Page 107 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Ian walked around the table, gripped a fistful of his white hair, and dragged his head ungently back.

“Ah!” he shouted, and his gnarled hands scrabbled over the table, looking for purchase.

Ian grinned down at him, delighted, all teeth and sharp chin. “Did you truly believe we were going tojoinyou? Me, the former child slave, and him, the cowboy Robin Hood of the biker world?”

Tears leaked from the man’s eyes, sliding down the ladders of wrinkles on his cheeks. “I’m – I’m wealthier than you can imagine. Than you could–” The rest became a yelp of pain when Ian tightened his grip.

“Don’t rip his plugs out yet,” Ghost said. “I want him to hear this. Hey. Look alive.” He leaned across the table and slapped the man, who yelped again, face wet now with tears and snot and drool. “Look at me.” He waited until he finally had, then said, “You brought a lot of people under your wing, huh? Lots of people you bought.

“But some of them decided to hedge their bets. Your toadie Deborah Sawyer with the FBI? We got a hold of her computer records, which is how I know that, pathetic as you are, you reallyarethe head of the snake.

“Cecil Pritzker. English mother, Polish father. A billionaire before your fifteenth birthday when both your parents died in a car crash in the Swiss Alps – a crash you walked away from, coincidentally. Makes me wonder if it really was an accident, but, of course, the police could never prove anything.”

He was whimpering constantly now, wounded little cries that left his lips trembling. Abacus. Pritzker. This pathetic, shriveled creature with his diamond buttons, and his contingency of guards, and his hands on the puppet strings of hundreds of rich and influential people.

The rest of Ghost’s prepared speech dried up on his tongue. This walking – hobbling – shitstain wasn’t worth the breath.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter.” He looked to Ian. “You wanna do the honors?”

Ian’s brows lifted. His grip slackened, and Abacus ducked out of it, putting his face back on the table. “Me?”

“Well. We both hate him, but I figure all of this” – he gestured to the air – “hits a little closer to home for you. You don’t have to. Just. If you want.”

He heard a door click open, and Fox’s familiar voice call, “Clear.” Heard the entrance of many pairs of feet, and the overlap of many voices, some of them speaking Russian.

Ian looked like he’d been slapped. His hands hovered open and empty on either side of the space Abacus’s head had occupied moments before. “I don’t…”

“Like I said, you don’t have to. I’ll be glad to. But it wouldn’t be the first time you–”

Ian shook his head. “No, no, I know that. That’s not why I’m hesitating.”

Ghost lifted his brows, expectant.

Fox stepped into view, in riot gear, mask shoved back on his head, trailed by New York Dogs and bratva toughs. “You good?” he called, and Ghost stayed him with a lifted hand.

Ian glanced over his shoulder at the crowd filling the room – their crowd, their people, the family they’d built, and the allies they’d earned – and turned back, lopsided smile quirking one corner of his mouth. “Kenneth, I’ve fought and vanquished myown demons, because of you. I couldn’t have done it without you, darling.”

Ghost made a face, but, inwardly, his chest filled with warmth.

“This is your dragon to slay,” Ian said, and stepped back, inviting him over with a gallant gesture.

Ghost moved around the table to stand behind Abacus, weeping openly now, choked-off, broken sounds of terror and grief that hitched his shoulders violently. “Not much of a dragon,” he muttered.

Ian laid a hand on his shoulder, and it was large, and warm, and comforting. “They never are, at the end.”

“Yeah. Guess that’s true.” Ghost took a deep breath, gripped the old man on either side of the head, and drew him upright once more. He started to say something, blubbering and stuttering, but Ghost didn’t let him get it out. He torqued his hands fast, the man’s neck snapped, and Abacus fell forward in a boneless heap on the table, dead at long last.

Twenty-Seven

Fallon took a hard slug of water – warm, plastic-tasting – and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. If he kept sweating like this, he was going to need some sort of sports drink. Salt tablets, something.

He checked the time on his phone again – he had ten minutes until he needed to leave – and then checked on the boy again.

Remy was still in his corner, though was no longer pretending to play with garbage. He sat cross-legged on the dirty floor, hands folded together in his lap, watching the comings and goings of the men. Someone had hooked up a generator and got the power going, so there were lights, now, harsh and flickering fluorescent tubes that beat back the dark, as night finally sank its teeth into the tail end of the evening. In the unforgiving glare of the overheads, Remy looked more like a haunted doll than ever: those bottomless black eyes, smudged beneath with sleepless bruises, cheeks narrow and hollow, expression impassive. He could have been thinking about Hot Wheels, or contemplating some Damien,Omen-style murder for all that Fallon could tell. Either seemed likely.

Nine minutes, thirty seconds to go. Fallon scanned the interior of the depot, and marveled at its transformation over the course of the day. Folding tables had been set up end-to-end in a horseshoe pattern, like a school bake sale, though it was all manner of guns, weapons, and tools laid out in orderly rows atop them, rather than cakes and cookies. One of Lloyd’s men was a welder, and put his wares to work – amidst showers of sparks and blinding flares of light – to create a cell that looked a lot like the sort of thing one used to go diving with sharks; itsdimensions were such that it was just large enough for a man of Mercy Lécuyer’s size and stature to fit inside, without being able to dodge away from anyone or anything that reached through the bars. It sat near the hook and cable setup mounted to the ceiling, and it was all too easy to envision Boyle’s plans for it.

Speaking of which: where the hellwasBoyle? He was due back an hour ago. If he’d succeeded – and Fallon seriously doubted he had, operating on instinct, or a hunch, or some such stupid shit – then this whole depot setup would prove superfluous.

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