Prince of Killers: A Fog City Novel

by Layla Reyne

  “It’s what’s right.” Holt straightened and reached for his tablet. “We have the trust fund for Lily.”

  “Mine too, if anything goes south.”

  Holt’s gaze shot to him again; he looked stunned.

  “Don’t act surprised,” Hawes said with a smile. “She’s all our legacy. At least until she has to share it with more brothers and sisters. Or cousins,” he added with a wink, then turned for the door. Holt didn’t stop him this time.

  Hawes stopped himself, however, when they were halfway across the parking lot, his mind snagging on something else Holt had said. “If you want me to tell Dante to get lost, I will.”

  Holt handed Hawes his tablet and shrugged into the flannel. “Not yet. He could be useful, and you like him.”

  “I do,” Hawes admitted. “But our family means more to me. It always will.” Any serious relationship Hawes had would only work if his partner understood and accepted all of him, family and businesses included, but that sort of full disclosure required trust. No guarantee. Not like the trust he had in his family.

  Holt held out his hand for his tablet. “How is that fair to you?”

  “It’s not fair if I compromise any of you.”

  “Don’t use us to push away every relationship.” A flash of righteous indignation brought Holt’s eyes to life. Hawes would take it, even at his own expense. “You have to trust someone.”

  “I trust you, Helena, and Amelia.” Hawes grinned and clapped his shoulder. “We can’t all be as lucky as you, Little H.”

  Holt covered his hand, holding it there. “If I could find a partner, if Mom and Dad did, if Papa Cal and Rose did too, then so can you and Helena.” He squeezed Hawes’s hand. “There’s too much good in both of you not to share it with someone special.”

  Papers were strewn across the lone buffet table remaining in the cavernous shell of a restaurant. Disclosure packets, purchase agreement, grant deed, bill of sale, and the various other title and escrow documents required to transfer ownership of their warehouse. On paper, it would look like a simple real estate sale. In reality, what was inside the building on the property was far more valuable to Shawn Gillespie than the land or the building itself.

  Gillespie and his two attorneys were flipping through the papers for a third time. Hawes didn’t begrudge them their careful review, especially as the documents had not been emailed in advance. Too easy to disseminate and draw attention. And while the disclosure documents could have been sent electronically, the deed and tax documents had to be originals. Hawes would ferry the stack of signed documents to Helena, who’d file them at the end of the week, allowing Gillespie time to move out the inventory before the change of ownership triggered a building inspection and tax reassessment.

  Hawes didn’t mind the few days’ delay. All he cared about was that the contents of the warehouse were no longer his inventory to move. They were officially getting out of the explosives business. No more using them and no more making them for anyone else either. Not when Hawes had no control over how they’d be used and who might get swept up in the collateral damage.

  Like Isabelle Costa had been, albeit more directly.

  Unbeknownst to anyone, Isabelle, a secretary at MCS, had been carrying on an affair with one of their operatives, Zander Rowe. According to an anonymous tip Hawes had received the night of Isabelle’s death, Rowe, who was supposed to be transporting a truck full of explosives, was instead diverting it to the highest bidder, a domestic terror cell hell-bent on attacking City Hall. Hawes had raced out after Rowe, calling for backup but not waiting for it to arrive, too terrified for his city and his family’s legacy. He’d caught up with the truck, and a gunfight had ensued between him and Rowe.

  When a second person had climbed out of the truck’s cab, pistol first, Hawes had fired on instinct, killing a woman whose only crime had been falling for the wrong man. A hostage who’d only been trying to protect herself. Hawes hadn’t realized that until it was too late, when he’d knelt over her and seen her bruised face and mangled wrists. He’d failed to call out, so she wouldn’t have known he’d won the shoot-out. She’d found Rowe’s spare gun and was trying to escape. Hawes hadn’t given her the chance.

  Helena had eventually talked him down that night—one life lost to collateral damage versus the many more who likely would’ve died if that terrorist cell had gotten hold of the explosives, but that one life was too many for Hawes. The risk that a tragedy like that might happen again, that his own weapons could be used against his family or the city he loved, was unacceptable. He would’ve sold the explosives business the next day if he could have, but extracting themselves from existing agreements had been time-consuming, as had been vetting a buyer.

  They’d found the right one, eventually. A real estate developer, Gillespie would be using the explosives for project demolition, not for criminal purposes. That said, he was getting a criminally good deal on materials and real estate, which made him willing to look the other way as to the explosives’ origin. Except as Gillespie waved off his attorneys and began read-through number four, Hawes was beginning to wonder if his buyer was getting cold feet. This was not merely a careful review. If that were the case, Gillespie or one of his attorneys would have spent more time on the disclosures. Instead, Gillespie was hung up on the purchase agreement, staring at it with wide eyes and increasingly pale skin.

  “Is there a problem?” Hawes asked from across the table.

  Gillespie’s eyes flickered up, then away, avoiding Hawes’s gaze.

  Tell one.

  “No problem,” Gillespie said. “Just making sure I understand everything.”

  Tell two.

  Nothing in that standard form purchase agreement or the other escrow documents was out of the ordinary, especially for a developer who regularly conducted real estate transactions.

  Hawes leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “All the terms are consistent with our conversations.”

  “Yes, it’s all here.”

  Beside Hawes, Holt held a pen out to Gillespie. “We’ll sign after you.”

  Gillespie took the pen and spun it around his thumb. Once, twice, a third time.

  Tell three.

  The attorney closest to Gillespie cleared her throat. “If there’s—”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll do it.” Another pause, another spin of the pen, then Gillespie began flipping pages and signing. Quickly, almost as if he was forcing himself to do so.

  I’ll do it.

  Tell four.

  “What firm did you say you were with?” Hawes asked the attorney.

  The other one, a man, rattled off a string of names Hawes recognized. A large West Coast firm with an office in downtown San Francisco.

  “Your firm handled the China Basin redevelopment, right?” Hawes said.

  “Yes,” the woman attorney replied. “Years back now.”

  Tell five.

  Hawes straightened in his chair. Next to him, Holt tapped at his tablet. “Amazing to see how much the area’s changed,” Holt said. “When I was a kid—”

  “There.” Gillespie threw the pen down. “Your turn.”

  “A moment, please.” Hawes stood and picked up the signed documents. “We just need to clear signing authority with our attorney.”

  Holt was already up and headed for the far end of the room. He held out his tablet to Hawes, a text open from Helena.

  Wrong firm, she’d replied in response to Holt’s inquiry regarding the China Basin legal work.

  “That’s what I thought,” Hawes said, voice low.

  “Those attorneys are on the firm’s website, but they could have hacked that, or asked the firm to change it for a day.”

  Hawes glanced back at an impossibly paler Gillespie. “Something’s off for sure.”

  “‘I’ll do it’ was a dead giveaway.”

  “Signaling us?”

  “If those attorneys are actually law enforcement, and they told him who we were
, who do you think he’s more afraid of?”

  Even if Gillespie didn’t know they were assassins, he did know they had access to explosives enough to blow him and his buildings to bits. Leverage like that did tend to work in their favor, especially when law enforcement officers, by contrast, could leverage a target only so far, given the bounds of the law.

  “They don’t have probable cause to raid the warehouse,” Hawes said, connecting the last of the dots. “They need him to purchase it to gain access.”

  Holt nodded at the papers in Hawes’s hand. “And our signatures to prove we owned the building and trafficked the explosives inside it.”

  “Let’s not do that.” Hawes folded the papers in two. “We haven’t done anything but discuss a sale of real estate so far. We can walk away.”

  “I think that would be wise.” Holt darkened the screen of his tablet and tucked it under his arm. “Competing offer?”

  “Works for me.” Hawes led them back across the room. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to cut this meeting short.”

  Gillespie shot to his feet. “All you have to do is sign.”

  “Your money will be wired immediately after,” one of the “attorneys” added.

  “There’s another offer,” Hawes said. “A better one.”

  “I’ll match it!” Gillespie countered.

  “That’s good to know. We’ll consider all our options and be in touch. Now, if you’d please.” He held an arm out toward the restaurant door, beckoning them to leave. “The owner’s realtor for this building will be here in five to collect the keys.”

  “Madigan, please. Let’s make this deal.”

  “I’m sorry, Shawn,” Hawes said, meaning it. He hated to think what the feds had on Gillespie to put that kind of desperation in the man’s voice.

  And what about what they had on him? Not enough to make a move, but enough to connect their activities to the warehouse. To the deal they’d brokered for its sale. Was this connected to the investigation Campbell had mentioned?

  In any event, their investigation was stymied for now, or at least this play was. Recognizing defeat, Gillespie’s escorts ushered him out, and Hawes closed the doors behind them.

  “Find out what they have on him,” he said to Holt, who was gathering the rest of the papers on the table. “Make it go away.”

  “He tried to set us up.”

  “You saw him. Did he look like a man with options?”

  Holt grunted in acknowledgment and shoved the papers into their folder. He lifted his eyes, and they were more than a measure concerned. “It’ll be viewed as weakness if word gets out that we let him do this to us without consequences.”

  “He didn’t do anything. I think, in the long run, we’ll get more out of saving him than damning him.”

  Holt didn’t look convinced, but further argument was forestalled by Holt’s ringing tablet, Amelia’s face lighting up the screen.

  “Hey, babe,” Holt answered. “What’s up?”

  “You need to get to the hospice house,” she said. “It’s time.”

  Hawes jostled through the lingering lunch crew in the hospice house kitchen and bolted out the back door, desperate for space and air. He killed people for a living, but the last three hours, watching his grandfather die, had been utter hell. Counting the seconds between Papa Cal’s last breaths, the tears running down Rose’s face, the number of times Helena tapped her nails or how often Amelia and Holt handed off Lily, each of them needing the extra comfort in turn. Not to mention the twelve times Hawes had had to sign his name on the termination-of-life papers. How many more documents would he have to sign this afternoon? Funeral arrangements, corporate formalities for MCS, the list went on.

  Hands laced behind his head, he stalked through the rows of the small backyard garden. His long legs ate up the distance in a few quick strides, but the high privacy walls hid what he didn’t want the rest of the world to see. His own shortened breaths, his own tears, the number of times he drummed his fingers against his skull. He needed to get his shit together before he stepped out the front door a different man than when he’d entered.

  Sweat dripped down his spine as he paced. The morning fog had burned off early, gracing San Francisco with a rare sunny summer day. Fitting for the last day of Cal’s life, a man whose existence swung wildly from light to dark. Local businessman and beloved Pac Heights fixture during the day, the last man you ever wanted to see headed your way at night.

  And fitting for the moment Hawes wasn’t sure he was ready for.

  A coronation by sun rather than his beloved fog.

  The screen door squeaked open and banged shut behind him. The sound of footsteps didn’t follow, but Hawes knew he wasn’t alone. He lifted his right arm and waited for his sister to slide in under it.

  Sure enough, a sniffling Helena snuggled up to his side and wrapped her arms around his middle. He hugged her close, and they stood like that for several long minutes, until Helena loosened her hold and walked over to the stone bench under the garden’s sprawling plum tree.

  “Thank you,” she said as Hawes lowered himself next to her. “For always being able to do what none of us can.”

  Hawes curled his fingers around the front edge of the bench’s carved seat. “What does that say about me?”

  “That you’re the strong one.” She covered his hand between them. “You always have been.”

  “Don’t discount yourself, Hena.”

  She cracked a wobbly smile. “You remember how Papa Cal used to practice saying my name with you? Mom and Dad loved to tell that story.”

  Hawes chuckled. “Every day until I got it.” Cal would sit him down with a piece of paper—Helena’s name written out phonetically on it—and use his heavy silver pen to tap out each syllable. Holt didn’t need a lesson, he got it on the first try, but it had taken Hawes a year longer to work out that middle syllable. By then, the nickname had stuck.

  “And the day you finally got it? Tell me the rest.”

  How could Hawes forget it? His grandfather had been so happy and proud. Not at all disappointed that it had taken Hawes so absurdly long in the first place. He’d called Noah and Charlotte back from the office, Rose down from the second floor with Holt, and Cal had repeated it over with Hawes, clapping and cheering when he got it right. “He went to Eastern in Chinatown and got a box full of those mooncakes I loved so much.”

  “Those things were the best. When was the last time you had one?”

  Hawes racked his brain. “I can’t remember.”

  “We should fix that.” Helena bumped his shoulder. “Soon.”

  “I’d like that.” Hawes lifted his arm and tucked his sister back against his side. “Maybe Rose would too, after a bit.”

  Helena ducked her chin, staring at her hands that had taken up their nail tapping again. “Can you imagine ever loving someone that hard?”

  The image of Dante stretched out on his couch, book on his chest, Iris at his feet, jumped unbidden to Hawes’s mind. He shook it off, unwilling to contemplate love in relation to a man he hardly knew. Attraction and lust were there for sure, as was that strange steadiness Dante provided, but love? Not quite so instantly. Not when loving and trusting the wrong person could spell disaster for Hawes and his family.

  “Me neither,” Helena mumbled, interpreting his silence as a no. Hawes didn’t like the dejection in his sister’s tone.

  “Holt manages,” he said.

  “He’s the brave one. You’re the strong one.”

  “And you?”

  “To be determined. I just can’t imagine…” She cleared her throat. “To lose your other half like that, I’m not sure I could risk it. Maybe I’m the scared one.”

  “Maybe I am too,” Hawes admitted.

  Helena had it wrong. Their grandmother was the strong and brave one. She’d sat at Cal’s side, crying but never letting go of his hand until Amelia had confirmed he’d taken his last breath. And even then…

  “She
wouldn’t look at me,” Hawes whispered.

  “She wouldn’t look at any of us.”

  “What if she doesn’t forgive—”

  “Don’t go there.” Helena wrapped both her hands around his arm. “She wanted you to hold the health care power of attorney because she too knows you’re the strong one.”

  He sure as hell didn’t feel like the strong one right then. Unsteady, uncertain, reluctant. All better adjectives for the jitteriness inside him. The fact that he knew exactly what—who—he needed to steady him, troubled Hawes all the more.

  Chapter Twelve

  I went ahead and let him in.

  The text from Holt pinged as Hawes reached the front steps of his building. Just in time to stave off the swell of disappointment at not finding Dante waiting out front for him.

  Because he was waiting inside.

  Hawes realized it wasn’t wise to depend on this man he hardly knew, but after the day he’d had—from Campbell’s ominous warning, to the explosives sale gone sideways, to his grandfather’s death and the fifty-nine times Hawes had had to sign his name since—he needed someone else to be the steady one for a little while.

  He needed to let go after white-knuckling the oh-shit handle all day long.

  He’d had his moment of weakness in the garden with Helena, but then he’d pulled it together and been the strong one they’d needed, doing his job as eldest child and official head of the family businesses. Rose was settled back at the house with her cats and Lily, funeral arrangements were in motion, and Amelia, Holt, and Helena had been fully briefed on the day’s events.

  Hawes was dead on his feet and dead inside. Dark to dark, he’d gone with barely a breather, the only bright spot the brief exchange with Dante that morning. He’d kill for that shower together now…

  But dinner, it seemed, was first on the agenda tonight. The rich aromas of sesame oil, soy sauce, and chilies wafted down the hall, reminding Hawes that in the chaos of his very long day, he’d forgotten to eat. And reminding him of his conversation with Helena. Of his grandfather, who was now gone.