“What’s he done now?”
“What’s who done?” She snapped her umbrella shut and set it on the vinyl top of the worktable to her right.
He snorted. He was sketching, she saw, working out the dimensions for a new piece. “Tommy. You’ve got that look on your face like he’s said something stupid.”
She walked around behind him to fetch a towel and unfolded it beneath the umbrella, wiping up the water it had left behind in the process. “Am I that predictable?”
“As the stars, love.” He set the pencil down and really looked at her, gave her a real smile. “So what was it?”
“Oh, nothing.” She plopped onto her usual stool and hooked the toes of her boots in the rungs. “Just that he’s starting to agree with the ones who don’t like me working for Dad.”
He made a disagreeing sound. “No. He’s not agreeing. He’s just thick-headed.”
She wished that was the case, but recalling his face before, the way he hadn’t wanted to meet her eyes… “I don’t know. Not this time. I…”
It terrified her, suddenly, the cold clammy hand of doubt at the back of her neck, digging its fingers into her subconscious. If Tommy could lose faith in her, if he of all people could reject her presence…Where would she go, then? To a typist job in a big office, wrapped in pencil shirts and scarves, fetching coffee, enduring unsubtle innuendos at the copy machine, while she watched pigeons scuttle on the window sills outside?
Would she become…ordinary?
Or perhaps that was the problem. She’d always been ordinary, only she’d fooled herself into thinking she was a part of something dark, lush, and underground. It had always seemed impossible and frightening – being like other girls. Shopping trips, pastel jumpers, boy bands, gossip trails, snogging parties. Even at twenty-six and well out of school, the thought of such things could still spook her.
She didn’t realize her eyes were shut until Albie touched her arm and they snapped open again. She gasped.
“Easy.” He gave her an assessing look. His face softened. Always a glorious expression on any of this set of siblings, when the humor and sweetness shined through. “It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be, I promise. You forget he’s young. But he’s your biggest fan.”
“Bigger than you?” she teased.
He drew himself up to his very average height. “Almost,” he teased back. “But seriously. Is it maybe not the safest thing for you to be breaking into places and stealing things?”
“That makes it sound like crime.”
He grinned. “Yeah, well, now, it isn’t. Would I let you do it if you were my daughter?” He grew serious. “I dunno, love. I’d like to think not. But your dad sees it different than the rest of us.”
“The rest of you.”
“The club, I mean. We blood relatives know you’re invaluable, though.” He chucked her under the chin like he had when she was a little girl.
“You’re so full of shit.”
“I am. That’s why I’m your favorite uncle.”
She laughed. “Right. Just don’t tell the others.”
Spending time with Albie never failed to ease unknown tensions inside her. After a pleasant half hour of chatting about his latest designs, her belly unclenched and her shoulders loosened.
Then he said, “I’ve got something to show you,” and motioned for her to follow him through the curtain into the back. His workshop, full of half-done pieces and woodworking equipment, rolls of leather on the wall. A massive tool chest with a false bottom, a trap door set in the floor. And down a narrow flight of steps, a secret basement. And a cache of illegal weapons that would send all of Interpol scrambling through the front door.
“I picked this up a while back,” he said as he clicked on the overhead light.
On the table in the center of the room sat a knife. Slender blade the length of her hand. Grip made of hard, white bone, carved with a tiny but unmistakable wolf. Hideous. Somehow beautiful. An effective tool always held a certain amount of splendor, admirable in its usefulness.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Russian guy. You like it?”
She skimmed a fingertip along the handle and found it warm, which seemed odd. “I do.”
“I got it for you.”
She looked at him curiously. “You’re not just trying to cheer me up?”
He grinned and shook his head. “No. It caught my eye in his assortment and it made me think of you.”
Pleased, surprised, she said, “Any particular reason?”
“The wolf reminded me of you,” he said, voice contemplative. “Even the loveliest of creatures has teeth.”
~*~
Tommy was waiting for her when she reached her flat. He sat on the floor, hands resting on his knees, leaning back against her door, looking a little like a British James Dean in his denim jacket and cut, cigarette hanging off his lip.
“Hello, Uncle.” She unlocked the door and he scrambled to his feet.
“I wanted to explain.”
“Yes, I imagine you do.” She hung up her jacket and toed off her boots, left him to follow her as she went into her kitchen.
His boots thumped against the baseboard, and he followed in his socks.
It was a tiny flat, one bedroom, with a kitchen like a shoebox. The fluorescent light overhead was so blinding she usually just stumbled around in the dark, finding things by feel.
Tonight she flipped it on, squinting, hearing Tommy’s hiss.
“Shit, do you need that?”
“Yes.”
She pulled the Dewar’s down and had a sip straight out of the bottle. Fuck glasses.
“Drinking again?” He placed himself on the other side of her butcher block island, blinking against the brightness.
“I didn’t finish my beer earlier, remember?” She offered him the bottle.
He took a long swallow. “You’re angry?” Passed the bottle back.
“Sad, maybe?” She shrugged and took another sip. Just two mouthfuls was enough to take the edge off her mood. “But I knew I couldn’t work for the club the rest of my life.” She tried to smile.
“Can I be honest?”
“Aren’t you always?”
“You shouldn’t want to work for the club for the rest of your life.” He held up a staying hand. “What I mean is, you’re smart. Me? I didn’t get the head for numbers, or guns, or assassinating”–
They both suppressed chuckles at reference to Fox.
–“but you could have a real career. Make money for yourself. Take holidays in warm places. Marry an arsehole banker with a double chin who’ll buy you a Merc and give you fifteen kids.”
His grin was infectious. Smiling, she said, “And when have I ever said I want those things?”
“Well…maybe not the double chin. He could be good-looking, if you like.”
“Tommy Duncan: life coach.”
He laughed, delighted. “At your service.” Then grew more serious. “Are we okay? You ready to get it done tomorrow?”
She took one last swallow and slid the bottle to him. “Ready.”
~*~
Six months ago, Michelle had been called up to her father’s office and found him entertaining a guest: a pale, stoop-shouldered man sweating profusely in the glare of incoming sunlight. She’d clocked him as an official of some sort straight away: the suit, the haircut, the rumpled pocket square he used to mop his brow.
“Sweetheart,” Phillip said, “this is Mr. Monroe. He has a job for us.”
“I think my daughter’s boyfriend wants to plant a bomb somewhere.” And in halting, frightened tones, the man explained it.
Two months ago, he told them, his daughter Macy started dating a new beau, and she had undergone a dramatic change. Prior to, she’d always met her father for Wednesday afternoon lunch, and they’d chatted about her university, about what he could tell her of his work in the prime minister’s office. He described Macy as “bright as sunshine,” always laughing
and smiling. “Oh, Dad, you and your jokes.” She would kiss him on the forehead before they parted ways. She got good marks at school and worked weekends at a pub popular with the young crowd.
And then the boyfriend came along.
She stopped keeping their lunch dates, abruptly, and with lame excuses. Stopped returning texts and calls. Mr. Monroe heard from the bursar at school that she hadn’t paid tuition for the latest term. When he went by the pub, the manager said she’d quit.
The boyfriend, when Mr. Monroe finally met him, was grungy, unwashed, reeking of marijuana smoke, and possessed of a certain neurotic glazed look in the eyes. “He hates the government, hates England,” Mr. Monroe said, sweating in earnest now. “Says we’re all a bunch of bloody colonizers and ought to be put to the stake. He said that, literally – ‘put to the stake’ – like he wanted to kill people.
“He has a vision for a new world order. One in which ‘industry’ is obliterated, and the ‘oppressors’ are wiped off the face of the earth.”
Michelle exchanged a glance with her father, who looked almost amused.
“Go on, Mr. Monroe,” Phillip urged, patiently.
Mr. Monroe had learned of the bomb last week. Visiting his daughter, they’d argued about the boyfriend – Mac, his name was – and Macy had asked him to leave. He had, tears in his eyes, and run into Mac on the stairwell. The boy was on the phone. “Did you get the C4?” he asked whoever was on the line, and didn’t even notice Mr. Monroe, shoving rudely past him on his way back to the flat.
“He’s going to blow something up,” Mr. Monroe said, eyes welling. “And I don’t know if it’s a government building, or the university, or a fish and chips stand, but he’s going to hurt people. Kill them.”
“Not that I don’t believe you,” Michelle said, “but why tell us about it?”
The man looked between her and her father. “Because I told everyone at work, and without him committing a crime, and without a warrant and all the proper channels, they can’t do anything to him.”
“And you thought you’d come ask your local MC for a hand?” Phillip asked. His eyes were twinkling, though, which Michelle knew meant he’d already decided.
“I don’t care what you do,” Mr. Monroe’s voice hardened. “You’re patriots, I know that much. And I know you don’t let the laws stand in your way.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Stop him. Before it’s too late and it’s all over the news.”
Michelle felt a low quiver of excitement in her belly.
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” Mr. Monroe pleaded. “Hell, I can probably expunge records.”
Phillip smiled.
“Just please say you’ll do it. Please.”
Phillip nodded. “We’ll do it.”
“God…thank you…Jesus…” The man gulped a huge breath; tears glimmered in his lashes. “What do you need from me?”
“Just his name.”
~*~
Three days later, swathed head to toe in black, Michelle and Tommy broke into Mac’s apartment and uncovered a treasure trove of bomb-making equipment, maps, handbooks, flash drives, and various other anarchist propaganda. With a burner mobile, Michelle put photos of all of it on the web. Then they packed up what they could carry, tacked a photo of Mac to the top of the tidy bundles, and dropped it off at parliament, sure to get caught on camera, faces and figures totally hidden.
The next day, Mac and his accomplices were arrested, and a bombing was stopped before it ever began.
Mr. Monroe wasn’t the first of such customers.
And thus, the Vigilante Patriots were born.
~*~
The morning of the McAndrew job dawned clear, sky scrubbed clean from last night’s rain. Tommy had slept on her sofa, and she roused him with a gentle tap on the head. “Rise and shine.”
McAndrew had a thumb drive he’d insisted he couldn’t expose himself. He wanted it “stolen” from his home, and for the Vigilante Patriots to be blamed for it.
Uneasiness prickled up the back of Michelle’s neck in the shower, but she pushed it down. Just usual nerves, she told herself.
Yes, usual.
Nothing out of place.
A flower show out on the pavements of McAndrew’s busy neighborhood. Pedestrians everywhere, laughing, calling, singing. They went in the back way. Nicked the drive, clean getaway. Then stuffed their hats, bandanas, and black gloves in the backpack Tommy wore. Just regular ordinary young people, maybe friends, maybe a couple. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Until…
She didn’t understand it, at first, when she saw the black-clad figures at the end of the street. Three of them, in masks, black jackets, combat boots. Long barrels of rifles sprouting over their shoulders.
Tommy pulled in a deep breath beside her. She felt his hand grappling for hers, his skin warm and smooth, before the street exploded.
~*~
“Tommy!”
He gasped and went down hard on his knees, dragging her with him.
The man who’d stabbed him closed in on them, crimson knife brandished, ready to finish the job.
“Tommy, Tommy.” He was too heavy, his arm gone limp around her waist.
The man with the knife, he –
She saw the flash of metal, heard the faint whistle as the blade parted air, just before a machete caught their attacker in the back of the neck, and sent him crumpling, boneless, to the pavement.
Albie.
Nothing had ever been as beautiful as her uncle standing above them, sliding a bloodied machete into the sheath at his belt.
“Chelle.” He knelt and gathered Tommy to him, both arms around his waist. “Help me with him.”
She did.
When the smoke began to dissipate, blue lights and sirens cutting pathways through it, they were gone.
Two
Michelle
A nurse took pity on her, finally, and brought her a chair to sit in. She hadn’t realized how badly she was shaking until she slumped down into it. Albie draped his jacket across her shoulders and she clutched it around her throat, breathing the familiar, comforting smell of his shaving cream off the collar, the scent dislodging the stink of smoke in her nose.
Bless Albie. He’d been the one with the presence of mind to stop the bleeding. He’d thought to wipe the soot from their hands and faces. Thought to tell the emergency department staff that they’d been mugged, leaving out all details of the attack in the street.
Tommy had been rushed to surgery. Then it was a blur of lukewarm coffee cups and hard chairs, fighting to keep her eyes open, wanting to vomit every time she relived that moment on the street.
And now Tommy’s room, the harsh tube lights, the beep of the machines. Tommy pale beneath the sheets, his breathing shallow as they waited for him to wake up.
Michelle dug her fingers into the suede of the jacket. This was their first chance to really talk, and she forced herself to look from her wounded uncle to her savior uncle.
Albie had his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulder braced against the door, face deeply troubled.
“How did you know we’d need rescuing?” Michelle asked, voice a croak.
“I didn’t. I just had a bad feeling.”
She looked back at Tommy, and her throat tightened. Her heart compressed. Oh, God. She wanted to touch him, slide her hand into his, squeeze and let him know she was here. But maybe she shouldn’t; maybe the doctor wouldn’t think she ought to.
Tears filled her eyes.
“Do you have the drive?” Albie asked.
“What?”
“The drive you took today. Do you still have it?”
“Yeah, but…” She couldn’t even think about work right now. Not when her uncle/surrogate-brother/best friend in the world lay possibly dying before her.
Albie touched her shoulder and she craned her head back to look at him.
“They were after it,” he said, spooky in his composure. “Nobody wan
ted to blow up a flower show. They were after that drive.”
A hard shudder moved through her. What if those men had shown up while they were still in the flat?
Worse…those men had known they’d be stealing the drive today.
“What the hell’s on it?” she wondered aloud.
“Something important.”
Tommy groaned, and the sound was a jolt of electricity through her system. She lurched forward, grabbed for his hand, then thought better of it.
“Tommy?”
Albie crowded in behind her, hand hovering in the air; he’d had the same impulse, to touch him somehow. “Thomas,” he said, like a command.
Tommy’s eyes flipped open, suddenly, pale blue under the lights and frightened as a horse’s. His chest heaved. His mouth opened, a soundless question.
“Hey.” Michelle laid her hand on his bare arm, careful of the IV and the wires. “We’re right here.”
His head rolled toward her on the pillow; his gaze moved across her face. And then he exhaled. “Jesus,” he whispered. “What happened?”
Tears clouded her vision and she ducked her head, hand tightening on his arm.
“You got stabbed, kid,” Albie said. “But you’re my brother, so you’re okay.”
~*~
“They’re going to want to see him,” Albie said out in the hall. “I got the texts. They’re on the way up.”
Michelle nodded. “Yeah.”
Of course Tommy’s brothers would want to lay eyes on him and ensure themselves that he was going to pull through. And what Albie wouldn’t say was that she might want to go for a coffee or something until they were done visiting.
“Michelle,” he said, consolingly. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the canteen.”
The sharp rap of high-heeled footfalls on the terrazzo preceded a crisp, familiar female voice. “And why would she want you to do that, Albert?”
Raven Blake’s mother, Sienna, had been a true conquest for her father: a runway model of cold, statuesque proportions. Raven had inherited her mother’s striking good looks, her slender physique and bold dark hair, but she had Devin Green’s blue eyes, bright with mischief and humor. She was smiling as she closed the distance and joined them, taller than them both in skinny slacks and stilettos.
Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) Page 2