Chapter Ten

Across town that same night, Echo jumped from the ground to the scaffolding and climbed upward.

This hit was on the fourth floor of the rundown apartment building and climbing the outside was as easy as eating pie. This was something he’d been doing since before he’d been of legal age. When a person grew up on the streets, climbing almost went with the territory. That, plus fighting for every scrap of food you could find.

His childhood had been spent clawing and fighting every human being whether or not they meant him harm.

Living free and wild became his way of life.

He fucking loved it.

Plus, he relished not having feelings like those other sorry bastards.

He wasn’t nice and had never been. He hated everything and everyone equally.

Why not do something constructive with the hate?

He shook off that fucking voice.

At eight years old, he’d made his first kill. At ten years old, he’d been caught while eating a stolen bag of chips of all things. He’d lived two years on the streets and it never occurred to him that he was being watched.

It happened when he’d grabbed a package of whatever he could get his hands on inside a convenience store and had fled out the door with the store owner screaming at him. He’d darted around the building, flew down the alley and careened around the corner. Running down a walkway, he slipped inside an open doorway. It was there that he had crouched, tore open the bag, and stuffed handfuls of nacho cheese chips into his mouth. So fucking hungry that tears had started to fall.

He had suddenly choked when hard hands grabbed him and he screamed, not from fear, but from fury when his bag of chips fell and scattered on the ground.

“Stop,” a hard voice ordered, but Echo fought like a wild thing with clawed hands and kicking feet.

Shit.

Echo jumped when a window above snapped shut and he wobbled on the scaffolding.

Why now of all nights would he remember his fucked up childhood?

Climbing upward, he reached the fourth floor and he dipped soundlessly over the balcony and waited. After a moment, he picked the lock and opened the glass slider. It squeaked, but the mother of the beaten and raped daughter had assured them when she’d asked for help that her husband would be too drunk to hear the door open.

Echo never relied on luck or another person’s words when it came to a hit. So, he’d followed the mark from the liquor store to home and waited a good hour before making his way up the outside of the building. That the building was in the middle of having their windows washed was a bonus.

Slipping through the opening, he pulled his Ulu knife. He’d almost brought his Ruger and while the compact, lightweight pistol was deadly, his love of knives had won out. He wanted to look into the fucker’s eyes when he sliced him open. The daughter had been too scared to press charges against her father. Deadbeat motherfucker needed to die.

Mr. Copenhagen was passed out on the bed in his greasy clothes from work, a half-finished bottle of scotch lying on the floor. The guy had muscle and tattoos covering his arms, and he could only imagine the damage he’d done to his daughter.

Echo walked soundlessly to the bed, then leaned over to get a good look at the guy’s face. It was the same as the picture on the burner phone, but what the phone didn’t show was a very recent scar slanting down the man’s face.

It was that scar and the man’s overall physique that had Echo drawing back in shock.

Memories assaulted him.

They were not memories of Copenhagen, but of a similar man from his childhood.

His past came roaring up again.

The man’s eyes popped open and Echo jabbed his knife into the fucker’s side. Copenhagen gasped and swiped out a hand, fingers fisting in Echo’s hair. The fucker’s grip was like a brick having worked with iron his whole life, and Echo should have been prepared.

He should have been faster, but he’d been too caught off guard with the man’s resemblance to the fucker from his youth.

Copenhagen flung him hard. Echo saw stars when his head cracked against the bedroom wall. The beefy fucker rolled from the bed and grabbed him, and Echo sliced down Copenhagen’s shoulder and arm with his Ulu, but the man didn’t seem to be fazed by pain or the blood.

Echo’s feet left the ground again and Copenhagen tossed him like a ragdoll against a heavy wooden dresser. Pain splintered in his back, momentarily winding him. Thank fuck that the apartment was on the end of the building was all Echo could think when he slammed down to the filthy carpet.

Still drunk off his ass, Copenhagen stumbled, tripped, and fell down to sit on the bed before he bounced back up.

Rolling to his knees, Echo flipped one dagger after the other at the man’s chest, groin and throat until all six Doran daggers were embedded.

It was that last knife to the throat that had Copenhagen dropping to his knees. Echo didn’t wait, he crawled forward, slashing his Ulu knife into the man’s neck, but he fucking missed the kill shot from shaking too much.

Still, it was enough to send Copenhagen toppling flat to the floor. Echo leaned over and stabbed the motherfucker over and over until his gloves grew wet with blood and his clothes from the spray when he finally cut the bastard’s jugular.

It had been years since he’d thought of the john who had raped and tortured him when his mother had been out selling herself for drugs. That john had been his very first kill, and just like that night when he’d been eight years old, he squatted next to the dead man and swirled his knife in the bloody wounds.

He really couldn’t blame all of what he’d become on Solomon.

Fucking Solomon.

Solomon rubbed at the crick in his neck. He sat at his desk, not really looking at anything since the phone call from Dave and now he had a backache. It didn’t surprise him that Ice had gone and ratted him out.

Not that he gave a shit as long as Ice stayed away from Echo.

He’d just gotten Echo back into the nest after the man had disappeared for six fucking years, and he would not have Ice fucking this up.

He and Echo went back far too many years to have some asswipe come in and ruin it. He’d only taken this job from Dave just to be able to keep his eyes on his boys. It had been that way between all of them from the first moment he’d taken them in.

Each and every single one of them belonged to him.

Of course, getting Echo to stay this time around had taken some threatening on his part. But it all worked out—Echo the man was not that different from Echo the boy.

He’d spotted the urchin living on the streets—and had been for a while by the look of things—which gave Echo some skills at escaping, and Solomon remembered how the boy had almost wiggled free. He’d instinctively known that if Echo got away, he’d never catch him again.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told the boy.

It didn’t matter what he said, though, Echo had continued raging and clawing until he ran out of strength and hung limply in his tight grip. Hefting the slight weight over one shoulder, he walked down the alley and entered an abandoned warehouse. Making his way into the deep, dark depths, he reached the very back. It was there that he dumped the kid in one of the empty cages designed for dogs. It would do until he could figure out what to do when the kid woke up.

The cage next to Echo’s rattled when Rogue came awake. The boy kicked at the metal, but Solomon wasn’t worried. He’d spent the extra money on that cage to hold Rogue in place—due to his size. Even at twelve years old, Rogue was big. Next to Rogue slept fifteen-year-old Fisher, curled on his side, still recuperating.

When he locked the padlock on the cage, Echo came awake and clawed at him through the small openings. Solomon snatched his hand away, rubbing at the rising bloody welts.

“Let me out!”

“What’s your name?” Solomon asked, taking a seat in a chair that sat in front of the cage.

The boy grabbed the bars and shook the whole cage, hollering with rage. Long black hair hung into his face, hate filled eyes the color of chocolate glared through the strands. With a dirty face, almost skeletal body and filthy clothes, the boy looked on the verge of death. He had spirit, Solomon had to hand it to him.

“Your name,” he said, lowering his voice to a growl.

“Echo.” The word was hissed and it took a few moments for Solomon to understand that Echo was an actual name. Or at least, that was what the boy was telling him. Echo was unique and Solomon liked it very much.

“Who named you that?”

“My mother when she was high. That’s what she said.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“You look like you’re eight.” Solomon smirked.

Echo slapped at the bars. “I do not! I’m ten!”

Solomon chuckled and lifted a heavy piece of rebar from the floor.

Rogue shrank back to the far end of his cage and covered his ears.

Solomon leaned closer to Echo’s cage and shoved the bar through the metal holes. Only when Echo’s screams died to whimpers did he stop.

“Never lie to me again,” he said, tossing the rebar down with a clang and Rogue pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms tight around them.

When Echo’s sobs filled the air, Fisher stirred in his cage and rolled over to stare at Rogue through the bars.

Solomon stood and walked out of the area. If pain and fear stopped working on Echo, he’d deny food. There was always a way to break someone to heel. Perhaps Rogue and Fisher could help the kid out by telling him that he meant business.

The laptop on his office desk pinged and Solomon returned from thinking about the past to the here and now.

First order of business was to make peace with Dave. And in order to do that, he had to make nice with Ice.

Solomon lifted his cell phone, held it for a moment, and then slowly returned it to the desk.

After several long minutes, he lifted the phone up again and made a call.