Page 58 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Sure,” Aidan said mildly. “You can leave. Or you can sit back down, get over yourself, and hear what I’ve got to say.”

“Dad.” Lewis, still seated, turned a half-desperate look of pleading up to his father. “Can you at least listen to him?” He glanced over his shoulder, and in a quieter voice said, “The Lean Dogs make shit happen in this city. We’ve got no other options.”

“That’s true,” Ian said, “the Lean Dogs domake shit happen.”

“And I can make shit happen – good shit – for you,” Aidan said, catching Parker’s gaze, and holding it, daring him to glance away with a look. “Today, I bought the unfinished subdivision next door to your property.”

The man’s brows lifted, the first sign of surprise.

“Yeah,” Aidan said. “So you can leave, sure, or you can sit down, have a drink and a burger on the house, ‘cause I own this fucking bar, and you can listen to my proposition. At least that way, if you say no, you’ll know what you’re turning down.”

A long beat passed, one in which Lewis sent Aidan a pleading sort of look that Aidan soothed with a gesture.

Parker noticed it – of course he did – and his lip curled, because he didn’t like it – of course he didn’t – but he finally tugged his chair up closer, and sat.

Tango signaled and Jazz sent a waitress their way.

“What’re you drinking?” Aidan asked, and tried not to sound too smug.

“Whiskey sour.”

When the drinks arrived, he launched his pitch.

~*~

Fox waited longer than originally planned to rear-end Hames. Long enough to get outside of the city limits, and onto a stretch of lightless, wooded road that made it clear Hames planned to drive Mike out into the middle of nowhere and shoothim. Far enough that when Fox hit the gas, and the BMW sent the Benz careening off onto the shoulder where it tangled and choked on waist-high grass, there were no passing cars to witness what happened next.

They didn’t revisit the office building where they’d taken Sawyer. Too much risk in the overlap. Fox drove the Mercedes, and Ghost drove the Beemer, and they ventured on ahead, until they found the place that had been Hames’s original destination: an old defunct natural gas storage facility, with a weed-choked gravel lot ringed by chain link and barbed wire, the tanks rusted and, hopefully, empty. There was a shed, with cracked and cobwebbed windows, and a shiny new lock on the door. Fox found a key in Hames’s pocket, and let them in, where they found a camp chair, and a roll of duct tape.

Hames, sweat pouring down his face, eyes rolling wildly, tugged fruitlessly at his bonds and looked up at the three of them, searched each face for some sign of mercy.

In the close confines of the shed, body heat built, and layered, and intensified, until Ghost wanted to take his jacket off, but didn’t dare, worried he might drip sweat down onto the ancient floorboards and leave some trace of DNA. All of them had pulled on itchy wool stocking caps to cover their hair, and sterile, nitrile gloves to keep from leaving prints. Hames’s breath came it short, quick bursts that echoed off the walls, like the panting of a frightened dog.

He settled on Mike, finally, for his appeal. “Chambers.” His voice shook, but Ghost didn’t think there was a drop of alcohol left in his bloodstream, scared fully sober. “I thought we had a deal. I thought we came to anunderstanding.”

“An understanding that ended up here?” Mike gestured to their surroundings. “I think that’s the sort of agreement that ends with a bullet in the back of my head.”

Hames shook his head, but the way his sweat-slick face paled said,yes, that’s right. “But that didn’t happen. Nothing’s happened yet.” His gaze flicked to Ghost, to Fox. “We can still make this right. I can still cut you in. And you,” he said to Ghost. “Whoever you are. If you want.”

Ghost had run on numb necessity all throughout the car crash, the apprehension, the drive over here. From the moment Fox said, “It’s gotta be now,” Ghost had slid into work mode, emotionless and ruthless as he needed to be to catch Hames, and keep him quiet, and get him here so they could press him for answers.

But now –whoever you are– panic-sharpened anger reared up inside him, and as the crickets and the owls chorused them beyond the cloudy windows, he didn’t try to hold it in check.

He lunged forward, and slapped his hands down on the arms of the chair – on Hames’s arms, where they were taped to the chair. Hames flinched back so hard that he would have toppled the chair over if not for Ghost’s claw-fingered grip. “Whoever I am?” Somewhere between his chest and his tongue, his shout turned low and silky-soft, and he thought, once Hames shrank back from it, that it was more effective than any furious scream would have been. “I’m the asshole whose grandson your attack dog abducted, and you don’t even knowwho I am?”

He was prepared to drill his identity into the man’s head, perhaps literally, but Hames got it right away.

His eyes bugged, and he sucked in a gasp. “Oh, shit–”

“Yeah. ‘Oh shit.’ Where the fuck is Boyle?”

Up close like this, nearly nose to nose, Ghost could see the prominent red veins in the whites of the man’s eyes; the broken capillaries branching across his cheeks, and the sides of his nose. The pouchy give of his jowls, and a spot he’d missed shaving, and Hames was entirely human at this angle. Not a faceless, all-powerful suit or badge, some hand of God smiting the outlaw from on high. Just a man: one with a drinking problem, and a once-athletic body gone to pot; doubtless one on cholesterol or blood pressure medicine or both. He had sunglasses tan lines along his temples, and his scalp showed pink through his thinning hair. He was too high-up to be doing field work; it was easy to picture a boat, a dock, a lake house: some place restful and fun where Hames and his family went to relax after the commissioning of kidnappings.

He was human, same as Ghost, same as any of them. Humans could behurt.

Ghost pulled the knife from his pocket, flicked it open, and pressed it up against the man’s jugular. Hames went still, save the rolling of his eyes, and the panicked, whistling breaths that flared his nostrils.

The sight of him like that, frightened and at Ghost’s mercy, was soothing. Ghost’s voice was normal when he said, “Where’s Boyle?”

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