Deacon's Law (Heroes Book 3)

by RJ Scott

  He sat back in his chair after a while, looking at Rafe’s back, at the curls under his cap, and hoped to hell that Rafe got out of this venomous mess before he became like his cousins. Deacon had actually raised this with his handler, but all he’d got in response was an instruction to wait things out. Rafe had only been there a few weeks, but the contagion in the place would get into his blood, and he could change.

  Of course, given his last name and his family, there wasn’t any way in hell Rafe was getting out of living there with a clean record, or even alive. Not unless Deacon could be a hundred percent sure that Rafe wasn’t wholly or partly involved with his uncle and cousins’ business. The department was looking at Rafe as part of what was happening here, and all Deacon could do was hope that he could prove otherwise.

  And looking at the young man with the smile and the gorgeous green eyes, Deacon knew that if Rafe was involved, it was a tragic waste.

  And he definitely shouldn’t have kissed him.

  Dinner was the same rowdy affair it always was. Arlo, the patriarch of the family, surrounded himself with those he considered familia, even those with a nebulous connection. Those with the closest ties sat near Arlo, with the hangers-on at the end of the long pine table. The ones at the end were third cousins, or with some link to Cuba, which made them acceptable in Arlo’s eyes.

  Deacon took his place, leaning against the door. He didn’t eat with the family; his place was to look menacing and to keep an eye on Rafe. Arlo’s words, not his. Arlo sat at the head of the table, his wife on his left-hand side. A pinched woman, she never really looked as if she wanted to be there, and wasn’t quick to speak on any subject, a fact that seemed to suit Arlo down to the ground. The twins were on the other side, with Felix next to his dad. Deacon had quickly assessed that Felix was the dominant twin, Chumo often showing his belly in arguments. Felix was definitely the favored son.

  And then next to his aunt, right opposite Chumo, sat Rafe. He looked uncomfortable sitting there, his gaze firmly fixed on his plate, his shoulders hunched, and he was never the first to make conversation.

  “Saw what was left of that homo kid at the ring,” Felix said, making sure his voice was loud enough for everyone to take notice. Which of course everyone did. The family owned a boxing club, and Felix loved nothing more than beating on people smaller than him. Fuck knew why the place hadn’t been shut down yet. “They had to take his sparkly ass out on a stretcher.”

  Rafe didn’t look up from his plate; he had to know as well as everyone else at the table exactly where this was going. Rafe had not been backward in telling his new family that he was gay. It was as much a part of him as his eyes, or his ability to sketch cartoon characters in the sides of his course notebooks. Felix was sometimes gleeful in his stories about how he dealt with “the queers”. He was dangerous.

  “Enough, Felix,” Arlo said, but his voice wasn’t strident as it usually was when he told people what to do. No, it was sly and slimy, and Deacon wanted to punch the man in the head. Of course, he’d have to settle for seeing Arlo behind bars, but he would freaking enjoy it if he got to punch him on the way in.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Felix said, but continued anyway. “I said they shouldn’t let him in the ring – knew he’d get pummeled by the next guy after I was done with him. Took two men to hold him still for the beating, though – he had fucking fancy footwork when he tried running.”

  “Language,” Arlo admonished.

  “So they called the paramedics, and it didn’t look good. Hell, maybe the next guy beat some straight into him.”

  Rafe looked up at that, his eyes glowing with a combination of anger and hatred, and Deacon saw the moment Felix knew he’d succeeded in hitting his mark.

  “Seems to me,” Felix said, silky smooth, “you shouldn’t ever take up boxing, Rafe, being a bit delicate an’ all.”

  Felix laughed at his joke, and half the table did as well, including Arlo.

  “Not built for boxing,” Chumo pointed out, which made more people laugh.

  Rafe said nothing, just as he never said anything, because there was no freaking point.

  Dinner pretty much went downhill from there, and Rafe excused himself as soon as dessert was done. Arlo looked at Deacon pointedly and inclined his head slightly, and with a returning nod Deacon left the dining room and followed Rafe. He didn’t want to – he wanted to be in the room where the action was, where he’d possibly overhear enough to take the entire Martinez family down. Rafe included, if needed be. He just had to trust that the bugs he’d personally installed over the last few weeks were actually transmitting as they should.

  “You don’t need to follow me,” Rafe snapped when Deacon caught up with him.

  He was at a T-junction in the long corridor. To the left were the bedrooms, to the right were the offices that were permanently locked. Deacon had seen the body language in Rafe that had shouted he’d been going right and had changed his mind at the last moment.

  “Just looking out for you,” Deacon said.

  Rafe muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “asshole” and “sexy”, but he couldn’t quite hear.

  “Stalking me, you mean,” he added, and took the stairs to his room, bypassing it and climbing the next flight to the roof. He held the door open for Deacon as he knew Deacon would be right on his tail.

  They exited onto the roof. It was nothing special; a flat space with various ducts and a large metal shed with its doors hanging off. Deacon knew every inch of this rooftop, including the perfect point from which to jump if he needed to get to the next building, where his handler sat monitoring everything Deacon was in the middle of.

  He also knew that this was Rafe’s quiet place. In the three weeks Deacon had been watching Rafe, he’d inevitably gravitated to the far corner with views over the river, and he would push his hands into his pockets and simply stare out over the water.

  “Why do you do it?” he asked as he stared forward. “Work for my uncle?” He turned to face Deacon, and his expression was a picture of openness; he wanted to know what it took for a man to be a gun for hire, a pseudo bodyguard, the heavy guy to do what needed to be done. How much of what his uncle had going on was known to Rafe? Deacon didn’t have an answer, because even though he had a solid backstory, part of him just didn’t want to lie to Rafe. There was too much confusion between them as it was.

  So he said nothing at all.

  “I guess you can’t say anything, eh?” Rafe concluded, and turned back to the water. “I just need you to leave me alone.”

  Deacon stepped closer to look at the view that kept Rafe enthralled. This was prime real estate in this town, on a slight hill. Built in the thirties it was solid stone, with manicured gardens winding past outbuildings down to the endlessly deep lake. From here you could see the end of the small jetty, and the water was flat and gray in the darkening evening.

  “I’m paid to look out for you,” Deacon reminded Rafe. “Your uncle worries about you.”

  Rafe huffed a laugh. “Cut the crap,” he said harshly, the laugh turning into a barely concealed snarl. “You know you’re lying.” He turned abruptly and stepped right into Deacon’s space, shoving at him, hard. “You’re all wrong. You don’t fit here any more than I do,” he added, and shoved again.

  Deacon’s chest tightened. That sounded a lot like an accusation. He grasped Rafe’s hand and pushed him away, acutely aware that if Rafe came too close he’d say fuck it and drag him in for a kiss.

  Rafe yelped at the same time Deacon realized he was holding Rafe’s hand way too tight. Deacon immediately let go, which made Rafe stumble, which led to Deacon holding him way too close to stop him from hitting the ground. They were alone up here. He was playing a role. His team wouldn’t care; they’d expect him to use every avenue he had to dig into what was happening here, and if that included kissing the nephew who didn’t quite fit into the family, then they would understand that. It wouldn’t be the first skin job he’d und
ertaken and it wouldn’t be the last.

  But what if someone came onto the roof?

  No one comes out here except Rafe.

  What if Felix decided to track Rafe down?

  Felix is with his father, which is where I should be; right at Arlo’s side.

  He’d run out of excuses, and Rafe was looking up at him, gripping his shirt, with naked need in his eyes.

  And Deacon couldn’t help himself.

  One more kiss wouldn’t be wrong. Right?

  But when their lips met, it became long, drawn out, a battle of wills on his part, a greedy, breath-stealing grab of a kiss from Rafe. They didn’t move, wrapped around each other in the dark, kissing as though they were in another place, and it was another time, and it was okay for them to be doing this.

  He didn’t know why they pulled apart; he thought it must have been him, but he wasn’t sure. He wanted another taste, but there was too much distance between them and he wasn’t ready to tug Rafe back.

  “Who are you really?” Rafe asked, his fingers touching his lips.

  God, he wanted to tell Rafe so badly, wanted to trust Rafe didn’t know anything about his uncle, or the kind of criminal activities that were paying for the remainder of Rafe’s education.

  He couldn’t.

  Deacon had a best friend, a former marine and the man next door to whom he’d grown up, Mackenzie Jackson. He’d always said that Deacon was an enigma.

  When they’d gotten drunk last, too many years ago to mention, kids who didn’t know better, Mac had summed Deacon up in three words: “marshmallow hard-man”. Which, of course, had led to an in-depth discussion about Ghostbusters.

  Ultimately, he never had fully asked Mac what he meant, but standing here looking at Rafe, he had an idea. He’d been undercover on this case for nearly a year in various lowly positions – grunt work and the like – and he was standing here nearly blowing all that hard work. He’d moved slowly into the circles that would catch Arlo Martinez’s attention, and when he’d finally got a way in, he’d known he was so close to getting Arlo behind bars.

  He couldn’t lose sight of that now in the face of a man too young for him with innocence in eyes that sometimes flashed fire.

  “We need to go back in,” Deacon said, and turned to go inside.

  At first he thought Rafe might argue, but then he heard footsteps behind him. He saw Rafe to his room, heard the door lock, and after a while he went back downstairs. His room was next to Rafe’s, and unknown to the younger man, his uncle had it bugged with both audio and video feeds. Deacon could see Rafe there, lying on his stomach on his bed, his arms crossed under a pillow. There was nothing creepier than having this window into Rafe’s world.

  He dozed, woken by the soft alarm that warned him Rafe had left his room. A quick glance at the clock, and it was a little after three a.m. The house was quiet, and Deacon eased out of his door. The place was big enough that it was a rabbit warren of stairs and corridors and small rooms, but Deacon instinctively knew that Rafe was heading right back to the office.

  Idiot.

  He would catch up with him, get him back to his room, and hell, maybe he should be honest about what he was doing here…but he was too late.

  Rounding the corner, he came across a tableau that made his heart stop.

  Rafe on his knees, and Felix with a gun to his temple, the door to the office wide open behind them. Felix looked up at Deacon. He looked unfocused in the light spilling into the hallway, as if he was high, and his mouth was set in a line.

  “I’m gonna kill him,” he said, and the gun shook a little right against Rafe’s skin.

  “Felix—”

  “I’m gonna fucking kill the son of a bitch.”

  Chapter 5

  Rafe closed his eyes, the feel of cold metal on his skin enough to make him think this was where it all ended.

  He’d seen Deacon arrive, seen the horror in his expression. But it wasn’t like he was leaping to Rafe’s rescue.

  Of all the shit to happen, he had to jimmy the lock and walk in on Felix snorting cocaine off the large oak desk, his pants around his thighs and porn on the computer.

  He’d attempted to back out, but he’d stumbled on the door jamb, and Chumo had been there. He’d moved so fast, and Felix had joined him, grabbing at any part of Rafe, waving a gun.

  “On your fucking knees,” Felix had ordered, and for a moment – a brief, panicked moment – Rafe had imagined that Felix wanted him to suck him off, his cock hanging out, his jeans snagged on his thighs. But no, as Felix yanked at the denim, the gun pointing at his face, Rafe realized this wasn’t about sex – this was about death.

  “Chumo? What happened?”

  “Not my problem,” Chumo muttered, and Rafe heard him move away.

  “What the fuck, Felix?” Deacon asked loudly.

  “Caught the fairy breaking into Dad’s office,” Felix shouted, and pressed the gun so hard against Rafe’s head that he was leaning on the wall, the gun holding him in place. He hadn’t wanted things to go this way. He’d wanted to find the evidence that Arlo had killed his dad; he’d wanted his day in court, watching Arlo answer for a hundred crimes.

  But it seemed he was going to die, and he kept his eyes tightly closed.

  “Give me the fucking gun,” Deacon ordered. “We don’t do shit this way.”

  The gun moved, but clearly Felix hadn’t passed it to Deacon, because it was still hard and heavy against his skin. Then it moved away from him.

  “Don’t fucking point it at me,” Deacon snarled, then there was a scuffle and a thud.

  Still Rafe didn’t open his eyes.

  The commotion had drawn an audience; his cousin’s voice, his uncle’s, and then the gentlest of touches to his chin.

  “Look at me, Rafe,” Uncle Arlo said, and finally Rafe opened his eyes. “What were you doing?”

  Deacon was there, staring down at him, his arms crossed over his chest, Felix’s gun in his hand. There was no smile, no connection, and he looked deadly.

  “Stand up,” Arlo ordered, and gestured for Deacon to help him, which Deacon did, yanking him into a standing position but holding him steady. “Talk to me,” Arlo began. “I took you in, in memory of my brother—”

  “You killed him,” Rafe snapped. He wasn’t living past tonight; in his heart, he knew that.

  Arlo shook his head, as if he was humoring Rafe, then his grip on reality appeared to loosen, and he went from benign uncle to madman. He closed his hands around Rafe’s throat, loosely at first and then tighter.

  “My sister was a whore to marry that man,” he snarled, spitting the last word into Rafe’s face. “He was a traitor. I’m ashamed of you,” Arlo shouted. “You have my blood, but you are nothing but a waste of skin. How could God bring a man like your father into my life to betray me?”

  “You’re fucked,” Rafe shouted. “Any god you pray to won’t forgive you for what you do.”

  Arlo shook him, and Deacon loosened his hold on Rafe’s arm.

  “You whoreson,” Arlo added with a shove.

  Rafe wasn’t backing down. “I’ve heard stories of what happened to my mom. Dad told me she didn’t die in a car accident, that she’d been beaten to death. You did that,” Rafe shouted at his uncle over the chokehold. He was aware that the game he was playing was a dangerous one, but what had happened to his mom had been a horror he could only imagine, and his dad’s dying words had damned Arlo to hell.

  Arlo was a murderer, and Rafe’s parents had both died by his hand. He was sure of it. There was no way he was leaving this Earth without taking down Arlo and his sons.

  This family had black blood.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Arlo snapped, and shook him. Rafe thought he saw Deacon move a little, but he must have imagined it, because Deacon wasn’t doing anything.

  “Take him out,” Arlo snapped. “Get rid of him.”

  Felix stepped forward, his mouth wide in a shit-eating grin, reaching f
or the gun that Deacon now held.

  “I’ll do it,” Deacon said, his tone like ice. He still didn’t look at Rafe, but the words were enough for every hopeful cell in his body to wither and die. He tried to scramble free when Arlo let him go; he even managed to get a few feet away before Deacon’s fist met his cheekbone and he crumpled at the strong blow.

  “Don’t kill him here like the last one,” Arlo snapped. “Take him out like I fucking said.”

  “I’ll take him to the lake,” Deacon said, very clearly, concisely, as if he’d considered before now what to do with a body.

  Deacon gripped Rafe’s arm, yanked him into a standing position. The hold hurt – even more when Felix bound his hands behind him and Deacon dragged him outside. Down the stairs, through the back door, he was dragged and pulled, Felix at their side, every so often yanking at a part of Rafe as if he was helping. At the start of the dock, which vanished into the dark, he let his body sag, attempted to get away, but two men were holding him, two men digging their fingers into his arms and torso, and Felix’s hand clamped tight over his mouth. He tried to bite, but it was getting difficult to breathe. Felix stuffed something in his mouth, and they must have reached the end of the dock, Felix letting go of him first and then Deacon shoving him backward.

  “We should weigh him down,” Deacon said. “I don’t want him floating.”

  Rafe shook his head, looking behind him at the darkness beyond.

  “I’ll get something,” Felix said gleefully, and vanished back the way they’d come.

  Rafe spat out the material that Felix had stuffed into his mouth, but Deacon stopped him moving anymore, holding the gun at his temple just as Felix had.

  Rafe coughed. “They killed my mom, after I was born – Arlo drove her car off the road.” He was desperate. “And my dad – he knew what her brother had done, and for that they killed him too.”

  “Shut up,” Deacon snapped.

  “Deacon, you don’t have to do this.”

  Nothing changed in Deacon’s expression, and his gun hand didn’t waver.