Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  Tenny delivered a sequence of sharp blows and karate chops to all the right areas, but though the man grunted and grimaced, he didn’t go down.

  Reese looked for a shot, but couldn’t find one: they were too close, too intertwined. He couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t hit Tenny – not that the idea gave him much worry, but Fox might not like it.

  Tenny punched his combatant in the throat, finally, and the man bent forward at the waist with an ugly choking sound. Tenny kicked him in the crotch, and then kneed him in the forehead. He slumped over and landed in a boneless, crumpled heap at the base of the stairs.

  Tenny lifted his head, then, chest heaving as he caught his breath, hair askew, his lip split. He met Reese’s gaze across the room, licked the blood off his lip – and grinned. So suddenly, and so widely that it startled Reese. He’d seen Ten smile, and smirk, plenty by now. But it was always a crafted expression; part of a repertoire he deployed to please or antagonize or fool whoever he was speaking to. This, though, looked real. He was looking at the real Tenny – whoever he was – for the first time, he felt.

  And then Tenny’s neck erupted in a shower of red spray.

  Reese was used to things happening quickly; he’d been trained to think in slow, logical, complete sentences in the pulses of silence between the thumping of his heart; in the gaps between breaths. It was a kind of slow motion he hadn’t known how to describe until Aidan had forced him to watch all those silly action movies that got nearly everything wrong about the kind of work he did.

  But this seemed to happen fast. Very, very fast. Blood fountained, spraying the wall, spraying up across Tenny’s face – which wasn’t smiling anymore, but was slack-jawed, his blue eyes huge. Ten was reaching for his throat, for the hole in the side of it, as he fell backward, and landed gracelessly on the marble, half-across one of the bodies he’d dropped.

  The gunshot came after that, a sharp crack that echoed off everything, and vibrated up through the floor.

  Gunshot. Shot. He’d been shot.

  Reese’s brain leapt, sluggish a moment, but then he whipped his head around, looking for the gunman. He was up on the gallery, had just stepped out of a door there, and held a gleaming .45 in one hand. Reese saw the mother-of-peal grip, the lines of engraving on the barrel. An obnoxious showpiece of a gun where something matte and stainless would have been so much more efficient.

  He catalogued the man, a quick reflex. Early twenties, black shirt, long black hair tied back, features that anyone would have labeled as “handsome,” though that sort of thing had always left Reese befuddled. Flash of expensive metal on his wrist, at his throat, diamond in his ear.

  He turned to look at Reese – who lifted his own gun – then winked, and stepped backward through the door he’d come out of.

  Reese had two options. Rush up the stairs, burst through the door, and take him into custody – or kill him, a persistent voice in the back of his head urged.

  Or he could go to Ten.

  He jumped over the table, crossed the room, and knelt at Tenny’s side.

  He was alive. He had both hands over the wound in his throat, blood gushing between his fingers, pooling on the white marble floor beneath it. It freckled his face, and was soaking into his clothes. The round hadn’t pierced his windpipe, but he breathed in jagged gasps anyway, already pale from blood loss. His eyes were huge, and feral, his pupils shrunk down to pinpricks. He was bleeding out – he was alive for now, but he wouldn’t stay that way.

  Reese set his gun on the floor, dug another bit of rag out of his pocket, and batted Tenny’s hands away from the wound.

  Tenny gasped. “Don’t–”

  “Stop. I have to control the bleeding.” He flicked the gloved fingers away – already weakening – and plugged the rag neatly into the hole in the skin. Wrapped both his hands tight around it and the side of Tenny’s throat and squeezed.

  Tenny closed his eyes and hissed through blood-flecked teeth.

  Reese could feel his pulse against his palms, irregular, wet beats, even through the gloves.

  Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.

  He heard footsteps – two sets – running up behind him. Reaching for the gun he’d set aside would have meant letting go, would have meant Tenny bleeding out.

  Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.

  Though they were both about to die, probably, once–

  A hand landed on his shoulder, and Fox popped in right next to him.

  “Shit,” he murmured, without any real feeling. “Carotid?”

  “Nicked it, maybe,” Reese said, muscles in his torso unclenching though he’d been unaware of tensing up. “It’s a graze. He’s lost a pint-and-a-half, maybe.” On the next stutter of Ten’s pulse, he saw a faint seepage of crimson between his gloved fingers. “Still bleeding, but slowing.”

  “Christ,” Eden murmured on the other side. “You got the shooter?”

  “No. He’s upstairs. Second door on the right.”

  “I’ll check,” Fox said. “Help him.”

  “Right,” she said. To Reese: “Here, I’ve got tape and some cloths. Let’s get him bandaged up.” She swore. “I’ll have to call an ambulance, but there’s nothing for it.”

  Tenny cracked his eyes open, just blue slits, his gaze unfocused.

  “Don’t die,” Reese told him.

  “Copy that,” Ten said, weakly, and passed out.

  Thirty-Five

  Fox wasn’t sure how he felt about watching his newest brother being loaded up in the back of an ambulance, unconscious, nearly dead, his throat swaddled with cloths and duct tape, but it wasn’t a positive emotion, he knew. Eden sent him one last look from inside the back, as the EMT with her bent over Tenny. She offered him a tight smile, an I’m okay smile, before the driver slammed the doors and went around to the front.

  Beside him, Reese fairly buzzed with tension, a live-wire crackle that probably no one else could feel, but which Fox felt in the raised hairs on the back of his neck.

  Fox sent him a quelling, authoritative look – cool it – and then turned back to Cantrell. “If you’re hoping for some sort of denial or cover-up, you’re shit out of luck, mate. We infiltrated.” Candy might have handled it differently, but Candy wasn’t here, was presumably stumbling out of bed, cursing, and tugging on jeans. So. Fox would handle it all how he saw fit.

  “Fuck,” Cantrell muttered, checking over both soldiers. He looked harried, overwrought, and very typical, Fox thought, of an overworked fed. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Perhaps start arresting known Chupacabra allies?”

  Cantrell gave him a dark look.

  “Just a thought. Anyway, there’s a shit-ton of cocaine in the garage, and files and files of probably important information in the master bedroom. Gilliard is there. I trust you found him.”

  “Tied to a chair! What happened there?”

  Fox shrugged. “I went up in pursuit of the shooter and found him like that, with tape over his mouth. The gunman got away, if you care.”

  “Of course I care!”

  “Based on the description, his name’s Luis, and he’s the boss’s son.”

  Cantrell stared at him a moment. “How do you know that?”

  “You have your sources, and I have mine. Mine spill quicker, if through less legitimate channels.”

  Cantrell shoved a hand back through his hair and glanced away a moment, jaw working. He let out a long, slow breath.

  Reese buzzed just behind Fox’s shoulder.

  Finally, the agent turned back to him, gaze narrowed. “I saw you earlier. Out at the original crime scene.”

  “Ah. Did Candy forget to introduce us?”

  “Yes.”

  Fox smiled at him. “Good.”

  “Are you–”

  “Tick-tock, agent,” Fox said. He clapped him on the shoulder and started to walk off, Reese following along behind him.

  “Hey!”

  He’d expected that. He pause
d, and glanced back over his shoulder.

  “You can’t – you can’t do this!” Cantrell said, throwing up his hands. He looked one tie-tug and coffee away from being at the end of his rope.

  “Do what?” Fox asked, all innocence, wrestling with another grin.

  “This is official FBI business, jackass!”

  “Then do your job, and I won’t have to.”

  They’d come in one of the club vans, parked a half-mile down the road, and off to the side, around a stand of trees, in a shadow and out of sight. By the time they’d reached it, the flashing lights and fluttering tape of the scene at Gilliard’s place were well out of sight.

  When they were well alone, Fox glanced toward Reese and watched him for a moment. The boy walked, as always, with his head held up, eyes shifting as he scanned their surroundings. Always alert, this one. He didn’t slouch, or saunter, or stuff his hands in his pockets, or affect casual the way that Ten did – the way Ten could. He hadn’t been wrong about Reese lacking artifice. No one had ever taught Reese to blend in, and so he walked with a predatory grace that was all about effectiveness.

  Fox could read the tension in him, though. It persisted; an unconscious fluttering of his fingers down at his thighs, bare and pale in the moonlight because he’d stripped off his bloodied gloves.

  “You did well tonight,” Fox said.

  Reese’s gaze slid over, and held, but betrayed nothing, of which Fox approved.

  “That bit at the end with Tenny was great – you saved his life. But before that, too. Ten was an idiot, but you did all the right things.”

  “I failed to secure the target.”

  “You prioritized,” Fox corrected. “Everyone has to in those sorts of situations. You decided to help Tenny, and I’m glad. Had I been in your position, I’m not sure I would have.”

  Reese’s eyes widened the tiniest bit in shock.

  “Don’t look surprised. I’m terribly mercenary when I need to be.”

  “You–” Reese clamped his lips shut and glanced away; his throat jumped as he swallowed, the pale column of it limned in betraying moonlight. He was still every inch the automatic, perfectly trained weapon he’d been, but Fox could see the way emotions were beginning to edge his responses; long-buried humanity lifting to the surface like grease bubbles through formerly impenetrable dark water.

  “Go on. Say it.”

  A beat passed before Reese said, “He’s your brother,” in a very flat voice.

  “Biologically, sure, but I’ve only just met him, and he’s a wanker. So. I’d have hurdled over him and gone for the gunman.”

  Reese stared straight ahead as they walked, swallowing again.

  “That troubles you, doesn’t it?”

  No answer, but yes was writ in the flexing of his fingers, the tight fists that he opened with obvious effort.

  “I’d ask you to explain, but you’re not very good at that, no offense, and I’ve already guessed it. You have a sister – she’s all you’ve had, for most of your life. There’s plenty you don’t understand – hell, there’s plenty I don’t understand: why do people get so worked up over china patterns and seat-warmers in cars? But you understand siblings. That’s sacred to you, isn’t it? Whatever the job, whatever was at stake, you’d drop everything and save your sister.”

  Reese halted – it looked involuntary, the way his steps jerked and he pulled up short. He looked at Fox with narrowed, glittering, inscrutable eyes.

  “You expected me to be the same. And you’re disappointed that I’m not.”

  No answer.

  Fox grinned at him, and it felt like a baring of teeth, like a snarl, but he relished it. “That’s my role in the club. Do you know why they call me when stuff like this needs doing? Why someone like Candy, or Mercy, or Michael McCall doesn’t handle it instead? Because I enjoy it. And because my emotions never get the best of me.

  “That’ll be your role in this club, too. It’s good that you saved Tenny, it is. Good for your soul, and good for him, and good that I don’t have to explain how I got someone killed tonight.

  “But it’s not good for the club. That’s not what we’re for.”

  He turned and headed for the van. A moment later, he heard Reese’s footfalls following.

  ~*~

  A bleary-eyed Candyman greeted them in the common room when they got back to the clubhouse. He and Fox settled down at a table, heads bent together in earnest discussion, Candy’s blond brows knitted over a gaze that Reese labeled worry mixed with desperation.

  Reese thought he ought to stand behind Fox’s chair, ready for orders…but he didn’t want to do that. That was a strange feeling: wanting to go off, to get away, to not be with someone. On the ride back, he’d realized he kept opening and closing his hands, tightening them into fists until his knuckles cracked. He’d forced them open and it had taken an effort to keep them pressed flat to his thighs, especially when he found the damp patch on the denim there, the place where Tenny’s blood had soaked through.

  Now, without asking permission, he passed through the common room and headed down the hall, slipped into his dorm room.

  He’d forgotten it was a shared dorm, now, until he leaned back against the closed door and his gaze landed on the air mattress on the floor beside the bed. He let out a deep breath and stood there a moment, replaying what Fox had told him.

  It had troubled him, and Fox had been right about why. He remembered a night in Colorado, music gratingly loud through the speakers, the clack of billiard sticks off balls at the pool table behind him, the stink of smoke, and spilled beer, and sweaty male bodies. Remembered Badger standing in front of him, Kris held before him, one hand curled around the chain hooked to her collar, the other tilting the knife at her throat, so the edge of the blade winked at him. Do what I tell you, or I’ll carve her up. She doesn’t have to be pretty to suck dick.

  Before he realized the impulse, he’d pulled out his phone and turned to sit on the foot of the bed. He dialed, and it was only when he had the phone pressed to his ear, and the other end was ringing, that he wondered what he would say. How could he put the thorny tangle sitting in his chest into words? He’d never had cause to express himself before – had never really had anything to express in the first place.

  After four rings, Mercy picked up. “’Lo?” He sounded rough, and slurred, and – oh. It was just after five in the morning in Tennessee.

  A bolt of coldness shot through Reese’s insides. He shouldn’t have called. Shouldn’t have bothered. “I woke you up.” His voice sounded like it always did, though he imagined it wavered; that Mercy would be able to hear his doubt.

  “Well, yeah, but.” Mercy cleared his throat, and his voice sounded smoother. “I was gonna get up in like a half-hour anyway. What’s up?” He sounded friendly, even freshly-awakened. He had this way of talking, this way of acting like he wanted to know someone’s answer.

  “I,” Reese said, and stalled out. He didn’t do this. He didn’t make personal phone calls. Kris called him, sometimes, but she did all the talking, and he said yes and no when asked a direct question.

  From the other end of the line, he heard rustling, a murmured voice in the background – feminine, sleepy, Mercy’s wife, Ava. Mercy murmured something back, mouth too far from the phone for Reese to make it out, then there was more rustling, and the sound of a door shutting. “Hey, you okay?” Mercy asked, voice echoing. In the bathroom, Reese deduced; all the porcelain made for strange acoustics.

  “Yes. Fine.” He glanced down at the floor; there was blood on his shoes, too, gummy smears of it against the worn black leather.

  “Hmm. You don’t sound fine.”

  “I am.”

  “Nah.” He sounded fully awake now, his voice warm the way it was when his eyebrows went concerned. Reese could picture him frowning at the wall, absently rubbing at his arm with his free hand. “You definitely sound like something’s got you bothered. You wanna tell me about it?”

  Reese lift
ed his head, startled yet again. How many things were going to happen tonight to freeze his normally-logical thoughts in their tracks?

  “Reese?”

  He swallowed. “You didn’t ask about the club.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t ask if something was wrong with the club.” His pulse throbbed, and he was suddenly aware that he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in hours, that he needed to rectify that soon. “You asked if there was something wrong with me.”

  Mercy was silent a beat, and then chuckled. “Well, the club didn’t call me at five a.m., you did, so I figure it’s you I needed to ask about.”

  Huh.

  “I know I run my mouth a lot,” Mercy continued, “but I’m a damn good listener when I try. Something on your mind?”

  It continued to amaze him, even months and months after first landing in Knoxville, the way the people there kept asking him to talk. Kept wanting to listen to him. It was the strangest thing he’d ever encountered in his life.

  He wasn’t good at it yet, talking. Relaying information in a way that held meaning for other people. But he was getting better, he thought. More human, a small voice in the back of his mind chimed in.

  There were ways to introduce certain topics of conversation. Kris kept trying to tell him that, her gaze earnest and worried – but Ava had waved and said, “Nobody around here’s got an ounce of tact, so don’t worry about it. You can’t shock me.”

  “He’s a blurter,” Maggie had said, smiling. “Doesn’t beat around the bush. I like that.” She’d looked at Ghost, then, who’d thrown up his hands and made one of those grumbling comments about “women this” or “women that” Reese didn’t get.

  He supposed he blurted when he said, without preamble, “Tenny got shot tonight.”

  “Shit, is he dead?”

  “No. I stopped the bleeding.” His pulse slowed, remembering. He’d stopped the bleeding. Tenny was still alive when they loaded him on the ambulance. This he could do: give a mission report. No finesse, no social skills required, just the facts. “The wound was a through-and-through, at the very edge of his throat. .45 caliber. It only nicked the carotid.”