Simon frowned, gaze becoming critical, and not just patronizing. “You don’t trust me.” Not a question.
“Don’t take it personal. I don’t trust anyone.”
“Albie,” Axelle said. “He’s the reason you’re not in a cell right now.”
“Yeah, and I want to know what he’s getting out of that.”
“Jesus,” Simon said. “Is your whole family this cynical, or is it just you?” Before Albie could respond, he sat upright, and set his glass down, frowning. “I helped you for Eden. And because these Pseudonym people are powerful monsters who need to be stopped. If keeping the Lean Dogs out of jail accomplishes that, then so be it. Sometimes, people do things because it’s the right thing to do, and not for some sinister ulterior motive.”
“Albie,” Axelle said before he could respond, leaning in close to speak right against his ear. Even through the pain, and the determination, the feeling of her lips and warm breath left him suppressing a shiver. “Since the second I’ve met you, you’ve been trying to convince me that there actually are some decent people in the world who want to do the right thing. Maybe give this guy a break, huh?”
He turned his head so he could look at her – mourning the loss of her voice and face that close – and she lifted her brows.
“I think he’s kind of a shmuck,” she clarified.
“Beg pardon?” Cavendish said.
“But the whole world’s not in league with Pseudonym.” She tipped her chin down, gaze pointed. “Just like all Lean Dogs aren’t father-killers, right?”
How could he argue with that?
He nodded, and turned back to Simon. Grudgingly: “Is there anything you can tell us that might be helpful?”
The man rolled his eyes. “Well, it seems as if I’ve already been rather helpful. But sure. What’s a little more?”
~*~
Everything Mercy did reinforced Reese’s assertion that he’d chosen the correct commanding officer to submit to. Ghost was technically the CO – and was for his entire club – but Reese liked reporting to Mercy. Mercy didn’t seem to think that there was anything wrong with him. He didn’t give him those strange, sideways looks that the others did, or speak as if he wasn’t standing right there and could hear them. Mercy always gave clear orders, and he outlined the ops for him, and didn’t try to tell him how to do his job – only that it was something he needed to do. For the club. For the people who’d taken him in. For his sister. Everyone else made his head hurt, so he tended to tune them out, and let Mercy deliver all the details.
Tonight, the plan was more complex than some of the simple – frankly insulting – errands Ghost had sent him on in Knoxville. Reese had the impression the Lean Dogs president wanted to keep him busy, but didn’t have much use for him. Tonight, though, he could be very useful, as part of a risky plot with little chance for success.
The plan wasn’t bad. But it could be better.
He wore tight pants made of a thin, unarmored material that limited flexibility and offered nothing in the way of protection – from impacts, or weapons. But his shirt, something gauzy and floating that Walsh’s sister had selected for him, hid the flak vest he wore underneath it well enough. His combat boots were his own, only polished a little. The makeup was smooth and stylized, but it resembled grease paint well enough.
Mercy handed him the ID card that he was supposed to hand off.
And an AK-47.
The models around them all carried prop guns, because the show, Raven had explained, was military-themed, proceeds supposed to go to veterans’ charities.
“You good?” Mercy asked, gaze very serious, but not stern – never stern.
“Yes, sir.”
Mercy clapped his shoulder, and Reese turned around and fell into the line of models waiting to take the stage.
He sensed Evan looking at him.
Evan, he’d decided, was stupid. And possibly useless. He’d claimed to be a sniper, but he seemed too nervous to be. And he was worried about his pants – not because of their tactical drawbacks, but because of the way he looked in them.
Reese didn’t understand that. A person either looked weak, or capable. What did any of the rest of it matter?
The music throbbed, low and deep, but fast; meant to match the long strides of the models. Much faster than his own heart, beating steady in his chest.
A woman with wild eyes, a headset, and a clipboard waved models toward the gap in the curtain, clutching at their shoulders a moment, holding them still, and then shooing them on with a “go, go.”
Evan stood in front of Reese, and he gripped his own gun with white knuckles; Reese could hear him breathing, just barely, over the music, quick in-and-out puffs through his mouth.
He was a liability.
He’d told Mercy so, earlier, while Ian was telling Evan to get dressed. (Ian was a whole other creature; Reese could read the anxiety pouring off of him, but he smiled, and said smooth things the way movie characters did, and for all the teeth he showed when he grinned, he wasn’t actually unkind. Reese approved of his leadership even if he didn’t understand him.) “He’s going to ruin the whole thing,” Reese had told Mercy, and Mercy had nodded, grim-faced.
“Yeah. Here’s what we’re gonna do instead.”
A better plan.
They moved up the line, up the line. Then a hand on his shoulder. “Go, go.” And they went down the long, lighted catwalk.
Several paces ahead, Evan staggered a step, and Reese knew that the bright lights and their contrast with the shadowed audience had disoriented him a moment. Reese narrowed his gaze against the onslaught of the glare and scanned the audience as he began his walk. He couldn’t make out the faces of anyone in the back, but he didn’t have to.
Walsh and Shane, dressed in black – Walsh even had a pair of black-rimmed dummy glasses perched on his nose – had seats in the front row, faces illuminated by the stage lights.
On cue, Evan tripped just before he reached them. Wobbled, wind-milled his arms. Gasps rose up from the audience. Reese kept walking, and plowed right into him, and they both tumbled off the stage right at Walsh and Shane’s feet.
Shouts of alarm.
Evan gave a loud oof when he hit the ground – on his back, like a civilian.
Reese tucked as he fell, landed on his shoulder, rolled, and scrambled upright, gun already slung over his back and secured by its strap.
He caught a glimpse of Walsh’s face, gaze wide, but expectant behind the useless lenses of his glasses. He held out a hand, ready to take the ID card.
That was the original plan: hand the card off to Walsh, pretend to be injured, and allow Walsh and Shane and Evan to lead him off into the shadows, where they could regroup and then proceed forward with their part in the assault on the penthouse level of the building.
But Reese had never worked as part of a team.
He dodged Walsh, kept the card, and ducked between two chairs.
There was no reason, after all, that so many people should risk injury or death in the execution of this plan. Not when Reese was made for this, and could handle it just fine alone.
~*~
“What the fuck?”
Walsh didn’t get worked up like this often. Mercy took him by the shoulders. “Hey, hey, it’s alright.”
Walsh twisted away and pushed a hand through his hair, yanking and cursing under his breath when all the gel made it difficult.
“Felix,” Ian said mildly, leaning in, “I don’t think your improvisation will be taken well.”
“You?” Walsh whirled around to face him again, brows jumping. “This was your idea? Merc, what the fuck?”
Mercy held up both hands, palms-out. “Hey, it’s alright. The kid made a valid point, and I took it seriously.”
“A valid…” Walsh clenched his jaw tight. He spoke through his teeth. “That ‘kid’ is an emotionless robot who hasn’t had a rational, human thought in his life. And you sent him off after my sister alone?”
“We’re go
nna follow him,” Mercy defended. “And give him a little more credit than that. He likes us. He knows this is important.”
“I can’t–” Walsh bit off the next words. He shook his head and undid the buttons of his silk shirt with clumsy movements, biting his lip viciously. “You should know better,” he muttered under his breath. “You should fucking know better.”
“King,” Shane tried, and set a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
Walsh shrugged him off.
“Where’d he go?” Evan asked, note of panic in his voice.
“He looked at the building plans same as all of us,” Mercy said with a sigh, and started stripping out of his own finery. “He’s going to find Cassandra.”
“Alone?” Evan asked.
Everyone ignored him, though Walsh grumbled something unintelligible.
They’d all managed to slip away from the pandemonium after the boys tumbled off the stage. They stood now behind a curtain, and a row of potted palms, wide fronds interlocking and offering them cover. The show was back up and running again, and if anyone backstage was looking for the strange Frenchman, his models, and bodyguards, no one had made it to this corner to search yet.
From a bag Bruce had lugged over, they tugged tac gear over their t-shirts. Ian and Mercy pulled black knit caps over their braided hair, and Evan smeared his makeup with his fingers, so it looked like jungle camo instead.
“You got your head on straight?” Mercy asked Walsh.
He screwed a suppressor onto the end of a Smith & Wesson and gave a tight “yeah.” That would have to be good enough for now.
Thirty-Five
“You’re Morris,” Phillip said.
The man in question smiled – it was really more a hitching up of one corner of his mouth. Through the windows behind him, the garden lights illuminated the steady silver flash of raindrops. In the silence before he spoke, Phillip could hear the rain, a steady drumming overhead.
“And you’re Phillip Calloway. President of the London Chapter of the Lean Dogs Motorcycle Club. I must admit, I was expecting a beard and a certain level of…uncleanliness.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“On the contrary. Your organization fascinates me. All these years of existence, breaking the law in every way imaginable, and still you’re in business. Stronger than ever, some might argue. It makes sense, in a way, that the children of one of my subjects would wind up part of an outlaw gang.”
Tommy made a disgusted sound. “Are we really gonna do this? Sit around and let this guy act like the villain in a shitty movie? He’s, no joke, a thousand-years-old, and he’s gonna fucking lecture us?”
Three security guards moved forward.
“Tommy,” Phillip said, reaching toward him.
Morris waved his thugs back. “It’s alright, it’s alright. He’s anxious, and opinionated. Subject Nine was always much the same way.” Another quirk of a smile, no teeth, his eyes cruel amidst the lines and folds of his wrinkled face.
Phillip wanted to lunge across the table and beat him to death. It had been too long since he’d gotten his hands dirty, and he badly, badly wanted to see this old creep’s blood on his knuckles. But he swallowed down the urge and said, “My brother’s right. What are we doing here? You want Project Emerald gone? Fine, kill them all. We’ve got nothing to do with our father.”
“Ah, but see, that’s where you’re lying. You’ve given him sanctuary and resources. You even faked his death for the news cameras. You’ve gone to great trouble to protect not just him, but his fellow subjects. And now you know too much.”
A gust of wind blew raindrops against the window.
“But we’re here talking,” Phillip said. “Which means you’ve moved past the idea of just wanting to kill us.”
Morris sighed. “At this point, it seems inevitable that you’ve already shared all that’s happened with the other chapters of your club. Yes?”
Phillip nodded.
“My people are powerful, and our reach is long, but you can see the kind of light it would shine on us if the entirety of the Lean Dogs MC were to be slaughtered all at once. Outlaw organizations such as yours have friends, have ties to communities and governments and law enforcement agencies. Project Emerald was always about secrecy. Stepping out of the shadows takes away any tactical advantage we have, and then we would cease to exist. I wanted to bring you here to talk, yes, because I think we can come to an agreement.”
~*~
Of all her brothers, King was the one she saw the least, but the one whose wisdom Cassandra relied on the most. Phillip acted like her dad – more of a dad than her actual one, honestly – and Albie was kind, but a little distant, like she was a kid, and he didn’t know what to do with her. She loved Tommy and Miles, and Fox, though she rarely saw him; he’d become almost mythic in her eyes, and she didn’t care if that was an unearned reputation, he was cool, damn it. Shane was the softest, the sweetest; he gave the best hugs.
But King was the brains of the bunch. Of the boys, anyway. He’d told her something, once, and she’d taken it to heart. When you start to fret, and things get to be too much, break it all down into manageable pieces. So that’s what she was doing now.
The people who’d taken her had drugged her, at first. Prick of a needle, and then sleep, and then a haze, everything soft and distant. But then they’d allowed her to come out of it. She’d been sick for hours, never actually vomiting, but reduced to slumping sideways, pressing her face to the cool plaster of the wall and swallowing convulsively. That had finally passed, and someone had brought her water and a protein bar that she’d reluctantly consumed. They wanted her alive if they’d taken her this way; there’d be no sense in poisoning her.
She broke it down into these pieces: She was in some kind of office. The desk had been pushed against the wall, but there was a window behind some vertical blinds, and the gaps were just big enough to peep through. It was nighttime, the view a sea of black dotted with lights. Her clothes were still in place, and she didn’t feel like she had any bruises in any especially tender places; she hadn’t been molested, to her knowledge, so that was one for the win column. Her hands were bound with duct tape, but her eyes were uncovered. A man with a thick neck, big shoulders, and big hands sat in a chair beside the door, reading something off his phone, blank-faced and bored. He had a bad hairline; looked like a knockoff Jason Statham with a lumpy nose.
They were waiting for something.
She had a feeling, one that left her breathless and queasy, that the wait was for her brothers, and that once they arrived…
Well, she didn’t like to think about the possibilities. None of them were good, save the fantasy where they kicked their way in and shot everybody in the place. They could do that – she wanted to believe so, anyway.
She didn’t know how long she’d been here – whether it was hours or days – only that her panic had dulled to a low simmer, something sustainable. And she knew that, suddenly, things were about to change, because she heard loud male shouts somewhere beyond the closed door of this room.
The Pretend-Statham lifted his head, and paused in his gum-chewing, mouth half-open, listening.
“What was that?” Cass said.
He ignored her, and got to his feet. Turned toward the door, but hesitated, hand on the lever.
More shouts. A thump. And then a sound like an explosion.
Cass ducked her head with a gasp. She felt the vibrations through the floor, and the whuff of rolling pressure slapping against the door.
“Shit,” her captor said.
She heard lots of yelling, and the squawk of radios, and lots of running feet. A hoarse male scream, as if someone was in pain. The cracks of gunshots.
And a softer sound, just above her. Pretend-Statham hadn’t heard it – he stood at the door, shaking, debating whether he ought to go out and see what all his friends were yelling about. But Cass heard it; a scrape.
She tipped her head back, and saw a demon.
<
br /> Her breath lodged in her throat, and she couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to.
One of the white acoustic ceiling tiles had been pulled aside, and in the darkness above it, a face stared down at her. Well, a pair of eyes did. Pale, vivid blue; icier than her own, than any of her brothers’. They were human eyes, but the look in them was anything but. And the face surrounding it was nothing but a glimpse of chin, and nose, the skin mostly smeared with some kind of black paint. If it weren’t for the tangled blond hair curling around the figure’s ears, she wouldn’t have thought it was anything alive looking down at her.
And it was looking at her – right at her. That blue gaze fixed on her face, and, slowly, a thin pale finger came to rest across black-painted lips. Be quiet. And then the demon dropped down out of the ceiling and landed lightly on its feet before her, straightening up from its impact-absorbing crouch to reveal itself as a young, thin man, in tight black pants, and a black vest, his arms and hands bare, a gun slung over his back. He carried a knife in his hand, and it glinted under the harsh office lights.
He hadn’t made a sound.
He made the gesture again, finger across his lips. Up close like this, she could see that his face was narrow and angular. That his slender torso, under the vest, was nothing but lean, sculpted muscle.
He held her gaze, unblinking, terrifying, until she nodded. Then he whirled – graceful, like he was dancing – and slipped the knife into the side of her captor’s neck.
Cass bit back a scream.
The man brought his free hand up and slapped it across her captor’s mouth, muffled the awful gurgling sound he made, and then laid him down on the carpet. The knife was still in the man’s neck, and once he was flat, the stranger pulled it out. A gush of blood, a fast spray that hit the wall, the carpet, and then settled into regular spurts that would form a large puddle in a matter of seconds.
Pretend-Statham clutched at the carpet, kicked, and gasped, and flopped like a landed fish. Death throes, she thought, and felt the coldness of shock sweep through her. Her horror was a fast spike that began to fade in the span of a heartbeat.
Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Page 31
