Paul didn’t respond, and Albie twisted around to look at him.
“We’re done, by the way. Me and you. Don’t ever speak to me as a friend again.”
~*~
Albie stayed down in the vault longer than he needed to, after Paul was gone. He opened up the case where he’d stored his new Škorpions, just to offer himself a distraction. Checked them needlessly.
When he was sufficiently calm, he went back up and locked up. Stepped through to the front of the shop and –
Paul was laid out flat in front of the desk. Fox was sitting on a stool, legs crossed, the picture of calm, blackjack in one hand, bottle of vodka in the other.
“What the shit?” Albie asked him.
Fox shrugged and raised the frosted glass bottle to his lips. “Figured you were going to give him a talking-to. And I had a few things to say, too.”
On the floor, Paul groaned and started to come to, reaching to cover the lump forming at the base of his skull.
Albie sighed. “This is why you and me don’t need to live in the same city.”
~*~
Jenny
“What do you think?” she asked.
Beside her, Colin stared at the house and nodded. “I like it.”
“You do?”
He glanced over at her, smile more of a smirk. “Baby, I’ve been living with your brother for over a year. You could show me a house made outta cardboard boxes and I’d like it.”
She laughed. “Point taken.”
The house she’d driven them out to see was a ranch, wind-scrubbed desert stone skirting around the base, brick-red wood siding above, with white window trim, white door, white flowers in big ceramic urns on the porch. She’d liked the split-rail fence in the online photos, and in person, she liked the gentle slope of the yard, and the substantial three-sided carport that would shelter her Jeep and his bike.
Those were the practical things, though. Not so practically, she loved the sunlight that came through the kitchen windows, the black flecks in the white granite counters, the claw-foot tub in the master math. Imagine that – a master bedroom and bathroom, all to themselves, a wall between their room and Jack’s. An incredible luxury.
“The colors make me think of a barn,” Colin said, squinting at the house again.
“In a bad way?”
“No, just in a way.”
“You want to put in an offer?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Happiness, she thought, tasted like fresh strawberries, and Colin’s kiss, and felt like the kind of dizzying drunk that never made your head hurt.
“Well, y’all?” the realtor, Kim, asked, too-white professional smile splitting her face in half as she finished locking the house up and clipped toward them in her pumps.
“We want to make an offer,” Colin said.
“Oh, wonderful!”
Jenny heard the car approaching while Kim whipped out a zippered folder full of paperwork, and she twisted to glance back over her shoulder.
A dark blue Kia pulled to a halt at the curb, and Agent Elijah Riley climbed out from behind the wheel.
A stomachache slammed into her immediately. Oh shit, what was this? What did he want? How had he even found them here?
Jenny walked toward him, not wanting Kim to hear whatever he might say, not wanting Colin to get in any sort of physical altercation with the man.
Riley halted a few steps from the car and shoved his hands in the pockets of his khakis. His polo shirt was rumpled and looked slept in. His face looked even worse.
Jenny folded her arms and squared off from him. “Are you stalking me?”
He gave her a humorless smile. “I just wanted to come say goodbye.”
“Right. Because I’ll miss you so much.”
His expression didn’t change. He was deeper in his own head than he was here in the moment, she thought, watching the sun strike his glazed eyes. “I’ll be riding a desk the rest of my career. Fleming got the cartel bust. I’m just…I’m just done.”
“Are you expecting sympathy?”
He shrugged. “No. You did ruin my family, though.”
“Your brother ruined himself. And then you followed. Don’t ever expect a shred of remorse from me, Elijah.”
“No. No, I wouldn’t expect it.”
Slowly, like a broken man, he climbed back into his car and started the engine.
Thirty-Nine
Michelle
The patter of rain against the window woke her. She blinked the grit from her eyes and saw that it was still dark, the sky beyond the window glass its usual colorless shadow, tinted with manmade light.
Candy was pressed up behind her, arm heavy across her waist. His breathing was deep, and regular. The sleep of the truly exhausted. She knew that, if she was careful, she could slip out of bed without waking him.
So that’s what she did, pulling on leggings and an oversized t-shirt before she ducked out of the room. She knew all the creaky spots in the floorboards, and picked her way over them, searching out the hands of the grandfather clock at the end of the hall: four-eighteen in the morning.
She didn’t bother to knock when she reached the door to Phillip’s office, but let herself inside, and then stayed leaned back against it a moment. It wasn’t a surprise to see her dad at his desk, poring over maps and photos and computer printouts. He didn’t glance up right away, and she thought it was because he knew it was her, and wasn’t startled. Better that thought than the idea that he just didn’t care.
It was funny – she’d never thought of her father as careless. Before that day in the street, and Tommy’s stabbing, and her being sent away.
She hadn’t seen him since she got here.
“Hi, Dad.”
He laid the map down and looked up at her, expression alert, despite the deep shadows beneath his eyes. “Hello, love.”
She pushed off the door and walked to the desk, sat down in the chair across from it, the one Albie always took. It was an old chair, and it groaned beneath her slight weight; the smell of dust and old tapestry rushed to fill her nose.
“Big day today,” she said.
“Yeah. It is.”
She had no idea what to say to him. Because she wanted to see him, before everything went down, but she refused to be the person who put meaningless drama on his desk before a dangerous operation.
But she sure as hell wasn’t expecting an apology.
Phillip cleared his throat, and the efficiency bled out of his face; behind it was fatigue, and sadness, and regret. “Oh, Chelle,” he said. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I should have told you from the first.”
“Did you say that because you wanted to? Or because Raven wanted you to?”
He smiled, eyes crinkling in the corners. “Darling. You know I love my little sister, but no one makes me say things I don’t want to. Your mother was the only one with that power.”
Michelle nodded; she couldn’t talk about her mother, she just couldn’t.
“I’ve been confused for a very long time,” he went on, voice thin, almost frightened, she thought. “You’re my child, and I’ve been using you for that reason – because I knew I could trust my own blood, and I knew you would think the way that I would. That you were my eyes and ears. And I thought, stupidly, that the universe would never take you from me, not after what happened to your mother.
“But I wasn’t thinking about the fact that you would grow up and want to have children of your own.”
“I never said I wanted that.”
“You didn’t have the chance to, because you were too caught up in being a soldier for me.”
“No one’s ever forced me to do anything. Except for when you sent me to America.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I know, sweetheart. And it won’t happen again. Tell me what you want, and I’ll help you in any way I can.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I want to help today. In whichever way I can. And then I want to go
back to Texas. And I want to marry Derek.”
He smiled. “Then that’s what you’ll do.”
~*~
Albie
The last fitful drops of rain pelted the black umbrella he carried, but it was tapering off, the street-level darkness of dawn a boiling mass of fog. He loved mornings like these; mornings when it wouldn’t have been out of place to run into Jack the Ripper at the base of a lamppost.
He caught his reflection in the dark glass of a window as he passed, and he didn’t think any of his weapons showed beneath the black wool coat he wore. He also had gloves, glasses, and under his dark jeans, combat boots.
He looked like a criminal.
He felt patriotic.
It probably shook out somewhere in the middle. But what good was being an outlaw if you didn’t get to subvert the law for a good reason every now and then?
He reached the peeling yellow door of the warehouse and kept moving, even strides carrying him to a narrow recession in the brick wall. A secondary entrance, at the top of a narrow flight of brick stairs. His umbrella blocked any possible view from a camera, as well as one from the street, as he held the handle between his cheek and shoulder, and used a lock pick kit to get the door open.
Though the building looked abandoned from the outside, the door swung inward on oiled hinges, without a sound. Albie snapped his umbrella closed and stepped into the dim interior, easing the door shut behind him.
These were the offices, lined up one after the next in a cramped hallway. It stank of moldy carpet and rat droppings.
Albie pulled a torch from his pocket and clicked it on. Quickly, efficiently, he opened the offices and scanned them. The first two were empty. But the third was the motherlode.
It was an actively-used office: papers in stacks on the desk, coffee mug with sticky dark residue in the bottom, computer, sweets wrappers. It struck him as fitting, for some reason: the idea of Bryan Cartwright – or whoever he was – knocking back chocolate and coffee in a continuous stream. Dissent took a lot of energy.
Albie wore a camera on a strap on his shoulder, under his coat; he unslung it and started snapping photos of everything.
~*~
Fox
“I feel like you’re being conspicuous.”
Walsh sipped his tea and ducked down deeper into his coat collar. “I don’t feel like that.” His tone was mild, but it held that razor edge. Don’t cross me, brother, it said. Little brother.
“Yeah. Well.” Without turning his head, Fox glanced over at their marks from beneath the bill of his hat. “You’re not me, though.”
Walsh snorted. Fox chose to take it as a compliment.
Two tables over, the three idiots Albie had been spying on were deep in an argument about whatever paper they were writing for school. Walsh was a little pale and put-off by the whole thing: “They’re just kids,” he’d hissed when they first sat down.
But Fox wasn’t affected. Age had fuck-all to do with the state of a person’s mind, a person’s soul. With their intent. Were these little more than boys? Yes. But they’d crossed a line…crossed many lines. And there were some lines in life you couldn’t go back across.
“The one with the glasses,” he said into his coffee cup.
Walsh still looked vaguely sick, but nodded. “Yeah. That was my pick, too.”
Now all they could do was wait for an opening. It needed to be a clean grab, no witnesses.
Fox reached for another lump of sugar from the dish in the center of their table. “So how’s the little growing family?”
Walsh let out a long, deep sigh, brows lifting. “Just don’t.”
“What? I’m making small talk. You should play along. It’ll help with your conspicuous issue.”
A black look.
“I’m trying to be a good brother.”
“You have never tried to be a good brother.”
“And maybe I feel guilty about that.” Fox shrugged. “So. How’s the family?”
Walsh gave him a look that said he wasn’t fooled for a second. But he said, “It’s good.”
“Emmie feeling alright?”
“Yeah, she’s past the morning sickness.”
“Is it really going to be a girl, like Raven said? Do you know that?”
A bare scrap of a smile touched Walsh’s mouth. “Yeah, we know. It’s a girl.”
“Got a named picked out?”
Walsh shook his head.
“Might I suggest Charlotte?”
“You may not. I’m not naming my kid after you.”
“Worth a shot.”
Two tables over, their marks started packing away laptops and pushing their chairs back.
Fox downed the rest of his coffee in one swallow. “Showtime.”
~*~
“Okay. So.” Fox gripped the edge of the tape and ripped it off the kid’s mouth with one fast yank. “Let’s talk.”
The kid let out a pitiful howl and screwed his eyes up tight, the tears beading along his lashes magnified through the lenses of his glasses.
He was taped hand and foot to a chair in the vault under Albie’s shop. The moment they’d pulled the hood off him, and he’d scanned the glass-fronted gun cases and the drawers upon drawers of knives, he’d promptly pissed himself.
Now the cramped space stank of ammonia, and Fox had little patience.
Which was probably why Walsh stepped in and said, “Hey, look at me.”
The kid’s eyes opened, swimming with tears, nostrils dilated as he fought not to sob.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Walsh said, tone soothing. “We just want to know when and where that Bryan of yours is planning on detonating his bomb.” He paused. “And if you don’t tell us…then we’ll hurt you.”
~*~
Candy
“On my left. Brown jacket. Blue hat,” Michelle said in his ear, and he almost turned his head before he caught himself. Her voice was coming through his earpiece, something he’d decidedly never used in his life of brawling and taking opposition by the throat.
He glanced across the market, finding her with his eyes, not allowing himself to linger. She and Miles walked arm-in-arm, pretending to inspect the produce in front of them; Michelle carried a basket on her other arm, green tops of carrots dangling over the edge.
To her left, sure enough, was Cartwright, hunkered down into a hooded raincoat, hat squashed low over his ears. He was sorting through artichokes, hands grubby and half-hidden by his sleeves. He had no idea what was about to happen.
Candy’s initial reaction was fear, seeing this man – this terrorist – so close to his old lady. He wanted to throw her over his shoulder and run like hell.
But he checked the impulse, and instead focused on the problem at hand: getting Cartwright into their custody without scaring the hell out of all these civilians and bringing the cops down on their heads.
“Tom?” Candy asked.
“Two rows over,” he answered. He had a baseball cap pulled down low to obscure his face, and a too-big jacket that broke up his normal silhouette.
“Get his attention,” Candy said. “And I’ll get him.”
Tommy moved around the long crate-composed row of produce offerings and positioned himself across the artichokes from Cartwright. “Hey,” Candy heard him say through the earpiece. “Asshole. Remember me?”
Cartwright’s head lifted, and he reared back, mouth falling open. He was just starting to show obvious, outward anger – his ears turning red at the tops – when Candy reached him. Grabbed his elbow in a crushing grip and jammed the barrel of a Glock up against his kidney.
Cartwright went utterly still, breath catching in his throat on a gasp.
“Move, and I’ll shoot,” Candy said, low, firm. “Talk, and I’ll shoot.” He tightened his grip until Cartwright flinched. The man might be a rampaging terrorist fear wizard, but he was half Candy’s size, and he would turn to dust in his hands, just like all the rest. “Walk out of here with me,” Candy said.
“Now. Move.”
Cartwright moved forward, jerky and stumbling. Candy gave him a rough yank and he fell into step, the gun digging through his jacket, into the skin of his back.
To an outsider, it would have looked like two acquaintances, as Candy marched him out of the farmer’s market and toward the waiting van.
~*~
Michelle
“The bombs, asshole,” Tommy said, face creased with irritation.
Cartwright set his jaw and glared at all of them simultaneously. “When I tell the police about this…”
“Oh, drop the accent, Princess Di,” Candy said. “It’s terrible, anyway, and we all know you aren’t British.”
Michelle wanted to laugh – one of so many things she loved about her man: his irreverent sense of humor – but instead she hitched herself up higher on the van’s bench and said, “We also know your name isn’t Bryan Cartwright. So quit with the act, if you please.”
In a sudden eerie swap, Cartwright slipped into a New York accent and said, “Well thanks, your highness, for being so polite.”
“Don’t talk to her, shitbag,” Candy said. “Don’t even look at her.” His face was flushed with anger, and Michelle could read the fury, the jealousy, the worry in his eyes. He would never tell her not to be herself, to sit still and look pretty, but he hated that this man was speaking to her, looking at her. It wasn’t about any sort of doubt when it came to her; it was about his terrible fear that the rest of the world would hurt her, take her from him. And she couldn’t resent him for those emotions. Not ever.
“What we’d like to know,” Miles said, redirecting, “is the locations of these bombs we’ve heard so much about.”
Cartwright rolled his eyes.
Candy’s arm snapped forward, a blur, and he punched Cartwright in the face.
“Shit,” Miles said.
“How’s that feel?” Tommy asked.
“Boys,” Michelle said.
Candy opened his hand against his knee, flexed all the fingers. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “We know all about you – your little cult of Bryan. And we know you and your men are the ones who’ve been bombing the city. We aren’t the police; we don’t need evidence, or warrants, or anything official. And we don’t have to follow any sort of code when it comes to interrogating you. So. Now would be a good time for you to cooperate.”
Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) Page 38
