Absolution: The Hunter Mercenary Series (Book Two)

by Morgan Kelley

  * * * H U N T E R * * *

  Phil King’s

  Address

  They headed to the address that Sarah had scored from one of her snitches, Lucky. It was in a shithole part of town, and not a place you’d expect a cop to live.

  At first, they assumed the informant had made a huge mistake. It was an industrial building in The Ninth Ward. It looked like someone used it as a machinist shop at one point.

  “This is his home?” Zayn asked, from behind the wheel of their newly swiped ride. “Here?”

  Dakota shrugged.

  “Well, we have to assume Lucky was on his game. If not, this is going to be a wild goose chase or a shootout when we just drop in on someone’s property.”

  Yeah, they didn’t have time for that.

  “What’s the plan?” Rogue asked from the backseat. “How do you want to do this?” he asked, hoping someone, mainly Dakota, had a plan of how to handle this. He was a thief, and he wasn’t sure what his role was in all of this.

  Before Dakota could say anything, Zayn had a question.

  “Are you going to marry her?” Zayn asked, clearly not talking about the case.

  “What?”

  “The cop. Are you going to marry her?” he asked again. “You know…like I married Stella.”

  Rogue sat there.

  “Well?” Dakota asked. Clearly, unless they discussed this, no one’s head was going to be in the game.

  “I don’t know if she’ll marry me.”

  “Are you ready?” Zayn asked. “You did bring her home to meet the family and made out with her in front of us. That’s a declaration right there.”

  “She hates my money.”

  Zayn laughed.

  “What is so funny?”

  “Well, rich boy, that’s a predicament. I say give it away and live happily ever after,” he teased.

  Yeah, no. He wasn’t doing that.

  He wasn’t crazy. While he wished he could be in her world, he couldn’t deny that his money was being used to help them find justice. His money was shared with the people he loved.

  “My gut says to move fast,” Rogue stated. “Is that so wrong of me?” he asked, knowing they would give him the truth. They would have his back, and for that, he was grateful.

  “Why do you want to move fast?” Dakota asked.

  “I want my mom to see me get married, and I want to make sure Cordelia knows I’m in this for real. This isn’t sex or just some fun. I really love her. I realize now that I only cared about Charlotte. That wasn’t love. This…this is love.”

  “And your kid?”

  And there it was. His heart skipped.

  “We discussed it. I think we’re good.”

  Dakota laughed.

  “Uh huh. That didn’t sound convincing. If you want my advice, unsolicited, I think you should put them together and see how that works first. You need to see if the three ladies in your life work out. You know she and Grace are good. Now see if she and Peony are.”

  He had a very logical point.

  “I say just do it,” Zayn stated. “I know you’re not going to believe this, but I like her. She’s a good person.”

  They both stared at him like he was absolutely insane.

  “Did he just…?” Rogue asked.

  “I think he’s having a stroke,” Dakota offered. “QUICK! Do you have aspirin?”

  “Shut up, you chuckleheads. I’m not having a stroke. I like her, okay? She makes him happy. She’s yanked that rich stick out of his ass and made him less bitchy. I say marry her.”

  Rogue leaned between the front two seats and smiled at him.

  “I love my brothers. Give me a kiss.”

  “You’re a fucking idiot,” he mumbled. “Let’s get inside before I beat your ass.”

  Dakota loved seeing Zayn flustered. It made his day, and he, too, knew the detective was right for Rogue. Only, he wasn’t a fan of rushing.

  At all.

  Still, it was time to work. He handed out the ear coms.

  “Let’s go. Zayn, you handle any back access to the building, and if Phil goes to run, shoot him in the leg. We need to question him. We have to find Chesky.”

  “On it.”

  Apparently, he was done laughing and joking. Back was the serious man with a mission.

  He was on his game.

  They hopped out and checked their guns as they gave Zayn time to get into place.

  “Rogue, watch my back,” Dakota stated. “We’re going in the front of this building.”

  He was good with that.

  “Sarah will kill me if I let you get shot. You were already stabbed once this week.”

  Oh, he was aware.

  It sucked.

  They watched as Zayn ran around the side of the building, and they heard his voice over the coms in their ears.

  “I have a locked back door. I’ll stand guard. Call if you need me,” he stated.

  They could do that.

  “We have an unlocked front door,” he stated, giving Zayn the heads-up. That worried them. In this part of town, anything unlocked was at risk for theft.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Together, Rogue and Dakota entered, their guns drawn. While it looked like an industrial building on the outside, on the inside, it had been rehabbed.

  Really rehabbed.

  The place was really nice. It was a shelled out building with open space and a large loft with rooms on the second floor. Someone had dumped a shit ton of money into the place. That proved they were in the right place and that Phil King was dirty.

  A cop couldn’t afford this.

  Ever.

  “Stairs,” whispered Rogue.

  They headed that way.

  “Be careful,” Zayn warned. He knew he wouldn’t get to them fast enough if something shitty was to go down.

  “We will be,” Dakota stated.

  They climbed the stairs.

  There was the scent of blood filling the air. Already, Dakota knew something bad had happened. His nose knew death, and they were about to walk into it.

  He pointed one way and sent Rogue to do his thing in the other direction. The place was silent, and he already figured they were going to find Phil King dead.

  This wasn’t his first day at the rodeo.

  As he headed around the corner, he saw the blood. There was way too much to have it be some household accident.

  “I have a body,” he stated. “It looks like Phil King,” he offered. “It’s a gunshot to the head.”

  “I’m on my way in,” Zayn offered.

  “Rogue, can you search for anything we can use? It’s time to be a thief.”

  “Uh, Dak, we have an issue, or maybe it’s a solution,” he offered. “Come here.”

  Dakota met Zayn at the top of the stairs, and together, they headed into the area where Rogue had gone to do his thing.

  They stopped when they saw him at the desk.

  There was a second body there with a gunshot wound to the front of his head and a gun in his limp hand.

  “Uh, Phil is dead in there,” Dakota stated, pointing from the direction he’d come from across the building.

  “Murder-suicide?” Zayn asked, trying to see his face. “It was obliterated.”

  “ID?” Rogue asked as Zayn began digging in the man’s pockets.

  He pulled out his wallet and looked inside.

  “Shit.”

  “What?” Dakota asked.

  He tossed it to him.

  It was Julius.

  The man was dead.

  “What’s that on the screen of his laptop?” Zayn asked as the screensaver kicked off, revealing a note.

  Dakota pulled it out from under the man’s head. There was blood all over the keyboard.

  It was a message from the dead.

  ‘I handled it. He betrayed Charlotte and me.’

  Rogue whistled.

  “Well, we know who was involved with killing Charlo
tte and that Julius really believed her to be his child to kill his son. He loved her.”

  Yeah, and he screwed them.

  “Can you pull up anything on that laptop?” he asked.

  He tried, but it had been wiped. Every command he entered, it was either encrypted or it was gone.

  “The blood is warm. Soon, it’s going to fry this laptop,” he stated. “I can’t work miracles.”

  Yeah, that said it all.

  “Delete that,” he stated. “We don’t need the cops coming here when Phil doesn’t show up for work, only to find her name. They’ll start digging, FBI or not. We lucked out with Cordelia, but we won’t get that lucky again.”

  He was aware.

  He deleted it, dumped the trash, and dumped some water on the laptop from a glass nearby.

  It sizzled.

  “Let’s search the place. Maybe we can find a phone or something to give us another piece of the puzzle.”

  That worked for them.

  “If Phil had to be at work today,” Zayn offered, “we had better move fast. We are trapped in here.”

  Yeah, they knew.

  They began searching the place, and under the mattress, they found a phone. It was a prepaid one that someone doing illegal deeds would have in their possession.

  On it, there was only one number.

  “Let’s get this out of here,” Dakota stated. “I have that uneasy feeling.”

  Yeah, Zayn too. He felt like a trapped rat, and that never bode well for him.

  Rogue pocketed the phone.

  “I’m ready.”

  They hustled down the stairs. As they were coming out of the building, Zayn stopped and backed them up.

  “We have a police car,” he stated. “It’s parking. I’ll kill him.”

  Dakota slapped him.

  “Out the back! You can’t randomly kill cops! That can’t be the first option all of the time!”

  He shrugged.

  “I used to do just that. Life was so much easier without you two in it. I didn’t have to worry about it.”

  They headed out the back door and raced for the other buildings behind the one Phil King had owned. The cop was about to find a gruesome scene, and hopefully, they’d gotten everything they could from the place.

  “That was close,” Rogue stated.

  “Yeah, too close.”

  Oh, Zayn had a wakeup call coming for them. They were far from out of the woods.

  “Do you want the good news or bad news?” Zayn asked.

  “Bad.”

  “We’re about to walk-through a really shitty side of town, and it’s a long walk home.”

  “And the good news?”

  “I have a plan.”

  He pulled out his phone and made a call.

  “Can you pick us up? Your sexy daddy got us in trouble,” he stated, much to Dakota’s horror.

  Rogue laughed. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Thanks. Here’s the street name. Get us there.”

  He read it off.

  When he hung up, Dakota stared at him.

  “Before you say anything,” Zayn stated, “We heard you fornicating at Purgatory and to escape the awkwardness of it, we went outside to avoid it.”

  Dakota swallowed.

  Oh, shit!

  OUTSIDE?

  “Sarah has nice tits,” he stated, busting the man’s ass. “Really nice ones.”

  Dakota paled.

  “Yeah, big, round, pressed to glass, tits,” Rogue stated, smiling wickedly.

  “Oh, Jesus. That’s…”

  “Awkward?” Rogue asked. “How much is your silence worth?”

  He was horrified.

  “You wouldn't…”

  Zayn laughed.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like two mercenaries at all. What the hell were you thinking?” he asked.

  His dick was doing the thinking.

  Clearly.

  “Uh, brothers?” he tried, hoping they would be gentle. Sarah would kick his ass.

  Then again, it had been some hot sex. Was he really sorry?

  “I know what I want,” Rogue stated.

  “What?” they asked at the same time.

  “Be my best men,” Rogue stated, as they walked down the street in the shitty part of town. “That’s all I want. When I do get married, be there for me.”

  That touched them both.

  Dakota held out his hand.

  “For my brother, anything. Zayn?” he asked.

  The man sighed.

  “You two girls are an embarrassment. I’m in, but I’m still telling Sarah.”

  “She’ll kill me.”

  Zayn smiled.

  “I’ll save it for when you really piss me off.”

  “You’re a dick.”

  “But you love me.”

  Shit!

  He really did.

  * * * H U N T E R * * *

  When she finally got there, the men were more than glad to get the hell out of that part of town. Not far away, they could hear the police sirens, and the further away, the better.

  As soon as she got them back to Chartres Street, there was that sense of relief.

  “You look perky today,” Rogue stated, directing that at Sarah.

  “I do?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you do.”

  Dakota slapped him in the back of the head as they entered the house. Later, he’d punch him in the face, again, if he pissed her off.

  Inside, the team was sitting at the table.

  “Find anything?” Stella asked.

  “Yeah, that it’s nipple-y out,” Zayn stated, mock shivering. “It’s a brisk day.”

  Dakota choked on the coffee he’d just sipped.

  “Uh, what’s going on?” Stella asked. “You three look guilty, and I doubt it has anything to do with where you were.”

  The men faked innocence to make it worse for Dakota. They were clearly going to enjoy this.

  Sarah pointed at them.

  “They saw my breasts while Dakota and I were having sex. You two are with peeping Toms.”

  Zayn and Rogue looked horrified that she knew and that she’d drop that in front of their women.

  “Uh…”

  She pulled the earpiece out of her ear.

  “Yes, I eavesdropped on you. If you think, for one second, I wasn’t going to listen to you three do this job, you’re insane, and thanks, Rogue. They are big, nice tits. I never knew you cared.”

  Dakota grinned.

  Stella pointed at her husband. “You were looking at breasts not attached to my body?” she asked.

  “My sweet Stella…”

  “And tormenting him?” she asked.

  He swallowed.

  Dakota kissed his girl.

  “I love you.”

  She patted his cheek.

  “I heard every word. They were mean to my man. That’s all kinds of wrong.”

  Cordelia stared at Rogue but said nothing.

  “Um, that’s not really what happened. I wasn’t peeping. I swear to God!”

  She began laughing to show him she wasn’t upset. A man was a man was a man, but she wasn’t letting him off the hook.

  “Now we have to show Dakota our breasts to even the score.”

  Gamble raised his hand.

  “I didn’t see…”

  Zayn growled at him.

  “That’s a horrible idea,” Rogue said. “I don’t want him checking out your body!”

  “That’s not happening,” Zayn growled.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have been threatening to blackmail him,” Sarah stated.

  Dakota grinned.

  “How’s that ass-whooping feeling?” he asked. “I feel pretty vindicated. I got the sex, and you got yelled at. When will you learn, boys?”

  “Maybe we should work,” Rogue said, dropping the phone on the table. “Where’s Storm?”

  “She’s taking a nap. Fluffy Butt is with her in the room, I think.”


  Rogue stared at him.

  “Fluffy Butt?” he asked in horror as soon as he figured it out. “Odin?”

  “Stella told me she renamed him.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “You’re out of control.”

  “Zip it, peeping Toms,” Sarah stated. “Let’s work.”

  She picked up the phone and pulled up the number on it. As she did, Cordelia entered it into the FBI tablet.

  “We won’t get a name, but we’ll get a location from where the call was made. Since we have a couple of them, one might be long enough to isolate it.”

  They’d take what they could get. Anything would be helpful. They were taking out each part of Rosemary’s web, and they couldn’t let even one person slip.

  She was the head of the serpent.

  Charlotte helped transport the women on her cruises.

  Taz was the money man.

  Chesky was her partner.

  It was all coming together, and in the end, they’d all pay for what they did. Justice was coming.

  “Got it,” Cordelia stated, pulling up the address on the FBI satellite database. “This tech comes in handy.”

  “Don’t get attached to it, copper,” Zayn stated.

  “Yeah, I might steal it, right?” she asked, pointing at Rogue. It made him laugh.

  “Well, let’s head back out,” Dakota stated, grabbing the paper and kissing his fiancée—of sorts. “Later, Sarah.”

  She wiggled her eyebrows.

  “I have to transform Cordelia, so it’s a date after that if you’re available.”

  Oh, he would be.

  Rogue didn’t budge.

  “Uh, coming?”

  “I have to get Gamble up and running for this. He can’t go in dressed like a commando. He needs to look rich and act like he’s got a clue. It’s a gambling den. I’ll brush him up.”

  He laughed.

  “What?” Rogue asked.

  “Uh, with a name like Gamble, do you really think I need to be brushed up?”

  Sarah snorted.

  “He has a point. It’s like a given.”

  “Help him,” Dakota stated. “I’ll take the big merry nipple-meister.”

  Zayn stared at him.

  “Who hurt you?”

  That made him laugh.

  “We’ll be back.”

  They headed out.

  “So, what are we going to do?” Cordelia asked. “How do I get ready for this?”