Retribution (Moonstruck Genesis #4)

Chapter 15

MAC LET Sean drive, preferring to ride shotgun and seethe, despite the night he’d spent with Hannah, who was currently occupying the back seat with Rudy. It wasn’t the other Wolf’s presence next to his wife that had him snarling, it was the fact she was in the damn vehicle.

“Stop thinking so hard, Mac. Just fucking yell at me and get it out of your damned system. The tension in here is making it hard to breathe.” Hannah couldn’t believe he’d really thought he’d talk her into staying behind after making love to her most of the night.

“Dammit, Hannah.” He gritted his teeth, choking on the words wanting to spew out. He would not air their differences in front of the others.

“You don’t want me here. You want me safe at home with the others. You want this. You want that. Yada yada. I get it, okay? I fucking get it. But I’m telling you, I have to be the one to meet this source.”

“Why, Hannah? Why do you have to be in the crossfire? We aren’t even sure this is a legitimate lead.”

She squinted her eyes closed and screwed up her mouth in an expression reminiscent of someone eating a sour lemon. After counting to a hundred—several times, Hannah rolled her head on her neck, stretched her shoulders and opened her eyes. “Look at it this way. At least I’m not sneaking around behind your back.”

Mac growled but he didn’t say anything. That was a good sign. Mostly.

“I’m not trying to be flippant here, Mac. That’s the truth. If you’d left me at Smith Mountain, I would have hopped in the next vehicle and driven myself. Look, I just have a gut feeling about this whole deal. Do I trust the set up? Oh, hell no. Will I trust the guy I’m meeting? Forget that shit. You’re just going to have to trust me, Mac. Trust that I can take care of myself and that I won’t do anything stupid.”

Muttering under his breath, Mac said all sorts of things, but Hannah only caught a few words. Stupid. Dangerous. Infuriating woman. She could live with that last one, and because she remained aware of the first two, she’d make damn sure she lived and came home to her Wolf. They still had a lifetime of living and loving to take care of.

“Mac, you heard what Harjo said. This is a contact from the old days. Even before DSS. He thinks if I meet the source, we’ll get the info we need.”

“I don’t want you walking in there blind. Or alone.”

“I won’t be blind, but I have to go alone. One whiff of the testosterone you three throw off and the dude’ll be in the wind before I can sneeze.” She unbuckled the seatbelt and leaned forward, her cheek on the back of Mac’s seat, her hand reaching through the gap to rest on his biceps. “I’ll be okay. Promise.” Pushing her luck when he didn’t respond, she added, “If I’m not, you have my permission to hunt my ass down and nail me to the nearest wall.”

The next time I nail you to a wall, you’ll be naked.

She barely managed to choke off her laughter as she murmured in Mac’s ear, “Promises, promises.”

They were okay and that’s what mattered most to Hannah. She’d meant everything she’d said to Mac last night. And as much as she’d go crazy if something happened to him, she understood the reverse was true. If she got hurt—or worse, there’d be no stopping Mac’s rampage.

HANNAH CHECKED the GPS on the rental car for probably the twentieth time. This Baltimore neighborhood was a mix of small commercial buildings and rundown tenements. Graffiti was painted so thick it looked like the only thing holding up walls on some of the buildings. People didn’t walk here. They scurried. Like rats. Creatures not quite human sticking to the shadows but seeing everything happening around them. Well, except for those whacked out of their brains on drugs. Gangbangers claimed one corner in front of a bodega. They were trash-talking and waving their hands in a veritable symphony of gang signs.

Across the street and down the block, a set of different gang members had set up shop, hence the signage and yelling back and forth. Hannah pulled a U-turn in the middle of the street and headed back the way she’d come. There was no fucking way she’d drive through the middle of that shit. In an abundance of caution, she pulled the pistol from the holster on her belt and settled it between her thighs.

Midway down the next block, she Uheyed again, and gave up, parking next to the fire hydrant. When she got out, after slipping the pistol back into its holster, she realized the hydrant was out of service and probably had been for years. She counted the buildings, since none of them seemed to have street numbers showing and stopped next to the one situated adjacent the alley splitting the block.

A bum stepped out of the mouth of the alley. Her very human nose cringed while her lips curled in distaste. The man reeked of sweat, piss, and rotting garbage. The guy hacked up a lung and spat it at her feet.

“Lovely.”

“Don’t get uppity, bitch. Follow me. I don’t do business out on the street.” He shuffled down the alley, sticking close to the wall. When he realized she wasn’t following, he glanced over his shoulder. “You’re the one contacted me. We gonna do business, we gonna do it in my office.”

“Do you have it?”

“Damn right I do.”

“I’d like to see what I’m buying.” The request was reasonable, especially given the importance of the information, and the price she was paying.

The guy turned and scratched his chest, and she swore something creepy and crawly ran across his fingers. She needed what he had and then she could get the hell out of here and back to the motel Mac had checked them into. Where she would shower. In bleach. For the rest of the day. Right after she burned the clothes she was wearing.

“Gonna be kinda hard, sweet tits.” He held up a flash card between his index and middle fingers, then turned and walked deeper into the shadows.

Hannah had no choice. She looked up and down the street, but no one seemed to be paying any attention. She didn’t get the sense of being watched either, so she gingerly stepped into the alley, walking straight down the middle where there seemed to be less debris.

When the bum stopped and turned to face her, she studied him, all while trying not to gag. Jeez, had someone left a couple of bodies to rot out here?

“How you figure you can see what I’m selling, sweet cheeks?”

“I’ve got it covered.” She whipped out a mini-tablet from the pocket of her jacket, snatched the card and inserted it. A moment later, information filled the screen—text and pictures. Yeah. The guy had the right stuff even if he was an insulting SOB. She pulled a wad of bills out of her pocket and tossed it his direction as she backed away.

The guy stepped toward her. “Where ya goin’, cockteaser? Let’s party.”

“Fuck off. I’ve got better things to do.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”

Like she was going to kill someone else. Murder—such an easy solution. Hannah backed away from the informant. She didn’t want to stay in this part of town any longer than she had to. She had the info needed to track down the targets. As she turned, the guy grabbed her arm. She had her pistol jammed into his groin even as he squeezed.

“Move it or die, motherfucker.”

The guy blinked but didn’t loosen his grip. “Damn, Major. Your reflexes have gotten better with age.”

Hannah stared, attempting to see behind the scraggly beard, dirt, and stink of the man. “Do I know you?”

“You used to.” He leered at her and then winked.

“Crap. Munro.”

“Took you long enough, Major.” He dropped his hand and leaned his shoulder against the grimy brick of the building framing the alleyway.

Munroe had served in the Army Inspector General’s office back in the day. He was there when she left for maternity leave but he left before she returned. “Where you been, Munro?”

“Here and there, Hannah.” He offered another cocky grin. “Right now, I’m here.”

“I always figured you’d end up on the streets.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “After the first week, you stop smelling your own shit.” Some emotion flickered in his eyes but it was too quick for her to interpret. “Listen up, Hannah.” He tapped the pocket where she’d slipped the tablet. “This is serious shit. I mean like get your throat slit and nobody will care shit. What are you messed up in?”

She stared at him a couple of minutes, her expression hard. He looked away first. “I’ve lost friends, Munro. And then the motherfuckers came after my family. This ends.”

The former undercover agent watched her from the corner of his eyes before he finally nodded. “I always figured you’d be worse than a grizzly sow if someone was idiot enough to get between you and your cub. These people? They play for keeps but you already know that.”

“Yeah. I do.” Hannah turned and walked to the mouth of the alley before she looked back over her shoulder. Munro remained propped against the brick. “Watch the news, Mun. Maybe you’ll get to go home one of these days.”

Hannah was gone, pivoting onto the sidewalk and he lost sight of her. Her footsteps were lost in the noise drifting in from the street. There’d be no need to watch the news. He was a man living on borrowed time and he was positive he’d never go home again. That wasn’t in the plan for people like him.

“You’re late,” Munro told the man slipping up behind him.

“Why didn’t you kill her?”

“That was your job.”

“We need her alive for now. Bitch’s time will come.”

Mun kept his thoughts to himself. Hannah Jackson McIntire, former Army Major and Department of Security Services analyst truly was a bitch—a bitch to kill. A lot of people had tried over the years, but the woman was like a freaking cat with way more than nine lives. He relaxed his shoulders, playing it cool, waiting and hoping the son of a cold-hearted bastard standing behind him wasn’t a sadist. If he was going to die, he just hoped it came swift.

“You shouldn’t have switched teams.”

Chuck Munro never felt the icepick-thin knife slide into his cerebral cortex. He was dead long before his nerve endings had a chance to register the lethal stab.