Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  Lanny sent her an approving look.

  Jamie buried his face in his hands.

  Alexei looked at her appraisingly, head cocked to the side.

  Nikita sighed, and finally nodded. “Carry a gun.”

  She felt her smile widen. “I’m never not carrying a gun.”

  14

  Farley, WY

  There was a restaurant attached to the hotel, an IHOP knockoff with vinyl booths, silk plants, and a breakfast buffet to die for. That was where Jake went looking for his targets, and that was where he found them.

  Before he left base – well, the garage – Ramirez had pulled him aside, hands on her hips, and said, “Why are we dragging our feet? We have the targets in range; let’s close in and make the arrest.”

  He’d silently wondered if questioning his authority was a personality trait, or something she’d picked up after she was discharged; a show of frustration much like his own with her situation. Her file indicated that she had no family and had enlisted at her local recruitment center on her eighteenth birthday. She’d poured her life into the Army – and barely escaped with it. Maybe she’d been promised a possible return to active duty and was chomping at the bit just like him.

  She hadn’t been touched by Ruby Russell, though; hadn’t felt the physical shove and the tingle of her skin healing.

  So he’d frowned at her and said, “These two have evaded eight recovery teams, and killed seventeen men.”

  Her brows had shot up.

  “We’re going to do this slowly and carefully. I’m off to do recon, and I’ll let the rest of the team know what I find.”

  She hadn’t argued after that, and the others had been content to keep playing small town blue collar workers. Now here he stood on the blue rug inside the restaurant, gaze going across the room to the table where Rooster Palmer and Ruby Russell sat eating breakfast.

  Jake took a moment, before they noticed him, to study them.

  Palmer held himself like a hunted man. Elbows on the table, head low, eyes up, shoveling in food mindlessly; it was fuel for him, something to keep his body going, and nothing he enjoyed. Jake could see the bulge of a gun at his hip, and the shadow of another in the shoulder holster visible under the unzipped halves of his jacket. There was a picture of him in the file back at the garage, a handsome, stern-faced kid in his dress uniform. He’d aged since that photo was taken; nearly died. If his discharge paperwork was to be believed, his doctors hadn’t expected him to ever regain full mobility. And yet Jake had seen him haul the girl out of the restaurant, strong and very much mobile.

  Across from him, picking choice bits off plates of sausage, and bacon, and hash browns, and French toast sticks, Ruby looked bright and vibrant as a little twist of flame, her russet hair capturing the light, her sweet face alight with simple happiness.

  The made a strange tableau: the hardened warrior and the lively sprite of a girl. Too close in age to be father and daughter, too far apart to be lovers. Brother and sister maybe. Or, the truth: high-level target and self-made bodyguard.

  It didn’t matter what they looked like, or why they did so; his job was to bring them in. Jake shook off all other thoughts and approached their table.

  Ruby noticed him first. Her hand froze, a long drop of syrup falling off the bit of toast she held, landing on her plate with a quiet plop that seemed deafening in the sudden silence. She didn’t turn toward him. Neither did Palmer; the Marine held perfectly still save his right hand, which moved to his hip, and the gun there.

  “If it’s alright,” Jake said carefully, “I was gonna come give you an update on your truck.”

  Ruby lowered her toast to the plate, movements slow and measured – save the fast trembling of her pulse in the creamy hollow of her throat.

  Palmer turned his head, gave Jake the kind of flat, unreadable look he’d always associated with the Marines; like they were all taking your measure as a man and finding you lacking on all counts. After a long moment, he nodded toward an empty chair, and Jake slid into it as casually as possible. Internally, he wanted to duck for cover and draw his own weapon. But he couldn’t afford any slip-ups now. Not when he was making progress.

  “Good morning,” he said to Ruby, sparing her a quick glance. It was polite, for starters, and also because Palmer might appreciate him looking away, showing enough trust to give him an open angle to his throat.

  She blinked, startled. “Good morning.”

  When he looked back at Palmer, the man was frowning. “What about the truck?”

  “Right. Basically, it’s fucked. Spence can rebuild the transmission, but it could take as long as a week. He ordered parts first thing this morning, and they’re on rush, but we’re still looking at at least three days. Probably more.”

  Palmer clenched his jaw, lips pressed tight together.

  “Did you have any luck with the classifieds?”

  He snorted and glanced back at his plate, picked up his fork again. “Nah.”

  “Sorry I don’t have better news,” Jake offered.

  “That’s alright, it’s not your fault,” Ruby said, giving him a shaky smile. “Thank you for all your help.”

  “It’s the least I could do after…” Jake trailed off, opening his hand on the tabletop, showing the unblemished skin on the back of it.

  “Oh.” Her cheeks pinked. She was one of those redheads whose blush went all down her throat and disappeared into the collar of her shirt. “Well, I–”

  “Ruby,” Palmer barked. “Didn’t you want to get some fruit?”

  “I…Oh. I did.” Her gaze moved between them, worried. “I’ll just go and…”

  “Yeah. ‘Fore it gets picked over.”

  There was no one else in the restaurant, but Ruby nodded and pushed her chair back, walked over to the buffet.

  Palmer’s eyes followed her progress, the gleam in them almost feverish; the gaze of someone who’d been in the sandbox too long, who saw hostiles in ever corner, behind every mundane potted plant. He kept his voice low, just for the two of them. “Alright, what do you want? And don’t gimme any bullshit about being a good Samaritan. You don’t owe us shit.”

  Jake sighed. “Honestly?”

  Palmer’s gaze slid over; his hand was still on his gun. “Yeah. That’d be good.”

  He’d known, after that first side-of-the-road encounter, that he’d have to tread carefully. And so he’d rehearsed what he’d say in this situation, because he knew it was coming. And yet, he hadn’t prepared for the way the guy was staring at him: like killing him was preferable to listening to anything he had to say.

  Jake took a gamble. “Look, I know you’re not gonna want to hear this – being the trigger-happy, paranoid freak that you obviously are – but I do a lot of pickups on the highway, sometimes almost a hundred miles away, and I hear lots of people’s stories when I’m giving them lifts.”

  Palmer glowered at him, but he leaned forward a fraction, and that was something.

  “Last year,” Jake continued, dropping his voice to a whisper, thanking God he’d always had a cool head in a firefight, because that’s what this felt like, “I picked up a long-haul trucker who’d just come through Tulsa, and he started telling me this crazy story. Said he was walking out of a gas station and saw this Tahoe full of black-ops looking guys go running across the parking lot, wearing all kinds of riot gear, toting full autos, toward this guy. This scary-looking guy in a Dodge truck with a redheaded girl with him.”

  Palmer stiffened all over; he stopped breathing.

  “People starting running and screaming, and taking cellphone videos. And this scary guy – this long-haired, military looking guy – he pulls a gun and tells the guys that if they don’t stop they’re all gonna wish they had. And they don’t stop. And they catch on fire.”

  Palmer let out one long, steady breath, expression never changing.

  “When I saw you guys in the diner,” Jake said, even softer, sympathetic now, “and then when she spilled her coffee,
and she healed me…I put two-and-two together.”

  “Yeah. So,” Palmer bit out through clenched teeth. “What you gonna do about it?”

  Jake shrugged. “I’m gonna see that your truck gets fixed and send you on your way. I figure it’s none of my business who you two are.”

  “Yeah? That’s what you figure?”

  Jake leaned back in his chair. “I loved being in the Army. I don’t know how I woulda survived without it. But I know that sometimes your country doesn’t always have your back. I know sometimes you have to go against an order.”

  Something like recognition sparked in Palmer’s eyes, but briefly, there and gone again in a heartbeat.

  “I don’t know what you’re running from, but I know you’re running. I know that your girl is special–”

  Palmer growled.

  “–and I know that being special can put a target on your back. I’m not a good Samaritan, no; just a guy who’s seen my fair share of people being used for the wrong reasons.”

  They stared at one another, unblinking.

  “So,” Palmer said. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. I don’t figure you’ll trust me, but I’m offering my help all the same.”

  Ruby’s chair scraped back as she returned, bearing a plate heaped with semi-fresh buffet fruit. She looked between them, missing nothing, a little notch between her brows. But she kept her voice light when she said, “They have pineapple. Do you want some?”

  “Sure,” Palmer said. He gave Jake one last warning glance, and then looked away, showing his own throat. He moved his hand from his gun to reach for his fork, and Jake felt like that was a small victory.

  15

  New York City

  “Keep an ear out,” Lanny had said earlier, “and if things go south, then you step in.”

  Jamie had been breathing harder than he was proud to admit. “Things go south? Step in?”

  “They’re expressions.”

  “I know they’re expressions. That whole sentence was nothing but expressions. What do you mean by them?”

  Lanny had sighed like he couldn’t believe he had to put up with this. “It means you need to sit at the table behind theirs, listen, and if Dr. Fowler tries to pull some shit, you hit him over the back of the head with a napkin dispenser. Got it? I’d give you a gun, but I think you’d just shoot yourself in the foot, and we don’t have time for that.”

  So, deeply insulted, a little bit scared out of his mind, Jamie sat at a window table in the agreed-upon coffeeshop, right behind Dr. Fowler, waiting for Trina to arrive. He’d never been anyone’s backup before, and he didn’t much feel like it now.

  You’re a vampire, he reminded himself. You aren’t helpless.

  Small comfort.

  He nursed his cappuccino and tried not to think about how much the man sitting behind him smelled of chemicals.

  ~*~

  Trina wasn’t nervous. Well, she was, but she’d suppressed it. She had a task, and no amount of nerves would keep her from it. She wondered, faintly, if this was the way Katya had felt, taking a steamer to Stalingrad, a rifle slung over her shoulder. On her way to kill Nazis.

  She clocked Dr. Fowler through the window of the coffeeshop and walked past him without turning her head, shoulders back, gaze forward, strides brisk. She made it inside, down the aisle of tables, and managed not to acknowledge him at all until she was sitting across from him. Then she pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and said, “Thank you for meeting me,” in the chilliest voice she could conjure.

  He seemed properly off-kilter. “Yes, well. Of course. Thank you for – I think we can both help one another.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” She pulled her phone from her pocket, a photo already pulled up on the screen. It was a close-up Harvey had sent her of the teeth marks in the abdomen of one of their vics. She set the phone down on the table and slid it just close enough for him to see, keeping her hand on it. “Take a look at that, Dr. Fowler, and tell me what you see.”

  He made a face, clearly taken aback. “This is…this is a crime scene photo–”

  “Autopsy, actually, but close enough. These right here?” She pointed. “They’re teeth marks. Fang marks, as in, not human teeth.” She pocketed the phone and sat back. “When were you going to tell me that your escaped patients are werewolves, doctor?”

  He stared at her a moment, gaping, sufficiently shocked. He blinked, and shook his head. Some of the coyness crept back into his voice. “Detective Baskin, I’m surprised.”

  She lifted her brows.

  “That you would even entertain an idea like that. Werewolves? Oh, is this a joke?” He looked relieved, and then stern, a transparent attempt at acting. “I didn’t take you for someone who would use murder victims to play pranks, but clearly–”

  “You know who I am,” she said, and he stilled. “The Ingraham Institute was founded in 1942 in Stalingrad. The first person they studied was a nineteen-year-old from Siberia named Sasha Kashnikov. If you work there, then you know that. Just like you also know that you’ve seen my last name on some paperwork somewhere. Let’s not play the monsters-don’t-exist game, because you’re obsessed with them.”

  He stared at her, jaw clenching.

  “You’re in charge of the wolves that killed that family, which makes you my number one suspect at the moment.”

  He smiled, thinly. “Do you think that will hold up in a court of law?”

  “Crazier stuff has.”

  His smile widened. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “No. I’m impatient – there’s a big difference. Where’s Sasha, Dr. Fowler?”

  Now his smile curled up at the corners, Grinch-like and smug. “I’m sorry. Who?”

  “Where’s Sasha?” she repeated, and this time the question was punctuated with a soft click.

  Dr. Fowler’s smile faltered; he jerked a little in his chair. “You didn’t.”

  “I very much did.” The Smith & Wesson .45 fit her hand with the familiarity of an old friend, reassuringly cool and heavy. “If you’re going to operate outside the law, then so am I. I’ve had very little sleep in the last week, you’ve kidnapped my friend, and I’m an excellent marksman. So unless you want me to Han Solo your ass through this table right now, you’ll tell me what you did with Sasha.”

  He met her stare-for-stare. “I didn’t do anything with him. It’s like I’ve already told you: I work with helping vets. Sasha is of no interest to me.”

  Her hand tightened on the gun. “You’re on very thin ice, doctor.”

  “As are you, I believe. You have no evidence for your case – at least not any that you can actually take to your captain, and the clock is ticking.” He leaned forward, voice lowering. “It seems like everything’s been upside down since your life got tangled up in other people’s business. If I were you, I’d forget about Sasha and worry about your job.”

  She leaned forward, too, though the gleam in his eyes sickened her. “Last chance.”

  “You won’t shoot me.” He held her gaze a moment, then smiled with satisfaction and got to his feet. “I’m sorry we couldn’t work something out, detective. It’s a shame.”

  “Wait,” she said, just before he turned away. “Not today, you’re right. I won’t. But someday. Eventually. I will shoot you. And I can promise I won’t miss.”

  He snorted, amused. “Good afternoon, Trina.” And walked to the door.

  When he was gone, Jamie twisted around in his seat, his eyes huge. “Um. What.”

  Trina sighed and holstered her gun. “Yeah. I know. Let’s hope that bought the guys enough time. I kinda got…carried away.”

  “Are you really gonna shoot that guy?”

  “One day? Yeah. I think so.”

  ~*~

  Lanny reached for his badge when they crossed into the lobby, intending to flash it, but Nikita batted his hand down.

  “You won’t need that. Watch.” And he proceeded to turn the brain of everyone they encountered into wors
hipful mush.

  “This is seriously creepy,” Lanny said, as Mona the Adoring Nurse led them to Dr. Fowler’s office. “That’s what you did to me, isn’t it?” He turned to glare at Alexei, who walked beside him.

  Alexei, the little shit – he was a prince after all; weren’t they all little shits? – shrugged, as remorseless as ever. “It was for your own good.”

  “So was hitting you in the face. How did that feel?”

  Ahead of them, Nikita snapped his fingers, a voiceless command to shut up.

  “Who the fuck put him in charge?” Lanny muttered.

  Alexei snorted in an agreeing way.

  The office door was locked. “Oh, I can,” Mona started to offer, and Nikita snapped the handle off with one effortless twist of his hand. Lanny heard the other half hit the floor inside the office, and Nikita pushed his way in.

  They all filed in after, finding the space surprisingly cramped; Lanny had expected someone with Fowler’s penchant for theatrics to work in an office with a massive, ornate desk and shelves full of oddities. Instead, the space felt just like any hospital office, with a cheap desk and rolling chair, white walls, and several wall shelves of plastic-covered file folders.

  “Mona,” Nikita said, and his voice was off: soft, and low, and cloying in a way that made Lanny’s skin crawl. “Why don’t you go stand guard for us?”

  Her voice was wrong too: slow and syrupy. “Okay.” She wandered out, smiling, dazed.

  “Dude,” Lanny said, and shuddered. “That is fucked up.”

  “You can probably do it too,” Nikita said absently, sitting down in the desk chair and waking the sleeping computer.

  “I what?”

  “It’s hereditary. Well. I guess that’s what you’d call it. It can be passed through breeding and through siring.”