He smiled, soft and sad. “Hello, love.”
She tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. Concentrated on breathing, in and out, until the tears had receded. When she finally faced him again, she felt more in control, even if her voice came out shaky. “What took you so long to get here?”
His smile widened, flashing teeth. “I had to convince Ava I wouldn’t get her husband killed.”
Raven snorted. She’d never met Mercy’s wife, but she’d always suspected she’d like the girl. “Are the others coming? I’ve got everything ready. Miles said he’d hook up all his computer stuff.” She gestured to the table, where Ryan had been sitting for the past half-hour, staring down into a cup of tea that had long since gone cold.
Walsh leaned in closer. “That’s the fashion woman, yeah?”
“Yeah. She’s…a bit shaken.”
“More than a bit, it looks like.”
“Anybody had a go at Clive yet?”
“Mercy’s doing that now.” Walsh’s expression got caught between amusement and disgust. “The less you know of that the better. In the meantime, I want to know what she knows.”
Shane came in, then, and Raven surprised herself by going to hug him. He still had that gentle look about him, his cut sitting on his shoulders wrong. Physically, he was no less capable than the others, but there was a haunted sort of sweetness in his eyes that had always made her think he wasn’t cut out for the outlaw life. Putting her arms around him – and having him hug her back – filled her with warmth, but it didn’t make her want to cry like Walsh had.
Phillip might have been the eldest, but it was Walsh she’d always believed in the most. The one who had the power to make things right.
They sat down at the end of the long table, flanking Ryan, who lifted her head with a bewildered look. Raven wondered if she’d taken a sedative while they weren’t looking, that glassy disconnect in her eyes.
“Ryan, these are my brothers. Well, two more of them. King, and Shane.”
Both greeted her with near-identical smiles that managed to be sympathetic, but not warm.
“I’m sorry you’ve had to go all through this,” Shane said, resting a hand on the table just beside hers – but not touching. It was a thoughtful distance, and Raven could see that Ryan appreciated it – that and his kind blue eyes too, probably – her posture relaxing a fraction. Shane uncapped a pen and flipped open a spiral notebook with slow, careful gestures. Nothing like a cop whipping out a legal pad; he had the demeanor of a therapist instead. “Do you think you could tell me everything you know about Pseudonym?”
Ryan nodded. “I can try.”
Slow and halting at first, cheeks coloring with shame, she eventually settled down to the bare-bones facts of it. Stopped trying to defend her own worries and actions and just spelled it out.
Ryan Anders was, without question, the most influential name in the London fashion scene, and had been for several years now. She’d clawed her way up from lowly seventeen-year-old model, to forty-five-year-old mogul, and everyone in the business spoke her name with a blend of fear and reverence.
It was only natural that companies tried to use her agency – both businesses, really; she owned her own clothing line and the most elite modeling agency – to get their own products into the hands of potential clients. Everything from hair straighteners, to nail polish, to double-sided tape for slinky dresses got dropped in gift baskets at Ryan’s events. Products like face cream, from Gleaux. From Pseudonym.
“Gleaux wanted me to advertise their product; wanted shots of me holding it and peering into flattering mirror reflections on magazine ads and billboards, and they wanted it to be an exclusive deal. Clive was very charming, but I knew something wasn’t quite right. The negotiations were drawn-out and very tense at times – this business is cutthroat, yes, but I could smell a rat.
“After Raven came to see me, I knew there was definitely something illicit going on.”
“Me?” Raven asked, offended.
Ryan sent her a wry look. “Oh, please, Raven. Everyone knows you have ties to–” She bit off what she was going to say with a tight press of her lips.
Raven felt like she’d been slapped. “Everyone?”
“It was mostly rumors. Now it’s more or less a sure thing.”
Raven groaned and dropped her face into her hands.
“Then what happened?” Shane prodded gently.
“I called Clive, and told him about Raven. I didn’t say anything exceptional, I didn’t think, just that she was interested in samples. And twenty minutes later he showed up at my office.” The heaviness of her voice told everyone how that had felt, seeing him standing in her doorway.
“I’d seen that sharp edge in him the time before, under that posh veneer,” she said. “But then, that day…” She shuddered. “He pulled out pictures of my kids. He started saying that I had to cooperate, if I knew what was good for me, that I was never to contact you again. He thought I might try to warn you, or something, that we were friends – and that’s when I…took a gamble.”
“What sort of gamble?” Walsh asked.
“I told him I knew what he was doing, and that I wanted in on it. I wanted to help him – he and whoever he worked for. I’d do whatever they wanted, in any way, and in return my agency would become the only agency in town.”
Walsh let out a whistle.
“And he bought it?” Raven asked, incredulous.
Ryan shrugged. “Everyone knows I’m mercenary. Apparently, they think I’m extravagantly so.”
~*~
Mercy had asked for two things: the aforementioned sledgehammer, and a radio. Miles had provided the radio: a small, battery-powered modern thing with an iPod dock. Mercy had set it in the middle of the garage floor, turned on “Enter Sandman,” cranked the volume and gone down the hatch, hammer propped on one massive shoulder.
Fox had still been able to hear the screaming.
He lit a cigarette, slouched back against the wall, and waited.
He heard the door from the back of the pub open and shut, light footfalls come across the cement floor. He didn’t look; he could already tell it was his father.
Devin came to lean against the wall beside him, half an arm length away. He lit his own cigarette, exhaling harshly after the first drag.
A scream floated up from the grate in the floor, just loud enough to cut through the music, but then the wailing electric guitars drowned it out again.
Devin tipped his head in close enough to be heard. “Will that big bloke really get anything useful out of this?”
Fox nodded absently. “Mercy always gets the goods. It’s the thing he’s best at.”
Devin hummed a considering noise. “Looks like the grim reaper himself.”
Fox dropped his smoke and crushed it out under the toe of his boot. “Dad?”
“Hmm?”
This question had been brewing for the last few days, Fox just hadn’t known how he wanted to phrase it until now. He was almost in that detached headspace he’d need for the mission tonight – the same one he’d been in when he took Clive down earlier – but he kept flickering back into true awareness. A place where he could feel anxious, and restless, and doubtful. He hated that place – it was so human. So pedestrian and ordinary, and ordinary had always fit him like a badly-stitched homemade sweater.
He turned to look at his father, the lines in his face made harsher in the shadowed interior of the garage. Sunlight came in through the high windows, weak and gray with rain, but it didn’t quite touch them here. Devin’s eyes seemed to glow in the dimness, that damnable blue that haunted them all.
“Dad, is there anything you’re not telling me? Something you’re holding back?”
The furrow between his brows deepened. “What do you mean?”
“This whole thing. Project Emerald, and Morris, and Pseudonym, and Cass, and…” He heaved a breath, lungs tight from the stress of it all. “Is there anything I should know that I don’t?
That you’ve held back?”
“If I say no, will you believe me?”
Fox frowned at him.
“Even if I was honest, you’d doubt me.”
“No, I…” Another breath. Frustrated. “I want to believe you. I don’t care if you’re a lying sack of shit about child support, or cheating on women, or – But I’d like to think you’d be honest about this, at least.”
“Look at me,” Devin said, the most serious Fox had ever seen him. “This is me being honest.”
There was movement over by the grate. Mercy’s head popped up out of the hole, followed by the rest of him; his shoulders were so wide it was a tight fit, but he managed to get up the ladder and to his feet with only a little wincing and a stiff step on his bad leg.
He leaned over and shut off the music, then sent them a manic grin, eyes shining. Smattering of blood on his face. “Got us some intel, boys.”
Fox pushed away from the wall. “Then let’s get to it.”
~*~
It was a big room, but it still managed to be a tight fit with everyone in it. Everyone but Albie. Fox had a feeling his brother was chafing to get in here and be a part of things – do something. Being bedridden was a hatred the whole family shared.
Axelle wasn’t here either, he noticed, one last glance around at the faces lining both sides of the table. She was keeping Albie company. That was good. Surprising, but undoubtedly good. Albie badly needed an old lady, and it made a certain sort of sense that a Yank racecar driver would fit the bill.
Phillip cleared his throat at the head of the table, where he stood in front a projection Miles had rigged up to land on the bare patch of wallpaper above the mantlepiece. A slideshow rolled: photos of the interior and exterior of the Pseudonym building, pulled offline from private sources by Miles. He was a genius, that kid.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have three objectives tonight,” Phillip said. “The first, and the most important, is to get Cass out. The second, also the most important, is to prevent any civilian casualties. This operation won’t be a success if we get any innocent people killed. The third, and likely the most difficult, will be putting Pseudonym on its knees.
“Here’s what we know: everything we need is in that building. We’ll be going in in small teams. They know that we have some law enforcement contacts, and I’m betting that’s why they chose tonight: there’s a fashion show in the ballroom tonight, and they’re counting on all that traffic to make it difficult for us, and the cops or MI5, to get in and out.”
“They’re going to try to create chaos,” Morgan said. “And they’ll be trying to kill all of us.”
“This is a suicide mission,” Raven said, flatness of her voice belying the way her hands trembled on her cup.
“No,” Phil said. “It’ll be difficult, and dangerous, but they still have a reputation to protect with the company.”
“Then why draw us to their headquarters?” Vivian asked. “That’s asking for a public spectacle.”
“A very particular kind of spectacle,” Ian said. “A chance to show anyone in the underground who’s watching that they’re powerful enough to take out an entire chapter of one of the largest, most well-known criminal organizations in the world.”
“No one’s ever done anything like that before,” Mercy said, grimly. “Ghost doesn’t let things slide, but there’d be no way we could push back against something like this. London would just be gone.”
The weight of that hit hard.
“We have to play it very smart,” Phillip said. “Utilize our resources. These people have never seen Mr. Byron, Mercy, or Reese, so we can use them as covert agents. Now, everyone else has a part to play, too, so listen up…”
Thirty-One
“For the love of God, get some sleep,” Phillip ordered when the meeting closed and everyone filtered out of the room. It was a good idea. They had some time, and Fox’s weariness dragged at his bones like physical weight at this point.
But he sat now on the roof, in the shelter of the small pavilion that housed the AC units, smoking a cigarette and watching the smoke curl through the unhurried fall of rain that pattered on the tarmac all around him.
He heard the door open, and a few moments later Eden ducked under the pavilion, shaking raindrops out of her hair.
Just a week ago she would have stood above him, arms folded, mouth tight, and said something cutting. Now, she settled right down to sit beside him without a moment’s hesitation, crossed her legs, leaned her back against the electrical box. Close enough that their arms touched.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked, voice soft.
“Nah. You should, though.”
She snorted. “Do as I say, not as I do?”
She elbowed him, lightly, as she said it, and he wanted to push back, to chuckle. To glory in the fact that she was teasing him, with that old tender fondness she’d had when they were together, when there was a standing invitation for takeout and sex on the couch in front of bad nighttime TV. When he’d thought…
He swallowed hard. “You should stay here. When we go. Where it’s safe.”
“Yeah, fuck that,” she said without any heat. “Charlie.”
He tipped his head to the side, so he could look at her properly. It felt too-heavy on his neck, all his muscles protesting the slight movement. And then he laid eyes on her, and it was no longer memories pushing at old, unknown soft spots in his heart, but Eden in the flesh, her gaze sweet and fierce all at once.
“You’re so stupid,” she said.
He frowned.
“Are you really so mercenary that you think everyone around you is, too? That we’re all just looking to get ahead, or get dirt on somebody, or stay alive?”
He…stared at her.
“Charlie.” She said his name again, a desperate edge to it this time. “Maybe this is falling on deaf ears, because maybe you don’t give a shit, but people care about you. People love you. Not because of the skills you have, because of what you can do. But because of who you are. You lose sight of that.”
“I am what I can do. That’s the only purpose I serve.”
She stared at him, lips pressed tight together. “Do you really believe that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She stared at him a long moment, rain dripping behind her, falling in a gentle silver susurrus against the tarmac of the roof, her face wildly alive by comparison. Brightness of her eyes, whiteness of her teeth, the jagged edge of her chewed lower lip.
And then she leaned forward, braced her hand against his chest, and kissed him.
In some ways he’d expected it. She’d moved in slow and deliberate, telegraphing the movement, eyes fluttering shut at the last second. But the press of her lips to his was a shock all the same.
What was this? he wondered. Her wanting a little comfort in a stressful time? One last kiss for old time’s sake? An echo of memory?
Or something new?
It didn’t matter. She wanted it, and so did he.
He reached up to cup the back of her head, and her hair was as soft as he remembered, slipping like silk through his fingers. All of it was as he remembered – the softness of her lips, the gentle confidence of her tongue, her little sucked in breath – but made sweeter by the ache of time lost. Their first night together, all those years ago, strangers staggering home from a pub, had been hot, and fast, and thrilling. But familiarity, he now knew, bred its own kind of excitement. Its own heat.
He knew that trailing fingertips down her throat would make her neck weak, and that she would sigh into the next kiss. That she would climb up into his lap if he stroked over her hipbones, even through her clothes – and she did. Her mouth was hot, and slick, and perfect, and he lost himself to it. Slipped his hands beneath her shirt to get to bare skin, soft, and warm, her belly sucking in in response to the coldness of his hands.
They warmed, though, as he shifted upward, cupped her breasts through her bra. Simple silk, nothing fancy; she’d always made
practicality look sexy as hell.
She pulled back, breathless, lips shiny. “Let’s go downstairs.”
“Yeah.”
They helped one another up, and made it to the door, and down two flights of stairs like they were drunk, catching at one another, stumbling, pausing to kiss, to slide hands over one another.
Fox wondered if the walk, if getting out of that moment on the roof, surrounded by rain, and empty space, and danger, might bring Eden back to her senses. But when they got inside his room, and he’d shut the door, she was the one to initiate again. She wanted this.
“You sure?” he asked, because he had to know. A part of him, deep-down, needed, selfishly, to know that she was choosing him, that she wanted him, and not just an outlet for her stress.
She let her shirt drop to the ground, and stood there in black bra and jeans, still strong, fit, and lithely feminine as he remembered, hair wild from the humidity. She searched his face, and some of the hunger faded, replaced with something softer.
She walked up to him, and laid both hands on his chest. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen afterward. With us.” She reached to tuck a curl of stray hair off his forehead, smiling. “But we always got this part right, Charlie. I’m sure.”
He ducked down to kiss her, and her arms went around his neck, holding him to her.
They moved slower after that. Fox was shaking, and he didn’t know if it was nerves, or anticipation, but he wanted to do this right. They undressed one another, and he pulled the coverlet back, laid her down on the cool, clean sheets and resolved to take her apart with his hands and mouth.
It was Eden who got impatient, raked his back with her nails. “Come on, come on, I’m ready.” Breathing through her mouth, hair fanned out across the pillow, gaze heavy-lidded, desperate. She tightened her thighs around his waist, and he pushed in slow, biting at his lip, dizzy with sensation.
He kept his eyes open, wanted to watch her, wanted to stamp the image of her like this, back bowing, nipples pink and wet from his mouth, moaning softly, into his brain to keep forever. He loved her like this, undone and not sorry for it. Loved her when she enjoyed herself, and him, and what he could offer.
Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Page 27