Page 162 of Lone Star

Candy felt nearly giddy as he was shoved into a seat. The officers left, replaced by Cantrell, who stood at the top step and surveyed all of them a moment before nodding and sitting down beside Mercy, still holding his shotgun.

“We can roll out,” he said.

The van rumbled forward, and somewhere in the back, Colin started whistling, a tune that Fox then picked up and added to: “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Forty-Seven

Albie saw the unmarked and the black-and-whites pull up, and he hesitated a moment, watching the scene in the parking lot unfold with sick horror. Arrests were happening. Their tenuous FBI allies were turning on them.

Albie stood in shadow, still, hidden from view. No one knew he was there, save Fox. His brother, currently folding his hands behind his head and going down to his knees. Shit. Albie should go out there; should join them, be with them.

But what good would that do anybody? He had an opportunity here. His own instincts told him to walk out into the sunlight and face the music, align himself with his brothers.

But he swore he heard Fox’s voice in his head saying,Don’t be an idiot. Fox wouldn’t wait around – Fox was only waiting around now to give him a chance. Fox would run. Fox would get the job done. Not because he didn’t care, but because sometimes being mercenary was the only way you could execute the plan.

So Albie dropped the sledgehammer, shoved the paperwork inside his cut, zipped it up, and ran. Out the back, out the way they’d come. Through the hole in the fence, down the alley, back through the grocery store with a distracted wave for the proprietress. He hoped Fox’s bike wouldn’t get stripped or towed, but there was nothing for it. He straddled his own, barely getting his helmet latched on, and gunned it.

The trip to the clubhouse was a blur. He had no idea how fast he was going until he nearly laid it down pulling into the clubhouse, tires spinning and gravel flying. He braced a foot, got it stopped, and was off toward the front door as the growl of the engine died away in slow echoes.

He went inside at a run…

Only to pull up short in the middle of the ruined common room.

There were people there, so many. Those who’d been asked to stay behind, like Blue, and the agent who’d come with the boys from the hospital, whom Albie wanted to strangle, now, after what he’d seen. He glimpsed Reese in the shadow of the hallway, and saw Jenny walking toward him.

But his vision narrowed down to one figure. To his brother.

Inexplicably, Walsh stood in the center of the room. He held a glass of whiskey that he set down on a table, and he moved toward Albie, arms opening.

Phillip might have been the boss of them all, the oldest and the most respected, but after that, King was the savviest; the cleverest, and, once you got past his smooth exterior, the most loving.

Albie wasn’t aware of moving toward him, but suddenly he was being embraced, and embracing in turn.

Albie pulled back first. “How – what…?”

“Mercy got a call from his duckling,” Walsh said, with a grim half-smile. “He thought things were maybe worse here than we thought.”

Albie was too dumbfounded for proper conversation, but he trusted his big brother to understand whatever idiocy came out of his mouth. “They took Chelle and Axelle.”

“I know.”

“The feds have been working with the cartel all along.”

“I know.”

A flicker of movement over Walsh’s shoulder drew his attention, and Albie stepped around his brother, hands already tightening to fists. “If you’ll excuse me.” He heard the crisp, threatening politeness in his own voice, the way Phillip always sounded before he planted a fist in someone’s face. He’d spotted Maddox, and the agent had spotted him, it looked like. if the way he took a step back and touched the butt of his gun was any indication.

“Try it,” Albie growled as he bore down on him. “Pull on a Dog in his own house, and see what happens.”

A hand caught him by the back of the cut: Walsh trying to reel him backward.

But it was Jenny who stopped him, when she slid neatly in front of Maddox with her empty palms toward Albie. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said.

“Why is he still in here?” Albie demanded. “Why isn’t he chained up, at the very least?”

At another moment, he would have admired her calm. “He had no idea about the family relationship either. Cantrell’s kept him in the dark about the whole thing, and, from what I’ve seen, he’s not smooth enough to have pulled off that kind of lie.”

“Hey,” Maddox protested.

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