Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5)

by Lauren Gilley

  “All you can do is be prepared, then.”

  And oh how insubstantial that felt.

  ~*~

  Carla Burgess wasn’t on the premises. They’d been through every damn room of the place, most of them Ghost never had a desire to see again, and the bitch wasn’t here.

  “Anything?” he asked Rottie as the tracker came into what had to be the office of the club, going by the hastily set up laptop and scattering of papers across the desk.

  He shook his head. “She’s not here.”

  “Fuck.” Ghost pushed a hand through his hair. “Bring me one of her guys. And Mercy. I want answers.”

  “Right away,” Rottie promised, and ducked out.

  The raid had gone beautifully. And by that, Ghost meant that the remaining johns had been subdued and cuffed with zip ties, all the thugs had been detained in a similar manner, and the dancing boys had been released and piled into a van that Littlejohn was already driving to a halfway house that knew to expect them. But Miss Carla was nowhere to be seen, and Tango and Ian? Not handling it well.

  “Hey,” he said as he turned to them, both standing on either side of Aidan, gripping his strong arms like lifelines, breathing through their mouths, glassy-eyed. “We’re going to find her. Mercy could get answers out of a stone, you know that. Just give us a minute.”

  Ian jerked a nod, but Tango didn’t respond.

  “Tango.” Ghost walked toward him. “Kevin. Hey.”

  No response.

  “Dad,” Aidan said. “This–”

  Rottie and RJ shoved a burly, black-clad guard through the door, smacking him in the shoulders with their telescoping clubs until the large man hit the floor on this knees with a grunt.

  “Where’s–”

  Mercy entered, putting the thug to shame in every respect. Plenty of tall men ate lots of food and made themselves into physical blockades. And then there were men like Mercy, all stone and steel, more shoulders than anything, bright with bloodlust and vibrant with athletic intent.

  “Go to work,” Ghost told his extractor/son-in-law. “I wanna know where she is.”

  Mercy cracked his knuckles and a wicked little knife slid out of his sleeve and filled his palm. He twirled it between his fingers, the light glancing off the blade, and moved around to stand in front of his intended victim.

  Shit, Ghost recognized that knife. He’d seen someone lose an ear to it once.

  “Hey,” Ghost said to the man kneeling on the floor. “Where’s the boss bitch if she’s not here?”

  The man didn’t say anything, jaw clamped tight in defiance.

  “Alright. Merc.” Ghost turned away, glanced toward the boys standing against the wall. “Don’t watch this,” he instructed, and meant it mainly for Tango. “Shut your eyes.”

  And of course neither he nor Ian did, both of them somehow paler and somehow delighted as they watched Mercy work.

  The thug finally screamed. Then said, “Okay! Okay, okay, okay!”

  Ghost redirected his gaze, studiously not looking at the blood. “Where?”

  “She’s with her guy,” he panted.

  “Who? What guy?”

  “Her rich guy.”

  “And who the fuck is that?”

  “Dad–” Aidan started, and cut off with a grunt.

  “I dunno, she calls him Bernard,” the guy said, eyeing Mercy’s knife. “He pays for everything. Shit, man, I dunno. She’s always with him now. He lives in this big fucking house. Used to buy boys from her and–”

  “Dad.”

  Ghost looked over at his son, and saw that he was alone. Tango and Ian were gone.

  ~*~

  Tango felt like he should have known all along somehow. The second the thug had started talking, he’d realized who Miss Carla’s mystery benefactor was. Of course it was the rich client in the brick mansion. Of course it was the man Tango had run away from when he was fourteen, naked save a bathrobe, craving heroin and frightened out of his mind.

  He’d never told Ghost and Maggie about the house and the man inside it who’d wanted to keep him for the night. At first, it had been because he was too afraid of tattling. Then it became a fear that said tattling would lead Miss Carla straight to him. And finally, he’d tried to push it all away, tell himself that nightmare chapter of his life was over and there was no sense seeking retribution.

  But now…

  Now he wanted blood.

  They didn’t have much of a head start, but Ian’s Jag was quick and powerful, growling down the snow-lined streets like the jungle cat it was named after. In the bluish glow of the dash lights, his face was not his own, that feral mask Tango had glimpsed when they were kids in love.

  Tango wondered if this was how Mercy felt when he was “working.” This tight ball of nauseas anticipation. Somehow he doubted it, but he had no other references for the way he was looking forward to putting his hands around Carla’s throat.

  The house came into sight, a hulking dark sharp against the night sky, roof dusted with snow, grounds spreading white and flat around it.

  Ian swung the Jag up into the driveway and jumped out, door open, engine running. In front of them, the heavy iron gates were locked in place, and Tango wondered, for a moment, if Ian actually thought he could push the things open. But Ian went to the key panel instead, the one affixed to a long arm so you could punch the code through your open car window. He produced a knife from somewhere amidst his all-black getup and pried the face off the box, going wrist-deep inside the wires within. A moment later, the gates slid open.

  “You’re kind of a genius,” Tango said as Ian slid back into the car and put it in gear.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  From the exterior, the estate seemed deserted. Key word: seemed. There were no cars, no tire tracks in the snow. No footprints. Which meant Miss Carla and her sick beau were on vacation somewhere – and wasn’t that a lovely thought; the bitch using her madam money to go to Tahiti – or they were buttoned up inside the house, cozy and hiding from the snow.

  “I need to cut the power,” Ian said.

  “Yeah.” Tango kept his hand curled around the grip of his gun as he slipped out of the car.

  They both eased their doors shut silently, not wanting to alert anyone in the house to their presence. Though, probably they were already on security camera. Or an alarm had pinged when they came down the driveway. Something. But cutting the power was still good. Unless someone had already pushed the panic button.

  “Don’t freak out on me, darling,” Ian said, and Tango didn’t correct him this time.

  “I’m not.”

  “Good. It’s three in the morning, and we’ve got that on our side. Come on.”

  Ian produced a lock pick kit from his pocket and made quick work of the deadbolt in the garage pedestrian door. Inside, there were three bays: Range Rover, Benz, and a Cadillac that had to be Carla’s; her taste never changed.

  Ian found the fuse box against the back wall and flipped all the switches. “Torches,” he said, and they both pulled out flashlights.

  The house was cool, and totally dark. Without the power, there were no digital numbers on the microwave, no faint whirring of appliances, no hum of a furnace. Eerie. Tango’s heartbeat sounded loud inside his head. He tried not to breathe. If there was anyone here, they were asleep.

  They moved through the first floor as quickly and quietly as they could, walking up on the balls of their feet, flashlight beams tripping across expensive tile and hardwood, Italian-inspired furniture in warm browns, golds, and wine reds. It was exactly as Tango remembered it, and his lungs tightened with every step he took back into his nightmare. It was even worse than the crushing memories that had descended at the club; he’d never been in that warehouse before, and when he was at The Nest, he’d had the other dancing boys to share the violent attention. He’d at least felt like he wasn’t alone.

  But here…in this place…

  He heard the soft click of someone thumbing the s
afety on a gun and reacted without thought. He shoved Ian down onto the floor and followed, shielding him with his body.

  The shot was obscenely loud in the dark. Drywall cracked as the round embedded in the wall.

  Tango rolled over onto his back, scrambling for his own gun, flashlight aimed at the dark figure who’d come down the staircase behind them. It was the client. Of course it was. Older, grayer, squinting against the brightness and shielding his eyes with one hand, the other holding a ridiculous pearl-handled semi-auto. And suddenly, Tango was fourteen, and tied to the bed, and a childish scream was building in his throat.

  Then he felt Ian beside him.

  Get your shit together! some inner voice screamed at him. Right. Because he wasn’t fourteen, and he wasn’t helpless, and it was time to get off his fucking ass.

  He and Ian knocked shoulders in their haste to get on their feet. Tango kept the light trained on the client’s face, who swatted at it and tried to aim his gun at them.

  “Get out of my house!” he screamed, voice shrill and terrified. “I called the police!”

  “Good. That gives us forty minutes,” Ian spat, and Tango just caught his arm before he pulled his own gun.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.” And charged up the steps toward the man who’d once paid to rape him for a night.

  “I’ll shoot!” the man warned, and Tango batted the gun out of his hand. The client’s fingers went limp the moment contact was made; he’d probably never fired the damn thing before in his life before tonight. He collapsed back against the stairs when Tango shoved him.

  He stepped on the man’s wrist, pinning him, earning a garbled shout of pain. “Do you remember me?” He shined the flashlight up onto his own face. “Huh? Do you?”

  “N-n-no…”

  “Oh love,” Ian said, joining him, “he was never interested in our faces. Were you?” He kicked the guy, hard. “Maybe” – his teeth flashed white when he grinned – “he’d like to be on the receiving end of some of that attention.”

  The thought filled Tango with horror.

  And that was when a woman came stomping down the stairs toward them, screaming bloody murder, what looked like a fireplace poker held above her head.

  Miss Carla.

  “Watch him,” Tango said, and stepped over the client. Bernard. Whoever the fuck he was. Because right now, all his fear was burning away, and he felt nothing but murderous.

  He met the woman mid-descent, caught her thin wrists in his hands, and the fireplace poker clattered down onto the wooden stairs, her hands curled into useless claws, the flashlight in his left hand digging into the bones of her forearm until he felt them shift.

  She was fragile. This demon who’d ruined his entire life was breakable as glass.

  He laughed wildly, crazily, at the realization, and backed her up the steps until they were in the upstairs hallway, Carla hissing, kicking, and screaming the whole time.

  “Shut up.” He shook her, hard, and backed her into a blue beam of moonlight let in from the window.

  Time had not been kind to Miss Carla. She stared up at him with a face all too familiar, but deeply lined, her eyelids droopy and her lips seamed. Her hair stood up in messy yellow tufts, cut short now and dyed poorly. Her patterned silk nightgown was nothing new, though. And the sharp scent of her perfume was like a punch.

  When she stopped screeching, and bothered to really look at him…it took her a moment, but she recognized him.

  “God,” she breathed. “Loverboy.”

  He slapped her. So hard she yelped. Hard enough that it hurt his hand. And unlike the times he’d done it in his nightmares, it brought no relief, only the crushing sense that he might be sick all over himself.

  He heard footsteps behind him, and then Ian was there, gripping Tango’s shoulder hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises.

  “Where’s the other guy?” Tango asked the same moment Carla said, “Shit, it’s Shaman.”

  “Out cold,” Ian said. And then, to Carla, grinning: “That’s right, Miss Carla. What’s the matter? Didn’t expect to see your little magic man again?”

  She gulped and spluttered and…said nothing to them. Not a damn word.

  Tango gripped her arms until she winced and flinched away. “What?” he asked. “Nothing you want to say to us? You destroyed our goddamn lives, and you’re gonna, what, stare like a goddamn fish?”

  It was stupid, so stupid of him, but he wanted – no, needed – her to say something. Anything. Call him names. Call him her pretty little Loverboy. Shout at them to leave. Tell them how worthless they’d always been…

  The silence was terrible. It was soul-crushing.

  “Speak, bitch!” Ian roared.

  She closed her eyes and ducked her head, trying to shrink away from them.

  Tango almost welcomed the sound of pounding footsteps moving through the floor below them, just because it signaled that something besides this ugly staring contest was about to happen.

  One hand still clamped to Carla’s arm, he turned, expecting the police to come barreling up the stairs. Instead, the hulking figure that reached the landing and stepped into the light was Mercy.

  Tango opened his mouth to tell him to leave, that the cops were probably on their way, that this wasn’t his fight, but couldn’t form words. Could only whimper pathetically.

  “Boys,” Mercy said, approaching them slowly, like they were snakes he was trying not to rile. “Why don’t you two clear outta here, huh? Just go on and I’ll pick up the mess.”

  “She’s seen our faces,” Ian said, like Mercy was stupid.

  “Yeah, I know, ‘cause you geniuses came charging here like the damn Lone Ranger and Tonto – only without the masks. So get out before the cops show up.”

  Tango swallowed the lump in his throat and said, “This is what I came here to do.” His fingers tightened on Carla’s arm.

  “No,” Mercy said, gently, like he was talking to one of his kids, eyes soft. He eased a few steps forward, close enough to lay one of his big hands on Tango’s shoulder. “Tonight was about rescuing that boy, the one from the news. And we did. And Fielding is gonna make sure all of this gets exposed to the public, and that everyone involved spends a long, long time getting gang-raped in jail. We took apart the club, Tango. We stopped it. That’s what you came to do tonight: stop it, once and for all.”

  Tango blinked and realized there were tears pouring down his face.

  “Brother,” Mercy said, face gentling even further. “I have killed a lot of people in my time. Some deserved it more than others. But you’re not me. You’re a better person than me. So trust me when I tell you that killing her won’t bring you any peace. It won’t right the wrongs, or even the score. You’ll only hate yourself. This isn’t the way back home. Not for you.” He glanced over at Ian. “Not for either of you. Go home. Everything’s done. It’s over now.”

  Tango wanted to argue. He wanted to scream and cry and hit things. But he…he felt the dark knot in his chest loosening.

  “I won’t go to prison for her,” Ian said, but his voice had lost its heat.

  “You won’t,” Mercy said. “Go on. I’ve got your back.”

  And…

  And they left.

  ~*~

  The woman, Carla Burgess, started to cry quietly as Mercy listened to Tango and Ian walk downstairs and leave the way they came in. When he was sure they were gone, he turned back to the woman, and opened the gate deep in his stomach, let out the devil that lived there.

  He smiled.

  “You know,” he said, and her eyes snapped to his face, wide and terrified in the moonlight. “My mama always used to say this thing to me when I was real little. She’d say, ‘You damn ugly brute, Felix. You ain’t nothing but elbows.’ I was a big kid. Nothin’ like your pretty dancing boys.” He heard his accent thicken, the Cajun coming out in full force now that he smelled fresh blood. “Guess I was always a monster, right from the start.” He grinned at her, and she shudde
red, stepping back.

  “The thing about Tango,” he continued, “which I guess you already know, is that he’s a real sweet kid at heart. This woulda scarred him for life. He never woulda bounced back. And that woulda sucked, ‘cause he’s got a steady girl now, and a club, and brothers who love him. Tango wasn’t built for killing.

  “Me, on the other hand.” He took her head between both his large hands and she gasped. “Do me a favor, would ya? When you get down there, when you go through Lucifer’s gate, say hello to Mama for me. Tell her Felix sends his love.”

  And he snapped her neck in one neat, expert movement.

  The body fell, juicy and limp, with a loud sound against the floorboards.

  Down below, the unconscious man groaned on the staircase.

  “Oh don’t you worry,” Mercy called and headed that way. “You’re next.”

  Thirty-Three

  “You can see all the stars after it snows,” Ian observed. “Even inside the city.”

  Lying across the trunk and rear window of the Jag, they had a front row seat to said stars, the little winking diamonds set high in the black velvet of the sky. Along the horizon, the first dusky blue blush of dawn was beginning to appear. In just a couple more hours, this night would be over.

  “Could you see the stars in London?” Tango took a long pull off the bottle of vodka they’d bought just inside at Leroy’s, and passed it over.

  “No, not that I ever noticed. Then again, I wasn’t ever really looking for them. I was at that age where what was happening beneath my own feet was more important than the rest of the world.” The bottle glugged as he took another sip, and then the cool glass was pressing back into Tango’s palm.

  “Aren’t you still at that age?”

  “Well, look who decided to show up: Kev’s sense of humor, at long last.”

  Tango snorted. “I was serious earlier. About my name.”

  “Yes, yes, very well. Tango,” Ian said with a sigh. “Bloody silly name.”

  “It’s no worse than Shaman,” Tango shot back. “And it’s better than that. Aidan gave it to me.”