Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (24 page)

Twenty-Two

Albie

The gritty slide of the sandpaper was soothing as ocean waves. Down the length of the chair leg, and then back up. Firm strokes. Pauses. Examining the texture of the wood, searching for that magic smoothness.

              “How do you do this every day?” Tommy asked, shattering the quiet.

              Keeping his frown mostly to himself, Albie set down the sandpaper and stepped back, closing one eye and tilting his head to better examine the chair. “It’s relaxing. Helps my blood pressure.”

              “You don’t have blood pressure,” Tommy said with a snort. “You’re a robot.”

              “A robot who saves your skin on the regular.” He waved with his hand. “Get out of my light, I need to see this.”

              With his usual dramatic production, Tommy huffed over to the chair’s finished mate and plopped down into it. The new leather squeaked under his ass and Albie bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from reprimanding him. It was a brand new, ass-print-free chair. You didn’t just abuse a piece of furniture like that. But Tommy was his little brother, and he’d almost died, and he was nervous as a cat tonight, so Albie didn’t say anything.

              “You talked to your sis…niece?” he asked instead, that old “sister” trying to slip its way into the mix.

              “Once.” Tommy stared at the toes of his boots. “A while back. Phil thinks she’ll know I’m here if I talk too much. She’ll know I never went away.” He lifted a miserable look that tweaked at all of Albie’s big brother soft spots.

              Albie picked up the sandpaper again. “That’s ‘cause Phil’s afraid she’ll be on the first flight back.”

              The paper chafed the wood, the sound becoming softer as the surface smoothed.

              “Would she?”

              “You know she would.”

              Tommy sighed. “But…”

              “Come on. She loves you. If she thought you were back here at home, she wouldn’t spend another second in Texas.”

              “Even though she’s with Candyman now?” Tommy asked, nose wrinkling in distaste, eyes flashing an even darker concern.

              Albie tried not to let his reaction show. Phillip had called to check in on the night’s plan about an hour ago, and had relayed the charming news that Candyman Snow was “respectfully” shagging Michelle. His initial response had been one of intense anger, which he’d vented by turning chair legs. Now he was on to the reluctant facing of facts part of the process. They’d driven her to this, he kept thinking, and it was a kick in the gut. They’d sent her away, and she was homesick, lonely, worried for Tommy, and bereft of her family. It was only human, reaching out for a little physical connection and comfort. Candy was big, and blonde, and charming, and handsome, if Albie was being objective – it wasn’t the craziest thing he’d heard, Michelle taking up with him.

              But he didn’t have to like it. He was her uncle, after all.

              “Well?” Tommy prompted.

              “I’m not seeing it with my own eyes, am I?” he said. “So I’ve got no idea what she really thinks about the man. Phil said they’re together. That’s all I’ve got to go on.”

              “That was a shit answer.”

              “It’s the only answer I’ve got. What about you? Do you see her settling down in Texas? Long term? Someone’s old lady?”

              Tommy frowned and kicked the heels of his boots together. Once, twice, three times. “Not really. I know she gets sad – I think she wants someone, you know? But I can’t imagine her just…
staying
there.”

              “It would certainly be a big change,” Albie agreed. Deep down, he agreed even more; he couldn’t see his niece cashing it all in here to live in the Texas desert with a man old enough to be her father. But he wouldn’t voice that. He wasn’t in the business of swaying people’s opinions.

              Not in
that
way, anyhow.

              “Okay.” Satisfied, he righted the chair and stowed the sandpaper in its proper drawer.

              “Finally,” Tommy muttered, getting to his feet.

              He called it the vault, the basement weapons cache. He’d spent months insulating the walls, laying proper flooring, making sure it was sound, and scent, and damp-proof, building his own gun racks and soft-closing drawers of ammunition. Velvet-lined cases for the knives, the knuckle dusters, the rifle scopes. Everything labeled, categorized, stowed with precision. He had military-grade food rations down there, bottled water, granola bars, first aid equipment. It was just as much a bunker as it was a gun safe, tricked out with a computer where he could watch the security feeds from the cameras upstairs.

              He was immeasurably proud of it.

              He pulled up the door and the hinges floated without a sound. Down the staircase, into the delicious scents of gun oil and polished wood.

              Tommy whistled, a quick show of his continued appreciation.

              “You haven’t been down here in a while.”

              “No. I always forget how lovely it is. Hello, gorgeous,” he said to the M4 rifle to his left, passing a forefinger down the stock.

              “Don’t make passes at ladies you can’t dance with,” Albie teased him, straight-faced, going to the worktable in the center of the small room.

              “Oh, I can dance, mate.”

              “Yeah?” But Albie was distracted, as he opened drawers and laid their supplies for the night out on the table.

              “Better dancer than you.”

              “Don’t discount the advantages of age.”

              Tommy chuckled.

              Albie laid out two Colt 1911 handguns, silencers, and magazines for them both. Two sets of brass knuckles – actual brass, always polished. Short knives – pig-stickers. Medium knives. His machete, in its scabbard. Two little Glocks. Magazines.

              He turned around to pull an AK from the rack behind him. When he laid it on the table, he glanced up and caught his brother’s now-pallid complexion, the sheen of fright in his eyes.

              He was remembering the street, the smoke, the knife sliding between his ribs.

              “You don’t have to come with me,” Albie said, quietly.

              Tommy shook his head. “Boss’s orders.”

              “Yeah, well, the boss isn’t the one doing raids with us, is he? So he doesn’t have to know if you come along or not.

              Tommy swallowed, throat working. “I’m not a coward.”

              “Didn’t say you were. But you’re traumatized.”

              “There’s a difference?”

              “A big one.”

              He took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “No, I’m coming.”

              Albie nodded, approving, but worried. “We’re wearing flak vests. In the cabinet behind you.”

~*~

Michelle

She woke with a start and wasn’t sure why. It was dark in the room, the laptop set up at the foot of the bed now dormant, its screen black. They’d fallen asleep in the middle of the first season of
Jessica Jones
. Content and drowsy against Candy’s shoulder one minute, waking now, mildly nauseas and panicked.

              She was sweating, her tank top and sweatpants clinging to her skin. The covers were suffocating. She slipped from beneath them as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake Candy, and sat up on the side of the bed, dangling her bare feet down onto the rug, breathing deeply, trying to get her pounding heart under control.

              What was this? A sound?

              She checked her mobile on the nightstand, but there were no messages, nothing that would have caused an alert of any kind.

              Her pulse was a kettle drum in the base of her throat. Pound, pound, pound. Relentless. Perspiration slid down her temples, and she shivered.

              A nightmare?

              A…a premonition?

              The room was quiet, full of its usual shadowy sights, smells, sounds – just Candy breathing, evenly, a little hitch because his chest still bothered him.

              But a sense of wrongness crawled up and down the back of her neck. Something out of place. Some disturbance.

              She couldn’t sit still.

              Without making a sound, Michelle eased to her feet and tiptoed out of the room, easing the door open and then shut. The Sanctuary was awash in darkness and shadows, but she knew it well by this point, and managed to get to Candy’s recliner

             
The telly
, she thought, and didn’t know why, but fumbled the remote off the side table and turned the massive flat screen on.

              The volume was still set at its insane, old-man-with-hearing-problems level and she punched the button to lower it. There was a channel, she’d learned with great amusement, dedicated to hunting and sport shooting of all varieties, filled with programming in which experts sat down and discussed the merits of various weapons, and then field-tested them. Albie would have loved it.

              Albie…

              A niggling worry in the back of her mind.

              She channel-surfed, thumb jumping on the remote button, starting to feel foolish. She must have had a nightmare that she couldn’t remember, now that she was awake. She’d crawled out of bed for nothing at – she craned her neck around to check the time on the microwave – five-twelve in the morning.

              Then she landed on one of the national news channels, one that happened to be playing an international news story. ALERT: BREAKING NEWS the ticker at the bottom of the screen read.

              London, at ten in the morning. A street, roped off with yellow tape, full of milling police and forensics crews in their yellow rain slickers and hairnets. A crime scene. A – the camera panned back – massive crime scene. Bodies in the road. Scorch marks.

             
It happened again
, her mind supplied, and she leapt forward in the chair, breath catching in her throat.

              A reporter with a perfect Oxford accent stepped into view, microphone held beneath her chin, expression one of calculated severity, her seriousness clashing with her orange-red lipstick. “According to eye witness reports,” she said, and Michelle shook off her panic, tried to focus on what the woman was saying. “Two men dressed in black approached this pub last night and opened fire on the men standing outside of it. A firefight ensued. Residents in the surrounding area have identified the victims as…”

              “Chelle,” Candy said behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

              He stepped around the chair, blocking the screen with his body, and his silhouette extended a hand toward her.

              “Here,” he said, “it’s Albie.”

              He was holding her mobile out to her, she realized, blinking like an idiot. Then she snatched it and pressed it to her ear. “Albie?” Her voice came out thin and wavering.             

              “It’s me, pet, yeah, and before you ask, I’m fine. Everyone is fine. All fine.” He sounded patronizing as always, and she shuddered hard in relief.

              “Shit. I just turned on the telly–”

              “Yeah, that was us.”

              They spoke over one another in the same breath.

              “What happened?” she asked, slumping down in the chair, catching her forehead in her hand. She tried to do that, anyway. The rough Velcro of her brace scratched her skin and she jerked back, startled. “Shit.”

              “I can’t tell you everything, not over the phone,” her uncle said. “But that thumb drive you and Tommy lifted?”

              “How could I forget it?”             

              “Bloody full of intel on a very large cell of those anarchy tossers who’ve been hassling the city. They’re starting to join up, get organized. Get professional help. Not just a handful of blokes looking to make a bomb in their basement, but real terrorist shit. Car bombs, house bombs, mass shootings.”

              “Jesus,” she breathed.

              “Yeah. That’s what we were doing last night. We got a confirmation on a location, and we took ‘em out. Some of them, mind. Not all. The head’s still on this particular snake.”

              “Jesus,” she said, again. “Outlaws fighting outlaws.”

              He snorted. “Don’t compare us to them. You know better than that, love.”

              “Yeah.”

              He spent another minute assuring her that all was well with the London Dogs, insisted she go back to bed since it wasn’t even six yet, and closed with, “Call me if that man gets too fresh.”