Page 132 of Prodigal Son

Abe sighed, but nodded. “It didn’t seem important to tell you.”

“Fuck you,” Fox said, too tired and dizzy to put any heat behind it.

He heard the door splinter. Shouts.

“Get up,” Phillip said, and hands latched onto him under his arms, hauling him upright. Fox managed to get his feet under him, and stay upright as his brother spun him around. Phil’s brows were at his hairline; he breathed roughly through his mouth. Devin had kicked him right in the stomach. “Can you fight?”

“Where’s Devin?”

“He’s gone. I don’t know. Can you fight?”

Fox swallowed down the urge to be sick – to scream, and howl, and lose himself in a vortex of hurt and confusion. “I can fight.”

Phillip frowned, and Fox read the intense hurt in the expression. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. He cupped the side of Fox’s neck. “Charlie, we need you. We have to finish this.”

“I know.”

Shouts. People pouring into the penthouse from the stairwell. Guards. And at their head, a figure dressed all in black, a hood obscuring his eyes.

“Yeah,” Fox said, and stuffed the bloodstained handkerchief in his pocket. Sniffed hard. “I’m ready.”

~*~

By the time they got into the Plaza offices, a maze of cubicles, Reese was already knocking guards down like bowling pins, his AK set on semi-auto mode, shooting them one at a time, but so fast that no one had time to react. And then they entered, and took on the rest.

It was fast.

Mercy spotted Cassandra behind Reese, fingers looped in a strap on his flak vest. And Cassandra spotted Walsh, and rushed forward.

“King!”

The guards were all down, a few moaning, but most of them dead.

Walsh dropped his gun to the industrial carpet and swept his sister up in a hug, squeezing her tight, murmuring into her hair.

Now if they could only get back to the ground floor and out of the building in once piece.

He glanced over and saw Ian watching the siblings, expression wistful.

“You alright?” Mercy asked. No one had tasked him with looking after Ian on this trip, but he’d felt obliged to do so all the same.

The dealer quirked a fast smile. “Quite,” he said, and for the first time since meeting him, Mercy believed him.

~*~

They were still a block away from the building, in a narrow alley of a street, when someone darted across in front of the van.

Axelle slammed on the brakes with a quiet shout of alarm.

The figure wore all black, a cap pulled down low on his forehead, and he moved quick, but in the bright flare of the headlights, Albie got a clear look at his face.

“That’s Devin!” He flung open his door and scrambled out and after him.

“Albie! Wait!”

If he’d thought the pain was bad before, when he was just limping around his bedroom, it was a fire that blazed in him now. But the sharp edge of it fueled him, and adrenaline gave him strength. Lungs screaming, head pounding, he ran around the nose of the van and gave chase. Down an even narrower alley, the kind a man as big as Mercy would have needed to twist sideways to fit his shoulders through.

Devin was quick, but he was also in his seventies. Injury or not, Albie caught him. And rugby-tackled him down to the pavement.

---