The Reed Montgomery Series Box Set

by Logan Ryles

  The room cheered. A couple tables away, Reed heard a drunk guy lean in and grunt to his friend, “Damn, dawg. I’d hit that.”

  Banks strummed her fingers across the guitar strings, unleashing a gentle melody into the room. Reed recognized it immediately, and it tore through his heart, flooding him with aching memories of that bar in Atlanta—the first place he heard those chords. As Banks leaned forward and pressed her lips next to the mic, a new wave of guilt and passion swept over him.

  “He was a vagrant, and I a gypsy. I lost my way when he first kissed me.”

  Reed looked away from the stage. The wrenching agony that cascaded through his whole body felt more real and painful than any fistfight or bullet wound. It was total, complete heartache.

  I did this to her. I made her song come true. I destroyed her heart.

  The bar sat in transfixed silence as Banks sang. The boisterous drunks in the back watched with their glassy, intoxicated gazes fixed on the singer as she whispered each delicate lyric into the mic. Nobody moved. Nobody talked. Banks enraptured them as much as she had enraptured him only four weeks prior.

  But this time, he could tell the difference. He detected the missing passion, the cavern behind the words. Banks was too much a performer to relax on her delivery, but she couldn’t fake the emptiness in her voice.

  “Can I get you another?” Reed was suddenly aware of the waitress at his side, leaning close. He blinked away the tears and shook his head. She turned and wandered off through the crowd, leaving him alone as Banks broke into the bridge.

  “I give, I gave, I’d have given him everything. I just wanted to believe some things would last forever.”

  Each word shredded what remained of his stamina, emotionally bringing him to his knees. He didn’t recall her singing this bridge in Atlanta, though perhaps it was a lapse in memory or the alcohol fogging his brain. Or maybe he had crushed her even deeper than he had crushed himself.

  Banks’s soft voice drifted away, and for a moment, Reed forgot about all the people pressed in around him. Then a wave of roaring applause filled the room, shaking the walls, and pounding in his ears. Banks smiled, her bright lips lifting into what looked like true happiness, but he could see past the mask, through the charade of a performer. Her real smile could light up a tomb, and this wasn’t it.

  She played three more songs, all covers of popular country tracks, then she waved and bowed without a word and moved toward the back of the building. Reed dropped a twenty on the table, then pushed his way through the crowd and out the swinging doors. The chaos of the city streets crushed in around him as he forced his way along the sidewalk, desperately fighting his way around the building to the nearest alley. Piles of pallets and empty alcohol boxes lined the walls as he pushed through them, splashing across mud puddles and around dumpsters to the back of the three-story bar and the connecting alley.

  As he rounded the corner, he saw her. Banks sat on the back step next to a closed door, her guitar leaned up against the brick wall, and her head in her hands as her shoulders rose and fell in gentle sobs. His world stood still, locked in a purgatory of her tears. Every protective and loving instinct within him ignited, thundering to life and commanding him to rush forward, take her in his arms, and sweep her off her feet.

  But he couldn’t move. His feet were frozen to the ground, locked down by guilt and uncertainty. His hands trembled as he held them towards her and whispered, “Banks . . .”

  Her blue eyes flashed as they met his. The cloud of confusion and hurt that filled her gaze clamped down on his heart, unleashing new levels of agony. She stood up and stepped back. Her hair, now a tangled mess hanging over her ears and eyes, was stuck to her forehead by a layer of sweat.

  It’s sixty degrees outside. Why is she sweating?

  Reed took a step forward and held out his hand. “Banks . . . I need to talk to you.”

  She licked her lips, her face flushing a sudden crimson, and she shook her head once, then took another step back.

  “Please.” Reed waited, still holding out his hand.

  She hesitated, and her lips parted. For a moment, he thought she was about to speak, but then he noticed her chest heaving in short puffs. Her flushed face faded to a pale white, and without a sound, she collapsed in the alley.

  Fourteen

  Salvador hated America with every part of his soul. Deep within him, in his very bones, this place felt hostile and cold. Maybe it was because of his line of work, or because he was hostile and cold himself. Maybe it was because America made him into a person he never wanted to be.

  The darkness of the small hotel room hung around him like a cloak, and the lights from his laptop danced in front of his eyes. The video feed was weak and broken, shifting and freezing from time to time, but the audio was clear. The familiar voices of his family, four thousand miles away in the midst of war-torn Venezuela, carried over the fickle internet connection, bringing the first warmth to his soul that he had felt in weeks. A smile spread across his tired face as the voice of his grandmother babbled on in hurried Spanish, discussing the local politics that ravaged his homeland. He listened to the words, but the only thing he heard was the voice. His sisters, two nephews, and his mother also appeared on the screen in turns, excitedly greeting him with smiles and blown kisses. Salvador waved back and asked them about school, work, and what books his mother was reading. Salvador sent books home every week for her, along with his weekly wire transfers. He could see the warmth in their cheeks and a little fat beneath their olive skin for the first time in months. Food was hard to come by in Venezuela, as inflation and political turmoil shattered the weak economy. The money Salvador sent home was the only thing keeping his large family alive. It was why he left South America in the first place—to find a lifeline that would keep his hungry siblings in school and his parents and grandparents out of the grave.

  “How are things at the plant, Salvador?” His mother put down the book she had been reading to him and smiled with the sort of warmth and love that only a mother could express.

  Salvador blinked and hesitated. “The plant . . . yes. Things are well. We’re building parts for Nissan.”

  “Are you still enjoying the work? Are they treating you well?”

  Salvador smiled. “Of course, Mamá. Things are different in America. The factories are safe.”

  “They pay you so much. It’s hard to understand.”

  He shrugged. “I work hard for them. They give me extra hours.”

  The smile faded from her wrinkled lips, and worry crowded into her eyes. “Salvador, you don’t have to. You should be pursuing your own life. Finding a nice girl. All this work is going to kill you.”

  Salvador shrugged. “I enjoy the work, Mamá. You know that. Is Papá home?”

  The worry in her eyes faded to sadness, but she nodded. The laptop twisted, and the screen froze, then it was filled with the familiar features of his tired father—worn and serious. Salvador had never seen his father smile—not once in thirty-two years. He was more than a serious man; he was a severe one. But he loved his family, and he would do anything to protect them.

  “Papá, how are you?”

  The old man grunted. “I’m fine, Salvador. How are things at the ‘plant’?” Salvador’s father never spoke of the plant without suspicion in his tone. Every time he asked about the work in America, his eyebrows furrowed, and he stared at Salvador with the intensity of a man who didn’t believe anything he was being told. Maybe he saw through Salvador’s farce, or maybe it was simply sixty years of programed distrust for America talking. Venezuela was, after all, a communist-leaning nation for many years and a loose ally with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

  Salvador shifted but smiled. “Well, Papá, I’m getting promoted soon. I’ll be able to send more home for the family.”

  His father grunted. “We don’t need the money, Salvador. I can provide for the family on my own.”

  “Papá, the children need schoolbooks, and Mamá n
eeds medicine for her back. I’m happy to help.”

  The suspicion in the old man’s eyes remained, but he shrugged. The video feed faded and froze again, but the distorted audio continued to carry through the tiny laptop speakers.

  “Salvador, there’s something I want to tell you. I want you to know—”

  The audio cut and warbled with electronic distortion. Salvador leaned closer to the computer, holding his ear next to the speaker. He still couldn’t hear anything.

  “Papá? Are you there?”

  “ . . . I know . . . I should have . . .”

  The screen went black, and then a window popped up: VIDEO CALL FAILED.

  Salvador sighed and closed the laptop. He ran his hands through his dark hair as exhaustion tore at his mind. It wasn’t the kind that comes from the physical exertion he claimed to expend at the plant. This was the exhaustion of mental torment, months of self-doubt, and guilt. So much damn guilt.

  He didn’t want to become a killer. He didn’t leave Venezuela to administer violence elsewhere. He came here to find better work, and to find a way to feed his starving family. But the immigration system rejected him. He was deported twice, returning to Venezuela without visiting his parents or letting them know of his failures. Embarrassment and self-hatred wouldn’t allow him to fail, and it soon became clear that if he wanted to get ahead in the world—if he wanted to win—he had to fight dirty.

  The criminal underworld was a cold and ruthless place, but working for men who lived in the shadows paid a great deal better than any Nissan plant ever could. Salvador was good at making things happen. He was good at being the hand of men who couldn’t afford to leave fingerprints. Being the fingerprint himself, and risking his own demise, promised the payout his family depended on.

  Salvador twisted until his back crackled. He picked up a photograph from the desk and walked through the connecting door to the adjoining suite. Six men stood around a table loaded with MP5 submachine guns and H&K pistols. Dressed in black combat gear, they were pale-skinned, broad-shouldered, Swedish by birth, and a solid eight inches taller than him. Trained killers, all of them. The six men formed the Swedish mercenary group, Legion X. After Cedric Muri was gunned down in Atlantic City, Salvador knew he might need backup, so he hired Legion X out of his own pocket, flew them into Atlanta, and now held them in reserve.

  A seventh man lounged in a chair in the corner of the room. Unlike the others, he wore street clothes and tennis shoes, and his blonde hair stuck out from under an Atlanta Braves hat.

  Salvador raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

  The man in the corner nodded. He spoke in a heavy Swedish accent with weak English, but Salvador could make out the gist of what he was saying. “It is as you said. He did not kill Montgomery. They fought near the river, then The Wolf just . . . quit. I do not know why.”

  Salvador nodded. “We have work to do. Two of you are flying to New York immediately. There’s a young woman at a special needs facility outside of Albany. Pick her up and take her to Detroit. Don’t harm her, and wait for further instructions.”

  Salvador dropped the photograph on the table. It was of a young woman with blonde hair. Her eyes were large, but her features were distorted with the clear marks of Down syndrome.

  One of the men in black picked up the photo and regarded it through narrowed eyes. “Who is this woman?”

  Salvador walked to the window and crossed his arms, staring out at the city. His stomach knotted, but he swallowed back the taste of bile in his mouth. “Her name is Collins. She’s The Wolf’s sister. If we cannot pay the man to do his job, we’ll force him.”

  Fifteen

  Reed sat next to the narrow bed and stroked Banks’s forehead with a damp washcloth. Her face had faded from white to red, and now back to white. Her skin was warm to the touch, and her palms were clammy. When he held his ear against her chest, he heard her heart thump at an accelerated pace. Banks inhaled in short gusts and breathed out just as fast.

  He dipped the washcloth back into the bowl and wrung it out before touching it to her forehead again. Her nose twitched, and her head turned a little, but she didn’t open her eyes.

  Baxter lay on the floor next to him, drool pooling on the carpet beside his slack jaw. The bulldog’s legs were splayed out behind him, but his eyes peered up at Reed with concern rippling through their inky depths.

  Reed wiped the cloth across his own forehead. He wasn’t sure why he confronted Banks in the alley behind the bar. He had to find her—that thought rang clearly through his head from the moment he accepted Kelly’s death and drove away from the scene of the fire. For two weeks he searched diligently to locate Banks, hiring Dillan and implementing every Google search known to man. It was a fruitless, desperate search—something that consumed his every thought outside of destroying the people who murdered Kelly.

  Now that he found her, he wasn’t entirely sure why he started looking in the first place. Deep within his soul, he felt things for this woman that he had never felt for anyone. He cared for her in an instinctive, meaningful way that regulated his actions and filtered his intentions right to their core. But none of those feelings answered the dominating question of why he felt he had the authority to track her down. Did she deserve her privacy? Should he have let her go?

  Baxter grunted, almost as though he understood Reed’s internal conflict better than Reed understood it himself.

  I can’t let her go. I have to make this right.

  Banks stirred, and Reed sat up. She had lain passed out on the bed for four hours now, with occasional twitches. But this time, her eyes fluttered, and her tongue touched her dry lips.

  “Here, drink this,” he whispered, and held out a bottle of water with a straw.

  Her eyes were still clouded with confusion as she accepted the straw and sucked down two greedy gulps of water, then fell back against the pillow. She blinked and turned her head toward him. “Chris.”

  Reed looked away, fiddling with the rag in the bowl.

  She lay still, but he heard her breathing regulate as her full consciousness returned. Her voice turned cold as she spoke again. “No. Not Chris. Reed.”

  Reed folded the towel around his fingers, refusing to face her. Banks pushed her hands beneath her and began to sit up.

  “You should lay down,” Reed said. “You need to rest.”

  “I know what I need,” she snapped. She leaned against the wall and grabbed the water bottle. Reed thought she might have intended to snatch it from him, but she was too weak to give it more than a tug. He released it, and she gulped down two more swallows.

  “I’m home.”

  “Yes.” Reed cast a glance around the tiny apartment. It was a studio with dingy yellow walls and carpet that somehow rivaled that of the hotel in Chattanooga.

  “How did you find my place?”

  Reed gestured to her phone. “Significant location on your maps app.”

  “My phone was locked.” There was no grace in her voice. No feeling.

  Reed shrugged. “Thumbprint.”

  “Nice. Glad to see you’re still busy intruding.”

  Reed forced himself to face her, then rested his palms against his kneecaps and cleared his throat. “Are you . . . okay?”

  Banks pushed sweaty hair out of her eyes and tilted her head. “Well, let me see. The man I thought loved me turned out to be a liar, a psychopath, a professional killer, and the kidnapper of my godfather—who, by the way, was brutally gunned down right in front of me. I have no family left, no friends, I’m living in this shithole trying to be left alone, and now you’re here. How do you think I’m doing?”

  Reed rubbed his fingers against his worn jeans, then took a slow breath. “I meant . . . physically. You seem sick.”

  Banks blew a fallen strand of hair out of her eyes. “Wow, you’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?”

  “I know you have Lyme disease.”

  “Oh, do you now? Well, that shouldn’t surprise me. You are, aft
er all, a black-hearted criminal. Bet you know all kinds of things.”

  Reed closed his eyes. Her each and every word sank into his heart, tearing through him like a bullet. Igniting more pain than any of his dozens of injuries over the last two weeks. Every part of him wanted to scream, wanted to grab Banks, pull her close, and beg her to forgive him. Tell her everything about Iraq and prison and the bad choices he made that led him down this long, bloody path. He was ready to spill his guts, right here and now.

  But no. She wouldn’t buy any of it. The proof was in the pudding, after all, and the only pudding she had ever seen was the blood and carnage he’d left behind.

  “Banks, I can’t ever apologize for what I’ve done. I don’t think there’s anything I can say that will make it better. I’m willing to tell you anything you want to know. I’m asking you to believe me when I say I never meant for you to get hurt. I did everything in my power to protect you.”

  Banks snorted. “Well, aren’t I a lucky girl?”

  Reed looked up again. “You don’t even know what happened…why your godfather was killed.”

  “Does it matter? He’s dead. And as far as I can tell, it’s your fault.”

  “It might matter, Banks. I want to explain. I want to make this all right, but I didn’t come here to win you back. I—”

  “That’s good to know, because I’m done with you, Chris. Or Reed. Or whoever the fuck you are. You’re just like every other deadbeat on the planet. Happy to get into my pants on a dark stormy night, and just as happy to leave me high and dry when shit hits the fan. Only you’re worse because you’re actually a horrible person.”

  As she spoke, her words faded from angry outbursts to weaker and weaker sobs. She finally broke off and slumped against the wall, her face turning red as sweat dripped down her cheeks.

  “What’s happening?” Reed asked. “Are you sick?”

  “Of course I’m sick. Don’t you know everything?”

  “Okay, well, where are your meds? What do you need?”