Prince of Killers: A Fog City Novel

by Layla Reyne

  “You gonna stand there with the coffee all day or pour?” Holt said, holding out his mug for a refill.

  “Are you sure you need one?” Hawes replied. “Or do you want to crash for an hour on the couch?”

  “Nap sounds good, but we need to go through all this first.” A mess of scattered folders and papers were spread between the four place settings.

  This did not look paperless. “What is all this?”

  Dante set the cast-iron skillet down on a trivet at the end of the table and began dishing out eggs. “While you all were dealing with matters yesterday, I did some digging.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this last night?” Hawes asked.

  “I mentioned that I was working on my end of things. But the details were not what you needed then.”

  The instinct was there to argue, which was good, but it was better that Dante had waited to tell him. Now he was clearheaded and ready to tackle whatever this was. “Did you find out anything about an investigation?”

  “Nothing recent.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Several avenues of investigation were opened five years ago.” Dante handed him three folders. “Health department, SFPD, and ATF.” The usual suspects, given their various enterprises. “They went nowhere at that time. Ditto three years ago when investigations were reopened. The timing in both cases can’t be discounted.”

  “When I stepped in for Cal,” Hawes said.

  “And after Isabelle’s death,” Dante added.

  “They were looking for a way in,” Helena said.

  “Likely,” Dante said. “If they’d found anything, they would have tried to use it against you. See if you’d bend or break.”

  Sausage, peppers, and eggs didn’t taste so delicious anymore. Hawes forced down a bite with his coffee. “They wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.”

  “I went back into the computer logs from then.” Holt rotated his laptop so Hawes could see the screen. “Multiple pings and attacks. We shut it down—they didn’t get through my firewalls—but someone was trying.”

  Hawes glanced at Dante. How much to disclose in his presence? The PI had been digging, he knew what they did, and he was still here, helping them. They’d be at cross-purposes soon, but at this juncture, they’d gain more by Dante being in on more of the story. Across the table, Holt seemed to reach the same conclusion, his eyes flickering to Dante, then to Hawes, followed by a nod.

  “Okay, but all these investigations were in the past.” Hawes nudged the folders with his mug. “Campbell said he saw a folder on the judge’s desk last month. Why would the judge have any of these out?” He turned to Helena. “Did it sound to you like he was talking about an old case?”

  “No,” she answered. “I definitely got the impression it was current.”

  “Maybe one of the cases was reopened,” Dante said. “Someone who thinks they can get to you another way, for a different reason.”

  “Cal’s declining health.”

  “But you’ve been in control for five years.”

  “And all of a sudden I’m being challenged internally too.”

  Helena nudged the files back in his direction. “Maybe because an insider knows about these.”

  “The meet yesterday,” Holt spoke up. “You said it yourself, Hawes. If we’d signed those documents and turned over the property…”

  “And if Gillespie had given them access to it…” Hawes propped his elbows on the table and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Fuck, and I was trying to move the prototypes out of the organization.”

  Helena grasped his wrists and lowered his hands. “We were, and obviously, someone doesn’t like that.”

  Didn’t like how he was handling the organization at all. “Whoever it is, were they trying to eliminate me so the investigation didn’t proceed? Or were they the tipster?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Helena said. “You’re gone either way. Even if Madigan Cold Storage goes away, our other associates won’t. They’ll just reform under a new leader.”

  All because he wanted to do things right. “I’m trying to make things better. Cleaner. So there’s less chance of collateral damage, less chance of an investigation. I’m trying to stop another—” Isabelle Costa. He cut himself off from saying her name aloud, not willing to go that far yet with Dante in the room.

  “By eliminating the most lucrative part of the business,” Holt said, wisely skipping over Hawes’s near slip and reiterating his point from yesterday.

  Hawes bolted up from the table, cursing.

  Dante caught his wrist. “You’re not gonna like what I say next.”

  “Seems to be a habit too.”

  “Not always,” he said with a smirk. That crooked smile, together with the sure hold around his wrist, reined in Hawes’s rising agitation. Until his next words. “I don’t think you should go to your grandfather’s funeral.”

  “But the eulogy. You helped—”

  Dante squeezed his wrist. “I didn’t have the whole story.”

  “Hawes—” Helena started.

  Hawes brought his other palm down on the table, hard enough to rattle the dishes. “Absolutely not. The last thing I’m going to do is show weakness. And I won’t disappoint Rose.” He straightened, and Dante released his wrist. “Besides, didn’t we begin this week with the idea of flushing out the traitors?”

  Holt gulped. “At Papa Cal’s funeral?”

  “Hopefully not. Of course I don’t want it disrupted, but either way, we’re done with this bullshit,” Hawes declared. “This organization is ours now. No one is going to take it from us.”

  “One of you has to stay behind,” Dante said. “In case an attack does occur at the funeral.”

  Hawes and Helena spoke at the same time. “Holt.”

  “Why can’t it be Amelia?” their brother protested.

  “You need to be the one with Lily,” Hawes said. “Out of all of us, your hands are the cleanest. You have the best chance of staying with her.” Hawes walked around the table and held his brother’s face in his hands. “You two are our legacy. I’m not letting anything happen to either of you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Amelia turned from the front windows and straightened her black dress. “The cars are here.”

  Holt, dressed in jeans, tee, and a flannel, scooted to the edge of the chair where he sat with Lily. “Are you sure I can’t go?”

  Beside him, Hawes brushed his fingers over Lily’s head. “You need to stay here, for her.” He hated asking his brother to skip their grandfather’s funeral. Papa Cal and Holt had been close. After their parents’ deaths, Holt had floundered, and it had been Cal who’d suggested he enlist rather than go to college. It had been the right call. Holt had found his purpose, and the benefits were still paying off. Hawes could never thank Cal enough for that guidance. What he could do was protect Holt and his legacy. “We talked about this.”

  “I know. I just—”

  Amelia laid a hand on Holt’s shoulder. “I’ll stay too.”

  She didn’t look any happier at the prospect. Of all of them, she’d been closest to Cal. He’d recruited her ten years ago, a young nurse who hadn’t blinked at his injuries when he’d turned up in her ER. She didn’t blink either when he’d asked her not to call the cops. She’d been their on-call nurse from then on, and once Cal learned what she could do with pressure points—and with a troubled Holt when no one else could reach him after he’d returned home from the service—Amelia had been welcomed into the family. Then last year she’d given them the greatest gift of all: Lily.

  Holt shook his head. “Grandma needs you.”

  Rose had seemed weaker since Cal’s death, not unexpected when one lost their other half. Amelia had kept close watch, as she had over Cal.

  “And with you there,” Holt added, “I will be too.” He dipped his face to kiss her knuckles.

  The quiet comfort they shared made Hawes’s chest ache. Ninety-nine percent of the time he w
as happy for his brother, but in that one remaining percent, jealousy always reared its head at the most inconvenient moments. He walked over to the window and braced his arm on the intricate casing. He wished the man out there, behind the wheel of Holt’s SUV, was in here with him. He considered sending a text to ask for an update. Anything to reestablish the connection, to call up the steadiness that, over the past day of making plans for this one, had eroded. Had deteriorated further overnight as he’d stayed here with his family rather than with Dante.

  Hawes reached for his phone but was diverted by the tap-tap of cat claws and the click-clack of high heels on the stairs. With the cats in the lead, Helena was on her way down with Rose on her arm. Hawes met them at the bottom of the stairs, and his grandmother, for the first time since the night before Papa Cal passed, lifted her face and met his eyes.

  Her blue ones, the same icy shade as his, were weary yet determined. She’d done her grieving, and now she was ready to move forward. She’d been the same after Hawes’s parents’ deaths. Torn up privately, until it was time to present the public face of the family. She’d been Hawes’s best teacher in that regard.

  “You’ll honor him today.” Not a request—a demand.

  “I’m ready.” Because Dante had helped him get there.

  “Good.” She shifted from Helena’s arm to his. “You’ll do him proud.”

  Hawes’s relief was palpable. Rose’s approval mattered more to him than anyone’s now. Cal’s expanding ventures would have failed if not for her tireless efforts at making the social and political connections they needed to succeed, on both fronts. There’d be no legacy without her either, and while Hawes and his siblings were changing the way things were done, he didn’t want her to think he was ruining or disrespecting everything she and Papa Cal had built.

  On their way out, they stopped by a tormented Holt and snoozing Lily, Rose giving each a kiss on the cheek. Hawes did the same, kissing the tops of their heads, then escorted their grandmother outside, where July was back to normal in San Francisco. Cold and foggy. They took the stairs slowly, and at the curb, Rose insisted he ride in the town car with her, Avery at the wheel. Helena and Amelia would ride in the car ahead of them, Zoe driving. Hawes had figured Rose would want Amelia or Helena with her, but as long as he and Helena were in separate cars, they were keeping with the plan.

  The plan that had Kane in an unmarked cruiser across the street, popping caramels and keeping an eye on Holt and Lily, and Dante in the SUV behind the two town cars. Hawes caught Dante’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Brown eyes held his, and Hawes let the steadiness he’d missed wash over him. The next few hours didn’t seem so daunting.

  St. Patrick’s had been packed for Papa Cal’s funeral. It seemed all of Pac Heights had come down the hill to the giant red-brick cathedral where Hawes’s grandfather had worshipped his entire life. Since safety concerns had forced them to forego the separate wake and graveside service, everyone who’d wanted to pay their respects had attended the service and waited in the receiving line after, their numbers spilling out into the church’s courtyards. An hour after the service had ended, there were still people milling around his grandmother at the church’s side doors. Off a bit from the crowd, Hawes rested against the metal rail at the bottom of the steps and surveyed the scene for anything amiss.

  “So far so good,” Helena said as she descended the steps. She leaned next to him and covered his hand. “The eulogy was beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” Hawes ducked his chin, but only for a moment, before lifting his eyes and scanning their surroundings again. “I wanted to do him justice, as our grandfather. I wanted them to see who he was to us.”

  “Thank you for doing that and for handling everything. Like you always do.” She patted his hand. “We ask a lot, and we forget to ask if you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay, promise.” He bumped her shoulder. “Just tired and ready for this to all be over.”

  “I’m glad nothing happened to disrupt the ceremony.”

  Hawes was too. He wanted to flush out the traitors, but he also wanted to honor his grandfather in peace. They’d gotten that much. Now he wanted to get his family home safely and move on to securing control, once and for all.

  “Call up the cars,” he said. “Let’s wrap this up and get back to the fort.”

  She nodded and pulled out her phone, while Hawes corralled Rose and Amelia. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, smiling politely at the few lingering neighbors. “But the cars are on their way around. Time for us to go.”

  They said their goodbyes, Amelia confirmed next week’s burial of the ashes with the priest, and Rose took Hawes’s arm again as they descended the steps. “You could have done that thirty minutes ago.”

  “I was trying to be polite.”

  “I’m too tired for polite.” She gave him more of her weight as they crossed the square to where the two town cars were parked at the curb. “I just want to get home, get out of these blasted heels, and see my great-grandbaby. You’ll ride with me again.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” It was more personality than she’d displayed in months, a glimpse of his spitfire grandmother from before Cal’s condition had declined. Hawes was glad to see that life coming back to her, even if she did sound bone-tired. He opened the back door of the second car for her, watched as Amelia and Helena disappeared into the lead car, then waited until Dante swung the SUV around behind them before sliding into the back seat next to Rose. “To the house, please,” he told Avery.

  “Shouldn’t take us more than twenty,” Avery replied as they eased into the light traffic. “We’re ahead of rush hour.”

  Five minutes later, just over Market, past the Theatre District curve, and waiting behind Amelia and Helena’s car at an intersection, the hit Hawes expected finally came, but not from the direction he’d anticipated. He was discussing dinner plans with Rose when their car was rammed—from behind.

  “What the hell?” He twisted in his seat, glaring through the back window at Dante, who slammed into the rear of their town car again.

  “What the fuck’s he doing?” Avery hollered over a crunch from the front end. “He’s pushing us into them.”

  Hawes whipped back around, glancing out the front windshield. The force of Dante’s repeated hits was plowing their car into the back end of his sister’s ride.

  “He’s waving his phone,” Rose said.

  Hawes spun, looking again out of the back window. Face fraught with alarm, Dante was thrusting his phone toward the windshield and shouting words Hawes couldn’t hear as he continued to ram their car, pushing them forward, into the intersection.

  “Check your phone.” That’s what Dante was shouting.

  Hawes dug his phone out of his pocket. The screen was lit with a group text from Holt. Calls blocked. Car bomb incoming.

  Avery saw it the same instant Hawes did. A utility van shoving its way through cars, no regard for scraped paint or broken mirrors. Her foot moved from the brake to the gas. With traffic behind them, forward was the only direction they could go. Dante wasn’t pushing them into the intersection. He was trying to push them through it. Before the van reached them.

  “Go, go, go!” Hawes shouted, beating the back of the passenger seat.

  In front of them, Zoe had gotten the same message and hit the gas, zooming the rest of the way through the intersection.

  Behind them, Dante was pushing them out of the intersection and driving the SUV into the path of the oncoming van. Into the path of the bomb.

  Oh God, no.

  “We need to divert,” Hawes yelled. “A different direction from Zoe. Get off the main streets.” That was the best hope of drawing the van off Dante and minimizing collateral damage.

  On the other side of the intersection, Avery broke left, and the van took the bait, swerving past Dante and onto a parallel side street, matching their direction and starting a game of block-by-block hopscotch. They stayed ahead of the van, just barely, thanks to Avery’s d
riving skills, but they were going to run into traffic again soon.

  Hawes’s phone vibrated in his hand. Bring him up Shannon. Trap, read the message from Helena.

  He gave the order, and Avery aimed them that direction, now herding the van. The van took the bait, thinking it was getting ahead. Avery gunned the engine, pushing them fast up Leavenworth, passing by the nose of the van at the intersection of Post and Jones. Then Avery hung a hard right onto Shannon, the back end of the car fishtailing.

  The van’s tires squealed behind them, but it righted at the last second, chasing them down the narrow alley. Hawes held his breath through the intersection at Geary, car horns blaring all around them. They made it through, the van still on their tail. As they cleared the first set of buildings, a flash of blonde appeared on the left. Helena, gun in hand, stood on the hood of the town car at the mouth of a parking lot. Then on the right, brown hair and denim, Dante taking a similar position in front of the SUV, in the lot on the other side of the street. Avery sped through the trap, and Hawes twisted in his seat, watching as the van did not, Helena getting its tires on one side, Dante the other. The van swerved and toppled over, glass shattering, metal scraping concrete, twisting and turning until Hawes could see the undercarriage.

  And the timer and trigger attached to it.

  0:05 in bright red digits.

  Not enough time.

  He banged the back of the passenger seat again. “Go!”

  Hawes took one last look out the back window—watched his sister catwalk over the top of her car while Dante hauled ass the opposite direction, each of them taking cover in their respective parking lots—then dove forward, taking his grandmother down to the floorboard with him.

  The blast behind them threw their car into the air, and gravity ceased to exist.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sixty-two.

  Hawes turned on his heel at the nurses’ station and started back the other direction on lap sixty-three.

  Helena stopped him halfway, nails digging into his biceps. “Enough, Big H. You’re gonna wear a hole through this hideous floor.”