Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  ~*~

  Albie

  He had enough photographic evidence to put someone away for a very long time, but they would still need something to corroborate Cartwright’s involvement.

  He was tucking his camera away when he heard voices. Distant, indistinct, echoing. People out in the main part of the warehouse.

  Albie stowed his camera and slipped down the hall on silent feet.

  The hall ended on a gallery, narrow and steel, with a handrail that hit him above the waist. Down below, his club brothers had come in through the main door, dressed in black, bearing torches and weapons.

  Albie whistled to get their attention. When they glanced up, he noticed Paul’s face before he noticed anyone else’s; the scabbed-over cut on his neck was visible even from a distance.

  “Search the place,” Albie told them.

  ~*~

  Fox

  “It’s Bryan.”

  “Yes, we know what the idiot’s name is. Stupid fucker named his movement after himself,” Fox muttered. “Who does that?”

  “Sounds like something you would do,” Walsh deadpanned.

  “Well, yes, but my name is considerably cooler than ‘Bryan.’”

  “No,” the kid said. His lip was split, both his eyes blacking, and the tips of his thumbs were scorched from Fox’s lighter. “I don’t know where the bombs are. But Bryan has the detonator.”

  ~*~

  Candy

  “It’s the mobile,” Miles said, and Candy knew he was right. “The detonator switch.”

  “Fuck.” Candy glanced over at the phone they’d set on the console between the front seats. “Is that true?” he asked Cartwright. “Where are the bombs?”

  Cartwright smiled through his split, bloody lips. “Right,” he said in his unnerving New York accent. “’Cause I’m gonna tell you that. Why don’t you make the call and find out?”

  “It’s alright,” Tommy said. “We’ll find them. After the rest of our crew is done turning over your warehouse.”

  Cartwright’s eyes went to him.

  “You understand you aren’t getting out of this van alive, right?”

  The first shot took them all by surprise. A sharp ping and a whir, and the ripple of air disturbed.

  They stared at one another, a half a beat of shocked silence. Then Candy yelled, “Get down!” and threw himself across the van, flattening Michelle to the hard metal floor, covering her body with his.

  Miles and Tommy followed suit, all of them kissing the floor of the van, hands clapped over their heads.

  It was a relentless volley, full auto gunfire battering the side of the van with terrible pings and screeches.

  Too late, Candy realized Cartwright hadn’t taken cover, had instead lunged toward the front of the van. The cellphone.

  “Shit!”

  He levered up on his arms, but it was too late.

  Hands bound together, Cartwright still managed to pick up the phone, and press the dial button with his thumb.

  ~*~

  Fox

  His heart pounded, a choking rhythm that echoed through his throat. He felt the hot slide of sweat down his back, under his clothes, and kept running. Beside him, Walsh kept pace – much to his shock – and their boots slapped the cobblestones in near-perfect sync.

  They were never going to make it to the warehouse in time. At that moment, Fox would have given anything to be as tall and long-legged as Mercy Lécuyer.

  But, as it turned out, that wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

  They barreled out of the alley and around the next corner, and were met by three masked men carrying AK-47s.

  ~*~

  Albie

  He was halfway back down the hall when he heard the first detonation. It didn’t sound like it ever did in the movies; a real charge was a deep, low blast of pressure, moving through the floor, up through his boots, settling low in his gut like he might be sick.

  He spun back around, threw himself against the metal railing.

  Down below, the wooden shipping crates lining the main warehouse floor were exploding, one after the next, the fire bright as a solar flare.

  It wasn’t car bombs. Cartwright wanted to bring this entire building down.

  “Get out!” Albie shouted, but his voice was lost in the terrible pressure and the crackling of destruction.

  They were fleeing, though, his brothers.

  His eyes latched onto Paul, the way he glanced up and over his shoulder, looking toward Albie up on the balcony.

  And then the crate beside Paul was a ball of fire and shrapnel.

  ~*~

  Michelle

  The gunfire stopped abruptly, the silence crushing. She heard tires squealing somewhere beyond the van. Heard Candy breathing like a racehorse in her ear. Heard the rapid thump of her heart.

  “Let me up,” she said, wiggling her shoulders.

  Candy did, but he kept his hand cupped against the back of her head, like he was trying to be her helmet.

  Miles and Tommy scrambled up onto their knees, too.

  They all noticed Cartwright with a collective, “Shit.”

  He lay slumped over the center console, riddled with bullets, bleeding everywhere, eyes sightless and unblinking. Dead.

  Candy grabbed the back of his coat and dragged him down onto the floor. Michelle moved away on instinct.

  “We need to move,” Candy said, climbing over the console to slide behind the wheel. “We’ve gotta find the bomb site.”

  ~*~

  Fox

  “Fuck,” he said, as he and Walsh skidded to a halt.

  “How are we gonna Kung Fu our way outta this shit?” Walsh muttered.

  “Krav Maga,” Fox corrected.

  “Hands!” one of the masked men yelled. “Hands up and on your knees!”

  Fox heard the roar of an engine just before a boxy white Nissan work van swung into view. It didn’t slow, and mowed down their masked assailants with a sequence of nauseating sound effects.

  It jerked to a halt and the back doors opened. Tommy poked his head through and said, “Need a lift?”

  ~*~

  Michelle

  The street was on fire. That was the only thought that filled her mind as the van halted. All she saw were the flames, leaping toward the low gray rainclouds. Even with the windows rolled up, she could smell the acrid stench of burning wood, and scorched chemicals and plastic.

  Was London ever going to be anything but burning streets for her, now?

  She didn’t realize she was reaching out with her right hand until it was swallowed up in Candy’s firm grip.

  “It’s okay,” he said, quietly. “I’m sure they’re okay.”

  The back doors of the van opened and her uncles spilled out, heading toward the inferno.

  The first drops of rain began to strike the windscreen when she saw the knot of dark-clad men coming toward them.

  She spotted Albie.

  She didn’t see Paul.

  ~*~

  Inspector Bill Lehigh, City of London Police

  The scene at the warehouse was the sort of thing he hadn’t thought to see when he joined the force ten years ago. What he’d just witnessed on the streets of his city was like something snatched from one of his Iraq nightmares.

  It was with immeasurable relief that he walked into the station, eyes gritty, shoulders aching, that nerve pain in his neck in need of about three whiskeys. The low level hum of activity, the familiar smell of undrinkable coffee and the sound of his shoes rapping the tile soothed some of his ruffled nerves. PTSD – he’d been diagnosed after his tour of duty. It still plagued him, evenings like these, when he’d been cataloguing body and bomb parts. The investigation was going to be extensive; Interpol was getting involved, and he had no doubt messages from a half dozen countries awaited him when he got back to his desk.

  They would have to wait, though, because something else awaited him there. Someone else.

  A young woman sat in the chair bes
ide his desk. Petite and feminine, her shining blonde hair secured in a tidy bun. She wore a pencil shirt, heels, white silk blouse. She held a small black zippered pouch in her lap.

  “Hello,” he said, too exhausted to be any kind of chivalrous. He heard the disgruntled inquiry in his voice, and couldn’t seem to alter it.

  “Hello,” she returned.

  Bill mostly fell into his chair, hands finding his temples and massaging. “Listen, not to be rude, but it’s been a very long day–”

  “That’s why I’m here,” she said, and for the first time, he really looked at her face.

  She had all the component parts to present a pretty picture. But he’d been a soldier, and now a police officer, and he knew that dead-eyed, jaded, seen-too-much look well enough to realize that whoever this girl was, however old she was, he wasn’t dealing with a regular citizen.

  His hands fell to his lap and he straightened in his chair. “You are?”

  She set the zippered pouch on his desk. “From what I can gather,” she said, London accent crisp and efficient, “you’re an exemplary cop without so much as a single disciplinary mark against you. I think you’re one of the loyal ones. One of the ones who does it for the right reasons.”

  He stared at her.

  “In there” – she tapped the pouch with one black-painted fingernail – “you’ll find everything you need to know about the people who blew up the warehouse today. Their leader is dead, but I’m sure some of his remaining followers will pick up his torch and move forward with it.”

  She stood.

  “Wait.” Bill surged to his feet and reached for her. “How did you find this? Who are you?”

  She stepped back, avoiding him, and her smile was sad. “I’m just a girl who knows things,” she said. And she was gone.

  Forty

  Michelle

  She slid onto the stool next to Albie, skirt catching at her legs in an unfamiliar way. Her scalp ached and she pulled the pins from her hair, let the heavy mass tumble down her back, and sighed in relief. “Package delivered to Inspector Lehigh,” she reported, slumping forward with her elbows on the bar.

  “Data,” Albie said to the prospect with the nose ring. “Whiskey rocks for the lady.”

  “Yessir.”

  It felt like it took years to get her drink, but really it was only a matter of efficient seconds. Michelle nodded her thanks to the prospect and curled her hand around the glass, feeling the body-warmth of the whiskey and the bite of the ice.

  “He’s dead,” she said, and didn’t need to clarify.

  Albie drained his glass – he was drinking his whiskey neat – and reached over the top of the bar for the bottle Data had left within easy reach. “Vaporized, more like.” The mouth of the bottle clinked against the glass as he poured, his arm unsteady.

  Michelle closed her free hand over his elbow and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Uncle Albie. So sorry.”

  He raised his glass to his lips. “You shouldn’t be sorry. I’m the one who was horrid to him.”

  She wanted to press, but didn’t, as he turned toward her, blue eyes haunted. She just patted his elbow.

  ~*~

  “So this is your place.”

  Early sunlight fell in pale panels through the windows, landing on the hardwood, gilding Candy around the edges as he surveyed her tiny lounge and its mismatched furniture. Her flat has always been shitty, she knew, but it had never looked as pale and sad as it did now, with Candy huge and hot-blooded standing in the middle of it.

  “Rather pitiful, isn’t it?” she said with a wry smile. “Anyway, it isn’t going to be mine any longer. Raven said she could find someone to take over the rent for me.”

  She hadn’t told him that part yet, and his brows lifted. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything left that I wanted to take back home.”

  He smiled a small, quiet, intensely happy smile that made her heart flutter.

  She needed to focus. They were meeting Raven and Cassandra for brunch, and there was no reason to drag this out.

  Candy’s heavy footfalls followed her into the bedroom, but she didn’t turn around, afraid his smile would stall her out all over again.

  There were some clothes in the wardrobe that she crammed into a rucksack. A few books. And then the jewelry box, sitting by her bedside.

  Her hand shook as she picked it up; her mother’s rings were inside it. “They’re yours,” Phillip had told her. “I love her still, but she isn’t in those rings. You take them. Get married with them. Carry her with you like that.”

  She pushed the box carefully into the rucksack and then knotted the cords.

  “That’s it?” Candy asked.

  “Yeah.” She took a shaky breath. “That’s it.”

  When she straightened, she realized her eyes were misty, and she dashed at them with the back of her hand. “It’s stupid. I don’t want to stay, that’s not the problem. And I won’t miss this place at all.” She waved an arm to indicate the flat. “It’s only…I left so quickly last time. In a panic. And when you leave slowly, it’s…”

  “It’s like you’re making a decision,” he filled in. “And that’s harder.”

  She sent him a wavering, grateful smile. “Exactly.”

  “Come here.”

  His arms were solid and strong as they went around her, and she pressed her face into his chest, the smooth wall of muscle there beneath his shirt. “I want to get married,” she whispered.

  “Hmm,” he hummed, without any of the surprise or reaction she’d expected.

  “You knew?”

  “Well, I figure that’s the sort of thing a girl would want, if she comes to live on the other side of the world with you.”

  Her chest clenched with gladness. “And I want children. At least one, anyway.”

  “Yeah. ‘Bout time I got started on that, huh?”

  And leaving…well, it wasn’t so bad in the face of that.

  ~*~

  Telling Tommy goodbye was the worst. She pressed her tear-streaked face into the crook of his neck and squeezed him tight. “You have to come visit me,” she ordered. “And we’ll come visit you.”

  He squeezed her back and his voice shook. “Try and keep me away.” And then, just a whisper, “Little sister.”

  ~*~

  “You, my brave girl,” Phillip told her. “Are the best thing I ever did.”

  And they both cried.

  ~*~

  The knife, in its familiar place in the shaft of her boot, was a comforting weight as she mounted the wide wooden stairs, one at a time, hand skimming the smooth wood of the rail. Around her, voices echoed, mullet rock filled the sound system speakers, and the night crowd of Amarillo, Texas danced, and drank, and hollered, and enjoyed the hell out of the ragingly successful bar that was the club’s to own, and hers to manage.

  Jenny waited at the top of the stairs, the plain ring on her left hand catching the light as she pushed her hair back and grinned at Michelle. “To be honest,” she said, leaning close to be heard, “I was worried it wouldn’t pull in enough money to stay afloat.”

  Michelle grinned back. “And now?”

  “Now Colin’s embarrassed I make more than him.”

  Michelle laughed and settled in beside her sister-in-law, elbows braced on the rail. “It feels good,” she agreed.

  They stood in companionable silence a moment, watching the activity down on the main floor. Most of the guys were in-house tonight. Fox was at the bar, currently picking up a redhead a good four inches taller than him without even trying. Niko was on break, and Cowboy and Gringo had finally gotten him to the bar, were pressing a beer on him, and no doubt giving him the you-ought-to-prospect-with-us spiel again. Things were quiet for the moment, the ATF cleared out and business as usual in full swing. But there was no such thing as too many men; wars could break out at any moment in this life.

  Michelle felt a light, brief touch at her shoulder and turned to
see that Jinx had joined them. He would always look stern and sharp-eyed, but she recognized the relaxation in his jaw, beneath his beard.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.” His eyes were straight ahead, but he tipped in closer, so she could hear him. “Caught the bartender on camera two, skimming off the register.”

  “Shit.” She sighed. “Well, we’ve got a dozen apps in the office, people wanting to work here. I can get someone new in tomorrow. He’ll have to finish out his shift.”

  Jinx nodded. “I’ll have a talk with him.”

  “I can,” she offered, but his eyes swung to hers.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Michelle grinned. “He’d probably find you much more persuasive.”

  He snorted, and a small grin touched his mouth. “That’s what I figured.”

  “Thanks, Jinx.”

  He gave her shoulder a brotherly squeeze before he moved off.

  It was a marvel, really, the way the boys here had accepted her, treated her like a sister, like family. She was, technically; after the hideous paperwork was finally over with, and she and Candy were married biker-style, her with a leather jacket on over her dress, it would have been well within the norm to be seen as a fragile female by her husband’s brothers. But instead she was a sister, like Jenny. This was a tight family, this Texas bunch. And though she missed her family like mad, she wouldn’t have traded London for a second of this, her new life.