Tango let out a strangled sound, but he managed to lock his knees and keep his feet.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Like hell, but there was no choice. Aidan began walking them slowly toward the door, knowing it was too slow, teeth grinding in anxiety. How were they ever going to flee like this? How could he get Tango through the hole in the fence? Up the hill? Shit, Carter would have to help carry him. That was if Fox wasn’t already dead and could provide cover.
Ian came around to Tango’s other side, drew the guy’s arm across his shoulder. When Aidan saw his expression, the absolute devastation of it, he felt a little guilty for what he’d said before. Ian Byron was a lot of things, but his feelings were genuine. This was as difficult for him as it was for any of them.
Carter had gotten the girl – Whitney’s – cell open and she rushed now toward Tango, face creased with worry.
“Oh, he’s hurt so bad,” she said, voice choked with tears. “He’ll be fine,” Aidan said, thinking that was probably a lie. But he didn’t have time for truths. “Lead the way up,” he said to Carter. “Let’s see if our fox is still alive up there.”
It was a long, slow, painful trip up the stairs. Tango cursed and muttered, but he managed to make his feet cooperate. Ian pulled his weight – or Tango’s weight, as it were. When this was over, Aidan decided he owed the guy a thank you.
“One foot after the next,” the Englishman whispered to Tango. “That’s it, darling. Not much farther.”
They were two steps down from the top when Carter, ahead of them, said, “Oh my fucking God.”
A few lurching strides later, and Aidan was at the threshold.
“Shit,” he muttered. Because there were simply no other words.
The hallway was littered with bodies. All of them Ellison’s men. Fox stood, polishing the barrel of his gun on the hem of his shirt, expression almost bored.
“Fox,” Aidan said, stunned. “You’re not dead.”
“Dead?” the Englishman scoffed. “You thought I couldn’t handle this?”
“How many people did you just kill?” Carter asked.
“Eleven? Twelve? Dunno, you ladies ready?”
“Uh…yeah,” Aidan said.
The most dangerous man you’ll ever meet, Candy always described him. Clearly, that wasn’t an exaggeration.
“You okay?” Aidan asked in an undertone as Fox and Carter led them back down the hall.
Tango, shuffling and struggling to keep up, letting Aidan and Ian carry his weight, said, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
Jesus Christ, no he wasn’t.
“It’s okay,” Whitney soothed. “We’re leaving. It’s all over now.”
Aidan pushed all his questions aside in the interest of expediency; but when they got out, he was going to have some things to ask Miss Whitney.
They reached the sitting room after what felt like ten years.
Fox turned around and gave them an assessing glance. “Can he move any faster than that?”
“Probably not,” Aidan said through his teeth.
“We–” Fox started.
A man appeared in the sitting room, standing upright and holding an AK.
“Shit,” Aidan said, scrambling for his own gun.
Another man appeared, then another, then…
It was Ghost, and Walsh, and Mercy, and Candy, and Colin.
Holy…
“Kev,” Ghost said, voice booming, heavy with emotion. “You okay, son?”
“Yeah,” Tango lied.
“Is that…?”
“It’s me,” Ian said. “Wonderful to see you too, Mr. Teague,” he said in a mocking tone.
“Aidan?” Ghost asked.
“We’re good, Dad.”
“Good,” the president said. “’Cause we got hostiles pouring in. We’re gonna have to shoot our way out, boys. Guns at the ready.”
Mercy hefted his sledgehammer over his shoulder. “Bring ‘em on,” he said, grinning. “I need the exercise.”
Aidan swallowed, and realized there was a lump in his throat.
His father walked toward them.
“Dad–”
“Mags told me,” Ghost said, voice going soft as he stepped forward and closed in on them. He wore a ski cap, flak vest, and carried not only the AK but a sidearm as well, his body strapped with more weapons and magazines, in full-on soldier mode. He offered a lopsided smile full of emotion. “You didn’t think I’d come help my boys?”
Okay, not a good time to get emotional.
Ghost reached out and put one hand on Aidan’s shoulder, the other on Tango’s. “Let’s go home,” he whispered. Then, to Aidan, “You ready to kill some motherfuckers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He turned around, hands still in place, shouting toward the Lécuyer brothers. “Boys, you clear them a path, okay? We gotta get Kev away. And Mercy” – he grinned hugely – “don’t show any mercy, okay?”
“No, sir!” Mercy said, laughing. To Aidan: “Come on, brother. We got your back.”
~*~
It was frigid outside, and Aidan wished they’d thought to bring clothes for Tango. Not that there was time to worry about it. Whoever lived in the pool house had called in reinforcements and there were men streaming onto the property, firing wild into the night.
Aidan ducked his head low, tightened his grip on Tango, and followed his brother-in-law.
Mercy had his sledge in one hand, gun in the other, firing off shots as he led them…using the hammer when someone broke through the line and got too close.
One goon managed to break loose and set upon them. Mercy swung a wide arc and caved the bastard’s head in with the hammer, one deadly stroke from his massive arm.
“Oh,” Whitney said in front of them.
“Don’t look,” Aidan told her. “Just keep going.”
Colin was no slouch. He clipped a guy in the shoulder with his own hammer and then finished him off with a round from his .45.
And then suddenly they were at the fence, the hole Fox had cut, and they were awkwardly pushing Tango through it.
“Go, go!” Colin shouted.
Aidan turned back and saw the two brothers fending off a pair of guards. “Merc,” he called.
“Take Kev,” the big man said. “Let my brother and me handle this.”
So they went. Aidan half-carried, half-dragged a semi-conscious Tango up the leaf-strewn hill, Ian and Whitney helping, the most unlikely duo of accomplices ever.
Gunshots echoed behind him. Shouts. The sharp crackle of fire.
And then the sweetest sound reached his ears.
“Aidan?” Sam’s voice called. “Aidan, baby, oh…”
They were at the hill. Littlejohn. Jazz. The waiting escape vehicles. And Sam. His gorgeous Sam.
“Baby,” she said, coming to him, touching his face and filling his field of vision with her perfect expression of concern. “God,” she said. And then she turned to Tango. “Kev, Jesus…”
Aidan tipped his head back, felt the hard press of his best friend’s arm across his shoulder, felt the cold prickle of icy air in his lungs, saw the stars reeling overhead as he fought to catch his balance.
“Thank you,” he said, not knowing who he was talking to. God, maybe. “Thank you. Thank God.”
~*~
“Well hell, it got stuck,” Mercy said, sounding incredulous. As Ghost watched, he braced a foot on the fallen henchman’s shoulder and gave the sledge a good yank; the hammer head came loose of the caved-in skull with a sticky sound.
Ghost’s stomach grabbed, but he smiled, too, turning away from his son-in-law to survey what was left of Ellison’s top of the line kitchen. Four dead here, and many more beyond, out on the lawn, by the pool, in other rooms.
Men had come pouring out of the pool and guest houses, when they realized what was going on, guns at the ready. At one point, two SUVs had pulled up out front with reinforcements, but the effort was wasted. The Lean Dogs m
owed them all down.
The kitchen looked like a war zone now, smashed up by the hammers, sprayed with blood like an impressionist painter’s canvas.
“I think that’s the last of them,” Mercy said, coming around the wide marble island to join him.
Colin was breathing hard through his mouth, chest heaving – whether from exertion or disgust, Ghost didn’t know. He looked a little green and dazed as he gazed around at the carnage.
“Col, you alright?” Ghost asked, sharply.
The guy nodded, swallowed, and shook his head. “Yeah. Fine.”
Mercy rolled his eyes, but a little smile lurked at the corners of his lips. Proud big brother moment? Maybe.
Ghost unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it. “Walsh, what’s the status upstairs?”
“Secure,” the VP answered. “But we got one live one, and he wants to talk to you.”
He sighed. “Yeah. On my way.” He gestured to Mercy as he left the room. “You two round up the others and start cleaning house. I want this place smoking in ten minutes, no more.”
A solid “yes, sir” from both of them.
As he crossed through the sitting room and hit the curved marble staircase – Harry falling into step behind him as sentry – he made a mental note to never decorate his evil bad guy lair in white. There was red everywhere. The copper tang of blood burned in his nose as he took a deep breath and climbed.
The upstairs was laid out like a hotel hallway, thick carpeting, potted plants, little window nooks that overlooked the grounds. Walsh waited for him in the open doorway of a bedroom that turned out to be an office. The man who wanted an audience was trussed up like a turkey on the rug in front of the desk, Fox’s gun trained on him. He was a plain-featured man, nothing distinct about him at all, not the slight build, nor the indistinct nose, nor the flat brown eyes.
Everyone else they’d killed tonight had been either a thug or a slack-jawed lackey kid. But this man was different.
‘Lemme guess,” Ghost said, “Bill?”
The man nodded and tipped his head back, revealing a trickle of blood on his chin, evidence of a split lip.
“Which one of my boys hit you?”
Bill darted a glance toward Fox.
“Hit him again, Foxy.”
Fox obliged, stepping behind him and kicking him in the kidneys. A hard kick, and from a motorcycle boot no less.
Bill grunted and arched away from the pain, breathing heavily through his nose. But he didn’t scream. When he’d subsided onto the carpet, Ghost crouched down in front of him.
“What’d you want to talk to me about?”
When the man opened his mouth, a loud gasp escaped his lips. He drew in a ragged breath and said, “Ellison knows this is happening. He’s been alerted.”
“Right. Right. Where is he, then? Was that the best he’s got? The idiots he sent? The ones my crew painted across the walls?”
Bill closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
“You weren’t hoping to bargain for your life, were you, Bill?”
No answer, which meant yes.
“Tell me: when you were hurting my boy, did you get off on that? Did it give you pleasure to make him scream?”
Bill’s eyes came to his face, and something was glittering through the flat professional façade. Fear. Desperation. “I was doing my job. Don’t pretend you don’t know how it works.”
“Oh, I won’t. I got a guy downstairs with your job. And I know he likes it, the big sick fuck.” Ghost pulled his gun off his hip. “Just like I know I’m gonna enjoy this.”
He stood, and put a round through Bill the Torturer’s head.
“Rottie,” he said into his radio. “We got one more up here, then have the guys bring the kerosene in.”
“Got it,” the tracker said back.
He looked at the two English brothers before him. “I want every computer in his house. Every flash drive you can find.”
“Yeah,” Walsh said.
~*~
“You know,” Mercy said as he dragged one of the corpses across the tiled poolside toward the house, “that’s what sucks about being the big ones. You gotta do all the heavy lifting.”
Colin grunted beside him, equally burdened. “Yeah, that damn Fox. Little bastard,” he said, dryly. “Never has to do the dirty work.”
Mercy laughed. Both of them had been shocked and delighted by the destruction Walsh’s little brother had wrought before their arrival. You didn’t mess with Charlie Fox. You just didn’t.
They reached the door that led into the kitchen and paused to catch their breath. Mercy reached for the door handle and glanced over at his brother. He was tired, sure, like all of them, but he was holding up alright. And he’d thrown his whole weight into the swing of the hammer, when they’d entered the fray.
“Hey,” Mercy said, and the seriousness of his voice drew Colin’s gaze. “You did good tonight. I’m proud of you.”
Colin’s grin was more of a grimace. “Oh, you’re proud?”
Mercy shrugged. “That’s what big brothers do.” Before Colin could respond, he opened the door and said, “Come on. We gotta build this funeral pyre.”
~*~
They laid Kev out in the backseat of one of the trucks. By the time they’d settled him and covered him up with jackets, he’d passed out.
“Better for him to sleep,” Sam said, easing the truck door shut. “He probably ought to be drugged, truth be told.”
Aidan shook his head. “He doesn’t like to take anything like that. He used to be a heroin junkie.”
Sam looked at him, gleam of her eyes in the shadows evidencing surprise.
“He was?” Whitney asked. She was crouched on the ground beside the rear tire, leaning back against it, small and curled up like some kind of woodland creature.
“Yeah,” Aidan said, and then he did what he’d needed to do since all of this had started. He snatched Sam into his arms and crushed her against his chest, face buried in the loose pale waves of her hair. “Sam. Jesus.”
She hugged him back, her arms tight around his neck. She shivered.
The wind stirred around them, rustling leaves, tugging at their clothes. Jazz was sobbing quietly somewhere behind them, Carter murmuring to her. It was the adrenaline bleeding out, Aidan knew. He wanted to sob himself; but his eyes were dry, and his breathing came easy as he held his girl and inhaled the sweet floral scent of her shampoo.
“You told Ava,” he said after a while, pulling back a little.
It was hard to tell, but it looked like she blushed. There was no mistaking the firm tone of her voice, though. “It was the right thing to do. We needed backup.”
“We did?” He grinned.
“Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong, but Kev was taken because of some decision your dad made. Your dad’s mess, not yours. You’re learning to clean up yours,” she added, softly, “it’s time he learned the same thing.”
No one had ever put it to him like that before. He kissed her, on impulse, because she was too right and too perfect, in that moment, dressed like a hooker in the woods.
A sound startled him, a sudden whoomp and a rush, like steam escaping a tight pot lid. An explosion, he realized.
He turned to look back down the hill, Sam clasped tight to his side. They’d set the house on fire. It was still contained inside, but he saw the bright tongues leap in the first floor windows.
He also saw his club, all his brothers, dark shapes walking across the lawn, moving toward them. He thought he could pick them out through general size and shape, but really he couldn’t. They were all the same, from this vantage point. Just his brothers. His family.
Thirty-Seven
They were in someone’s house. Maggie, the woman had said her name was. A pretty blonde with an unmistakable aura of authority. She’d led them down a hall to a bathroom, and then a set of bedrooms. Whitney had been handed clothes that she’d since changed into: sweatpants, a sweatshirt, pale gray
and feminine in cut.
She sat now on the edge of a bed, in a warm room full of gentle lamplight, alongside Kev, who lay back against the pillows, smelling of soap, glistening with healing ointments that had been smeared on his neck, his arms, his face. Maggie and her daughter, Ava, had been waiting with warm towels when a huge man named Mercy brought Kev from the shower, his big hands gentle and sweet as he’d laid him out on the bed. The women had dressed him, doctored him.
Maggie had finally looked at Whitney, afterward. “Oh, baby, you ought to sleep.”
Whitney had shaken her head. “No.”
“Coffee?” Ava had guessed.
“That’d be great.”
She curled her hand around the warm mug now, and stared down at Kev’s unconscious shape beneath the sheets.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him. “I wish I could take what happened to you and put it on myself.”
His eyes flipped open, and his voice croaked from between split lips. “Don’t say that.”
It filled her with joy to see his eyes open. Such pretty eyes, baby blue and liquid with emotion, though his face was stiff with bruises and swelling.
“I do wish it,” she said. “I hate what happened to you.” Her eyes filled with tears at the memory.
“No,” he said. “Don’t cry.” His own eyes fluttered shut, his face going slack.
Whitney thought about going back into the main part of the house, with the murmuring crowd of people.
Instead, she lay down beside Kev, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.
~*~
Aidan took a long swallow of whiskey-laced coffee and set it down with a deep sigh. “Shit,” he said, for the sake of his bruises, those of his brothers, and his own shaking fallout of adrenaline. He couldn’t remember being this exhausted in his life. Nothing had ever tasted as good as this spiked coffee. Nothing had ever been as beautiful as his family standing around him as he sat at Maggie’s kitchen table with his father.
“Kev’s asleep, I think,” Maggie said, sipping her own coffee.
Aidan felt his father’s gaze and glanced toward him.
“You’re an idiot,” Ghost said, then grinned. “But damn. I raise my glass.”
Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor Book 4) Page 37
