The stranger wiped his knife clean on the twitching man’s suit coat and straightened, turned to face her again.
“Are you Cassandra Green?” he asked, and his voice was as eerily unemotional as the rest of him.
She had to swallow before she could speak. “Y-yeah.”
His gaze tracked across her face, touching every feature, his own gaze impossible to read. Then he nodded. “Follow me.” Turned to the door.
Beyond it, she heard more shouts. She really, really didn’t want to go out there. “But–” she started.
“Stay behind me,” he said. He unslung the gun from his back – her brothers had taught her enough that she knew it was an AK-47 – and opened the door.
~*~
“Ha!” Mercy said after Reese radioed in with his location. “Eighth floor, east side of the building, Plaza Industries’ wing.”
Walsh paused on the stairs. They were between the seventh and eighth floors now. “He’s there now?” Some of the tightness left his voice, replaced by something like awe. As close as Kingston Walsh ever got to awe, anyway.
“In the ceiling,” Mercy said with a laugh. He was delighted. “Man, if only I was smaller, I would be, too.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t hold you, dear,” Ian said dryly.
“I know. Shit.”
The slipped out on the next landing, and followed the oh-so-helpful directories toward the proper wing. They passed a bank of elevators, and were met by glass walls and doors, etched with the Plaza logo, a suited security guard standing in front of it, arms folded.
“Hey,” he said, when he spotted them, and reached for his gun.
Too slow. Walsh shot him in the head and kept going, pushing through the glass doors now spotted with blood and brain matter.
“Maybe wait out here,” Mercy told Ian.
The dealer checked his watch, and grinned. “Oh no, I’m having fun. And besides. The cavalry should be arriving in about three…two…one…”
~*~
“What sort of agreement?” Phillip asked, but deep down, he already knew.
Morris’s smile said he could read his thoughts. “From what we’ve been able to gather, none of the nine of you are all that close with your father. The younger girl is the only one who even bears his chosen last name. Subject Nine is all we want. And then you can all walk away from this unscathed.”
“All of us. You’ll let us just walk.”
“Yes, of course. I’d like to offer you time to think it over, but I’m afraid that isn’t possible. This is a one-time offer. And, you should know” – his smile widened – “we’ve already taken custody of your other sister. The one who’s been slipping around with that designer woman, thinking they’re so clever.”
Raven.
Phillip swallowed, and let his gaze stray to the windows again. Still just darkness, and landscaping, and rain falling softly over all of it.
“What–” he started.
One of the security guards touched his ear – a sharp rustle of his jacket – and then leaned in to whisper something in Morris’s ear. Phillip couldn’t hear the words, but he could hear the man’s tone – fast and worried.
“Something wrong?” Phillip asked.
No one answered him.
Another guard got a notification in his ear piece, and joined the conversation.
Phillip traded glances with his brothers.
And then the windows shattered.
~*~
Raven knelt on the carpet, hands bound in front of her, in the place where she’d been shoved down and told to stay like a dog. Too furious to be properly frightened.
Three thugs had apprehended her and Ryan, and now they waited, while the bastards snapped orders into radios and decided their fate. There was a very good chance she’d be killed, she knew, but all she could feel now was fury. How dare they manhandle her? How dare–
“What?” one of them snapped, and looked toward the door of the office where they were being held.
Raven became aware of a swelling wall of sound from down the corridor; distant, but loud enough to register. A rising tide of mixed shouts, screams, and thundering feet.
The guard stepped to the door – she heard a soft sound, a strange one – and then he fell over, boneless. Landed hard on his side without even attempting to catch himself. Red stain blooming across his white shirt. Dead.
A gun came in through the open door; its suppresser proved what the sound had been: a muffled shot. Then an arm, then a man, hollow-eyed, with buzzed hair, but a wide grin.
“Hands up, mate,” he said, his cockney accent so think it was barely understandable.
The guard did in fact put his hands up.
The gunman turned his grin on Raven and Ryan. “Hullo, ladies. What say we get out of here?”
~*~
This felt wrong, somehow, but Eden was trying not to dwell on that. When she arrived, riding shotgun in a police van full of a SWAT team ready to charge into the Pseudonym building, the place was already thoroughly under assault.
As it was supposed to be.
People were pouring out of the doors on the ground floor, everyone in elegant evening wear, fleeing the ballroom and a fashion show that Eden knew had been invaded by a particularly raucous street gang. It was a family group, ranks swelled by people loyal and people owned: the Hennesseys. Ian Byron, Shaman, had brokered a very sudden, very lucrative drug deal with them, and now here they were, playing their agreed-upon role in this whole thing: creating enough chaos to cripple Pseudonym, while not harming any civilians.
Eden turned to Detective Hendricks, who she was squeezed in beside, an old friend from her police days, before she’d joined MI5. “No arrests on these guys tonight,” Eden reminded. “We promised them that.”
Hendricks snorted. “A bloody shame.” But she nodded.
Other emergency vehicles screeched to a halt around them, forming a perimeter, lights spinning.
But it didn’t feel right anymore, she thought, almost sadly, being on this side of the law again. The right side, really – the legal side.
But it wasn’t her side. Not when all the people she cared about were on the other side.
~*~
Fox wasn’t showy, ordinarily. Showing off was the fastest way to get yourself killed, and wasted effort besides. But he felt showy tonight. Felt positively theatrical.
The glass wasn’t bulletproof. He burst through it with his arms tucked over his face, elbow pads taking the brunt of the impact, and he leaped into the penthouse amid a shower of glass. The others came with him; glass flew, a thousand sparkling shards catching the light, and, too slowly, a group of armed guards turned to meet them.
Easy. So pathetically easy. Fox’s gun felt like a part of his hand. He raised his arm, and squeezed the trigger, and his muscles absorbed the recoil, old habit. His brothers sat at one end of a long table, clustered together, weaponless, he knew. They ducked down when the windows shattered, but they didn’t need to; he wasn’t going to hit them. He never missed.
One shot, two, three. He took out three guards himself, and the others fell to Abe, to Morgan, to Dad. Then they were down, and there was only the old man left, cowering in his chair at the head of the long table.
Fox prowled deeper into the penthouse, ignoring him, looking for the door that would lead to the stairwell. He found it, and he heard shouting and the clack of shoes coming up concrete stairs on the other end. He flipped the lock, but knew it wouldn’t be able to hold for long.
He turned back to the table.
Abe had a hand fisted tight in the old man’s collar, muzzle of his gun pressed to his temple. The difference between them, in that tableau, hit Fox like a slap. Morris was no doubt a few years older, but he looked decades older: stooped, paunchy, his face jowly and sagging, the backs of his hands spotted. He looked like someone who used a cane; like someone’s grandfather, with a medicine cabinet full of prescription pills, and a tremulous smile, and a tendency to get confused in
the middle of loud, crowded gatherings.
And Abe, even iron-haired and sun-damaged, looked like a weapon, lean and hard, even after all this time.
And then Abe lifted his head, and looked right at Fox, and nodded. Go ahead, that nod said. Run this.
And even if Phil was the president, Fox slipped into the role of leader now like it was custom leather, butter-soft and clinging to his skin.
He strolled up to the table and aimed his gun at Morris, casual, one hip cocked. “We don’t have long,” Fox said, and his tone sounded bored, because he was bored. He was tired, he realized, physically, and mentally, sick of all this protracted drama. What was the use of it? The only reason people like him – like his dad, and all the others from Project Emerald – existed was because people like Morris always wanted to pull one over on someone else. Since the dawn of civilization, men had been trying to gain power over one another.
It was fucking stupid.
“If I shoot you right now, does this all stop?” Fox asked, point-blank.
“Ah, smooth,” Phillip muttered.
“No, I’m done,” Fox said. “This ends now. You’ve got five seconds to tell me who I’ll have to kill after you’re gone. Answer, or I shoot you in your old wrinkled dick instead of your head.”
“Ooh,” Tommy said, softly, and Fox made a mental note to hug his little brother later, thankful for his relentless irreverence.
Morris tipped his head back, so Fox’s aim was even truer, his shot set to go right between his eyes. He smiled, close-lipped, like he had a secret. “So, you’re the one, then.”
Fox smirked. “Great. He’s got dementia.”
But Abe’s arm flexed, and the muzzle of his gun pressed in harder at the man’s temple.
“You,” Morris continued, “are the one he promised us. The Prodigal Son, at long last.”
Outwardly, Fox didn’t so much as twitch. But inwardly, he felt a jolt. A fast frisson moving under his skin, anxiety that threatened to rattle his professional calm.
“What are you talking about, asshole?” he drawled, tone bored. But his heart started to pound.
Morris’s grin widened, flashing yellowed teeth. “He never told you, then.” Without turning his head, his gaze slid toward Devin. “Why not? Too afraid? It couldn’t be honor.”
“What’s he talking about?” Phillip demanded. He was on his feet now, facing Devin.
And Devin leveled his gun at Morris, jaw tight.
“Wait,” Fox said, just before he pulled the trigger. “I want to know.”
Devin glanced his way, and then at the others, one-by-one, eyes wide-rimmed, frantic.
“Dad,” Fox said.
Someone on the other side of the door had found an ax, and was hammering at it, muffled bangs, the door rattling in its frame. It wouldn’t hold long.
“Devin,” Abe said, expression grim.
“What?” Fox demanded. “What the fuck?”
Morris chuckled. “When we were designing the subjects, treating them with steroids and experimental serums, we decided it would be best to guard our research as well as we could. Leaving one control subject, of course. We sterilized them. All but one: Subject Nine.”
The words went into Fox’s ears…and set off a small explosion in his brain.
“What?” Phillip said, shrill, losing some of his usual composure. “What are you–”
Crack of a gunshot, and spray of blood and gore. Morris slumped forward, dead.
It was Devin.
Fox rounded on his father, and all his calm – his exhaustion, his distance – it finally cracked. It felt like something important and permanent in him cracked, too. The sort of thing that would seep blood until he was ruined.
“What the fuck?” he roared, and charged toward his father. He reached out with his free hand, intending to wrap it around Devin’s throat. All he saw was red; all he felt was rage.
Devin brought his own arm up, a sharp chop, right on the nerve in Fox’s forearm. The limb went numb, a burst of pins and needles, and Devin grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward. Head-butted him right in the nose as he stumbled forward.
Stars burst across his field of vision. Roaring pain. The heat of wet blood as vessels broke in his nose, and it gushed out, down into his mouth.
The world spun, and Fox was on his back, Devin’s boot resting on his chest, wrist still held in a pincer grip. The pain had brought tears to his eyes, blurred his vision, but he raised his gun and aimed it at Devin’s face.
“Why?” he demanded, voice thick with blood, slurring with it.
Devin’s face twisted up, as if pained. “I didn’t mean for it to go like this, Charlie. Honest, I didn’t.”
Fox heard scuffling. Phillip loomed over him, but Devin kicked him away, and spun out of sight.
He sat up, head throbbing, nose bleeding all over the place. He pressed his sleeve to his nostrils to stop the flow, and saw Morgan and Abe coming in closer, crouching down in front of him.
“What the fuck?” he said again.
“Christ,” Morgan said, and ran a hand over his head, nearly upsetting his knit cap.
“Charlie.” Abe leaned in, a handkerchief having manifested in his hand, and pressed it to his nose.
Fox took it from him, applying pressure.
Abe’s expression was sad.
“Did you know?” Fox asked, words muffled by the cotton.
Abe sighed, but nodded. “It didn’t seem important to tell you.”
“Fuck you,” Fox said, too tired and dizzy to put any heat behind it.
He heard the door splinter. Shouts.
“Get up,” Phillip said, and hands latched onto him under his arms, hauling him upright. Fox managed to get his feet under him, and stay upright as his brother spun him around. Phil’s brows were at his hairline; he breathed roughly through his mouth. Devin had kicked him right in the stomach. “Can you fight?”
“Where’s Devin?”
“He’s gone. I don’t know. Can you fight?”
Fox swallowed down the urge to be sick – to scream, and howl, and lose himself in a vortex of hurt and confusion. “I can fight.”
Phillip frowned, and Fox read the intense hurt in the expression. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. He cupped the side of Fox’s neck. “Charlie, we need you. We have to finish this.”
“I know.”
Shouts. People pouring into the penthouse from the stairwell. Guards. And at their head, a figure dressed all in black, a hood obscuring his eyes.
“Yeah,” Fox said, and stuffed the bloodstained handkerchief in his pocket. Sniffed hard. “I’m ready.”
~*~
By the time they got into the Plaza offices, a maze of cubicles, Reese was already knocking guards down like bowling pins, his AK set on semi-auto mode, shooting them one at a time, but so fast that no one had time to react. And then they entered, and took on the rest.
It was fast.
Mercy spotted Cassandra behind Reese, fingers looped in a strap on his flak vest. And Cassandra spotted Walsh, and rushed forward.
“King!”
The guards were all down, a few moaning, but most of them dead.
Walsh dropped his gun to the industrial carpet and swept his sister up in a hug, squeezing her tight, murmuring into her hair.
Now if they could only get back to the ground floor and out of the building in once piece.
He glanced over and saw Ian watching the siblings, expression wistful.
“You alright?” Mercy asked. No one had tasked him with looking after Ian on this trip, but he’d felt obliged to do so all the same.
The dealer quirked a fast smile. “Quite,” he said, and for the first time since meeting him, Mercy believed him.
~*~
They were still a block away from the building, in a narrow alley of a street, when someone darted across in front of the van.
Axelle slammed on the brakes with a quiet shout of alarm.
The figure wore all black, a cap pulled
down low on his forehead, and he moved quick, but in the bright flare of the headlights, Albie got a clear look at his face.
“That’s Devin!” He flung open his door and scrambled out and after him.
“Albie! Wait!”
If he’d thought the pain was bad before, when he was just limping around his bedroom, it was a fire that blazed in him now. But the sharp edge of it fueled him, and adrenaline gave him strength. Lungs screaming, head pounding, he ran around the nose of the van and gave chase. Down an even narrower alley, the kind a man as big as Mercy would have needed to twist sideways to fit his shoulders through.
Devin was quick, but he was also in his seventies. Injury or not, Albie caught him. And rugby-tackled him down to the pavement.
A very, very, very bad idea.
Pain exploded through him, bright and breath-stealing. Ribs, head, back, hips – everywhere. His grip slackened, and Devin managed to crawl forward and twist around. Albie tightened his hands into fists at the cuffs of his pants and held on for dear life, gulping air, broken bones in his arm screaming.
Behind him, he heard running footfalls, and bless Simon Cavendish when he skidded to a halt and said, “Don’t move.”
Devin put his gloved hands up, to show they were empty, gaze pinging between them, wild as a spooked horse’s.
“Dad,” Albie gasped out between ragged inhales. “What happened? Where are you going?”
Devin kicked a little, testing Albie’s hold, gaze trained on Simon, the gun he had to be holding. “Well…you know. Bit of a change of plans…”
Nausea rolled through Albie, and it had nothing to do with his concussion. “What happened to the others? Where are they?”
Devin gave a sharp, impatient sigh. “They’re fine. They’re bloody great – but going off script, as always. Morris is dead.”
“What?” Albie’s fingers went lax, a shocked reflex.
Devin tried to scramble away.
Crunch of grit under Simon’s shoes as he leaned forward, and Devin paused again. “He’s doing a runner,” Simon said. “Aren’t you, Devin? You left your kids there, and you’re running away.”
Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Page 32