with a superior expression. “Which I assure you I am not.”
“Pretty sure nobody was thinking that,” Aidan quipped.
Ian sent him a cool look – one tinged at the edges with a true smile.
“Fielding got prints and mug shots off the goons, and said he’d run them through the database,” Walsh said. “A few of them had tats from several different organizations.” The Money Man, Ghost knew, was displeased with the lack of order now, in the aftermath. The immediate threat had been stopped, but there were still loose ends: missing girls, criminal groups at large, out for blood. “This isn’t over.”
“No,” Ghost agreed, “not by a long shot. But it is for tonight. I say we all grab some sleep, and we’ll start fresh tomorrow. See what we can do in the daylight.”
For his own part, he wasn’t expecting to sleep at all. He envisioned sitting up in the kitchen, smoking, sipping whiskey, trying to piece together a tapestry from all these crazy balls of yarn they kept seeming to uncover.
He earned some agreements; Carter got up quick, anxious to leave, off to Leah’s no doubt.
Ghost caught Ian’s gaze and said, “I’ll walk you out.”
Ian nodded, coat draped over his arm, and leaned in to say something to Alec, who nodded.
They went outside, and fell into step; Ghost was conscious of Bruce, and Alec, following at a discreet distance. The moon was out, shining on steel warehouse roofs, and on the river.
They didn’t speak. Ian didn’t ask where they were going – Ghost figured he knew. His expensive shoes clipped across the asphalt, crunching occasionally on a stray bit of gravel, as they made their way down to the big trucking warehouse.
The rolltop doors were cinched tight. Ghost let them in through the front office – locked with a key – and took him back to the makeshift cell they’d set up for their prisoner.
An old, rusted metal cattle trailer sat parked in one corner, its rear door padlocked. The slats weren’t large enough to get more than an arm through. There was a bucket of water, and an empty bucket inside to act as makeshift toilet.
They approached, and peered through the slats; light fell in stripes across Luis Cantrell, slumped down in the front cover, arms resting on upraised knees. He glanced up at them, eyes gleaming like mirrors in the shadows. He didn’t speak.
“Have you told the police you have him?” Ian asked.
“No, and I’m not going to.”
“Vigilante justice. I like it.”
Ghost snorted, remembering an apartment in New York, and Ian kicking his chin up, and saying he’d do it himself. “Thought you might.”
Ian turned toward him, and Ghost glanced over, found him deeply troubled in a way he hadn’t shown inside the clubhouse, in front of everyone. “He knew things about me – things that I don’t share freely.” His throat jumped. “I suspect he knows things about all of us, and I want to know why.”
“I do, too. I’ll be asking him that, when we start with the questioning.”
Ian nodded, and cast one last look at the prisoner. “I suppose I’m lucky,” he mused. “I had every reason to turn out just like him.”
“No,” Ghost disagreed.
“No. I had a few dark angels on my side.” He smiled, fleetingly, and pressed Ghost’s shoulder as he passed. “Goodnight, Kenny.”
“Goodnight, Ian.” The door thudded shut. To Luis, he said, “Get ready to sing, little bird. You’ve got a lot to answer for.”
In a flat voice, Luis said, “Will you let me live if I do?”
“Oh, no. You’re dead either way. But one way I put a bullet in your skull. The other, I let Mercy make gator food out of you first.”
~*~
Reese took longer than was strictly necessary in the shower, scrubbing the stink of a dead man’s clothes off his skin, working all the knots from his hair. He was pleased, warm inside with it, glad of a job well done. Fox had clapped him on the shoulder and said so, and, rather than the blank, cold sense of having done his job, he’d felt something more like pleasure. His mouth had tugged, and he’d realized he wanted to smile.
Threat neutralized, Luis captured, civilians saved – that was a whole new pleasure, one he’d never expected back in his days with Badger’s crew – and the promise of much more work on the horizon. For all that his muscles were pleasantly tired, he was eager, too, ready for more.