Page 84 of The Wild Charge

“You’re damn right it looks bad!”

“But I don’t think anyone there knew it was me – that I was a Dog.”

“Not the point. If something bad goes down in this city, everyone assumes it was us.”

Fox sighed, and nodded. Generally, he didn’t have to worry about fallout too much. The jobs he worked were usually away from home, quick in-and-out hits and drops and rendezvous. But there would be seismic repercussions from this; big ripples in the still pond of the city that would have rumor mills churning and civilians staying home behind locked doors.

Civilians…he supposed he should have shed a tear or two for the innocents, but that wasn’t ever his worry.

“Not to mention,” Ghost continued, “Abacus is onto us now. In a way they weren’t before. Shit just got a lot more complicated.”

“Not necessarily.”

Walsh, silent up ‘til now, leaning across the bar and sipping at the very tall, very cold vodka he’d poured himself upon their return, said, “He knew your name.”

“I don’t think that has shit to do with Abacus,” Fox shot back. “I think, for him, it’s personal.”

Ghost’s perma-frown deepened. “How?”

Tenny’s voice cut across Fox’s planned reply, taut and threatening as a pulled-tight piano wire. “Because he’s Reese’s old handler.”

~*~

Reese didn’t remember getting back to the clubhouse – he remembered nothing, really, save vague, blurred sensations. Tenny’s hand on his wrist; hard pavement under his feet; the distant wail of sirens. He thought there’d been a truck in there, somewhere, because it had been too chancy to be on their bikes and risk any sort of connection between the Dogs and what happened at the restaurant. Whathadhappened at the restaurant? He couldn’t recall anything except…

That face.

That voice. One that dragged him straight back to the past, to a time he hadn’t thought to return to.

“Again.”

“Do it again.”

Smack.“Quit dropping your shoulder.”

“Another mistake like that, and it’s the closet for you.”

The worst of all:“Someone wants to make an offer on you. I told ‘em you and your sister are a package deal.”

He’d only ever known his handler – to be taken from that, to be sold…that was the first time he remembered his hands quaking in fear.

Then had come Badger. And then Roman. Then Mercy, and the club. Fox.

And then…

“Hey.Hey.”

Someone was speaking to him.Tennywas speaking to him.

Oh. He was…

Reese blinked eyes gone dry and surveyed his surroundings. He stood shirtless in front of his own bathroom mirror, paint half-smeared from his face, hair falling out of its tie. There was a nasty bruise coming up on one cheek, and a long, shallow cut along his waist, just below the line of his Kevlar – which he’d also removed without memory. Blood welled and oozed; there were smears of it on his hands, and the water was running. He’d come in here to clean up, obviously, but had gotten stalled partway through.

He blinked again, and turned his head toward Tenny, who hovered in the doorway, expression careful.

“You alright?” When Reese didn’t answer, because his jaw didn’t seem to want to work, Tenny leaned in, slowly, and brushed a thumb through the dribbles of blood leaking down from the cut beneath his ribs.

Reese shivered.

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