Page 103 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Ding.

The doors glided open with painful slowness to reveal guards standing three pairs deep. Black suits, ear pieces, jackets unbuttoned so their sidearms were within easy reach. All woreidentical, sternly disinterested expressions; all had thick necks, and big square jaws, and shoulders so wide they brushed against one another as they filled the hallway.

Before the doors were fully open, before the lead guards gestured for them to step out, Ghost was struck by mental pictures of his own toughs. His club, his Dogs, his brothers.

He pictured Walsh, too often underestimated because of his size, and his quiet demeanor, but with those eyes, and that cutting look that made even the largest of men take a step back and second-guess themselves.

Pictured Michael, and the terrifying intensity of his gaze, removed and feverish all at once, so that you could never tell if the guy hated you, or didn’t care if you lived or died.

Pictured Mercy, and his broad, sometimes-manic, always-delighted smile, murderously happy as often as he was genuinely happy, calling Ghost “Daddy” and picking him up and being a damn nuisance.

Pictured Tango, and his inked skin, and his pierced ears, and his striking haircut, and the cut-crystal sweetness of his face, beneath the badass screen he’d worked years to perfect.

Pictured Aidan. His boy. With his road rash scars to remind him of his impetuosity, and his brown eyes, the same color as Ghost’s, but infinitely kinder. Aidan who was going to hate him forever after all of this.

Pictured Carter, the kid he’d been, and the man he’d become, more loyal than any of them could have imagined. Pictured Hound’s angry, old-man snarl at church, and Rottie’s desperation to pull him out of the room before he said something unforgiveable; RJ the perpetual fuckup, and stalwart Dublin and Briscoe. Roman, his sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, with a younger man’s haircut and an older man’s wisdom, finally, cautious in his re-patched position with the club.

Pictured all of them, from Phillip Calloway in London, to Candyman in Texas, to the surfer-vibe crew all the way out in Cali, and everyone in between.

He hadn’t been wrong in the car when he told Ian that men needed some sort of society. His was a society not made of faceless suits following orders, bent passionlessly to a task that a cruel master assigned them. They were people. His people. A whole motley crew of individuals who all had one thing in common: they didn’t fit in anywhere else. They had found brothers who loved them, and loved their commitment to live on their own terms, amid their own tribe.

And the man they’d come to meet, who’d been pulling puppet strings for decades, infiltrating security agencies and law enforcement branches in every country of the world, had sent men in suits for them, each indistinguishable from the next.

The doors stilled, fully open, and Ghost stepped neatly in front of Ian and told the lead guards, “You gotta strip search us, or can we get this shit over with?”

One guard leaned over and whispered something to the next, who touched his earpiece, and a moment later, nodded. “This way.”

Behind him, just before he stepped off the elevator, Ghost heard Ian take a shaky breath. No doubt Ian had meant to swan his way down the hall in front, tossing his hair, putting on a show, a gleaming jewel drawing all eyes. But not this time, not since Ghost was there to stop it.

Ian was as much his charge as all the Dogs. As his kids. And it was him Abacus was going to have to deal with today.

He took the first step – and between it and the second, he felt the lightest brush of fingertips against his suit jacket, right between his shoulder blades.Thank you, he read in that single touch.I’m with you.

Ghost fell into the pocket the guards made for them, and put all his faith in his whole life’s experience, Ian’s razor-sharp wit, and Fox’s ability to pull off the impossible.

~*~

A short, utilitarian hallway led past what looked like a typical office setup: open doorways revealed a breakroom, and a bunk room, and a series of desks and computers and wall-mounted TVs. The security HQ, Ghost figured. Then their little convoy paused, a door was swiped open with a keycard, and the landscape changed.

The low light – umber, gold, and flickering – set Ghost on high alert immediately. Candlelight, firelight, both of which they found as they entered a room done up like something offMasterpiece Theater. It was wide, with low, timbered ceilings, and dark, glossy wall paneling set with sconces. Ghost caught glimpses of ornate tables and dark-shaded lamps, bookshelves and the glimmer of dozens upon dozens of bottles on a sideboard that belonged in a castle. There were candles, set in a series of heavy silver sticks down the length of a long dining table, one that stretched nearly the length of the room, along the windows that offered a view of the darkening night sky, and the city’s earthbound stars.

Nearer to hand, there was a fire as well, real wood, by some genius of high-rise engineering, logs crackling beneath a marble mantelpiece. In front of it, two armchairs sat cocked at angles. In one of them sat a shrunken, hooked shape that Ghost realized, once his eyes adjusted, was a very old and frail man.

The guards that flanked him and Ian ushered them over to the dining table, but Ghost caught glimpses of other guards going to the old man, producing a walker, helping him to stand. He turned his head to shoot Ian a glance.Are you kidding me?

Ian was back in supervillain mode, but spared a brief headshake.Unbelievable.

Guards pulled out chairs for them, side-by-side, to the left of the head of the table, which put their backs to the windows. They sat. Ghost heard a far-distant rumble of thunder, as the evening’s humidity swelled, and boiled, and finally began to shift toward a breaking point.

He shared one last look with Ian, while they had the chance, guards prowling, filling the room, blotting out the light of the sconces. Ian’s gaze was tense, but ready. Determined. Ghost nodded, and turned toward their host, as he was helped, with painstaking slowness, toward the table.

It would have been faster had the guards on either side of him bent down to move his legs for him. As it was, they steadied his trembling arms as he eked his way inch by inch across the rug. The closer he drew, the more obvious his wheezy, labored breathing became. Ghost could see the strain of tendons in his neck, and jaw, and temples, softened by layers of crepey, liver-spotted skin and sagging subcutaneous fat.

The man who called himself Abacus, who’d claimed to have founded this whole hideous organization, wore a several-thousand-dollar suit over his wasted frame, and small, round, gold-rimmed glasses that wanted to slide down his nose. He still had a shockingly-full head of hair, bone white, swept neatly clear of his forehead, a Dalmatian landscape of age and sun and liver spots. His hands, humped and strangely curved with arthritis, were decorated with jewel-set rings. Ruby cufflinks flashed on his wrists, and his buttons winked with diamonds.

It seemed to take hours, but, finally, Abacus was placed in the chair across from Ian, and snugged in to the table by the strong arms of his suited guards. One of them, before withdrawing, produced a handkerchief, and leaned in to wipe the man’s mouth.

Only then did Abacus knuckle his glasses back into place with a shaking hand, and look at them for the first time. Ian, then Ghost, then Ian again. He cleared his throat – a sad and frail sound – but when he spoke, his voice was clear, and smooth, faintly accented in a way that Ghost couldn’t place. Not British, he could tell that.

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