And then the place had blown.
Jerrod stared into the middle distance. “And you didn’t see Thorne.”
“No. And I thought we’d ruled him out,” Miguel said. “Right? The last time the pirates struck?”
Jerrod was shaking his head. So he knew Thorne was connected to Nadia and Barbarian. Miguel needed to get to Thorne and warn him—from a burner phone, or better yet, in person. Jerrod sometimes monitored calls.
“No bodies, no dead,” Jerrod said. “But I’ve got a few ideas on how to find them. At least Victor’s girl. I know how to find her.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Thorne stood at his kitchen window holding his phone, listening to the soft murmurs coming from his bedroom. Richard and Nadia were discussing whatever they discussed when they were alone. Richard was protective of her. Thorne liked that. Richard was a good man, much as it pained him to admit it. A better man than he had ever been.
That photo of her mother had lit him on fire with a mix of happiness and rage—happiness because Nadia had found her mother, and she might be alive. Rage because of what Victor had done to the woman.
He couldn’t blame Nadia for the raids. Hell, he knew what it was like when somebody you loved was at the mercy of evil people. It was a claw lodged in your heart.
Which was why he’d be making a call he didn’t want to make.
The voice on the other end answered with a name. “Dax.”
“It’s Thorne.”
“What can I do for you, Thorne?”
Thorne knew what kind of man Dax was. Dax collected people; more correctly, he saved them so that he could own them and throw them at his agenda. Thorne didn’t mind—he trusted a man with an agenda far more than one without.
Up until now, Thorne hadn’t been in Dax’s debt. Theirs had been an even exchange—Thorne got Jerrod’s identity, and Dax would get the names of corrupt federal officials as soon as Thorne took over Hangman.
He’d kept from owing Dax. He’d liked it that way.
All that would change now.
“I need a favor,” he said.
“What?”
“I need information on some of the Slaters’ soldiers. Home addresses. Vulnerabilities. I need to have a conversation with one of them. I’ve got three names.”
Silence. Then, “What are you trying to do?”
“It’s personal. I’ll keep our business out of it.”
“If it’s the Slaters, I need to know,” Dax said. “Maybe I can help.”
This surprised Thorne, and he even felt a pang of jealousy. “You have people inside the Slaters?”
“What do you need?”
“You have people inside?”
“Small time of the reluctant kind.”
Thorne hated the pang of relief that filled him. Like a fucking jealous schoolgirl, wanting to be the only important one inside the Quartet. He went to the kitchen window and looked out at the funeral home. It was for this view that he chose the apartment. To keep his own death in sight.
His willingness to die was his greatest power.
“I won’t say anything else about who I have. I protect my people, Thorne.”
“Of the reluctant kind,” Thorne said.
“He can’t do what you do. He certainly can’t call me up.”
Thorne sniffed, as though he had no need for Dax’s assurances. “A friend has discovered that a relative is in one of those sweatshops. A woman by the name of Yana. I need to get her out of there.”
It took so long for Dax to reply that Thorne thought he’d lost the connection. “And so you become the co-op pirate’s co-op pirate.”
Leave it to Dax to fit it all together. “I need to pull this woman out.”
“Yana.”
“She’d be in her forties. Probably a Russian national. I have a thirty-year-old photo.”
Silence. Then, “Email it to me.”
Thorne clicked off.
Jerrod sometimes talked about what he termed “patsy funnels.” Hangman does a small favor for somebody to get them in Hangman’s debt. Just enough that they don’t really owe Hangman. Just enough for them to say yes.
But then Jerrod would set up a circumstance where they would need Hangman—some family member in trouble. Money disasters. The patsy thinks of Hangman, not knowing Hangman caused their problems. The next favor is big. Hangman does it.
Then comes the ask—Hangman asks the patsy to do something small, but illegal. That becomes leverage for a bigger favor. Something that, if discovered, would compromise their freedom or their livelihood. At that point, the patsy is too deep within the Hangman funnel to escape.
Thorne couldn’t help but feel like he was entering a funnel. It wasn’t a Hangman funnel; it was a Dax funnel, pulling him deeper into Dax’s debt, deeper into having to trust the Associates.
Nothing to be done.
He returned to the bedroom to find Nadia standing at the window with Richard. “What are you doing up?” he demanded.
“Watching the tap dancers,” she said. “You get anything?”
“I will.” He joined them at the window. He never paid attention to the tap dancers except when the windows were open and the breeze was blowing a certain way, carrying the faint taps along with it. You could see the tap dancers through the corner window of a brownstone across the busy street; they passed the window by one by one, pumping their arms up and down.
Richard snorted. “Who are you people?”
“You go, people,” she said. “Fly your dork flags high.”
Thorne’s heart squeezed tight. Nadia never saw the best in a person—no, that was far too mundane. Nadia saw what was real and messed up and wrong in you, and she loved you for it. Or so he’d thought. Lowlife brute, she’d say, and he’d eat it the fuck up.
He used to think it made him someone special, not knowing he was interchangeable. Just a step up from a nobody.
Still, he wasn’t sorry for telling her what he’d told her. She couldn’t love him, but it didn’t change how much he loved her.
“Getting up at the asscrack of dawn to do some fucking dorkass thing,” she said, like it made them special.
God, there had been a time when he could have lived on her regard, like one of those plants that hung from trees, living on moisture from the air. But he’d never really had anything to offer her beyond chemistry and violence. He gazed beyond, at the funeral home.
“Do you watch them?” she asked.
“What?”
She smiled. “The tap dancers. You sit here. You must watch them.”
“I don’t watch them,” Thorne said.
“You so suck.” She hit him, and he caught her hand.
“You shouldn’t be standing,” he said.
“He doesn’t watch them,” she teased. “The badass warrior doesn’t watch the tap dancers.”
“Hey,” Richard cautioned. “I’d watch the tap dancers.”
Nadia narrowed her eyes at Thorne. “What do you watch?”
“Get in bed,” he grated.
“Not until you tell me.”
He tightened his grip. “You shouldn’t be up.”
“Your chair was pointed out.” She gestured at his book—Tao Te Ching. “This a Bruce Lee thing?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Bruce pulled most of his stuff from the Tao.”
She watched him with such interest, such intensity. “You read and you look out. At what?”
She was doing it—making him feel special. Like she wanted to know about him. His gaze fell to her lips. Plump and imperfect and too big for her face and the hottest lips ever.
“What do you look at?”
He glanced out. What did it matter if she knew? “The funeral home.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s what I look at.” And with that, Thorne picked her up. She cried out in protest as he carried her across the room and set her on the bed. He arranged the pillows, wanting to stay there with her. He took maybe a little too long to a
rrange the pillows.
Richard leaned near the window, ankles crossed, gun stuck in his belt. “Don’t mind me.”
“Is it eight yet?” Nadia asked. “I need to check in with Kara. She has a no-calling-before-eight rule.”
It was just eight, as it turned out.
Richard grabbed her phone and tossed it on the bed. “I need breakfast,” he said.
Breakfast. Right. You served things like that to guests. “Come on.” Thorne led Richard into the kitchen. He usually blended eggs in protein drinks and green smoothies, but that was practically astronaut food, not what you served to guests.
He made a mental inventory of his kitchen. In addition to eggs, he had coffee and tea. Butter. Even cinnamon. He could make French toast.
“How does French toast sound?” Thorne felt like he was channeling a TV show or something. “And coffee?”
“I’ll help,” Richard said.
They worked side by side in the kitchen. Thorne set the coffee going. Richard broke the eggs with one hand.
“So,” Richard finally said. “Hangman.”
“Yup.” It was only natural to wonder why a guy would join Hangman.
“Kettle into the fire,” Richard added.
Thorne shrugged.
Richard started the griddle. “And you’re going back.”
“I never left. I’m just handling the co-op pirate problem. Getting Yana out of there should do the trick.”
“Like that’s what this is. You ending the co-op pirate problem.”
“It’s what it is for this conversation,” Thorne said.
“You need to let Nadia go with you.”
“She stays behind,” Thorne said.
“Jesus,” Richard said. “Pull your head out of your ass and start partnering with her!”
Thorne swung his gaze to Richard.
Richard lowered his voice. “You love her, but you don’t trust her.”
“What’s that?” Thorne grated.
“She needs to help save her. She’s a good partner in a support role, and you make her stay behind? Her dad made her a second-class citizen. Don’t you do it, too,” he warned.
Thorne moved closer to Richard. “I wouldn’t be comparing me to Victor too much, if I were you.”
Richard drew up to his full height. Thorne felt the man’s breath on his nose, and the power of his fierce love and respect for Nadia. “Nadia can hold her own out there. She gets scared, but she powers through and keeps her head. You won’t even let her drive? You need to rethink that shit.”
“I wouldn’t have let her get shot,” Thorne said.
“Let her? You need to start looking at her as a serious partner instead of somebody to make decisions for,” Richard said. “You think you love her? How about opening your eyes and seeing her, and seeing who she is, and deserving her?”
Thorne moved an inch closer. He got what Richard meant about deserving her. Well, he couldn’t exactly tell Richard that he was working for the good guys, helping Dax bring down the Quartet. And what did it matter, anyway? His motives were pure vengeance. “I’m right about at my limit with this.”
“I’m not,” Richard said. “You need to open your eyes. You need to take my advice, friend.”
Advice? Friend? Was Richard being an ally?
Smoke started filling the kitchen.
“Crap.” Thorne moved the pan off the fire. All but two pieces of French toast were charred. He plopped the two unburned pieces on a plate. “That’s hers.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Thorne rang the doorbell next to the massive steel door at the front of Jerrod’s palatial home at around ten. He’d gotten the summons as soon as he turned on his phone. Jerrod’s butler let Thorne in.
He heard the grumble of male voices speaking in confidence as he moved toward the living room. The scent of coffee wafted through the place. He found Jerrod and Miguel on the couch, a laptop open on the coffee table in front of them.
Miguel glanced up with a vacant expression. His eye was blackened; his lip was split.
Three other guys across the room drank coffee near the built-in buffet.
Jerrod hit a few keys and then he, too, looked up at Thorne.
And smiled. Like he knew something. Thorne ran through what he could know. The Slaters wouldn’t have recognized him—he’d taken them out too fast. Miguel was his ally. Miguel controlled Skooge.
Had Miguel turned?
Jerrod sat back, crossed his legs, and took his .22 from the side table, leveling it at Thorne. He was using it as a pointer—as he often did—finger not on the trigger. But Thorne had seen how fast that could change. “Where were you?”
Miguel was a stone statue at Jerrod’s side. Had Thorne been wrong to trust him? He looked pretty beaten up, but Miguel wasn’t the type to crack on a beating.
“Nowhere,” Thorne answered.
Jerrod hooked a leg over a couch arm. “Dude.”
Thorne smiled, playing a man without a care in the world. “My place.” Thorne went to the buffet where the coffee was laid out. He poured himself a cup.
“With the little lady?” Jerrod pressed.
Thorne’s blood froze. Jerrod knew something, or at least he had the scent of something. Had Miguel told Jerrod about his rescuing Nadia?
He splashed cream into his coffee, picturing the room behind him. He was jacked up enough to take the room, maybe even take Jerrod. Jerrod might get off a shot or two, but that .22 was never very accurate.
Except if Thorne killed Jerrod unprovoked, he’d never be able to take over Hangman. And it would touch off a Quartet earthquake that would endanger Nadia’s mother. Life was so much easier before, when he could go for maximum damage. Now there were people to think about.
You have to trust somebody sometime. He closed his eyes. He’d trusted Miguel last night. He’d shown him his belly.
Thorne turned. “Why’d you call off the search? I went back to the mansion and nobody was there.”
“Another co-op was hit last night,” Jerrod said.
“Another?”
“Reedsville,” Jerrod said, letting his gaze linger, weapon sideways on his knee.
Don’t look at the gun.
“And?” Thorne asked.
“We know who the pirates are.”
Thorne waited.
“You know two of them,” Jerrod said. “Nadia Volkov and Barbarian.”
Thorne squinted. “You’re sure?”
Jerrod nodded.
Thorne looked around at the guys—Jerrod’s favorite lieutenants and Miguel. “What’s the status? Do we have them?”
“There was a blast,” Jerrod said. “We’re thinking they didn’t make it out.”
Thorne nodded, carefully blank.
“We had them cornered in the mechanical room, and they set off a blast,” Miguel said.
That would explain the beating. Jerrod would have wanted them alive. But that would also be the way they tricked him—by lulling him into a false sense of security. “All of them?”
“Three of them.”
“There were six in the past,” Thorne said.
“We’ll know more later. Fire marshal has the site sealed,” Jerrod said. “In the meantime, we’ve got cartel dollars just coming in. Thorne, I need you to pull together the shipping containers. We need to get the paperwork in order and get this round going.” The Valdez cartel was their largest money-laundering customer. Hangman sold them iPhones under the radar, which an arm of the cartel would turn around and sell for pesos. It was a sophisticated form of trade-based money laundering involving multiple invoicing and faked quantities—and quite effective in cleaning cash. And Hangman made a tidy profit.
Thorne went off with two of the guys who handled shipping. Yes, Hangman had a business to run, but Thorne couldn’t quite shake the sense that Jerrod was trying to keep him busy.
Dax called just as they reached Port Tampa Bay.
“She’s alive,” Dax said. “At the Southport co-op.”<
br />
Thorne suppressed a smile. Nadia’s mother was alive! He couldn’t wait to tell her.
The only problem: crews were pulling the place apart; the whole sweatshop was being dismantled and moved, thanks to the pirate attacks.
A rig was due there at three in the afternoon. Dax’s contact didn’t know where the sweatshop and the workers would be taken—that was hushed up, but they had enough information to work with.
Three in the afternoon. That gave them less than four hours to get ready.
It would be a semi-trailer. There would be three guards on it; one in front and two riding in the back. If it weren’t for the two in back, Thorne would be taking the rig alone.
He cut the connection and looked over at Hangman Twelve. “I’ve got to go.”
Thorne rode in the backseat of Richard’s Jeep SUV next to the child’s car seat, having insisted that Nadia take the front, trying to show his attitude of partnership. Also, it was nicer for her leg. He kept watch behind them, but he’d determined some miles back that no one was tailing them. The windows were heavily shaded—not that they were anywhere they’d likely be seen.
His Hangman brother hadn’t been happy he’d left the port while they were dealing with the bills of lading in paying the bribe. He’d hotwired a car in one of the long-term lots instead of waiting for a cab.
Thorne rested his hand on the side of the empty car seat, toying with the little straps and buckles, wondering what it would be like to be responsible for a little being like that. It was hard enough loving Nadia, a highly capable adult woman. But to have that little boy?
He glanced at the rearview mirror and caught Nadia watching him warily. He took his hands off the straps—she probably thought he was tangling them up
He thought about babies just about as much as he thought about octopus families, but sitting there with this object from Benny’s world, it hit him so powerfully just then how amazing it all was. There was a stuffed bear on the backseat floor. He picked it up and straightened its shirt. He considered strapping it into the seat as a joke, but when he thought it through, he realized that Nadia would just have to unstrap it and get it the hell out of the way the next time she took the kid anywhere.
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