She sighed. “No, you’re not.”
“Dr. Adkins over here.”
“You came home,” she said. “You’re cold, yeah, I’ll give you that. And efficient, all of that. But home doesn’t care about the walls you’ve built up out in the rest of the world. You came back to your old haunt, and your old man, and your ex…whatever I was. And things are complicated for you here. This is your family, Charlie. I’d think you were a sociopath if this whole thing wasn’t difficult for you.”
He let her words sink in. Actually comforting.
“They took my little sister,” he said quietly.
“I know. Let’s quit standing around in the dark and go get her back, okay?”
He leaned over and nudged her shoulder with his. She didn’t lean away. “Okay.”
Twenty-Eight
“Thank you.” Ryan’s hands shook as she reached for the teacup Raven offered her.
They were in the big conference room across from Phil’s office, its Victorian fixtures and crackling fire unspeakably soothing. Down below, the pub had reached the fever pitch before last call; Raven found the low vibrations of it a comfort; danger didn’t seem so prevalent when you were surrounded by raucous humanity.
The first person Raven had run into upon their return to Baskerville Hall had been Axelle, face like a thundercloud. She looked much the same now, pacing the length of the room with her arms folded, shooting Raven the occasional dirty look.
“I still can’t believe you took my bike,” Phillip said for the third time. His tone fell somewhere between disapproving and proud. “I can’t believe Tommy helped you.”
“So you keep saying,” Tommy said. He sat at the far end of the table, leaned back with his chair balanced on two legs, unrepentant.
“It handles beautifully.” Raven shot him a grin. “You should get out from behind that bloody desk of yours and ride it more. Be a real biker again and not just a mob boss.”
Phil lifted his brows and tipped his head a fraction toward Ryan.
Who was currently glancing between them with a blank sort of shock.
“Ry,” Raven said, “this is my brother Phillip. He runs the London Lean Dogs.”
“Jesus,” Tommy said with a laugh. “Sis is on fire tonight.”
“Raven,” Phillip warned.
“That’s just a fact: you are the president. Your existence isn’t the thing you’ll wind up in jail for.”
He sighed.
“And Ryan, seeing as how she was fleeing into the night, afraid for her life, is probably really glad to be around her local notorious outlaws, isn’t she?” She felt her smile go sharp, that weaponized grin she’d practiced in the mirror for years.
Ryan sipped her tea. A little slipped down her chin because she was trembling so badly, and she dashed it away with the back of her hand. Without lipstick, her mouth looked thin, and flat, and pinched. “I, uh, I actually thought that gangs…clubs,” she amended quickly, “like the Lean Dogs were urban legends.”
“Hear that?” Tommy said. “We’re urban legends.”
Phil reached the end of his limited patience; there was no mistaking that expression. “Why did you bring her here?” he asked Raven. “If she has answers, let’s get them, otherwise I don’t need any bloody civilians in my clubhouse.”
“Ryan’s the one who hooked me up with Clive,” Raven said. “I for one would like an explanation, because I’ve known her a long time, and I’d like to think she wouldn’t intentionally try to get me killed.”
Ryan ducked her head over her tea cup.
“Isn’t that right?” Raven pressed.
The fashion mogul let out a thin, wavering breath and lifted her head again. She looked between the two siblings, pleading. “I didn’t understand what was happening at first – the day Clive came to the office and introduced himself. It was months and months ago. And he was…” Discreet spots of color bloomed in her cheeks.
“Why does everyone think he’s so damn handsome?” Axelle said. “He’s not that good looking.”
Ryan’s blush deepened. “He was so personable, and mannerly. So correct. I had no reason to suspect at the time that he was some sort of government agent.”
Raven’s breath caught.
The fire crackled.
Collectively: “What?”
~*~
Miles’s eye strain was so terrible at this point he could barely read. His laptop screen looked covered in wavering hieroglyphics at this point, smudging and blurring every time he blinked. He was long since used to looking things up, digging up dirt, hacking into websites that should have been secure as bank vaults, and learning things not meant to be seen by young outlaw boys with too much free time. It had become his official role within the club, and most times he loved it. It kept him from having to shoot people while serving a valuable purpose.
But with this case, there was just so much.
He’d mined all through the Pseudonym sites, going down endless rabbit holes, looking into Gleaux and dozens of other Pseudonym-owned companies. He’d been trying, since Fox’s call earlier, to figure out if the CEO, Fenwick, was this Morris person – though it had become immediately apparent that the man running some crazy assassin experience wouldn’t exactly be listed in a registry somewhere.
He thought, given the sheer volume of web pages he’d searched, and the aforementioned eye strain, the migraine it was threatening to give him, it was excusable that he’d only just now noticed it.
Something was wrong with Clive Mahoney’s birth certificate. The watermark, the signature – it was a clever job, but it was a forgery.
“Shit.” Miles scrabbled off his bed, kicking candy wrappers and an empty energy drink can out of his way, heart pounding. Calling as he went, “Guys! Phil!”
~*~
They’d used plastic riot cuffs to link his wrists behind his back, and then pushed him down in a corner and told him to get comfy. One guy – massive, with a pair of brass knuckles – had been left to guard him, and was currently scrolling through something on his pone and grinning to himself.
A reasonable method of containment for a reasonably incompetent civilian.
Only, he wasn’t that.
Clive folded his hands together – you had to get the angle just right – and set about the business of working out of his cuffs.
~*~
Fox parked the van behind Baskerville Hall feeling, not exactly better, but at least more focused. Centered in a way that he hadn’t been the last few days. Knowing that Cass had been taken would have been crippling for a lot of people, but for Fox, it helped him clear out all the useless, cluttering emotions that prevented him from doing his job.
His hate of Devin, his weird worry about Eden – that could wait until later. Until after the job was done.
The others piled out of the van and fell into a cluster behind him, tired and complaining of stiffness from the drive.
His hand was on the handle of the pub door when he heard the shouting.
Not drunken brawl shouting, or the dispirited yells of a crowd told it was time for last call. No, this was proper shouting. Screaming, really.
Panic and fear.
Fox opened the door with one hand, and pulled his gun with the other, gliding inside on silent feet.
Not that it mattered. No one was paying him, or the door, a bit of attention.
The scene that awaited him didn’t make any sense, but he worked out a plan for handling it all the same.
A tall man in a white undershirt, with a bloodstained bandage on his left arm, stood in the center of the main pub floor, his wounded arm wrapped tight around Nicky’s neck, muzzle of a gun pressed to the big man’s temple. The gunman had thick black hair gone greasy, falling in his eyes – eyes that glinted like a wild animal’s under the fairy lights draped along the ceiling beams.
It was late, but there were still patrons at some of the tables – that was who had been screaming. A few women clutched their bags to their chests, hiding
behind their men, all of whom watched, half-drunk and gobsmacked, as the gunman urged Nicky forward a step, gun digging in so hard that Nicky winced. The biker had a swelling eye, Fox saw, and a split lip.
Poor dumb Nicky.
Dogs on the stairs: Phil, Tommy, Miles, Chef, all crowded together. The prospects – whose names Fox still didn’t know – had pulled cricket bats from under the bar, and stood with feet braced, ready to use them.
But there was only one gun, and that was in the hands of a stranger. An assailant.
Two objectives: get the gun, and knock the guy on his ass.
Three: keep the civilians safe.
He’d thought he was centered before he came in; he hadn’t been. He felt it now, the last of his jitters bleeding away, leaving him cold, calm, still. He couldn’t feel his pulse, or his breathing. He was an automaton. Just like Abe had taught him.
“Charlie,” Eden whispered, just a breath, and tried to grab at his sleeve.
He stepped out of her reach and walked into the pub, empty-handed, unhurried. No one said anything; everyone he knew was too smart to call out to him and draw the gunman’s attention. He got close – closer than the man probably wanted – before the guy whipped around to face him, crook of his elbow digging into Nicky’s throat, teeth bared, eyes white-rimmed.
“Stay back,” he said, posh accent.
“Ah. You’ll be Clive.”
A twitch; surprise. But then the gun pressed in even tighter; Nicky would have a nice round bruise there tomorrow.
“Are you one of them?” Fox asked. His gaze shifted mechanically, looking for openings. There, on the bandage, a fresh trickle of blood going down the arm. There, at his knee, between Nicky’s own. The face was always a good option. The gun was a Glock: no safety.
Clive’s gaze went to the stairwell, and the Dogs gathered there. He’d already decided Fox wasn’t a threat. More the better.
Movement behind Fox, slow, sly, but effective: Abe slipping between tables, moving toward the bar.
“No,” Morgan said, and Clive’s head whipped back around. “Look at him, Charlie. Look at those wild eyes. He’s not one of us.”
Clive grimaced. Or maybe it was a smile. “Get away from the door.” He jabbed the gun into Nicky’s head, that universal sign for move or I’ll shoot.
Abe had reached the bar, and curled his hand around someone’s abandoned beer.
“Let’s have a chat,” Fox said. “Just you and me, yeah? No weapons, no hostages. I take it someone roughed you up.” He nodded toward his wounded arm. “That was rude of them. But come on. You’re surrounded; if you kill Nicky, you know you won’t get out of here alive.”
Clive was shaking; Fox could see the sweat on his face, pouring down in rivulets. Blood dripped onto the floor. Nicky held still, his jaw set. His breathing was hampered by the arm at his throat, but he looked at Fox with composure. Ready, his gaze said.
“Come on,” Fox said, and made a slow, telegraphed reach forward.
Abe threw the beer at Clive’s feet, and the glass shattered, beer splashed everywhere.
Clive spun.
Fox leaped.
He chopped Clive right in that perfect place at the base of his neck, over the nerves that went down over his shoulder and into his arm. The blow was hard – not enough to take him down, but his hand spasmed, and he lurched back, off balance.
Nicky took the opportunity for what it was; he ducked down, got his hands on Clive’s arm around his neck – loosened thanks to Fox’s attack – and used all his considerable bulk and strength to get his back under Clive’s chest and heave him up and over.
It was a beautiful throw, really. The gun fell in the middle of it and landed on the hardwood with a clatter. A moment later, Clive landed on top of a round table with a crack. The table held, somehow, and Clive let out an explosive gasp as all the breath was forced from his lungs.
“Take his gun,” Fox said. “Get all the civilians out. Go.”
Flurry of activity around him.
Fox reached to put a hand on Clive’s throat–
And the man snatched his wrist.
“Tougher than you look,” Fox observed, before he was yanked off his feet.
~*~
“…always seen around the same building,” Carl had said of the stranger who’d killed the detectives. “Always all in black. Some kids followed him once, and he just vanished. Into thin air, like. But that building is part of it. Must have a flat there.”
So that was where Albie went, and where he now stood, head tipped back, breath pluming in the night air.
An old building, one that had survived the Luftwaffe, its stone façade acid-eaten, its iron railings ancient and flaking decades of paint. In the latter half of the twentieth century, after the ticker-tape parades and the bunting, and the flapping Union Jacks had all come down, once the building had stopped being a relic, and started just being another block of flats where people slept, and fucked, and shot-up drugs, and got drunk and screamed down off of balconies, the building had lost its luster and become something droop-eyed and sad. Rubbish in the shadows, crinkly leaves, old cigarette butts.
Albie spotted one lit window, up on the fourth floor. That’s what Carl had said: mannish silhouette up on the fourth floor, moving in out, the light only on for little bursts at a time.
Albie ducked under a tattered old bit of crime scene tape and slid down the alley. Pulled down the fire escape, and started climbing.
He should have called Phil. Should have gone back to the Hall to share what he’d learned from Carl, make this a group decision, get some backup. There was a zero percent chance that Cass was being held here, and that Albie was instead about to walk in on a trained, emotionless, barely human assassin.
But he was crawling out of his skin at this point. And the idea of delaying any longer, talking things over like a bunch of putzes, was unconscionable at this point. So, guns heavy on his back, and his hips, and under his arms, and around his ankles, he went up to the third floor, broke quickly and cleanly into a window, and slipped inside.
Cold as a tomb. Still, stale air. Empty rooms, the drywall long-since ripped down, old lath rotting underneath. Scent of mold, and dust, and something that had died months and months ago, decomp finally turning to that old cardboard smell.
The floors creaked horribly, so he walked up on his toes. Slow, slow steps. Long pauses in between to listen for movement. He heard rats scurrying – that unmistakable scuttling in the walls – but nothing heavy or human.
Albie slipped a .45 from his shoulder holster and thumbed off the safety. He pulled a small torch from a pocket, but didn’t turn it on yet, instead held it ready beneath the gun, police-style.
Long narrow hall, moonlight coming in through the windows, blue rectangles on old scarred floorboards. Patch of Victorian wallpaper, colorless with age, dangling down in ragged strips like picked scabs. A stairwell, narrow and switch-back. He went up. Slow, slow, slow.
It was a fool’s errand.
Until it suddenly wasn’t.
~*~
Fox didn’t try to resist, and instead went with the pull, landing on Clive sideways, driving his elbow into the man’s ribs. Clive grunted in pain, and kept rolling, toppling them off the table, landing on top of Fox on the sticky floor.
But Fox landed curled up like a little pill bug, his other elbow winging out at the last second before Clive’s weight pinned him, and slamming Clive right in the throat. He made a terrible choking sound, and Fox pushed off the floor and heaved him off, twisted, rose up onto his knees. Karate chopped him in the throat, right in the same spot, at his Adam’s apple.
Clive barked, harsh and loud, like a seal, back bowing up off the floor. One hand went to his own throat, and the other clawed at the ground, searching for a weapon, for purchase.
Fox ripped his hunting knife from his boot and stabbed it straight through the back of Clive’s hand, into the floor.
Without any air in his lungs, Clive’s scream ca
me out a trickling whimper, though his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“Now.” Fox pinned his other wrist, with his hand, and then reached to pull his bandage off. The wound on his arm started bleeding freely. “You ready to hold still and cooperate? Or shall I ruin the other hand?”
~*~
Light seeped out from under a closed door. Albie raised his gun, turned the knob quickly, and sent the door swinging in with a fast flick of his fingers.
The light source was a table lamp, sitting on the floor, no shade, its bare bulb glaring in the otherwise dark room. Beside the lamp, a figure sitting cross-legged, dressed all in black, hood pulled up. Albie glimpsed the barest hint of a nose, but that was all.
A man, he thought. One not moving a muscle.
Albie didn’t move, either. For a moment, the rush of his own pulse filled his head. He held his breath.
They moved at the same time.
Albie didn’t know who this was, and didn’t really care; it wasn’t a member of his family, and he wasn’t feeling remorseful. He fired a shot.
The figure dodged it, somehow.
Albie cracked off two more rounds, pulse galloping wildly, vision swimming, adrenaline turning everything blurry-edged and too-fast.
And then the figure hit him. Tackled him, toppled him back, straddled his chest.
No! Albie thought, panic surging. He caught a glimpse of a face – pale, bright eyes, lean hollow cheeks.
He curled his fingers tight around his torch, and threw a fast, snapping punch, straight up. He connected – grunt, huff of breath – and then the man – it was definitely a man, this person in black – swung at him.
Albie saw stars. Such a solid blow that he didn’t even register the pain at first, only a sudden, intense numbness around his eye.
His gun, where was his…?
He dodged the next hit, or tried to, slow and clumsy, reeling from the first hit. Put both hands up to block. His gun was gone; he’d let go of it when he was tackled. Damn it!
Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Page 24
