“Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
A fire engine lumbered into the intersection, its wail deafening a moment before it cut off. A fireman hopped off the back and headed their direction.
Before he reached them, Ghost said, “I’ve got three guys inside.”
“Of fucking course you do.”
“They’ve already sent hostages out. Let’s hold tight, and see what they can do.”
Vince sighed. “Bikers are playing SWAT guys now?”
“These aren’t ordinary bikers.”
~*~
The gunmen moved softly into the room. Leah could hear the brush of carpet, and the creak of their gear, though their actual footfalls made no sounds.
She pressed her fingers to her lips to keep them from trembling, and concentrated on keeping still, keeping silent. Listening.
“Over there,” a low, masculine voice said. More creaking, more carpet brushing.
A commotion, then. A bang. And a scream.
Isobel. They’d found Isobel in the trash can.
“No, no, please!” she cried.
Leah could hear her thrashing and kicking. The can toppled with a plastic clatter.
Leah’s lungs squeezed, and her heart leapt. Oh God, oh God.
“Please! Stop it!”
Gabe shouted, “Let go of her!”
She heard him moving, shoving a chair, trying to rush to her aid.
Then a gunshot.
Isobel screamed.
Gabe let out a grunt of pain.
Black spots crowded Leah’s vision. Oh God, oh God.
She’d never gone for those shooting lessons; didn’t have her own weapon. She had some Mace in her purse, but that was back at her desk. She had nothing, was only small, and non-threatening, and trapped here in a nightmare, the fire alarm cycling again and again.
But she had to do something. Couldn’t crouch here and hide anymore.
What would Ava do? What would Maggie do?
Old ladies were old ladies not just because they slept with bikers – bikers had chosen them, and they’d chosen bikers, because they were tough enough to handle that life.
She let her hand drop. Took a breath. And crawled out from under the table.
~*~
Carter stepped over the slumped body of a young man in the hallway just past the stairwell. He didn’t know if he was dead or alive, or his friends, either, but he didn’t have time for that. They’d just heard a gunshot, and a door stood open partway down the hall. Tenny and Reese slipped through it, and Carter followed, heart in his throat, hands sweating inside his gloves, on the stock of the rifle.
It took him a moment to make sense of the tableau that greeted them. When he realized what was happening, his world narrowed down to one point: Leah’s face.
Her chin trembling, her eyes shiny, but her voice steady. Her empty hands held up, palms presented to the three men in black who were squared off from her.
One of them held onto a young woman in a blue dress; she was shivering and crying.
A young man in a suit lay sprawled across the carpet, groaning, hand clutching a wound in his thigh that was rapidly bleeding all over the place.
“Please,” Leah was saying. “We’re unarmed. We just wanted to leave the building. We don’t have any money. Please.” Her throat jumped as she swallowed. Her gaze shifted toward him, and widened – with fear, he realized. She thought there were now six goons in the room with them; couldn’t recognize him behind a helmet and goggles.
“If you want a hostage,” she said, “take me. I’ll go quietly.”
Oh, baby. His chest hurt, sharp pain, driving the breath from his lungs. No.
“But please leave them alone. Please get some help for Gabe – I’m afraid he’s gonna – gonna bleed to death.”
“Shut up,” one of the men barked, and took a step toward her.
Carter lowered the rifle, settled his sights, and shot him in the back of the neck, right between his helmet and his vest collar.
Blood sprayed forward, a thick gout like a fountain, and he staggered forward; hit his knees, fell face-first on the floor, twitching.
The other two were shouting, turning, but Tenny and Reese had them. Carter registered the glint of a knife, heard the muted sound of a suppressed gunshot.
Carter propped the rifle on his shoulder, shoved the goggles up onto his helmet, and said, “Leah.”
Her face went blank with shock. And then crumpled. She ran at him, already crying, and hit him like a missile, arms tight around him at once. Pressing her first sob into his collar.
“Oh my God,” she choked out. “Oh my God, you’re here.”
Carter looped his arm around her and held her back, dropped his face into her hair, briefly, breathed her coconut shampoo, and the clean skin of her scalp. Alive. Safe. And so, so brave.
“You’re here,” she repeated.
“I’m here, baby, I’m here.”
~*~
Reese pulled off his belt and knelt beside the wounded civilian – who gasped and tried to scramble back from him. In as reassuring a voice as he could manage – he wasn’t practiced in this sort of thing – he said, “I’m here to help.” Brushed a weak hand aside and tied the belt off above the wound as a tourniquet. “You shouldn’t walk.”
“I can carry him.” Reese glanced up to see a pale, trembling young man in a suit standing above them. His expression was determined, through the fear.
“Good. Get him out. Carter can help you.”
Carter, still with an arm around Leah, nodded. “What about you guys?”
“We need to find Ian,” Tenny said, straightening. He’d bent to wipe his knife clean on the dead man’s pants leg. “He’s still here.”
Reese stood, and nodded. “We’re fine. Go.”
Carter didn’t argue. Whispered something to Leah, who nodded and wiped her face, and then moved into position to help lift the wounded man.
Reese turned full toward Tenny. “The knife. Really.”
Tenny grinned at him, all sharp white teeth beneath the gleam of his goggles. “You aren’t going to suggest this is actually a challenge, are you?”
Reese stared at him – but couldn’t deny it. As far as troops went, these weren’t the best.
“Don’t spoil my fun.” His grin widened an impossible fraction. He patted Reese’s cheek with a gloved hand and headed for the door. “Come on, then.”
Reese sighed…and resisted the urge to smile himself.
~*~
“You have holdings in New York?” Luis asked.
Ian didn’t grace him with an answer. If he knew what sort of wedding he’d had, then he knew that he had holdings in New York.
Luis made an impatient sound. “I came here today to enlighten you about your opportunities.”
“I thought you came to blow up my building.”
Luis grinned – but the impatience glittered, still, in his gaze.
“Is there in fact a bomb?”
“If you cooperate, then you’ll never have to find out.”
“I thought this was an opportunity.”
“It is.” Voice tight, now. He wasn’t in control; even though he had the guns, and the goons, and had taken over the building, he couldn’t pin Ian down mentally, and that was getting to him. “You aren’t like the Dogs. You and I both know it. You lack their inconvenient scruples and hang-ups about certain necessary evils. You’re a businessman, a true one, and you’ve clearly done quite well for yourself.”
“Why, thank you.”
“You’re more like me than you are like Ghost Teague. If you align yourself with me, with my colleagues, you have the chance to make gains the likes of which you’ve only dreamed of.”
“I have plenty of wealth, I assure you.”
“But some things are more appealing than wealth, aren’t they?”
“Such as?”
“Power.” The word dripped lust. His eyes shone. “I’m offering you a chance to be a part of something extra
ordinary. Businessmen from all walks working together – no longer competing, but cooperating. No shootouts, no sabotage, no hits and vendettas. Just wealth, and power, enough for everyone.”
“Let me guess,” Ian said. “All I have to do is hand the Dogs over to you on a silver platter.”
Luis grinned. “It would be helpful.”
Ian studied him, could almost taste his desperation. He said, “If you have them, and you have the chance for riches and influence, why would you want me?”
Luis blinked.
“Just because I can take out the Dogs for you?”
“I–”
“Or because you’re not reliable enough for them, and you think bringing me along will sweeten the pot?”
Luis studied him in turn a moment. His grin became a snarl. “Because we’re so much alike, you and me. You’ve been fucked. It feels good to be the one fucking for a change.”
Ian knew that it was a stab at his past, but that Luis wasn’t talking about sex in regards to the present, not at all.
A flicker of movement in the outer office caught his gaze, and he was careful not to linger on it. The goons had been facing out, but faced in, now; they hadn’t noticed it.
“You know,” Ian said, “I did use to think that. But I suppose I’ve grown. Fucking is a fleeting, visceral pleasure, to be sure. But it fades. It leaves you hollow. I’ve found that it’s much better to love, and to protect. That’s what feeds the soul.”
Luis frowned. “What–”
Pfft.
Pfft.
Suppressors were so civilized. Ian loved the way they kept gunshots from being loud and rude.
The two guards fell, boneless, dead, seconds after a fine mist of blood bloomed from their throats and into the room. Red mist sprayed across Luis’s face, and he blinked, startled, and turned.
Ian lunged forward, across the desk, never more grateful for his height and length of limb, and stabbed a letter opener into the back of Luis’s hand. The one holding the gun.
He screamed. The hand spasmed, and the gun fell to the carpet.
The black-clad figure in the doorway cracked his gun across the back of Luis’s head. Luis slumped down in the chair, unconscious.
“Well done,” Ian said, panting only a little as he eased back in his chair. Alec’s hand touched him on one side, and Bruce’s on the other. They would be cross with him for being so reckless.
The figure in the door was joined by a second, both lean, their black clothes and gear ill-fitting. The first pushed up his goggles, grinning, to reveal big, blue eyes, creased with mirth. Charlie Fox’s pretty brother.
He glanced down toward Luis, his bleeding hand, and in his true accent said, “I’m impressed.”
Ian winked at him, pleased when it drew a blush. “Me, too, darling. Shall we go down now?”
Forty-Five
A paramedic had draped a blanket across Leah’s shoulders. It was a warm afternoon, but the blanket’s weight was a comfort, and she found herself shivering and drawing it tighter around herself as she walked, slowly, down the sidewalk into what had been roped off as the safe zone outside of a potential blast radius.
“Leah!” Her mom crashed into her, and wrapped her up with a surprising amount of strength for someone so slender.
Leah hugged her back, breathed in the comforting, familiar scent of her perfume. But she still buzzed inside with numbness.
She’d stood up to three armed men, and offered to be their hostage. Had tried to talk them down.
And then Carter had been there, and he’d killed one. And he’d walked her out, but then he’d disappeared; entrusted her to Tango’s gentle hand on her shoulder, guiding her down the sidewalk. And then the paramedics, and now her mom, crying all over her.
She didn’t think she’d know if she was okay until she saw Carter again.
“Leah.” Her dad, strangely choked. He reached them and put his arms around both of them together. “Oh, thank God.”
Behind her, she heard Ghost talking to someone. “…bomb sniffing dogs?”
“Yeah, just as soon as we get the building clear – oh, someone’s coming out.”
She twisted in her parents’ grip, and managed to look back toward the building, still within the shelter of their arms. It didn’t feel like shelter; felt like it was suffocating her.
She glimpsed three figures exiting the glass front doors, Ian’s long, auburn hair unmistakable in the sunlight, streaming over his shoulders. She recognized his husband, Alec, and his bodyguard, Bruce. They showed empty palms, and made a beeline for the officers on the scene.
Reese and Tenny had found them, then, though there was no sign of those two, in their ill-fitting black uniforms.
She didn’t realize her legs were giving out until her dad said, “Whoa,” and gripped her more securely. She was dizzy, then. When her head cleared, she was sitting on a city bench down in front of the still-boarded-up Bell Bar, and her mom was pressing a fresh latte in a travel cup into her hand. She drank gratefully, and could feel the sugar and caffeine go to work almost at once.
Her mom sat down beside her. “We were so worried, you have no idea – and Ghost showed up – and everyone outside was talking about a bomb – maybe we shouldn’t sit here. Should we go home? Honey, are we safe?”
Her father answered in soothing tones.
Leah sipped her latte and watched the churn of activity. An armored vehicle went past, SUVs labeled “K-9 Unit.” Pedestrians, onlookers, milled and gossiped.
The fire chief went past in his red, white, and tan cruiser. When the car was past, Leah saw a familiar figure standing on the far sidewalk. Carter was back in his jeans, blue t-shirt, and cut.
He looked both ways, then crossed the street to get to her.
It felt like she took her first deep breath in hours as he walked toward her. The numbness ebbed – gave way to a bone-shaking relief, and…yes, a joy. How she could feel joyful after what had just happened, she didn’t know. Could only chalk it up to being alive, and loving, and being loved. The memory of his breath warm in her hair, and his arms strong around her.
Heedless of her parents, she stood, let the blanket fall off her shoulders, and opened her arms to him. He didn’t even slow; walked right into her space and enfolded her, his arms tight, his hand gentle at the back of her skull.
She was aware of her mother saying something soft, and of her parents drifting away down the sidewalk, giving them a moment.
She wanted to kiss him, and reassure him – be reassured in turn. But for now, she could only cling to him, soak up his warmth. She thought the smell pressed into the skin of his neck might be gunpowder.
He breathed out shakily and said, “I love you, too.”
~*~
“There was no bomb anywhere in the building,” Ghost said that evening, all the lamps blazing in the common room, Evan dealing out drinks as fast as they could drink them – which was fast. “The bomb squad went over every inch, and said they’ll look again. For now, it looks like the scare was just a way to create chaos and get Luis inside.”
“Dramatic little shit,” Mercy said with a snort, taking another sip of his Scotch. “Couldn’t just have a back-alley meeting like a regular gangster.”
“That would imply he was meeting a regular back-alley gangster,” Ian said, plucking lint off his sleeve with a superior expression. “Which I assure you I am not.”
“Pretty sure nobody was thinking that,” Aidan quipped.
Ian sent him a cool look – one tinged at the edges with a true smile.
“Fielding got prints and mug shots off the goons, and said he’d run them through the database,” Walsh said. “A few of them had tats from several different organizations.” The Money Man, Ghost knew, was displeased with the lack of order now, in the aftermath. The immediate threat had been stopped, but there were still loose ends: missing girls, criminal groups at large, out for blood. “This isn’t over.”
“No,” Ghost agreed, “not by a long
shot. But it is for tonight. I say we all grab some sleep, and we’ll start fresh tomorrow. See what we can do in the daylight.”
For his own part, he wasn’t expecting to sleep at all. He envisioned sitting up in the kitchen, smoking, sipping whiskey, trying to piece together a tapestry from all these crazy balls of yarn they kept seeming to uncover.
He earned some agreements; Carter got up quick, anxious to leave, off to Leah’s no doubt.
Ghost caught Ian’s gaze and said, “I’ll walk you out.”
Ian nodded, coat draped over his arm, and leaned in to say something to Alec, who nodded.
They went outside, and fell into step; Ghost was conscious of Bruce, and Alec, following at a discreet distance. The moon was out, shining on steel warehouse roofs, and on the river.
They didn’t speak. Ian didn’t ask where they were going – Ghost figured he knew. His expensive shoes clipped across the asphalt, crunching occasionally on a stray bit of gravel, as they made their way down to the big trucking warehouse.
The rolltop doors were cinched tight. Ghost let them in through the front office – locked with a key – and took him back to the makeshift cell they’d set up for their prisoner.
An old, rusted metal cattle trailer sat parked in one corner, its rear door padlocked. The slats weren’t large enough to get more than an arm through. There was a bucket of water, and an empty bucket inside to act as makeshift toilet.
They approached, and peered through the slats; light fell in stripes across Luis Cantrell, slumped down in the front cover, arms resting on upraised knees. He glanced up at them, eyes gleaming like mirrors in the shadows. He didn’t speak.
“Have you told the police you have him?” Ian asked.
“No, and I’m not going to.”
“Vigilante justice. I like it.”
Ghost snorted, remembering an apartment in New York, and Ian kicking his chin up, and saying he’d do it himself. “Thought you might.”
Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8) Page 49