Sanchez held out a picture, and I took it with shaky hands then immediately dropped it to the ground, almost vomiting.
“What the…?”
“Schumer died from a bullet to the head, execution style,” Sanchez informed me. “But they also chopped his junk off. And they did it before they shot him.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I hissed, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. If that’s what they did to people who stole their coffee filters, what happened to girls who stole their hearts?
“I want information on the Brotherhood. Something that can help me prove that it exists at all and that these men are more than the common white collar criminals they pretend to be,” Sanchez informed me. “You have access. I’m not asking you to put yourself at risk. Just keep your eyes and ears open then report back to me with anything you find.” She bit her lip. “Please, Ms. Dansley. I don’t want anyone else to end up like Joey Schumer.”
I swallowed hard, eyes trailing down to the photo on the floor. The rotting young man stared up at me with gooey, lifeless eyes, his body missing what I’m sure he considered his most important parts.
Surely Rex couldn’t have been a part of this? The image of him snapping Luke’s fingers flashed through my mind. But no, he’d had a reason for that. He was protecting me.
Right?
“Okay,” I said finally. “I’ll keep my eyes open. But I can’t promise anything.”
Sanchez gave a short nod and pulled out a card. “Thank you, Ms. Dansley. I’m sure Joey Schumer would be grateful to you.”
chapter SIX
CREEP
- REX -
“Are you okay, Rex?” General Wong asked, sounding worried. “You look sick.”
I held the phone up, not that I could see the man on the video screen since my eyes were squeezed shut. “Yes,” I replied through gritted teeth, resisting the urge to cover my face with my hand as the stench of rotting flesh filled my Hummer. “I’m fine, Marshall, thanks. Can I help you with something?”
“I received a report of another attempt to breach the Brotherhood’s security system. I find this particularly disconcerting considering what’s inside Angela’s Lab.”
I started to suck in a deep breath then remembered exactly what was inside my car and scowled instead. “No one short of the Saint himself could crack that system without days of direct access to the system. But we are taking precautions. Everyone is on high alert, and if someone was able to break into any of the Three Ladies, well…” I paused, lips quirking in amusement at the idea. "They definitely wouldn’t get what they’d come for if they made it inside."
If there was one thing training had taught me, it was precautions, precautions, precautions. You could never be too careful.
“You certainly have nothing to worry about. We’re going to find the man behind the intrusions and take him down—and all his people with him.”
Wong nodded. “I appreciate the reassurances; however, I must remind you how seriously we take security here at the Pentagon. If these intrusions are not brought under control in the near future, we may not be renewing our contract with King Corp.”
“I understand,” I said, grimacing as I heard the door open. “General Wong,” I said loudly, making Jones freeze. “I am very sorry, but I actually am feeling ill, and I need to be going. Thank you very much for contacting me. I will write up a report letting you know how we are protecting the assets. Have a nice evening.”
I ended the call and groaned, rubbing my forehead as I glared at Jones.
“Are you finished yet? I have a date in an hour, you know!”
“You see how fast you can dig a six foot hole before you complain,” he replied calmly, flashing me a smile. The son of a bitch was covered from head to toe with dirt, but I swear he wasn’t sweating a drop as he popped open the back of the Hummer, pulled out the rotting body wrapped in plastic, and tossed it over his shoulder like it weighed nothing. Seriously, the man was not human.
“Get the genitals,” Jones commanded, and I let out a laugh at the absolute absurdity of the comment. There are some moments in life you simply wish you could get on camera. This was one of them.
“Yeah right,” I said dryly, rolling my eyes. “I agreed to let you use my Hummer since your SUV’s in the shop. There is no way I am carrying the genitals.”
“They’re in a bucket,” the man said with a shrug, and I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Get them yourself.”
“Fine, whatever.”
Twenty minutes later and he was back, fucking whistling as he climbed in the car.
“They’ll never find that childfucker again,” Jones said, sounding satisfied. “Burned him to a crisp and buried him deep.”
“I can’t believe you actually had Conner dump the body,” I chastised. “Of course it floated back up. He was probably too lazy to weight it.”
“It didn’t even float,” Jones muttered. “Because the bastard was too lazy to drop it in the water. Apparently he left it on the damn beach, cock stuffed in the mouth. But I had parent-teacher conferences to attend after the hit, and I didn’t have time to dump it myself.”
“They’ve already gotten all the info they can from the corpse,” I pointed out. “Explain to me why we had to break into the coroner’s office and steal it when there’s nothing left to find?”
My eyes widened as Jones’ cheeks grew red. In the twenty years I’d known him, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him blush.
“I’ve never had a body found before,” he muttered, sounding more than a little embarrassed. “It was really bad for my reputation. I had to do something.”
“Right,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. I waved a hand in front of my face. “How long until the smell goes away?”
Jones gave me a sheepish smile. “Mmmm… That would be… never.”
“What?!” I shouted, and he chuckled. “Sorry, man, but it sticks. No worries, though, you’ll get used to it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, scowling. “I am going to kill you if that’s true.” I glanced at the clock. “Dammit, if I go home and shower, I’m going to be late for dinner with Mason.”
“Here,” Jones said, reaching behind the seat and grabbing the duffle bag he’d brought along. He pulled out a bottle of cologne and tossed it to me. “Spray some of that, and I’ll drop you off.”
I sighed, giving it a little sniff, then grimacing at the strength. Somebody bought his cologne at the fucking grocery store. But hey, it was better than Zombie Chic.
We reached the restaurant in thirty minutes, twice the time it would have taken me, but Jones liked to be certain he was never pulled over, for obvious reasons. I glowered at the cheap looking cologne bottle, sighed, then finally gave myself a generous squirt.
“You want me to pick you up?” Jones asked, and I snorted.
“No, I want you to get a cab and leave me my car.”
Jones smiled sweetly. “Sorry, buddy, but I have a trophy in my pocket. Can’t use public transport.”
I looked at him, horrified. “What, like a finger or something? Oh, God, please tell me it’s not his…” I gestured vaguely toward my crotch, and Jones burst out laughing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the coroner’s tag that had been attached to the mark’s foot.
“I’m going to glue it to Conner’s forehead while he’s asleep as payback for leaving my kill sitting on the damn beach.”
“You know what? I don’t want to smell this again tonight anyway. Or possibly ever. Keep the Hummer. I’ll get a cab.”
Jones smirked, and I climbed out, muttering very rude but mostly non-sensical words to describe my friend as I did so.
“Poodle fucking, ass-shit eating, cum vomiting, vagina eyed, pickle dicked son of a—”
“Describing yourself?”
I looked up, eyes widening as Mason walked up, giving me a wicked grin as she put her hands on her waist, her flared skirt giving a little swish as she swung her hips.
“Describing Jones, actually,” I replied, trying to keep my cool. I held out my arm and she took it, grimacing slightly.
“Went a little strong on the cologne today.”
“Yeah, sorry, I was in the lab where they study the effects of parasites on decomposing flesh, and the smell just wouldn’t come off.” I shrugged. “I figured better this than, well…”
Mason grimaced. “Yeah, I take the implied criticism back. Nice cologne, Rex. Very nice. Love it.”
“Shall we?” I asked, gesturing to Marty’s, one of my favorite restaurants, if you didn’t include the ones with a dollar menu. As someone who had to stick to a strict diet for heart health, there was nothing I loved more than a huge, juicy cheeseburger you could buy with coins collected off the sidewalk.
“Mr. Bennett! Welcome!” the concierge called out in a voice that quivered somewhere between nervousness and full on terror. I’d been with Sonny the last time I came in, and an FBI agent had made the mistake of pulling a gun on his daughter. The event ended with the Department of Defense facing off against the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the parking lot while Sonny faced off against Agent Shady in the restaurant.
Needless to say, Shady was no longer a field agent—she filed papers in Evidence now—and Sonny had a restraining order against her for both himself and his daughter.
“Hello, we have reservations for two.”
“Of course, this way, please.”
I couldn’t help but notice how amazing Mason looked in her midnight blue dress and silver heels as we followed the man to a small table in the back. I pulled out her chair and she settled in, looking around nervously.
“This place is really nice,” she said, wincing as she took the menu from the waiter. “…And the prices aren’t shown on the menu.”
I shrugged as I sat down across from her and took my own menu from his hand. “It’s not really the sort of place that expects people to worry about it. You certainly shouldn’t.”
“Oh really?” She said, eyebrows raising as she looked at me, obviously a little peeved at my response, for reasons I didn’t understand. Did she want me to set a limit on the cost of dinner or something? “Considering that I’m supposed to be buying you dinner, it sort of matters to me. I’d prefer not to overdraw my account on the appetizers.”
My eyes widened. “What? No! When I said you owed me dinner, I just meant coming out with me. You’re not buying.”
Mason scowled, looking surprisingly upset by that news. “You think I’m going to let a criminal like you pay for my food?” She sat her menu down and sipped at her water glass. “I’d rather go hungry.”
“Water costs twelve dollars here, Mase,” I said dryly. “It’s filtered,” I added when her mouth dropped open.
Her lips tightened, and I sighed. Oh, those sexy lips.
“Look, I know we are not friends, and I completely understand why. But I thought we’d sort of gotten past being the kind of enemies who can’t even be in the same room without spitting at one another. What’s going on?”
Mason shrugged, tossing her fabulous hair over her shoulder in an elegant motion that made me want to grab her up, pull her against me, and press my lips to hers as hard as I could.
“I started thinking. You have a lot of money. One of your best friends is the fancy version of a mobster and the other is a gigolo.”
“He prefers ‘whore,’” I murmured, which was completely true. Apparently ‘gigolo’ and ‘hustler’ sounded too old-fashioned or something.
“Fine. A mobster and a whore. Plus your friend Mr. Jones has the exact same name as a killer! So where do you get your money? I know where you got the heart beating in your chest—off a moving ambulance, and you did it by pointing a gun in someone’s face. Where did you learn to do that stuff, Rex? Are you really a businessman or do you bury bodies in your free time to make your cash?”
I let out a laugh, shaking my head as if in total disbelief, even as my heart pounded a bit too fast for comfort or safety. Was it simply the irony of life that had Mason asking me this literally hours after Jones lowered Schumer’s body into the ground, or did she know something?
“Are you asking me if I’m some sort of, what, hitman or something?” I shook my head. “I don’t know what Conner told you about my mom when he gave you the tour of the Three Ladies’ Labs, but trust me—I couldn’t do wetwork if I wanted.” That was damn well true. Not if the wetwork was actually wet, anyway. I had snapped a few necks and injected a bit of poison here and there. Sniper rifles didn’t bother me, either. The blood was far enough enough away that it might as well be catsup. Yay for long range weapons. But cutting a man's dick off was not going to happen.
“He told me she was dead,” Mason replied. “Like my mom. Who killed herself.”
“I know that feeling,” I said, locking eyes with her. “Because my mom cut her own heart out in front of me when I was six years old. It left me terrified, soaked in blood, and with a very severe case of hemophobia.” I paused. “In case you’re not caught up on your Latin, that’s the medical term for a psychologically induced fear of blood.”
Mason stared at me in shock, just like everyone who heard the story of my hellish childhood trauma. That one was only the beginning, but I wasn’t in the mood to share the details of all the horrors I had to watch my father induce on my little brother, many of which were very bloody.
“So despite my attempt to make it my major at Harvard, paid execution ain’t my thing.” As if I had anything left to learn about killing by the time I went to Harvard. I was well integrated into the Family by then. “As for the rumors of Sonny’s mob ties—yes, he’s the grandson of a mobster. No, he’s not in the mob. And Conner? He sleeps with friendly, attractive, forty year old women for several thousand dollars a night. It may be a crime, but it’s not murder.”
The gutting of many very abusive johns who’d raped him as a teenager had been. Mason, however, didn’t need to know about that.
“As for Jones... It’s something like the third most common name in the world. The man is a PE teacher. What kind of PE teacher is a hitman in his free time?”
“So, the Brotherhood isn’t real?” she questioned, and I stiffened, wondering just how much time she'd been spending on that damn site of Shady's. First 'super spy' questions, now the Brotherhood. I really needed to have Valentine shut it down.
“The Brotherhood is absolutely real,” I said, and Mason’s eyes widened, mouth forming a little ‘o.’ I smiled, playing it cool as I fed her the story we used to explain our little group of bro-mercs.
“It started when Sonny, Brawn, and I were maybe six or seven. We lived on estates near one another and our home lives sucked, so we made a club. Over the years, other boys from the area joined our club until we had a fraternity of seven. We stuck together through high school then went to college together. Now? We get together now and then, and those of us who’ve been more successful help the others out. Val cleans for us and Conner’s living at Sonny’s place right now.”
“So it’s just a club?” Mason said, and I nodded. Technically, it was just a club. A club of former mercenary intelligence contractors who knew they could trust each other with their lives—something rarer than pigeon blood rubies the size of my balls. And I have some damn big balls.
“What did you think it was?” I asked, pretending to be completely lost.
“There's that website that says it's part of the spy thing, sort of a ring?” She shook her head, cheeks red, obviously feeling stupid. I felt kind of bad, considering she wasn’t stupid at all. “And this woman, an FBI agent. She came to me with these pictures of a dead man. Apparently he worked for you.”
I groaned out loud, shaking my head. Dammit, Shady. “It was Shady Sanchez, wasn’t it?”
Mason’s brow furrowed. “Who?”
“Agent Sandra ‘Shady Lady’ Sanc
hez. She has an obsession with proving my friends and I are some kind of crazy criminal spy ring. It doesn’t help that she blames us for her losing status as a field agent.”
“How did that happen?” Mason asked.
I glanced around. “It happened in this restaurant, actually. She came in and pulled a gun on Sonny’s daughter, accusing the kid of being behind some sort of bank heist. They demoted her to Evidence. She’s still pissed.”
Of course, the kid had been behind the heist, but Mason didn’t need to know that. Greta had been grounded for a month.
“So who was the dead guy?” I asked, as if the smell of his rotting body wasn’t permanently bonded to my nostrils. “I hadn’t heard any employees died.”
“It was Joey Schumer,” she replied. “He looked horrible. He was all scrawny and rotted and had maggots coming out of his mouth.”
I grimaced, shuddering at the idea. I’d refused to look at the corpse before Jones wrapped it up. I didn’t do decaying people, especially not ones that had been stuffed in between big rocks for two weeks instead of filled with embalming fluid and put in the ground. Hell, I just about puked when my milk went bad, much less when maggots had their babies in someone’s butthole.
“May I ask what I can get you tonight, sir, m’am?” the waiter asked, and I swallowed hard, somehow managing to smell Joey’s decayed penis even over the absurdly strong cologne. I covered my mouth with my hand, handing the waiter the menu with the other.
“I think I’ll have a salad. No meat. Or dressing. And, uh, skip anything that could possibly be mistaken for a bug.”
- mason -
Poor Rex looked like he was going to be sick right then and there. I almost felt sorry for him as he stared down at his salad, which seemed to be made up primarily of sesame seeds and mashed coleslaw, mixed together in a manner that most definitely resembled maggots wiggling around in rotting flesh.
Paid killer this man couldn’t be, no matter how sure Agent Sanchez had seemed. I’d been horrified by the pictures she’d shown me, but you would think he was actually smelling dead flesh instead of cabbage from the way he kept rubbing at his nose and grimacing. Though I wouldn’t actually go as far as to call him a wuss, like he swore he was, he certainly wasn’t going to be working at the coroner’s office anytime soon.
Heart Thief (Black Market Billionaire Book 1) Page 14