but she sat studying her hands as she worked her fingers together in nervous twitches.
Evan, eyes about to bug out of his head, said, “Dude. Did you not hear…any of that? Like, it’s a whole company. And the government. How…how do you go up against that? No offense, but, like…you’re just a dude with a cool leather vest. And, again, no offense, but…you’re not very tall…”
Abe cuffed him across the back of the head.
“Ow!”
Fox spread his hands. Invitation, maybe supplication. “I’m being serious here. This is what – what we all” – gesture at Dad, Abe, Morgan – “do. We neutralize threats. It’s a big threat, yeah, but that doesn’t mean this is impossible. And there’s not a choice: get rid of these guys, or wind up dead.”
Morgan sighed. “You aren’t wrong, but–”
Fox’s phone rang.
Twenty-Four
“For the record, this is a terrible idea,” Axelle said as she slid into a booth across from Raven. It was a very corner booth, one Raven had unceremoniously kicked a group of paying customers out of; they’d tried to argue, but something about a woman in spike heels, with wild hair, and wilder eyes, swinging a vodka bottle, inspired them to get up and move. She’d then tucked herself back against the old worn leather, the fronds of a potted fern falling over her shoulders, and poured herself a shot.
She downed it and blinked. Shook her head. “Noted,” she said, and poured another. “Will you have some?”
Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Page 20
