King Slayer: A Fog City Novel

by Layla Reyne

  Chris pushed his own jeans down farther, stripped off his shirt, and stroked himself faster. “Let me help you,” he urged. “Let go for me.”

  “Look where that got me. You lied. You betrayed me. I should fucking hate you.” The smart, rational part of Hawes’s brain was fighting him, even as precome made his strokes audible, even as his breaths between words grew short and choppy.

  “You liked being under me.”

  “Fuck, too much.” Hawes groaned, wanton and needy, and Chris had to squeeze his balls to stave off his charging orgasm.

  “I liked it too. All that straining muscle, all that strength matching my own. Your hands digging into my biceps. Holding on for dear life.”

  “Oh God.” Hawes panted, breaths uneven, his words stuttered. “Too good. Too close.”

  “No such thing,” Chris said, right there with him. He wished like hell he could see Hawes, wished he was there with him. But they could get somewhere else together. “Get there, Madigan.”

  Hawes’s groan was long and broken, and on it, a wrecked, “Dante.”

  Chris tumbled over the edge with him, streaks of come splattering his torso as pleasure, desire, and desperation erupted in a blinding orgasm.

  They caught their breaths in rhythm, together still, and Chris was the first to speak. “Wish that had been my mouth on you again.”

  “That jock and cheerleader really didn’t appreciate what they had.”

  “You’ve seen the yearbook now. No better in print and no better in real life then either.”

  Chris’s chuckle was met with dead silence on the other end of the line. A beat later, Chris realized the mistake his lust-fogged brain—and mouth—had made.

  “How’d you know that?” Hawes asked, his voice a dangerous whip. Fully alert, all trace of their shared pleasure gone.

  “I assumed,” Chris tried to cover. “Holt said he was retrieving it.”

  “Or my condo is bugged.”

  “I assume you swept for bugs.”

  “You assume.” Hawes’s quick, determined tread echoed over the line. He was on his feet, moving around the condo. “Your assumptions and your plans, Mr. Perri. I can’t trust any of them. Lesson learned.” Ice cold, not the least bit of heat.

  Chris fucking hated the freeze-out, especially after they’d just burned so hot together. After he’d managed to get close again. Dammit! He had to get back there, or at least try to. Trust—that was the key. That was where they kept getting tripped up.

  He wiped off his torso with his shirt and stood, hiking up his pants. He hustled to the study and turned the speakers up, listening. “Give Iris a scratch for me,” he said. “She’s in your closet.”

  Hawes ended the call, and a moment later snuffed out the bug, a blast of static giving way to silence.

  “It wasn’t all a lie,” Chris said to no one.

  Chapter Five

  Chris pushed open the restaurant’s heavy glass door, and the wave of déjà vu almost made him stagger. The same hostess stood at her stand, Kane sat on a stool at the bar, and Hawes occupied the corner booth on the far side of the dining room. But that’s where the similarities to last Sunday ended. No lively music played, no enticing aromas wafted from the kitchen, and no other diners filled the rest of the tables. The only patrons tonight were the king and two of his most loyal, most deadly allies, Helena and Avery.

  The hostess stepped out from behind her stand and extended an arm toward Hawes’s table. “Your party is waiting, Mr. Perri.” Coat draped over her other arm, she sidestepped Chris and placed a set of keys on the bar next to Kane. “Anything else, Chief?”

  Kane drew the keys toward him. “We’re good, Ashleigh.” Chris couldn’t see Kane’s face, but his bedraggled voice said plenty about the weekend he’d had. Worse than even Chris’s. “Thank you.”

  “Just drop the keys in my mail slot before dawn.” She squeezed his shoulder, flashed a smile at Hawes’s table, then slipped out the front door, ignoring Chris completely.

  He waited for the door to thunder shut behind her before sliding into the space next to Kane. “They bought the place out?”

  “They don’t trust you anymore.” The chief rolled a cut-crystal tumbler between his palms, sloshing the two fingers of amber liquid inside the glass. Scotch, judging by the color and peaty smell tickling Chris’s nose. “Don’t trust me much either.”

  “And yet we’re both here, and they haven’t shot us.”

  Kane side-eyed him. “Yet.”

  Chris didn’t doubt that Helena and Avery had their weapons within reach, if not drawn and trained on him beneath the table.

  “Thanks for setting this up.”

  “You’re lucky they answered my call.” Kane drained his scotch and reached over the bar to place the glass in the sink. “And don’t thank me yet.” He straightened, wiped his hands, and slid off his stool. “Let’s see how this goes first.”

  Kane led the way across the dining room rather than standing guard at the bar. He was joining them this time. As a mediator? Chris didn’t dwell on the thought too long, his attention seized instead by the man seated at the middle of the table—the man whose lips were pressed into a thin line, whose posture was on guard, and whose blue eyes tracked his every step. Chris tried to take each step more like Dante, less like Special Agent Perri. Dante was the name Hawes had moaned last night when he’d come, the man he’d let in again. The man Chris had wanted to be more than anyone else for those too brief minutes, maybe who he wanted to be now more than a little—a lot after this was done. More than who he wanted to be, Dante was who Chris needed to be for this meet to pay off.

  A meet he was lucky to have. After disclosing the location of the bug to Hawes, Chris had waited all day for the cancellation call to come. He’d taken a gamble, which could have gone either way. A final destruction of trust or an ounce of it earned. The phone never rang. Either he’d won back enough trust for Hawes to keep this meet, or this was a trap and he’d walked right into it.

  Hawes’s frigid “Mr. Perri” made Chris think the latter. No sexy rumble, no trace of warmth, no hint of a Y instead of an I. This was the cold, untouchable Hawes Madigan from Izzy’s files. The only sign of emotion was the quiet, restrained anger that practically vibrated off him, as though his dark, fitted suit was the only thing keeping him contained. “I don’t know what more we have to say to one another, but you requested this meeting”—he spread his hands—“so we’re here.”

  Chris lowered himself into the chair next to Kane and nodded a greeting to Helena and Avery. Helena appeared aloof, while betrayal burned in Avery’s dark eyes. Still loyal to her employers. Good. And of their missing party… “How’s Holt?” Chris didn’t expect him to be here if Hawes and Helena both were, but he probably wasn’t far away.

  Hawes’s gaze flickered to Kane, a look passing between them. “Fine.” Holt was anything but fine, if Chris had to guess from that terse response.

  But before he could question further, Helena turned her I’m-barely-tolerating-your-presence glare on him. “Get on with it, Mr. Hair.”

  Chris chuckled, the tension-filled air around them lightening a smidgen. “We’re sticking with that, then?”

  “What else am I supposed to call you? Dantopher?”

  And lightening a bit more. He held up his hands, palms out. “Things got out of hand Friday.”

  Stony silence. So much for the reprieve.

  “We can still work together,” he ventured.

  “I don’t see how that’s possible.” Hawes pointed a finger at him. “Fed.” Then at himself. “Target of a federal investigation.”

  Chris jutted a thumb at Kane. “LEO. You work with him.”

  “Because we’ve known Brax for over a decade,” Helena said. “He’s proved he can be trusted.” She tilted her head, long blonde hair cascading over her leather-clad shoulder. “You, not so much.”

  “Let me see if I can change that.” He pulled back one side of his denim jacket, moving deliberatel
y and obviously, and reached inside the inner pocket. He bypassed his leather card case and withdrew the flash drive he’d prepared last night. He pushed it across the table. “That’s a copy of the file from the judge’s desk.” Not wanting to implicate them in front of Kane, Chris didn’t mention Campbell by name, the target who’d given Hawes the tip on the current investigation right before Hawes and company had murdered him and set it up to look like a suicide.

  Eyes flaring, Hawes accurately read between the lines. “So it was the ATF?”

  Chris nodded. “Higher-ups got wind you were moving the explosives. Reopened the prior investigation.”

  “They thought they’d get us on the sale?”

  Chris nodded again. “I convinced them I could infiltrate quickest.”

  Hawes traced his index finger around the rim of his glass. Chris thought he detected a tremble. “Because you thought you could seduce me.” Or, given the barely contained fury in Hawes’s voice, the assassin was readying to pick up the heavy cut crystal and throw it at him.

  Chris backpedaled, fast. “Not part of my original plan.”

  Hawes rolled his eyes. “And we’ve come full circle, back to your plans.”

  Chris ignored the jab and made his case before objects started flying. “I had Isabella’s files and knew them better than anyone. That’s why I thought I could infiltrate fastest. Other than Izzy, no one else at the ATF knew you or the organization better.” He leaned forward, rested his forearms on the table, and clasped his hands. “What I quickly realized, however, between recon and working with you, was that yours isn’t the same organization Isabella, and those before her, had investigated. And you’re getting out of the explosives business. I have no interest in stopping or arresting you.”

  “That’s not what you said yesterday morning.”

  “You weren’t listening.”

  He clasped the glass, knuckles white. “I was handcuffed to the fucking bed.”

  “You’re not now,” Chris said, fighting to keep this conversation focused, fighting not to get sidetracked by the image that flashed behind his eyes—Hawes naked and writhing and seething mad. So mad then, and now, that he still wasn’t listening. “I need you to hear me, Hawes. My mission remains the same.”

  Hawes stifled a noise and averted his gaze, dropping his hand from the glass.

  Helena took up the conversation. “To find Isabella’s killer.”

  “Yes,” Chris answered. “And also less death, which means stopping whoever is trying to overthrow you and your brothers. Our interests are aligned. We track the explosives and determine who is behind their theft and the attempted coup, and we stop them.”

  “We,” Hawes scoffed. A flicker of something softer, sadder, passed across his eyes, before a sheet of ice slammed down over it. “I don’t trust you.”

  “Then trust me,” Kane spoke up. “I’ve got all sides of this covered.”

  Brows scrunched, lips pressed together again, Hawes did not look convinced by Kane’s assertion, but the chief pressed on, and Chris kept his trap shut. He was getting nowhere, maybe Kane could.

  “I do not want a bloodbath on my streets,” Brax said. “Be it a war within your organization, an explosives sale to the wrong party, or a war between you and the ATF. I’ve got too much at stake here.” More than just his job, given the strain in his body and the plea in his voice. “I’m trying to protect all of us. Trust me to do that and to keep my promise. Ten years and I haven’t wavered. I won’t now.”

  Hawes kept his gaze locked on Kane—calculating, assessing—for an interminable five seconds, before it flickered to Chris, then to the flash drive. He drew the device toward himself and pocketed it. “We’ll consider it.” He stood, Helena and Avery rising beside him.

  Chris stood as well. “Thank you.”

  Helena gave him a departing, “Mr. Hair,” Avery another stony glare, and for his part, Hawes paused at the door and leveled him with fiery blue eyes and a “Mr. Perri” that was a few octaves closer to last night’s version. Chris counted it a win.

  Chapter Six

  Monday morning arrived with no follow-up messages. Chris’s phone was obnoxiously silent again, no matter how many times he’d checked it. Nothing from Hawes, nothing from Kane, not even an intrusion alert to indicate Holt was poking around in his system. Granted, there was a better than average chance Holt had circumvented his enhanced firewalls, but Chris fully expected the hacker to leave him a middle finger start-up greeting to let him know exactly where he’d been. But his computer, like his phone, transmitted no messages this morning.

  Standing outside the 16th Street BART station, he glanced once more at his phone. Still nothing. An answer on how they were going to play this would be helpful sooner rather than later, given his babysitter’s imminent arrival. He shoved the phone back into his pocket, rearranged his saddlebag so the strap crossed his body, then entered the teeming mass of commuters descending the stairs to the trains.

  Taking BART one stop over to UN Plaza and the Federal Building was easier than finding parking for the Hog downtown. Also quicker this time of morning, even with the broken escalators that plagued the stations. On second thought, maybe he should have taken the bike. He could have wasted time finding a parking spot and delayed facing the terror that was Scotty Wheeler.

  By all accounts, Wheeler was a good agent, but he was not a UC agent. Need a tome-sized file built out for a case? Wheeler was the guy. Need to find a needle in a haystack? Wheeler was the guy. Need to delicately infiltrate a tight-knit family of assassins? Wheeler was so not the guy. He was about as subtle as a bag of hammers when it came to conducting investigations. And hammers were the last thing Chris needed when he was already skating on thin ice.

  Once on the train, Chris shoved around the files in his bag and dug out his book. He hoped the starter files he’d spent all day yesterday preparing—on Amelia Madigan and the organization’s soldiers—would keep Wheeler busy. Let Scotty dig for that particular needle while Chris went about his work, in his own way, relatively unimpeded.

  He read a few pages before the doors slid open at the next stop. He exited the train onto the platform and into the sea of people, the tide moving slowly toward the stairs, as the escalator was broken at this station too. Packed in as they were, Chris didn’t realize the person directly behind him was an enemy until they pressed the muzzle of a gun against Chris’s lower back.

  “No sudden movements, Agent Perri,” the woman said.

  A man appeared on Chris’s other side, a half step back like the woman, but close enough to prick Chris’s right flank with a knife, behind his bag and just above the waistband of his jeans. “Keep walking,” the man said.

  Chris did as told but slowed his pace, enough that his would-be captors were forced by the crowd to pull even with Chris, giving him a better look. He recognized them from the pictures on his home office walls. Tamela with the gun to his left and Devon with the knife on his right. Madigan soldiers. Was this Hawes’s answer? Or were Tamela and Devon working against their boss?

  “Did Hawes send you?”

  No comment, not that Chris had expected a reply. Soldiers knew better. But they did falter at the base of the stairs as the crowd in front of them undulated backward in response to a commotion on the level above.

  An opening.

  Chris heaved his paperback at the ceiling, scattering the rafter pigeons and jostling the platform crowd around them. Avoiding a knife to his kidneys, Chris slung his bag around to cover his lower back, spun toward Tamela, and grabbed her pistol by the barrel. It was a risk. She could pull the trigger and kill him, setting off a mass panic down here, but he was no good to them dead. She wouldn’t fire.

  It was the right call. Chris wrenched the gun from her grip and let momentum carry his right elbow back into Devon’s face. Chris counterbalanced with a kick to the left, planting a boot in Tamela’s stomach. Not enough to take her down, but enough to get the crowd really scattering.

  Several of
the closest bystanders screamed—“Fight!” “Move!” “Gun!”—having spotted the weapon in Chris’s hand and Devon’s combat knife clattering to the cement floor.

  Chris had no choice. “ATF! Clear the area!” he shouted, sealing the deal on chaos. Better for the public to know law enforcement was on the scene and better to announce himself to any converging BART Police. He’d reach for his badge if he could, but Devon, behind him, was trying to strangle him with the strap of his bag. Chris wedged his free hand under the strap, curled his fingers around it, and shoved outward, extending his arm. Victim to momentum again, Devon rammed into his back. Chris reached back his other arm, curled it around Devon’s neck, and bending forward, hauled Devon over his back. The soldier hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him, mouth opening and closing as he struggled for breath.

  Chris was having trouble catching a breath—or break—of his own. Back on her feet, Tamela was preparing to attack. She shook out her limbs and eyed the gun Chris had trained on Devon.

  Escalating shouts from the crowd drew Tamela’s gaze off Chris long enough for him to tuck the gun into his waistband. He couldn’t risk using it down here, even if most of the commuters had heeded the warnings and cleared out. With Tamela still distracted, Chris shrugged off his bag, wound the strap around his fist, and cocked it for a throw. Full of files, there was enough heft in the bag for a good hit.

  The maneuver proved unnecessary.

  A flash of gray silk, starched white cotton, and ice-blue eyes streaked in front of Chris, kicking back down a resurging Devon and sending Tamela to the ground beside him, the crack of bones unmistakable. She tilted forward, trying to curl over her awkwardly hanging arm, but the wire around her neck hauled her back upright.

  “Not yours?” Chris said to the man holding either end of the garrote.

  “Not anymore.” Hawes leaned down and spoke right next to Tamela’s ear. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you, traitor.”