27. Chapter 24 – Lauchlan
T uesday nights were feckin’ boring.
I’d been pestering my pretty little Blondie all evening to come out to play with me, but she wasn’t answering my messages.
She was a busy woman, and I was still working my way into her heart, but I’d thought a time or two since our date in the balloon that the whole connection thing might have gotten a wee too … much.
I was as surprised to get choked up as she was—Da’s sense of adventure and the recent loss of him still snuck behind my eyelids every now and ag ain.
Apparently, now and then included riding air currents with a beautiful woman I was trying to cheat. Lovely timing, and all that.
Still, women loved vulnerability. Ol’ Brene Brown woulda been proud of that whole touchy-feely moment. Of course, I knew her ma had passed—I’d done my research—but hearing her tell it; well, that made it a bit more real for me too.
I didn’t like when marks started looking like people. When they were people, it complicated things. Better to see them only as jobs with a dividend at the end.
Simple. Easy. Un complicated.
I was feeling a whole lot of complicatedness tonight, and I wanted my Blondie to peg it out of me again. A good ol’ prostate poke would remind me of the mission and give me some more spank bank material to boot.
Win-win.
I was sprawled on Ma’s couch while she was out working a job, flipping through American porn channels with disinterest. My mind constantly flit back to the naked Queen rubbing herself all over me. A naked lass rubbing her tits on a 2-D screen was right boring by comparison. I flicked off the TV and grabbed my phone instead.
In Dublin, I had buddies to call on when I was bored out of my tree. We’d grab a pint or play football at the pitch. Here, I only had jobs and Ma. Neither would suit my interests tonight.
After a half hour of twiddling my thumbs playing Candy Crush , my restlessness got the better of me. I decided to check on my tasty little treat for shits and giggles more than anything.
Not at all because I was becoming obsessed with her.
I’d slipped a micro tracker on her cellphone when she’d sidled up to me after our dead parents’ confessional. Made me feel a bit shyte to be honest, but seizing opportunities was th e name of the con game, and I couldn’t have asked for a better one.
I had designed the chip myself. A sneaky little speck the size of a dirt smudge, which could only do one thing—broadcast a location.
I opened the app on my phone, and cracked my neck and knuckles in the few seconds it took to load. The flashing hot pink dot—did that on purpose—came into view, moving at the speed of a vehicle down a dodgier part of the industrial core.
What was my Blondie doing down in the Crocks at ten-thirty on a Tuesday?
Curiosity made me giddy, and now I had a mystery to solve with my beautiful billionaire at the center. I clapped my hands in glee before leaping to my feet, grabbed the keys off the counter, and jumped in the elevator down the 10 floors to my car park.
I knew everything there was to know about Hillary that had been recorded on paper, but I still knew so little. What would I find out tonight? Was she a secret dancer? A stripper? Did she have a mafia lover?
I mulled over many theories, each more ridiculous and sexier than the last, as I drove toward her pretty pink little dot now stopped in a warehouse parking lot.
Whatever she was doing, I wouldn’t be staying; I was just taking a little peeky-boo at what my mysterious mark spent her time doing on a drab Tuesday.
Unless she was taking part in an underground orgy in one of those done-up abandoned buildings filled with hot, sexually repressed power women. Then I was definitely staying.
I was always up for an orgy.
I pulled in next to three cars, none of them recognizable, and parked, grabbing my gun and my switchblade from the center console, just in case.
Nev er bring a knife to a gunfight; but if it’s a knife fight … bring a knife and a gun. Da had some wisdom, all right.
I hadn’t felt threatened once since settling into Carlisle. The people here were much softer than the powers I was used to in Europe, but Americans were much more subtle about their threats and intents. I didn’t feel the need for weapons, but I went nowhere empty-handed.
Muffled grunts and gasps crept out of the door, and the prospect of an actual sex party delighted me, until I caught an aggressive growl with my Blondie’s name on the air.
“Hillary. I don’t want to kill you!”
Kill her? The fuck was I walking into?
I didn’t think—something Ma would say I do often, but she’d be wrong—and swung the door open with my weapon raised.
I was not prepared to see a scrappy blonde woman sweeping the legs out from under muscular Thor. The two of them landed in a heap on a crackly— was that a tarp? —floor beneath them.
Hillary didn’t slow. Leaping from her position just shy of Kellan’s head, she circled him as he rose to his feet just as deftly. The pair of them faced me with rabid faces, blood streaked across their skin in mismatched patterns.
Kellan looked like Wolverine himself had clawed him across the cheeks. Aaron, the Rodriguez patsy, sat on the outside of the makeshift fight ring thing , his hawkish gaze watching me like his eyeballs were glued to my forehead. The man was a bit of a robot, not even blinking at me before turning his psycho-stare back on Blondie.
Surprised he could see anything through two swollen black eyes.
“The fuck is this?” I asked, maintaining my composure in case they added me to the ring. “Some sort of fucked up fight club for ri ch kids?”
Kellan reached for something on the floor, and before I could blink, a black handgun was pointed in my direction, the safety unlocked and ready to skewer some Irish blood.
“I don’t want to shoot you, Conan, but I’m not willing for Blondie to lose a limb tonight.” I kept my gun trained on him, nodding my head toward the door. “Toss it.”
Another metallic click of a bullet in a chamber startled me. Hillary held her own pretty little silver gun in her grip, and by the look in her eyes, she knew how to use it.
“Drop the gun, Lucky. You shouldn’t be here.”
Lord have mercy. If this woman got any sexier, I’d be locking her up in my bedroom til the end of time.
“Jesus, Blondie. I’m trying to rescue you from a fuckin’ barbarian, here. Mind telling me why you’re all exorcising your demons on each other?”
I’d let her exorcise her demons on me. Her split lip, flushed face, and bruised torso in a sports bra made her look like a warrior straight out of hell. Turns out, I was into that.
The faint whistle of metal zipping through the air was my only warning a blade was coming for me, but I was too late.
“Fuck!” I roared. A tiny but lethal throwing dagger speared my right hand. I dropped the gun and gripped my wrist. My gaze snapped to a now very-alert Aaron who glared metaphorical daggers back at me too.
The three of them started firing off words in rapid Spanish, their attention and weapons no longer trained on me while I bled rivulets all over the unfinished floor. Now that I was impaled, I wasn’t a threat or something.
“I don’t like your friends, Blondie,” I muttered as I tore off the sleeve of my shirt and wrapped it around my wrist as a makeshift tourniquet.
I sat down on the floor, listening to the three of them angrily snap at each other; fully willing to wait them out. Con me n were patient. This certainly wasn’t the stickiest situation I’d ever gotten myself into. I was semi-confident, if worse came to worse Hillary wouldn’t kill me.
Mostly.
Plus, I couldn’t complain it was a boring Tuesday night anymore.
It wasn’t until a name—Alvarez—cropped up that I snapped to attention.
“What the fuck do you lot want with Alvarez?”
Their attention turned back to me. The three of them stared at me with suspicious eyes filled with dark intent. I didn’t like where this was going.
The bloodied man who looked every bit a real-life Viking stalked over to me and gripped my shoulder with a massive mitt, dragging me forward onto the plastic pooled with little puddles of blood.
More rapid-fire Spanish with aggressive hand gestures. Arguing and counter-arguing. Mostly debating whether or not to off me, if I was reading the room right.
When Kellan cocked his gun at my head again, stress sweat beaded along my hairline.
She wouldn’t let him kill me, would she? Not my Blondie?
The thought died a fiery death when her own gun came up to point—I was too fixated on Kellan’s weapon, I couldn’t tell where it was aimed exactly, but I had my suspicions.
“We will see what he knows.”
Aaron’s voice broke through their squabble. Had to give the guy credit, he could be as commanding as the other two, even with a smucked up face. He rose from his courtside seat and limped toward me.
Okay, now I was probably in real trouble.
The three stared down at me, all imposing and angry, and I started calculating how I was going to get out of this mess. A bit late, really, but I’d really been convin ced I’d made enough inroads with Blondie I wouldn’t need to. Hopefully, I could live and learn for the next job.
It didn’t look promising.
Snarled Spanish. Insults. Three Alphas with their little Beta cornered. If I could just–
Hillary’s English reply broke through the noise.
“Lauchlan,” she stated coolly. My full name dripped with false security off her devilish tongue. “It’s your lucky day. Welcome to Fight Club. If you want to walk out of here alive, here’s your initiation.”
Fuck.
Nope.
I didn’t like that one bit.
Uh, oh. Looks like the Rook is caught! How is Lucky going to get out of this mess?
In the ultimate game of cat and mouse, who will be the victor?
The Rook, The Knight, The King, or the Queen?
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