She checked her passengers. Raven and Vivian sat in bucket seats just behind her. The others were bundling Clive into the big cargo area in back. She spotted Tommy, and Miles, and the original driver – Chef, Albie had said – and the two who’d come into the conference room, the makeshift medic and the big one with the muscles.
“Everybody here?” she asked.
Albie slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “Yeah. Drive.”
She threw the van into gear, and did just that, peeling away from the curb with a squeal and a cloud of exhaust and smoked rubber.
She was in control now. Her nerves didn’t just evaporate – a slow melting away into the atmosphere. They vanished. Snap.
“Do we have a tail?”
Albie checked the side mirror. “Yeah. Another van.”
“Okay. Hold on.”
An intersection loomed ahead, its light red. She slowed a fraction, laid on the horn – and cut the wheel hard to the right.
Blare of horns, squeal of brakes. Cars slid and slipped around one another, like fish in a bustling stream. She heard the distinct crunch of someone being rear-ended. But her way was clear, and she straightened the wheel and stomped the gas.
“Jesus!” someone in the back cursed.
They were on a four lane. She checked her mirrors, merged, and took the next left, barely dodging through a gap in oncoming traffic.
“Christ, you’ll get us killed!” someone else shouted.
She raced down a narrow side street. An alley, really, pedestrians – dressed like restaurant employees – leaping out of the way. She kept going. Hard right at the next intersection, a stop sign. Fast. Too fast. Breaking all kinds of laws and speed limits.
Two more hard turns. She was in the zone now. Everyone in the back slammed up against the sides of the van, cursing her, but she didn’t care.
“You’ve gotta head east,” Albie said beside her. “Next left.”
She took it, and then the next three turns he dictated.
The way opened up into a crowded four-lane.
“Go,” Albie said.
Screams from the back. She thought she took off a few side mirrors as she squeezed between cars.
But she lost the tail.
A few more turns, and they were pulling into the back lot at Baskerville Hall.
It was with reluctance that she braked to a halt and put the van in park. Driving was the thing that had given her strength. Now she was about to step out onto solid ground and become a mere mortal again.
She glanced sideways over at Albie, and read his nod as approving.
But, behind her…
“Let me out of this bloody death trap,” Raven said, pushing open the big sliding side door. “Jesus!”
“She’ll get over it,” Albie said with a shrug, and opened his own door.
Axelle climbed out, with a mounting sense of dread, and walked around to the back of the van, where the boys were hauling out Clive. He’d cried during the trip, face wet and shiny with fresh tears.
“Fancy him now?” Albie asked his sister.
Raven made a disgusted noise and headed for the back door of the building.
Axelle lingered, watching as two of the guys got Clive up on his feet, holding him by the arms.
“We need to stitch this,” Chef said, grimacing at the bloodstained, makeshift bandage.
Albie said, “Get him inside.”
Axelle fell into step beside him. “What happened back there?” She was starting to shake, fine tremors that chased one another up her arms; she folded them across her middle to keep them still.
Albie seemed outwardly unperturbed. “I don’t know. We’ll find out.” He sounded so sure that she almost believed him.
Twenty
Morgan’s place – the one not listed on the map, but that Abe swore he knew the location of – was only an hour from Norris’s, but the difference in the landscape was stark. These were tidy, rolling farms, unfurling like quilts beneath an indigo sunset sky, split rail fence and stone walls marking the borders between pastures of sheep, and cattle, and shaggy horses.
The moon was coming up, a cold sickle on the horizon, and the light went down, down, down, and then was gone when Abe said, “This is it. Turn here.”
Eden was driving, and she slowed to a crawl. “You’re sure?” A glance up the driveway revealed a dark sprawl of fields bordered by walls, and a dark farmhouse crouched at the end of a gravel path, the stones reflecting the scant moonlight. A larger structure loomed beyond: a barn, judging by its A-frame roof.
“Yeah, this is it,” Abe said behind her.
She traded a look with Fox – or, tried to. He sat peering out the window, expression unusually withdrawn. The light was minimal, just the glow of the dash lights, but she could see his small frown, and knew it marked a deep sort of contemplation – a sort he’d never shown her when they’d been together.
With a sigh, and a fair amount of trepidation, she turned the van up the twin dirt ruts of the drive, and piloted them toward the dark house. She parked. Killed the engine. Shivered.
“Nobody’s home, it looks like,” she murmured. This place, though lovely in the headlights, gave her the willies in a way that Norris’s sty hadn’t. Every time she blinked, she saw his tortured body, hanging by its bony wrists. These people weren’t TV gangsters; they were killers. Trained weapons – and someone was systematically killing them off.
She didn’t want to get out of the van.
In the backseat, Devin said, “Come on, then,” and popped his door. The others piled out, groaning and stretching.
“You coming?” Fox asked, and she glanced over to see that he’d finally looked her way. Gaze still heavy, contemplative.
She swallowed and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Palmed her gun. “Yeah.”
Gravel crunched underfoot as they headed for the house. Eden hung back, for once not ashamed to let someone else take point. She already knew what they’d find inside: nothing. And what they’d find in the barn: bodies.
Evan reached the bottom step first, and paused, hand on the bannister. “Did you guys hear that?”
Eden turned in a slow circle, gun trained on the ground, ready to fire the second she caught sight of a target.
“What?” Devin asked.
“No, I hear it,” Fox said. “It’s low. Sort of a…a hum.”
“What…” Eden started, but then she heard it. Felt it, more like. A faint vibration, moving up through the soles of her Docs, into her joints. It buzzed in the back of her teeth. “All the lights are off, but something’s drawing a lot of power.”
A flashlight beam fell amongst them, sun-bright, blinding. “That’d be us,” a man’s voice said, calm and smooth.
Familiar.
Eden whipped around, leading with her gun.
The light blasted her in the face, and she was forced to shut her eyes.
“Agent Adkins?” the voice said again, and then she knew it.
She peeled a sweaty hand off her gun and used it to shield her eyes. “Captain Harlowe?”
“Shit, Morgan, kill the light,” Devin said, and nothing made sense.
~*~
Morgan was, from initial appearances, more like Abe than Dad. Fox considered that one for the win column. Trim and compact, with iron gray hair trimmed to an appropriate style, and a tidy beard. He wore jeans and a shawl-collared sweater, and in addition to his high-power flashlight carried an old-fashioned oil lantern, its sides shuttered until he locked the heavy barn doors behind them. Then he opened it and let the warm light spill across the dirt floor, illuminating stalls and sleepy, startled horses.
He knelt and pulled up a trapdoor, which offered more light. “We live down here for now,” he said. “It’s all set up. Come on.” And started down a wooden staircase.
Fox had the sense of entering a dream. He marveled at his lack of response earlier, out on the driveway. When the light fell across them, Eden and Evan had both been drawn tight
, ready to bolt or shoot. But Dad, and Abe, and Fox himself had just stood there. He’d like to say that he’d known the light belonged to Morgan, and that they hadn’t been in danger, but that would have been a lie. He didn’t know how to explain the numbness that kept creeping, and creeping, and creeping over him. It had started early, he guessed, that day in Dad’s apartment, but he hadn’t realized it. This whole thing felt like a movie he’d stepped into, and nothing real or plausible. He was disconnecting. Emotionally. And all the while his brain was moving at double-time.
For starters, he wanted to know why Eden had called Morgan “Captain Harlowe,” and why she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
But first they went down a narrow flight of stairs and landed in a narrow, wood-walled hallway, the floor laid with red brick, a lamp on a table providing the light. Morgan pulled the hatch down after them, and latched it, then set off down the hall.
“This way.”
The hallway led into a lounge that radiated cozy from every corner. Low whitewashed ceiling beams, a brick fireplace with a flickering ventless stove at its center. Worn leather couches and chairs, knitted throws draped over their backs, and a thick rope rug under a steamer trunk coffee table. Table lamps provided warm light.
The lounge adjoined a kitchen through a wide cased opening, a room full of white cabinets, stone counters, and antique appliances. A hallway led deeper in, doubtless to bedrooms and washrooms.
It was a wonder.
“This is all under the barn?” Devin asked with an appreciative whistle.
“No, it’s underground,” Morgan said. “The barn’s over there.” He gestured toward the kitchen. “The whole thing would collapse on our heads if we’d dug underneath it.”
A woman appeared in the doorway, wiry and spare, graying hair tied back in a braid. She wore a flannel shirt and jeans; held a revolver down low, against her thigh, her grip on the weapon familiar.
“It’s alright, Nora,” Morgan said. “These are old friends.”
She surveyed them with an iron gaze, chin raised to a defiant angle. Finally, she snorted and turned away. Over her shoulder: “I thought you said you’d shoot Devin Green on the spot if he ever showed his ugly face around here?”
“Hey, now,” Devin protested. And then: “And, hey, I’m not ugly! I’ve got nine children to prove it!”
“Dad,” Fox said. The word left his mouth an airless plea. He didn’t have the energy to properly chastise him.
How did Eden know this man?
What the hell was going on?
Morgan set his lantern down in the center of the coffee table and turned to them, expression grim. “You found me.” He didn’t sound happy about it.
“You’re the one who told me about this place,” Abe said.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d actually come here. That’s not what we do, Abe. We don’t congregate.”
“That last part’s my fault,” Fox said, stepping forward. “When we realized these creeps were after all of you, I’m the one who said we needed to round everybody up. Make sure you’re all safe.”
“Huh. Of all Dev’s ill-gotten offspring, I wouldn’t have pegged you for the savior of the bunch, Charlie.”
“You know who I am?” Fox asked with true surprise.
Eden spoke up, and her voice was…strange. “He knows who all of you are.” She stood with her arms folded tight, expression haunted. “He was my supervisor at MI6 for a time.” She swallowed, and it looked painful. She stared at Morgan, caught between accusation and horror. “He wanted me to do some recon on you, once.”
“Recon? What are you…”
Oh.
Oh.
He thought of a dim pub, warm scent of too many bodies, and too much spilled drink. A voice beside him. “No one’s sitting here, are they?” A stunner of a brunette sliding onto the stool next to his at the bar.
She’d told him she was in law enforcement that night. She hadn’t lied.
Had she?
~*~
Then
It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
Just feel him out, Harlowe had instructed. Get a read on him.
Was he in trouble? Did she need to bring him in?
No. Just some recon. He trusted her instincts. Wanted to know her gut feeling.
It started at the pub, as planned. A regular haunt for him – at least when he was in town. He’d stay gone for months at a time, then come back around for a few. Lived in the big four-story Victorian building that housed a dark smoky pub on the ground floor, one she’d been into a time or two, all the employees sporting black leather cuts with running black dog patches stitched onto the back.
He was a Lean Dog, then. Everything Eden knew about them she’d gleaned from files, scrolling through arrest records, wanted fliers, and suspect lists on the computer, wind-roughened, bearded, leather-clad criminals glaring back at her from the screen. All of them looked defiant and proud, even in their mug shots. They all shared a legendary refusal to cooperate with authorities of all types; they never turned on their own kind in exchange for reduced sentences. Expensive lawyers in thousand-dollar suits always turned up to represent them at court.
Her target, Charles William Fox, was half-brother to the London chapter president. He didn’t hold a steady job in the city, and, for some reason, he chose to drink at a pub that wasn’t owned by his club. A bit odd, maybe, but Eden walked into McTaggart’s that night thinking she knew what to expect.
But she hadn’t counted on Fox.
He’d leveled a grin like a weapon at her – repeatedly. “Most people don’t, but you can call me Charlie.”
Charlie. With dark hair that gleamed under a row of Christmas lights, and a clean-shaven, almost boyish face. Not handsome in a traditional sense, but interesting. A spark in those big, blue, blue eyes.
He was a criminal, undoubtedly, even if he’d never been arrested. But the chill that rippled down her spine wasn’t born of fear or revulsion. And when he scooted his stool closer to hers, and let his arm brush against her side, she didn’t pull away. Didn’t want to. She wanted to blame it on the beer, but she’d only had half a glass. Tried to rationalize that she worked too hard, and it had been too long, or maybe she was catching the flu – tried to explain her absolute lack of reason.
But in the end, she knew it all boiled down to simple attraction.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this…but it happened all the same.
His mouth on her neck, five o’clock shadow tickling her skin, tongue tracing her pulse. His hands, touch gentle, skin rough, on her waist as he slipped them beneath the hem of her shirt and mapped the contours of her ribs.
“Wait – wait,” she breathed around a laugh, fumbling with her keys. “I’ve gotta – unlock–” There. The key slid home, and she turned the knob, and then they stumbled into her dark apartment.
He steered her back against the door when it was shut, and fastened his mouth to hers, deep, hungry kisses peppered with little nips. She laughed again – she kept laughing – against his lips, the curve of a smile she found there by feel in the dark.
He pressed in close, their bodies flush, and the intimacy of it shocked her a little. He was a stranger, and she didn’t trust him – but that thrilled her. The daredevil part of her that had chosen a job where she carried a gun and badge, and put her life on the line. He kissed her, his tongue sliding between her teeth, wet and messy, and she knew a thrill like a car chase; like closing a high-stakes case and ending up on the news. Too close, too fast. Against policy, against her better judgement….
She skimmed her hands up his stomach and chest, pressing at the taut padding of muscle there with her fingertips. Her heart pounded. Desire coiled up tight, almost painful in the pit of her stomach.
“Bedroom’s back that way,” she said when he trailed kisses down her jaw and throat.
The trip there was a blur of dropped clothes, and bumping shins on furniture. And somewhere along the way, the little cautious voic
es in the back of her head disappeared.
She wanted this. It was happening.
Cold yellow light from a streetlamp filtered through her open blinds, striped his smooth bare chest, and her hands as she rested them there. He sat back against the headboard and pulled her up to straddle his lap, his hands unselfconsciously possessive on her hips, on her ass, on her sex. He was bold, none of that awkward first date fumbling, and she was starving, suddenly.
She rolled the condom down onto him, and brushed his hand away, where he was up to two fingers now, stretching her, trying to prep her like a gentleman.
“Here, move,” she said, impatient, taking his cock in her hand and lining him up. “You’re not that big.”
His laugh turned into a moan as she sank down, slow but relentless. “Really – really know how to – get a guy’s – confidence up.” But he was rock hard, as he filled her, and sweat glimmered at his temples, his collarbones, damp beneath her hands when she finally had him all the way inside, and reached up to clutch at his shoulders.
Not huge, but he wasn’t small, and it had been a while. She bit her lip and willed her body to relax. She wanted this. Right now, she needed it.
His laughter died away, and he smoothed his hands up and down her sides, soothing sweeps. “Shh, it’s alright, sweetheart,” he murmured. He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her in close; ducked his head and teased at her nipple with his tongue; sucked it lightly into his mouth. “Just relax. I don’t have to be anywhere. We’ve got all night, if you want.”
She did want. She moved, a little. And then a little more. And then tension started to bleed out of her, and her body gripped him tight, and he angled his hips just so, and – oh. It was good.
She dug her nails into his skin, and she rode him, breathing raggedly through her mouth, gasping, murmuring, loud and not caring. She came like that, vision going white behind her closed eyelids; he eased her through it, hands on her hips, sloppy kisses and whispered praises. Then he pulled out and rolled her onto her stomach, took her front behind, his teeth fastened at the top of her spine.
Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Page 18