Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  Out on the street, dim and growing louder, closer, he heard the roar of bikes.

  The controlled clatter of rapid footfalls coming down the iron staircase from the second-floor offices.

  He glanced up and saw Fox, his expression tightly excited, eyes gleaming, a sheaf of papers clenched tight in one hand.

  “The boys are coming, I hear,” he said, as he hit the ground and strode to meet Albie. “Good. They’ll want to see this.” He flapped the papers toward Albie, too fast for him to read them.

  “What?” Only half paying attention, because the hammer still felt so good in his hands.

  “The top one’s a copy of a birth certificate. And look, underneath, photos.” He flipped through them, and Albie had the impression of a man, a woman, and a boy – their son, his skin a blend of her dark and his light. A lovely Hispanic woman, young, only twenty or so, and an equally young white guy, still awkward and gangly, his face pained.

  “So?” Albie asked.

  “I had to pick the lock of the safe these were in, all bound up in an envelope. This is blackmail material,” Fox said, like Albie was stupid.

  The roar of bikes crescendoed, Dogs rolling up in front of the gate.

  “Hold this.” Fox shoved the papers at Albie’s chest. “I’ve gotta go let them in.”

  He trotted off with a pair of bolt cutters – and who knew where he’d gotten those – and Albie fumbled not to drop the papers. Blackmail material. He glanced down at them as they fanned back together, into order, the birth certificate on top.

  He heard Fox shouting something to Candy at the gate. Heard the metallic clatter of the chain hitting the pavement, and the grumble of a half-dozen Harleys as they rolled into the lot.

  The certificate was an American one, the state of birth listed as Texas, the baby, a boy, born twenty-four years ago. His name was Luis…

  Luis.

  But, no, that…

  Albie scanned it again, carefully, squinting, heartbeat throbbing in his ears.

  The wail of sirens reached him. Distant, but drawing closer, just as the bikes had.

  The baby’s full name was Luis Miguel Juarez Cantrell.

  ~*~

  The problem with being an optimistic person was that it was too easy to hope sometimes, even when you knew better. On the way to the address Fox had provided, full of the heady sense of invincibility his bike always provided, Candy let himself hope. Let himself imagine that Michelle was going to be here, at this warehouse; that he could punch someone’s jaw apart, kick down a door, and find her, whole and unharmed; that he could pick her up like the prince from a fairytale and make it all right again.

  Fox disabused him of that notion quickly, though, when they pulled into the warehouse lot and killed the engines. The Englishman was already shaking his head. “They’re not here, but they were. Albie found us another address, I suspect, and I found–”

  The wail of sirens reached them. Loud and growing louder, swelling. More than one.

  Candy pulled off his shades and looked down the street.

  Fox turned and said, “Oh, what in Jesus’s name…”

  Candy saw the cars slide around the farthest corner, cherry lights winking on their dashboards, three unmarked black sedans with cheap wheels.

  The feds. “Nice of them to show up after we’ve done all the work,” Fox said, turning back to him, as the cars screeched up in a line along the sidewalk. “There was an office inside, and a safe–”

  “Fox,” Candy said.

  Car doors were flung open, and men and women in FBI-printed flak vests poured out, guns already drawn. Cantrell came out of the lead car, his badge on a chain around his neck, slapping the front of his vest as he jogged. He carried a police issue shotgun, and his face was red from adrenaline and exertion.

  Candy heard other sirens coming from behind them, approaching from the opposite side of the street.

  “Amarillo PD,” Jackal called. “What is this?”

  “Fuck,” Candy muttered, and swung off his bike. Snapped off his helmet and dangled it off the handlebars.

  A PA crackled from one of the cars, and a staticky voice said, “Derek Snow, do not move! Put your hands where we can see them!”

  “Jesus,” Fox deadpanned. “Holy Jesus. This isn’t happening.”

  Local PD came to a skidding, screeching halt; doors slammed, and voices barked orders, and boots slapped over asphalt. Someone had a shotgun back there, too, one they cocked with a loud sequence of clacks that echoed off the metal building front.

  Cantrell came around the gate and onto the lot, muzzle of his shotgun leveling on them. “Hands up, all of you. Let me see palms.”

  “Put your hands where we can see them!” the voice yelled over the PA again.

  “What’s going on?” Candy asked, as calmly as he could manage. His heart pounded to two competing rhythms: the terror of wasted time while Michelle was in danger, and the mounting fury of realizing he’d let himself get caught red-handed. He was glad neither Blue nor Jinx were here to say I told you so. “What is this? The guys you want are inside. My wife–”

  The sharp, unmistakable barrel of a gun poked him in the ribs from behind. A voice barked, “Down on your knees! Get down, now!”

  “Hey!” he heard Jackal say.

  “Alright, alright,” came Victor’s thick Russian accent.

  Slowly, trying not to get popped by a nervous trigger finger, Candy folded at the knees and went down to the pavement, hands moving to cup the back of his skull. In front of him, Fox did the same.

  “Cantrell,” Candy said, trying to pin the man with his gaze – a gaze Cantrell wouldn’t meet, glancing from one to the other of them, not lingering. Furtive. Guilty. “What’s happening?”

  Cantrell addressed all of them, and not Candy, as other agents joined him, weapons trained on them. “You’re under arrest for breaking and entering, burglary, assault–”

  “Oh, rich,” Fox said.

  “–and murder.”

  “Hey, I didn’t murder anyone – ow!” Jackal said, the last after the distinct sound of him being smacked across the back of the head.

  The woman from the precinct earlier, with the blonde ponytail, leaned in to whisper something in Cantrell’s ear. He nodded, and she moved toward the open garage bay doors with two other agents in tow.

  Behind Candy, rough hands took his wrists and hauled them down to the small of his back. The first cuff went on, cold, its tiny little whizzing clicks loud as a vault door closing. He could have gotten loose – could have shaken off the cop, and turned, and punched his lights out.

  And been shot for his trouble.

  Even as his panic mounted – high up in his throat now, enough to choke him – he knew that he couldn’t do Michelle any good if he was dead. “We put down some cartel dogs,” he said, “and I don’t consider that murder.”

  “The only Dogs here,” Cantrell said quietly, “are the ones wearing your patches.”

  “Do you know what this is?” Fox craned his neck to glance over his shoulder at Candy, and was clapped over the ear by the cop cuffing his wrists. He didn’t flinch, but faced forward; raised his voice loud enough to be heard. “This is our mate Cantrell covering his own ass.”

  Cantrell’s face did something strange – Candy read it as a brief flare of panic, hastily tamped down and covered with a scowl.

  “He was content to let us do all the dirty work while we could – too many hoops to jump through, too much red tape on his end. At least, that was what I thought.”

  He was hit in the head again, hard enough that Candy knew it had to leave his ears ringing.

  “Let him talk,” Candy snarled. Two sets of hands gripped him – a man on either side of him, at each elbow – and hauled him up to his feet. He flexed his arms, and felt the cuffs bite into his wrists; felt the hands holding him tighten in sudden spasms of panic as they felt his biceps swell. “You owe us a fucking explanation for this.”

  Cantrell ignored him.
r />   “Sir!” one of the agents who’d gone into the garage called. “We’ve got victims. One needs EMTs.”

  Fox chuckled.

  “Victims?” Candy asked. “Victims?” He was ignored.

  A van pulled up at the curb, plain blue, printed with the Department of Corrections’ seal.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  “Load them,” Cantrell said.

  Candy got another ungentle shove from the shotgun barrel, and was pressed forward toward the van, behind his brothers.

  Fox was ahead of him. He risked speaking again, and the words hit Candy like a punch. “Found some paperwork inside. Luis is Cantrell’s son.”

  Fox got smacked again; a tip of his head was the only sign the blow had registered.

  But Candy didn’t need to ask for clarification. If Fox had said it, then it was so; if he’d found paperwork, he’d known whether it was real or fake.

  My father, Luis had said on the phone. Had said to poor dead Benny. My father runs the cartel.

  An FBI agent at the head of a blossoming, dangerous criminal organization. It made so much terrible sense it left Candy reeling and sick. A part of him felt duped, but a larger part grappled with the impossibility of it. How could he have known? How could anyone have known?

  They were marched around the nose of the van. Colin was the first one in, and Candy could hear him go, “Holy fucking–” before he was shoved along down the center aisle.

  A few moments later, he realized what the exclamation had been about. He went up the steps and did a double-take when he got a good look at the uniformed officer driving the van. Though he’d never spent much one-on-one time with the guy, the low-lidded, impassive blue gaze of Michael McCall was unmistakable.

  Fuck, Candy thought, a laugh bubbling up in his chest.

  He swallowed it, and turned his head, gaze landing on the other officer, the one riding in the front row of the van, baton laid across his knees. His uniform fit terribly, the fabric bunching and stretching across the shoulders, gapping at the buttons. And why wouldn’t it, when the man filling it out was Mercy Lécuyer, comically stone-faced beneath the brim of his cap; Candy could see a few loose, long black hairs that had fallen out from under it, dangling down past his shoulders.

  Candy felt nearly giddy as he was shoved into a seat. The officers left, replaced by Cantrell, who stood at the top step and surveyed all of them a moment before nodding and sitting down beside Mercy, still holding his shotgun.

  “We can roll out,” he said.

  The van rumbled forward, and somewhere in the back, Colin started whistling, a tune that Fox then picked up and added to: “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

  Forty-Seven

  Albie saw the unmarked and the black-and-whites pull up, and he hesitated a moment, watching the scene in the parking lot unfold with sick horror. Arrests were happening. Their tenuous FBI allies were turning on them.

  Albie stood in shadow, still, hidden from view. No one knew he was there, save Fox. His brother, currently folding his hands behind his head and going down to his knees. Shit. Albie should go out there; should join them, be with them.

  But what good would that do anybody? He had an opportunity here. His own instincts told him to walk out into the sunlight and face the music, align himself with his brothers.

  But he swore he heard Fox’s voice in his head saying, Don’t be an idiot. Fox wouldn’t wait around – Fox was only waiting around now to give him a chance. Fox would run. Fox would get the job done. Not because he didn’t care, but because sometimes being mercenary was the only way you could execute the plan.

  So Albie dropped the sledgehammer, shoved the paperwork inside his cut, zipped it up, and ran. Out the back, out the way they’d come. Through the hole in the fence, down the alley, back through the grocery store with a distracted wave for the proprietress. He hoped Fox’s bike wouldn’t get stripped or towed, but there was nothing for it. He straddled his own, barely getting his helmet latched on, and gunned it.

  The trip to the clubhouse was a blur. He had no idea how fast he was going until he nearly laid it down pulling into the clubhouse, tires spinning and gravel flying. He braced a foot, got it stopped, and was off toward the front door as the growl of the engine died away in slow echoes.

  He went inside at a run…

  Only to pull up short in the middle of the ruined common room.

  There were people there, so many. Those who’d been asked to stay behind, like Blue, and the agent who’d come with the boys from the hospital, whom Albie wanted to strangle, now, after what he’d seen. He glimpsed Reese in the shadow of the hallway, and saw Jenny walking toward him.

  But his vision narrowed down to one figure. To his brother.

  Inexplicably, Walsh stood in the center of the room. He held a glass of whiskey that he set down on a table, and he moved toward Albie, arms opening.

  Phillip might have been the boss of them all, the oldest and the most respected, but after that, King was the savviest; the cleverest, and, once you got past his smooth exterior, the most loving.

  Albie wasn’t aware of moving toward him, but suddenly he was being embraced, and embracing in turn.

  Albie pulled back first. “How – what…?”

  “Mercy got a call from his duckling,” Walsh said, with a grim half-smile. “He thought things were maybe worse here than we thought.”

  Albie was too dumbfounded for proper conversation, but he trusted his big brother to understand whatever idiocy came out of his mouth. “They took Chelle and Axelle.”

  “I know.”

  “The feds have been working with the cartel all along.”

  “I know.”

  A flicker of movement over Walsh’s shoulder drew his attention, and Albie stepped around his brother, hands already tightening to fists. “If you’ll excuse me.” He heard the crisp, threatening politeness in his own voice, the way Phillip always sounded before he planted a fist in someone’s face. He’d spotted Maddox, and the agent had spotted him, it looked like. if the way he took a step back and touched the butt of his gun was any indication.

  “Try it,” Albie growled as he bore down on him. “Pull on a Dog in his own house, and see what happens.”

  A hand caught him by the back of the cut: Walsh trying to reel him backward.

  But it was Jenny who stopped him, when she slid neatly in front of Maddox with her empty palms toward Albie. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said.

  “Why is he still in here?” Albie demanded. “Why isn’t he chained up, at the very least?”

  At another moment, he would have admired her calm. “He had no idea about the family relationship either. Cantrell’s kept him in the dark about the whole thing, and, from what I’ve seen, he’s not smooth enough to have pulled off that kind of lie.”

  “Hey,” Maddox protested.

  “You can hit him all you like later,” Walsh said behind him, “but maybe let him explain, first.”

  Albie wished he had the sledgehammer back. But he jerked a nod and stopped trying to pull away from Walsh. This was about Axelle and Michelle; he had to keep them in the forefront of his mind. Not like back at the warehouse. That kind of red-haze bloodlust served no one.

  He swore he heard Fox’s voice in the back of his head: disapproving of emotional displays.

  He reached inside his cut and drew out the documents Fox had given him. Passed them to Walsh when his brother stepped up beside him. His gaze stayed trained on Maddox, and his voice crackled; there was only so much rage he could suppress right now. “Please explain to me how your whole department was in the dark about this,” he invited, mocking.

  Beside him, pages rustled, and Walsh whistled as he scanned the birth certificate.

  Maddox – still half-hiding behind Jenny – said, “Look, I’ve got no idea what the rest of the department knows, but I don’t know shit. Or I didn’t, until today. Cantrell’s never told me shit. I usually just carry shit to the car and pull surveillance duty.” He s
hoved both hands through his hair – thoroughly mussed, like he’d done that a lot today – and clasped them together at the back of his neck. Shook his head. He looked like a man who’d reached a point of disbelief and anger so total he’d tumbled over into numbness. The body’s way of preserving sanity.

  Albie couldn’t find any sympathy at the moment.

  “He never talked about having a family?” Walsh asked.

  “No, never. But I thought…” He made a face.

  “It would be wise not to withhold information,” Walsh said, almost gently. Albie was struck by the fleeting thought that Walsh was usually the one to do the note-taking when Mercy pried answers out of people. Strong stomach, and a steady manner.

  Maddox let out a deep breath, and dropped his hands. “I’ve thought this whole case was fucked up from the start. We didn’t know shit. How could we not know shit? No leads, and no witnesses, except for you guys.” His expression went disgusted, momentarily, then fell back to bewildered defeat. “It seemed wrong. All the resources we have, and all this dicking around we’ve done here. He was stalling.” A hard glint flickered in his eyes. “He was planning this the whole time, wasn’t he?”

  “Planning what, though?” Jenny said. “To help the cartel take out the Dogs? Arrest the club?”

  Albie frowned. “I just came from there. How do you already know?”

  Walsh smirked. “Police scanner.”

  Jenny smirked. “God help Amarillo PD right now.”

  There was a story there, but not one Albie was going to take the time to ask about now. “We need to move. I’ve got an address, and we don’t have time to wait.”

  Eden joined them. “You know where the girls are?”

  “Yeah.” It hurt to swallow; his stomach felt lodged in his throat. “They’re with the mad priest.”

  ~*~

  Tenny didn’t so much as flinch on the walk from the sofa to their shared dorm room. But by the time Reese had deposited him down onto the bed, his face had gone very, very white, his lips pressed to a tight line. “You didn’t have to carry me,” he muttered, like he was annoyed, but Reese didn’t miss the way the veins stood out in his temples and wrists; the simple strain of trying to move without shifting his head or neck at all.