Page 113 of The Wild Charge

This was all so much worse than they’d bargained for at the beginning. And he didn’t believe Hunter’s denial about Reese, was convinced the man wanted him back, because the boy was far from useless.

Fox turned around to face the others. “Listen,” he said, and they immediately cut off their conversation and turned to him. “The way Hunter was talking, he’s not just enforcing for the higher-ups. That’s what he’s been tasked with, but he’s taking this personally.”

“He wants Reese?” Walsh asked.

Mercy frowned; he smiled so often, usually easy and jovial, that when he stopped smiling, it left the fine hairs standing up on the back of everyone’s neck. “Not on his fucking life.”

“Maybe. But I don’t…” Fox was exhausted, suddenly. He rubbed at his face, then stepped up to the bar and picked up his drink. “I don’t know what the fuck he wants,” he said, after a heartening swallow. “He’s fucked up.”

“We already knew that looking at Reese,” Walsh said.

“Yeah, but hewants something. I can feel it.”

Booted footfalls clomped onto the back deck and mounted the stairs. Fox shot Mercy and Walsh a quelling look and glanced back over his shoulder as Tenny and Reese emerged on the upper deck.

Both were dressed as Fox was, in form-fitting all-black, hats covering their hair. They’d wiped most of the grease paint from their faces, but smudges remained on jaw and cheekbone. Their expressions were still the blank, businesslike masks they’d worn since they’d all split up at the clubhouse.

“Any problems?” Fox asked.

“No,” Tenny said. But one of the smudges, Fox saw as they drew up to the bar, was in fact a bruise coming up.

Mercy slid them both whiskeys without prompt. Tenny picked his up and his gaze slid over to Fox, blankness giving way to a cold spark of banked fury. “What did Hunter want?”

A quick glance proved that Reese hadn’t reacted outwardly to the name. It was Tenny whose jaw flexed.

Fox’s mind might have been churning and chewing over possibilities, but he wasn’t going to saddle Tenny with them – not when he was already this wired about it.

Ah, love. It made men into idiots.

“Typical villain rubbish,” Fox said with a shrug, feigning nonchalance. “‘You can’t get away.’ ‘We can get you anywhere.’ That sort of shit.”

“You left out the bit about the girls,” Walsh said.

“What girls?” Tenny asked.

Reese said, “Raven and Cassandra?”

“Yeah.”

Tenny’s gaze narrowed. “What about them?”

“I called Ghost on the way back,” Mercy said. “Their hotel room in NYC got trashed. Message on the bathroom mirror, the whole nine. Someone knew they were coming, and they knew which room they were in.”

“Oh,” Reese said, looking probably about as alarmed as he was capable.

“How in the fuck–” Tenny began, bowing up, gaze flashing – then he closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. You know what? I don’t care.” When his eyes opened, his attention landed on Fox. “What happened with Hunter?”

To Reese’s credit, he didn’t react to the name. Still, Fox tilted his head toward him in silent, subtle question:You want to talk about him in front of your boy?

Tenny’s answering glare was quite clear.

“Sit,” Fox said, motioning to the bar and moving to join Mercy behind it so they could all be squared off. “Drink your whiskey.”

“That bad?” Tenny quipped, but he did sit, to the outside of Reese, who’d settled in beside Walsh. Fox had the sense he’d planned it that way on purpose, wanting Reese hemmed in, protected.

When both boys had taken dutiful sips from their glasses, Fox recapped his rooftop conversation with Hunter, leaving out his suspicions on Hunter’s underlying motives. Tenny’s narrow, skeptical expression, however, said he didn’t need to voice them: Tenny was already thinking the same thing.

“That’s us warned off, then,” Fox finished. “They have friends in high places, they can reach out and touch us – all the usual bollocks.”

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