by Mary Calmes
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Author’s Note
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Copyright
Late in the Day
By Mary Calmes
Second From The Vault
Terrence Moss. Conrad Harris. Gold Team Leader. Darius Hawthorne. The Vault. Juggling all these names would bother some, but for Darius, it’s business as usual. When he closes a chapter in his life, he leaves a name—and the people associated with it—behind. He’s managed to keep a few colleagues, even fewer friends, and no companionship through his forty-plus years… but that’s now changing.
The newest chapter of his life is bringing serious change: a stable home, a recovered identity, an unlikely family, and now a chance encounter with the one man Darius ever loved: Efrem Lahm. The reasons they parted are still valid, and there’s no way they can trust each other. But Efrem has already decided he won’t let Darius go… and Darius will have to decide if he wants to take a chance with his heart this late in the day.
For Lynn, who is on my journey with me, Lisa, who makes everything better, and Susan, who answers odd questions about her home.
Chapter One
SOMETIMES IN life, being a person’s protector translated into trivial situations like making sure they called when they got home safely after leaving your place for the night. At other times caretaking took on a more life-or-death connotation. Me looking after Trevan Bean was the latter, which was why I came along to what appeared, on the surface, like a normal everyday meeting with his fairly new boss, Marc Eastman.
“You know,” Trevan teased—he’d learned to do that over the course of our acquaintance—“having you come with me is like bringing a gun to a knife fight.”
“You’re saying I’m overkill?”
“Yeah,” Trevan said, grinning wolfishly. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Once upon a time, he’d been terrified of me. That had stopped years ago, which said more about me and how scary I wasn’t anymore than anything else.
It made sense. I was tired. Though I didn’t like to admit it, after twenty-plus years of killing for my country under the umbrella of the military, and then for profit as a private contractor, I was more than ready to quit. The chances of that happening, of everyone letting me quietly walk away, had been, originally, slim to none. As a rule, contract killers didn’t retire; someone retired them. The fact that I would be spared that was still very new, a blessing that had blindsided me. It wasn’t, however, only my good fortune. The man we were there to see was also reaping the rewards of my newfound lease on life. Had I still been thinking I had no future, I would have been far less patient with him.
When we reached the penthouse on the slowest elevator in existence and I exited, I counted five men in the room—not including Marc Eastman and his second-in-command, David Seta, who were sitting out on the balcony, Eastman on his phone. Conspicuously missing was Dean Fortney, Eastman’s muscle, the guy in charge of security. It looked ominous.
One of the men waved Trevan and me outside onto the balcony that looked out toward Ren Cen. It meant all those men between us and the door, but I was still pleased to have a great view of all the other buildings. It meant Ceaton Mercer, my number two, my guardian at meetings like this one, would have no trouble making sure Trevan and I remained healthy. Eastman had no clue whom he was truly dealing with. Sadly, that ignorance would end with this meeting.
Gesturing for Trevan to go ahead of me as I trailed behind him, I noted the sharp contrast between the white rugs, furniture, and walls in Eastman’s home and the black overcoats Trevan and I wore. I wasn’t crazy about the target we presented, but between myself and Ceaton in the next building, I was pretty confident that even if Eastman’s men drew down on us that we would be all right. The odds were in our favor.
Once outside, we took seats across from Trevan’s boss. It was fortunate we were still wearing our overcoats because it was cold outside, somewhere in the twenties. Yesterday it had been warmer, up in the fifties, but the temperature plummeted overnight and hadn’t come back up.
“Why are we out here,” I groused under my breath, irritated, hating the cold almost as much as the cloying humidity of summer.
“I prefer it actually,” Trevan answered my rhetorical question. “I mean, it feels like a fishbowl in there. At least out here we can breathe.”
“It’s March,” I muttered, still grouchy, having not had enough coffee yet. “Jesus.”
Trevan chuckled beside me. “It’s Detroit.”
I grunted.
“I think you hate the cold more than anyone I know.”
It made me foul; there was no way around that. I should have planned to move to Florida instead of Boston because that was like going from the frying pan into the fire, but I had already made the plans to leave Detroit very soon.
“Seriously,” Trevan teased me. “Maybe the city we want is Honolulu.”
“Shut up,” I ordered.
“Trevan,” Eastman greeted warmly after ending his call, standing from behind a heavy cut-glass table with beveled edges, hand held out for my friend to take.
Trevan stayed seated and kept his arms crossed, no longer needing to make nice with the guy who’d killed his old boss, his first boss, the man he would have walked through fire for, trusting me when I said his family was safe and his husband, Landry Carter, already in Boston, was just as secure.
“No?” Eastman said snidely, spurring laughter and snickering around us. “You don’t even want to touch me anymore?”
“I never wanted to,” Trevan assured him, “but now I don’t have to because I’m leaving the city after this.”
“You don’t go anywhere without my say so, little boy.”
Trevan scoffed. “Watch me.”
Eastman’s gaze darted to me, and I watched guys moving to stand behind me out of the corner of my eye.
“You should have them be still,” I suggested. “Don’t want everyone ending up like Fortney.”
He jolted—it wasn’t subtle—and Seta, beside him, went ashen. “Where’s Fortney?” Eastman asked shakily.
“Call and find out.”
Everyone froze as Eastman turned to his second-in-command, who pulled his phone from the breast pocket of his suit jacket.
“I need to check something,” I said, opening my hand and extending it out to my side. The small red dot that hit it caused murmurs on the balcony and in the room next to us, gasps, and Seta whimpered as he spoke while Eastman quickly crossed his arms.
“What is this?” he asked sharply, no power in his voice, more a rasp.
“This is me wanting you to understand that everyone here is alive right now because I’m allowing it. Move your guys back where I can see them or I’ll have my colleague start shooting.”
Everyone complied quickly and moved to the opposite side of the balcony or room behind Eastman.
Seta placed his phone facedown on the table.
“Well?” Eastman prodded anxiously, brows furrowed, lips pursed, just the picture of unease. What’s going on?”
“Fortney’s dead,” Seta reported.
Eastman had a pretty good poker face, but when he glanced at me as well, he caught his breath. The quick swallow was not something I missed either.
“Just dead?” I aske
d Seta, wanting my intent to be clear.
He cleared his throat. “No. You left him in pieces.”
“Not me,” I clarified, smiling smugly, laying it on. “A colleague.”
“Why would he do that to—to him?”
I shrugged. “I asked my guy to send a message.”
“And what was that?”
I turned to Trevan.
“What?” Trevan repeated.
“Fortney killed Pike,” I told him flatly.
“He was the one?”
I nodded.
“Thank you for finding out.”
I returned my attention to Eastman and Seta. “Trevan asked me to find the guy who killed Pike and then to make sure that he got the same—and more—that his mentor did.”
Eastman took a breath through his nose.
“I didn’t want you to miss retribution when you saw it,” I stated flatly.
His hands closed tightly over the ends of the armrests on his chair. “You realize that I have twenty men here in the penthouse with us and even more just one floor below.”
“The man covering my back is a surgeon with a rifle in his hand, and at the moment he has the most expensive scope in the world mounted on it. I know that because I bought it for him a little over a month ago as a housewarming present.”
He shivered. It was subtle—I only saw it because I was watching so closely.
“Plants are so cliché, don’t you think?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Eastman promised.
“You’re not.” I was implacable. “Because if I do anything but sit here and smile, my guy will send an RPG into the floor below after he kills every last person left alive here.”
“You think he can shoot that fast?”
“He doesn’t have to do anything fast. He’ll just kill whoever’s left once I’m done.”
Eastman paled.
“I have a gun too. I’m not just going to sit here and let you draw down on me or Trevan. You’re insane if you think that could ever happen.”
“You’re so confident in your associate?”
“I didn’t say associate. I said he was my guy, and that makes all the difference here with what lengths he’s prepared to go to.”
Ceaton Mercer was, in fact, my knight, the guy who kept me safe. It was a brand-new arrangement. A contract killer would not normally have backup, but I’d taken a new job, a permanent one, thus the push to get Trevan out of Detroit.
Trevan wasn’t sure. He’d lived his whole life in Detroit, and the idea of leaving the city, his city, was scary. But I was sure it was the right thing to do, and because he wanted the man he loved safe, as well as his family, he was doing as I directed and going forward with plans to uproot his life and move to Boston so he could remain under my protection.
“Why there?” he asked that morning in the car as we drove toward downtown.
“Because I found this island I like that’s quiet,” I replied mildly, “but it’s also close to the city, so you can find a place to do your restaurant thing and Landry can relocate his jewelry business.”
Trevan nodded like that made sense. And I knew it did. Logic and I were very well acquainted. But still, I knew he was hurting. It was hard to leave, harder to start over, and he was angry that he had to. But he was out of choices.
It always went that way when a person began to legitimize a previously illegitimate business. Someone wasn’t happy. In the case of my friend, Trevan Bean, he had been trying to get out of the gun trafficking business for the past two years. Slowly, flying under the radar, he’d been liquidating illegal inventory—firearms and explosives—and changing it over into legal inventory at a lesser profit, still with money always coming in. He had some creative accounting going so that no one was any the wiser at the moment, but I’d been certain that a reckoning was coming. When Trevan told me he had a meeting he couldn’t get out of, I knew the time had arrived.
I, of course, understood the impetus behind the change. Two years ago, Gabriel Pike, Trevan’s mentor, had been killed execution-style when Thiago Fanton came to Detroit and eliminated the Masada crime family’s hold in a wave of blood that left no boss standing. Trevan wasn’t originally targeted because he wasn’t far enough up the food chain. He was only the guy who managed the runners who collected gambling debts as well, but his job changed as soon as Eastman realized what he had. Trevan was smart, and he could do his job in his sleep. He was moved immediately up to logistics, became the guy who tracked what inventory came in and went out, and in that capacity, he became invaluable to not only Eastman, but Eastman’s boss, Fanton.
Thiago Fanton, a member of the Gaeta crime family out of New York, wanted all the guns and gambling business in Detroit and he was adding drugs and girls to the mix, something Trevan and the rest of the Masada crew weren’t involved in before. There was big money in meth, cocaine, and prostitution, and the new Italian mob now fighting with the guys already there was taking the business in that direction. What had hurt Trevan the most was that initially Gabriel told him he’d be given the choice to leave on his own terms. Gabriel planned his departure. He sent his family ahead to California, but he never joined them. After three days, his wife contacted Trevan, who alerted the police to his disappearance.
A week later, Gabriel’s body had been identified and the grisly details recounted to Trevan—because he was the one to file the missing person report. Having to call Gabriel’s wife, a woman he knew, shredded him up inside. I sat beside him in his office, my hands on his shoulders as he broke down sobbing afterward.
“They killed him because he didn’t want to become a pimp and a drug dealer,” he cried.
“I know, kid,” I tried to soothe him.
He heaved out a breath. “I’m going to fix this.”
I didn’t even want to know what that meant. It wasn’t my area. My only job was to protect him from anyone who wanted to hurt him and make them pay if they tried. It was one of many hats I wore.
“I won’t lose anyone else.”
He lost his father when he was young, and losing Gabriel was almost more than he could bear. “I swear to God, Con,” he said sadly, his voice nasal from crying. “I’m gonna get out of this fuckin’ business in one piece, but first off, I’m gonna make it legit so no one will ever be able to tie me to anything dirty.”
I sat quietly beside him and let him alternate between tears and rage. It was my role.
A week later, as I stood beside him at the steel mill on Zug Island, I asked him if he was sure about his course of action.
“I am.”
So I gave the go-ahead, and we watched as molten steel was poured over weapons that Trevan Bean was responsible for selling. Anything from Glocks to Uzis, AK-47s to shotguns and rocket launchers to revolvers were destroyed. Millions of dollars were gone in seconds and as we walked out I was silent.
“You’re worried about me, about my choices,” he said quietly.
“I am.”
He cleared his throat. “I know you didn’t sign on for this, so if you can’t have my back anymore I—”
“This changes nothing,” I muttered, keeping my voice low, comforting. “I’ve pledged to keep you safe, and I will. I’m just wondering what your plan is.”
“Plan for what?” he asked, turning to look at me.
“I get destroying the guns, but what are you putting in their place?”
His smile was wicked. “I do have a thought.”
I was really only slightly concerned.
Eighteen months later and people were starting to catch on, so I was taking him out of Detroit before anyone got around to coming after him. Not that he wasn’t on everyone’s list to get rid of, but to get to him, they had to go through me.
That was easier said than done, but they had begun trying.
It started out so small that I had barely noticed at first.
I had a near miss in a parking garage, and a day later, a drunk almost ran me down as I was crossing a street in C
hinatown. A week after that, a guy tried to mug me. So stupid. When he was dead, as I checked the gun he’d pulled on me, I realized the firearm cost more than what I had on me. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with the logistics of moving Trevan, finding the man I wanted to be my backup as I moved into my new position, and looking for a house for myself in the Boston area—I probably would have realized sooner that these were actual attempts on my life. But as it was, when I was tailed for three blocks in the dead of winter and the car came up onto the sidewalk after me—no pretending, no swerving, just without a doubt trying to run me down—well, then they had my attention.
Of course, after that incident, after I left four dead men in an Oldsmobile in an alley… then things escalated.
Five guys were in my condo when I got home from driving Trevan to a meeting, so I went upstairs to my neighbor’s place—a very sweet flight attendant who was never home—went out onto her balcony and literally got the drop on them. It was exhausting, killing men with a knife, but a gun would have been too noisy, even with a suppressor, and digging bullets out of bodies was a pain in the ass.
The blood was a whole other annoyance. Luckily I found the vehicle they’d come in—it was parked conspicuously in a guest spot in the resident lot—and loaded the dead men into the Chevy Suburban. I was really quite appreciative of all the space. After the fifth time up and down the stairs, I was beat. Even guys like professional soccer players who did tons of cardio, would have been tired after that.
I left the Suburban under an overpass, ablaze, and then burned everything I’d worn when I got home. The quickest way to get caught was to transfer something from a crime scene to home, so I stripped down at the front door, leaving every stitch outside—it was late, after all—then changed, returned to my welcome mat, gathered everything I’d worn, head to toe, and took it to the basement and charred it to ash in the furnace.
Now, a week later, I was escorting Trevan to an early morning meeting with Eastman, the guy Fanton had put in charge before he returned to New York, satisfied that his new man could hold down the fort in the Motor City. The meeting took Eastman three weeks to set up because Trevan had been ducking his calls and working very hard to hide without looking like he was.
