Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3)

by Lauren Gilley

  Albie decided something, then.

  He drained the last of his whiskey and laid a hand on her arm where it rested on the bar top. He thought she might flinch away, but she only turned toward him, brows notched together in hurt and confusion.

  “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “What?”

  “Nothing bad. Just upstairs, come on.”

  She hesitated. A long moment. She’d heard stories – God knew how many and how sordid. She didn’t have to trust him, and she must have thought he meant to get her behind a locked door somewhere.

  Whether she was brave, or tired of arguing, or tipsy from drink, he didn’t know, but she finally nodded and slid off her stool.

  ~*~

  When she was on her feet and following Albie through the press of bodies, Axelle realized she’d had more to drink than she should have on an empty stomach. Not drunk, but fuzzy, her balance less than stellar.

  When they reached the foot of the stairs, and the prospect on guard duty nodded them through, she grabbed a handful of the back of his jacket. “Wait.”

  He paused immediately and looked back over his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, just…” The jacket was old faded corduroy, something dorky like someone’s grandfather would wear, but the fabric was very soft between her fingers. “Just…go slower.” She swallowed and offered a smile. “Room’s spinning a little.”

  “Shit.” His mouth turned down. “We should get you something to eat–”

  “No, show me. I’m fine. We’ll eat after.”

  He gave her a measuring look, gaze unreadable, then nodded and continued on, slower this time.

  They went all the way up to the third floor, where it was quiet and the air smelled less like sweat and alcohol and more like old furniture. It helped to clear her head a little.

  He led her steadily down a long hall and finally to a door at the end, one that was tucked up into the eave of the building, and her pulse gave a little rap-rap of disquiet again. What was on the other side of that door? What did he…?

  But he turned the knob, pushed it open, and flicked on the lights to reveal an ordinary, if small, bedroom. The roof was sloped in the right corner. A twin bed and a small dresser crowded the room. Faded, peeling motorcycle posters were trying to come loose from the thumbtacks that held them to the wall. And in the steep corner, right by the window, sat a small wooden chair.

  Albie stepped in first. “This was my room for a while,” he said, voice soft. “After Mum died, and before my grandparents found me.”

  “You – you lived here? How old were you?”

  “We all lived here at some point or other. I was thirteen.”

  “…Oh.” Thirteen was – thirteen was young. That was…

  He eased down into the chair; it was small, and it creaked when his weight settled in it, but it held.

  Axelle found herself easing down onto the end of the bed, perched on the edge, ready to bolt if she needed to. She felt the fear thrumming in her veins – but knew there was no cause for it. Nothing about the way he slouched down and propped his head against his knuckles spoke of a threat.

  No, this fear was an internal thing.

  He was silent a long moment, gaze trained somewhere on the rug. Then he said, “It was heroin with my mum. The drugs didn’t kill her – that was her boyfriend. She always picked the winners, Mum did.”

  It was hard to swallow. “Oh,” she said again, and something – some reservoir of anger and resentment – deflated inside her. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It was rough at the time, but. I already knew Phil. He made a point of that from the beginning, being involved with all of us. He took me in, brought me here, gave me a place to stay. Made sure I had food, and clothes, and that I went to school.

  “Mum had been on the outs with her parents for a long time. But Phil tracked them down. They wanted me to be in their lives. So.” Another shrug; a little twitch like his jacket was too tight. “They had a furniture shop. A shit one. Phillip helped them buy and set up Maude’s.”

  She could see him in her mind’s eye: thirteen, small for his age, shiny dark hair falling in his blue, blue eyes, sitting beside an old man as he showed him the way to shape a wooden table leg. Not an outlaw, or a drug dealer, but a little boy freshly orphaned, leaning on the support of the family he had left. A family that was half biker club, half elderly craftspeople.

  “And that’s why you’re a biker who makes furniture.”

  “Some of why. I made this chair.” He smoothed one hand down the arm of it. “It was the first thing I made all by myself. I was sixteen.”

  If she squinted, she could tell that some of the angles were off, and that the legs could do with a little refining. Still. “Pretty impressive for a kid.”

  “Gramps thought so.” He curled his hand around the chair’s narrow arm, squeezed until his knuckles cracked. When he lifted his head, his gaze was direct, but not uncomfortably so. “I like making furniture,” he said. “I like making things. Sometimes that’s a chair, or a coffee table. And sometimes it’s a plan to keep my family safe.”

  Axelle took a deep breath and let it out slow. It felt like she stood at the edge of something.

  “There’s a photo downstairs in the pub,” he said, with the air of starting something. “Of the two founding fathers of the Lean Dogs. It was 1947. Everyone knows about the clubs that got started in Cali in sixty-seven, but this was after World War II. Bobby Ludwig and Cole McCallan, RAF boys without homes to go back to. This building was one of the ones that never got touched by the Luftwaffe. They opened the pub, and started the club.

  “The Knoxville chapter gets credit for being the mother chapter. It’s the biggest, it makes the most money, and Ghost makes all the big club-wide decisions, yeah. But this is where it all got started. Because the war was over, but there were some who couldn’t go back to the way things were. Who thought that letting someone – a tyrant, a country, a government – tell you what to do with your life was too dangerous a way to live.

  “That’s the one-percenter life. Living on your own terms, making your own rules, and your own fortunes. I’m sorry about your father, Ax, but I won’t apologize for being what I am. We all make our own choices. He made his.” The last was said gently, but it still stung.

  Axelle ducked her head over her lap and blinked at the sudden burn of tears. “Yeah. I know. He was a real shithead.”

  “So’s my old man. But here we are.” Trying to save him, trying to take on the kind of enemy that no police force on earth could take down.

  It was quiet a long moment; the old building settled around them, like a soft sigh.

  “Come on,” Albie finally said, and stood. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  When Axelle lifted her head, it was with the knowledge that she had to stop pretending she wasn’t invested in all of this. She was here, she was involved – she could wallow in bitterness, or she could man up.

  When he held out a hand to her, she took it, and let him lift her to her feet.

  It brought them too close together, their faces level, noses just a few scant inches apart. It was nothing – innocent, even – but his hand felt rough and warm around hers, and the heat of his breath touched her face, and it smelled like whiskey.

  “Oh,” she said, stupidly.

  He grinned, a quick sideways twitch of his mouth, and then turned her around to face the door. “Off you go, lead the way.”

  And inside she was thinking oh. Oh, oh, oh no.

  Sixteen

  Abe had a cramped little apartment above his warehouse gym that still smelled like laundry soap and toast, just like Fox remembered. He assumed, if the place smelled the same, that Abe ate afternoon tea just the same: two pieces of toast, one with butter, the other with strawberry jam; tea with a splash of bourbon; leftover lox from the morning’s breakfast, kept cool in the fridge along with his assortment of vegetables, fruit, and kosher pic
kles. He’d always been regimented about the things he put into his body. Save that splash of bourbon at tea time, he didn’t drink; it muddled his thoughts, and that was an intolerable state of being for a man who lived in anticipation of a government raid.

  A glance around the flat revealed that the place looked the same: well-loved furniture, threadbare rugs, but no clutter, and a military cleanliness. Heat from the radiator steamed the window. Chipped white mugs hung in a neat row above the sink. The curtain that cordoned off the bed was pushed back, revealing perfect tucked blanket corners and white pillows propped up against the iron headboard.

  This was his favorite thing about Abe: nothing ever changed. Steady voice, steady hands, steady routine. Devin had always traveled around like an American cartoon rail-rider, here one moment and gone the next, different clothes, different hairstyles, different pregnant mistresses. The only constant was his smile…and that was nothing but a hunting lure, hooks hidden in the blinding flash.

  Abe’s kitchen table was small and square; he pulled an extra wooden folding chair down from the hooks on the wall and, with some shuffling, managed to fit five seats for all of them. Mugs were set out, and sugar, a little pot of fresh cream in a blue-glazed pitcher. Abe set the teapot, also blue, on a folded towel in the center of the table, overhead lamplight gleaming down the smooth, tan skin on the back of his hand, lifting high over the topography of fat veins and humped knuckles. He had fighter’s hands.

  It had been silent throughout all this. When he was seated, he leveled a look straight at Fox, implacable, and said, “Now explain.” Abe was a person who didn’t give a flying fuck about Fox’s reputation, and that was a comfort.

  He felt something in his chest loosen.

  Evan reached hesitantly with one spindly arm for the teapot and began to pour for everyone.

  Fox took a breath and said, “Long story short, this one” – he hooked a thumb toward Devin – “started digging around in shit he shouldn’t have, and now everyone associated with Project Emerald is a wanted man.”

  Devin sighed elaborately as Abe’s gaze cut to him. “He’s oversimplifying it, as usual. It isn’t as if I started this. I got a tip-off about–”

  “Tip-off from who?” Abe interrupted.

  “I’m getting to it. From Morgan. He said someone was digging into the old files, and no one was safe. Someone had all our names, and addresses, and the like. Knew who our families were. It was a warning. It…” His constant confidence wavered here, doubt edging into his expression, and his voice. “It spooked me, Abraham, I won’t lie. I decided I had to know what they knew. So yeah, I broke in, and I took the files, and they caught me on film. It’s what I had to do.”

  “Why you?” Abe asked, eyes narrowed.

  Devin made a play at his cocky grin. “Because I’m the best.”

  “No, you’re not,” Abe said, flat. “I am. So why really?”

  Devin made a face. “The rest of you have more to lose than me.”

  “You have nine children,” Abe deadpanned. “And I have none. Try again.”

  A look came over Devin’s face, then. One Fox had no memory of ever seeing. It was…serious. Grave, even. Tight with an uncharacteristic display of indecision. He said, “You know why.”

  “Ah,” Abe said, and picked up his tea. “That old conscious. Still alive.”

  Devin’s face slipped back into something more normal. “I’ll have you know–”

  Abe held up a hand, palm-out. “You have nine children. I will say no more.”

  “Whoa,” Evan breathed. “Nine?”

  Eden muttered, “It’s a long, very sordid story.”

  Fox shot her an unappreciative look, and she shrugged. He turned back to Abe. “Dad said Morgan went dark. After he told me that Morgan existed. Jesus.” He shook his head. “And Pseudonym came after Dad. We think they’re going to try to neutralize anyone who knows what happened with Project Emerald. We came here to warn you.”

  Abe said, “You could have rung me on the phone.”

  That stung. Swift and sharp. Fox was surprised that it did, so little did these days – but Abe wasn’t just another asshole in his adult life of spying, and killing, and travelling from chapter-to-chapter, doing their dirty work. Abe was from his childhood, those fragile, formative years in which he’d known his own father didn’t love him, but wasn’t old enough to understand why. Coming to Abe in person was a kindness…but maybe Abe didn’t want that.

  “I could have,” he said, holding that measuring, inscrutable gaze. “But all you’ve got is that ancient landline. Who knows who might be listening.”

  Abe blinked slow, like even that movement was something he could control. He was the stillest person Fox had ever met. “What’s with the girl?”

  Eden made a quiet sound of affront, but when Fox glanced her way, she looked relaxed, sipping her tea and rolling her eyes.

  “Eden was working for Pseudonym to track down Dad,” Fox said, keeping to the facts. “When they turned on her, she fell in with us. We can trust her.”

  Devin snorted. “These two used to shag back in the day.”

  “Christ, old man…”

  “Used to work for the Crown, but she’s a good egg. Yeah, we can trust her.”

  Abe’s brows lifted a fraction. “Shag?”

  “Oh my God,” Evan murmured, awed. “This is like being in a movie. I’m in a movie.”

  Fox looked down into his tea, and then looked toward the cabinets above the old avocado-colored stove. “You got anything to drink besides tea?”

  ~*~

  Charlie was thirteen, and he hated what he saw every time he looked in the mirror. Head-and-shoulders shorter than Billy Craddock and his rugby-playing ilk, nothing but knobs and spindles, and untamable hair falling in eyes with girl-long lashes. His eyes were the only thing pretty about him, and Charlie desperately didn’t want to be pretty. He wanted to be tall and stacked with muscle. Bull-necked, and ham-fisted, and capable, and adored by girls with eyelashes longer than his.

  “That’s bollox,” Abe said. “That’s not what you want.”

  “Yes, it is!”

  “It’s what you think you want,” Abe said, even and sure. Charlie had never heard him shout…he’d never heard him act anything besides calm. His laughter sounded like a lone wheeze, and his smiles were rare, fleeting things. Steady as the tides, infuriating as trying to conquer an entire ocean. Sometimes, after their training sessions – the ones his poor dumb mother thought were actually study sessions at the library – Charlie went home and flung himself down on his bed without dinner, and screamed into his pillow until there were tears building hot behind his closed eyelids.

  “You think,” Abe went on, pacing a slow circle around Charlie’s ready stance, “that you want to be big, and fat like those boys you go to school with.”

  “They’re not fat, they’re muscular. There’s a difference.”

  Abe shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Either way, you don’t want that.”

  Fuck you, Charlie thought, but didn’t dare say. He might have been an insolent little shit, as Dad liked to point out (and Mum, too), but he knew when he should hold his tongue.

  “What you want,” Abe said, coming to a standstill in front of him, arms folded. “Is to be able to beat the shite out of them.”

  Charlie’s anger halted…and then dissipated. “Um…yeah. Yeah, that’s what I want. But.” He flexed his scrawny arms. There wasn’t a better demonstration for his uselessness.

  Abe only smirked. He looked back over his shoulder. “Len!”

  The boys working in the ring stopped and glanced over. One, the bigger of the two, tugged off his foam ear protector and ducked under the ropes; jogged over. “Yes, sensei?” He was huge, muscles stacked on top of muscles, but unfailingly polite.

  “Take off those gloves,” Abe instructed, turning toward him. “I want to give this doubter a demonstration.”

  The big guy winced – a reaction Charlie found odd. “Ah, sensei…you
sure you don’t want to use one of the others?”

  Abe flashed a rare grin; all teeth, no humor. “Leave your hands taped.”

  After a prolonged moment of fiddling with his gloves and delaying as long as possible, Len and Abe were finally squared off from one another on one of the training mats. Len dwarfed their teacher, sweat-slick muscles gleaming beneath the industrial lights, body poised and taut, hands held at the ready. His face was pale and doubtful, though.

  Charlie didn’t understand. How could someone so massive and so capable – he’d watched Len spar with the other boys in the ring often; seen the others hang off the ropes, winded, bruised, done – possibly be intimidated by someone built like Abe. Abe was quick, and knowledgeable, and regularly trounced Charlie during their instructional bouts. But Charlie was only little. Surely Len would–

  Abe attacked. His explosive burst of speed was so sudden it took a second for Charlie’s vision to register it. He was already across the mat in the span of a blink. Len threw up his forearm to block, teeth gritted. But he was too slow, and Abe ducked down low, besides. He landed a blow at Len’s waist, in the soft meat just under his ribs, then whirled away, out of reach of Len’s retaliatory swipe.

  The whole thing had happened in the span of a breath. Len clutched at his side, breathing in short, pained little gasps. “Damn, sensei, that really–”

  Abe struck again. He went high this time, leaping, spinning, kicking. Len reacted, but too slowly. The heel of Abe’s foot connected with his shoulder with a loud smack.

  The match devolved from there. Abe’s assault was measured, precise, and relentless. He exerted the exact amount of force needed to inflict pain, to distract, to get Len doubled over – but without breaking any bones or leaving the kind of bruises that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  At some point, Charlie realized his mouth was hanging open, and didn’t have the wherewithal to shut it. Abe was…he was incredible. Len was bigger, stronger, and more menacing, but Abe decimated him.