Twenty-Six

Evening piled thick, muggy, and orange-smeared between the high-rises of Manhattan. Ghost had expected it to be cooler than home, but it wasn’t, and instead of the familiar algal bloom of the river, it was the choking reek of exhaust and garbage that slipped through the cracked window. He rolled it back up, and had never wished to be on the back of his bike more.

In the seat beside him, Ian sat still in a rigid way that spoke of nerves, hands pressed flat to his thighs, head tipped back on the headrest, eyes closed. His nostrils flared on every breath.

Buck up, kid , Ghost wanted to say. You’ve got this. You’ve got me. But that wasn’t what he would have said to Aidan in this situation.

Christ, Aidan…

No, no, not now. He’d think about him later, once this was done. And the kid who needed him now – who needed his unloving brand of love – was beside him, dressed in black on black with a blood red pocket square, hair brushed to new-penny brilliance.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re not seriously afraid this guy’s gonna be better dressed than you, are you?”

A slow, slight smile touched Ian’s mouth. He slitted his eyes open and glanced over at Ghost without turning his head. “Little chance of that.” He closed his eyes, and resettled, but the ramrod tension of his shoulders had eased. “Hardly. I suppose…” He frowned, and sat up, eyes open and scanning out the window. “I suppose I’m just wondering how we got to this place. All of us,” he added, turning back to Ghost, looking at him properly this time. “When I’m sure none of us could have predicted it ten years ago.”

Ghost checked his initial agreement, and gave the comment its due consideration. He tugged at the cuff of his suit – God, he was sick of suits, and it had only been a few days – and reflected back on the day he’d first met Ian. The funeral home, and Tango going pale, and shaky, and having to leave the room. Ian with his hands in a Mr. Burns steeple, his slow turn in the chair, the portrait of a movie villain, but chilling all the same.

Back then, Ghost had been high off a victory against the Carpathians – small fucking potatoes by comparison. And Ian had been backing local lowlifes like Holly’s family.

They’d come a long way; the question was: in the right direction? Current circumstances pointed to no, with everything upside down, with all of them scattered, and lying to each other, hiding things, running off and skipping out on flights to London, Mags, Jesus . But…

He took a deep breath, and smoothed his cuff one last time. He’d accomplished nothing but pulling a thread loose. “Let me ask you something. When you set up shop in Knoxville, were you planning to become involved with the Dogs?”

Ian’s gaze narrowed, and his lips thinned.

“We’re way past playing coy, Dr. Evil. I was the witness at your courthouse wedding.”

As quickly as suspicion had crossed his features, it melted into a quiet sort of warmth, and Ghost realized it hadn’t been suspicion at all; had perhaps been a breed of regret. Wanting to go back and do things differently. He could relate.

“Were you just trying to get under Tango’s skin? Or was the plan to align with us all along?”

Ian smirked. “ Align . I’d say it was more like I intended to put you well under my thumb.”

Ghost cocked a single brow.

“Obviously, meeting you and yours altered my perception of what was possible. But I would have been a fool not to become involved with the Lean Dogs, given my business ambitions.”

“See? Ambitions. I took over as president with a helluva lot of those.”

“As specific as all this?” Ian waved a hand to include the chauffeured Range Rover in which they sat, the city, its occupants.

Ghost snorted. “Definitely not…but I wanted big things for the club. I used to talk about it with Mags at the kitchen table, once Ava had gone to bed.” Nostalgia gripped him, one harsh squeeze up under his ribs; that had been a simpler time, and though he’d felt this restless yearning inside himself then, he’d been happy, too, Maggie golden under the kitchen lights, bare toes moving aimlessly up and down the back of his calf while she sipped her wine and listened to his plans. His dreams. No matter how hardened he’d been, no matter how he phrased it, those plans had been no different than the dreams of a kid in school, gazing out the window.

“My uncle,” he started, and paused, because he didn’t talk about Duane if he could help it, but if there was ever a moment to, now was it. The first two words broke the dam at the back of his throat, and the rest spilled out, boiling with feeling in a way he hadn’t expected. “My uncle Duane loved the club. Well, he loved being in the club. He loved the bikes, and the drugs, and the drinking, and the women. It was all one big never-ending party to him, and he would do anything, or kill anyone, who got in the way of that.”

“Sounds rather different from your approach to the organization,” Ian said, mildly.

“Yeah.” His attention was too penetrating, at this point, so Ghost settled back against the seat, and watched the storefronts flash past beyond the window. “The whole point of the club is that you live outside of whatever the hell ‘normal society’ is. For Duane, I guess that meant being a loud and rowdy shithead. But unless they’re living all alone out in the woods, men need some kinda society. To me, being an outlaw meant creating a place outside of all the bureaucracy bullshit. Like, the government can tax the shit out of us and do whatever the hell they want with the money, no matter what the people want; a pedo can walk free on a technicality in court; the safety of your family depends on how fast the cops show up. Neighborhoods stay unsafe because nobody cleans them up, and everybody’s always turning around asking Big Daddy Gov to make it all better. Well, fuck that. I’m in charge of my own destiny. If somebody’s a piece of shit, he’s a dead man. If my family isn’t safe, I make them safe. Duane sold drugs for money, and I sell drugs because if I can control the sin, I can control the city, and a city under my control is one where me and mine can thrive .”

He stabbed his finger against his thigh on the last point, realized he was breathing hard, and checked himself.

Ian hummed a contemplative sound. “Outlaw literally means ‘outside of the law.’ But the law of the land and the law of nature isn’t always the same, is it?”

Ghost glanced over, and saw that he understood – he’d already known he did. He nodded. “Yeah. Money is power, and power is security. We were always gonna end up here, Ian. How could we not?”

Ian flicked an uncertain smile. “Yes, of course. You’re right.”

“For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen you not be able to talk your way out of a bad situation.”

“Hm. There’s a first for everything, I suppose.”

They lapsed into silence, as the Rover crawled through evening rush hour traffic. The Rover ahead of them – piloted by Fox – tried to surge forward, and was forced to slam on the brakes.

Ghost wasn’t worried about being late: this wasn’t the sort of meeting where punctuality mattered.

“I’m curious,” Ian said after they’d crept another few dozen yards. “Joining Abacus would be the least risk to me. It would be a lucrative, pragmatic decision. And yet, the moment I called you, you assumed that I was still safely on your side.”

Ghost rolled his head against the back of the seat so he could see him, and found Ian staring at him with still attentiveness, expression blank and inscrutable.

He shrugged. “I’m not your dad or your boss. If you wanna sign on with Abacus, sign on.”

Ian frowned. “That isn’t my point.”

“No, your point is stupid. How many years has it been, Ian? And you think that I’m gonna think you’d bail to join up with that buncha sickos? Gimme more credit than that.”

Ian smiled, slow and sweet, and before he turned his face away, Ghost saw the quickly-blinked-away glimmer of forming tears. He reached over and lay his hand on Ghost’s thigh, and because it didn’t feel like a come on, but like a desperate reach for a lifeline, Ghost let it stay. Even patted the back of it.

“Get your shit together,” he said, in the kindest voice he could, and Ian chuckled. “We’ll be there soon.”

By the time they arrived, Ian was at his showman’s best. When Bruce opened the door, he glided out of the Rover and offered his coldest gracious smile to the suited thugs who awaited their arrival by the parking deck elevator. “Good evening, gentlemen. I trust you’re well.”

“Arms out, spread your legs,” one of the thugs ordered, and stepped forward to pat them down.

Ghost couldn’t remember the last time he’d endured a pat down, much less the last time he hadn’t been carrying at least a half-dozen weapons on his person. But he extended his arms, and endured the rough grabbing of hands as big as Mercy’s, and walked into the elevator when he was nudged forward. The last thing he saw before the doors closed was Bruce’s rare look of fear as he watched his master disappear behind sliding steel panels.

Alone for the moment, as the car hummed and began to climb, Ghost said, “He’s been a good one. Bruce.”

“Wonderful,” Ian agreed. “I couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated bodyguard. Even if he does always nick my mint Milanos.” In their reflections in the door, he saw Ian’s face crease with momentary pain, a child’s grief over a parent, and it was quickly smoothed.

“Where’d you find him, anyway?”

“I inherited him when I killed his first master,” Ian said, quietly, voice faraway. “He’s been unfailingly loyal ever since.”

Their elevator went straight from the garage up to the penthouse, no stops in between; no chance to get off.

It rose, and rose, and rose, smoothly, without any hitches, without the usual glowing numbers up in the corner to signal which floor they were passing. Ghost couldn’t see a camera, but knew there was one, that the man they were about to meet was watching them even now.

Ian’s sleeve brushed his, and a sideways glance proved that his hands were linked together in front of him, and that he was trembling, faintly, though his expression was serene. If not for the camera, Ghost would have offered one last word of assurance. A shoulder squeeze. But as it was, he faced forward, and took a few last deep breaths, and, finally, the elevator slowed.

Ding .

The doors glided open with painful slowness to reveal guards standing three pairs deep. Black suits, ear pieces, jackets unbuttoned so their sidearms were within easy reach. All wore identical, sternly disinterested expressions; all had thick necks, and big square jaws, and shoulders so wide they brushed against one another as they filled the hallway.

Before the doors were fully open, before the lead guards gestured for them to step out, Ghost was struck by mental pictures of his own toughs. His club, his Dogs, his brothers.

He pictured Walsh, too often underestimated because of his size, and his quiet demeanor, but with those eyes, and that cutting look that made even the largest of men take a step back and second-guess themselves.

Pictured Michael, and the terrifying intensity of his gaze, removed and feverish all at once, so that you could never tell if the guy hated you, or didn’t care if you lived or died.

Pictured Mercy, and his broad, sometimes-manic, always-delighted smile, murderously happy as often as he was genuinely happy, calling Ghost “Daddy” and picking him up and being a damn nuisance.

Pictured Tango, and his inked skin, and his pierced ears, and his striking haircut, and the cut-crystal sweetness of his face, beneath the badass screen he’d worked years to perfect.

Pictured Aidan. His boy. With his road rash scars to remind him of his impetuosity, and his brown eyes, the same color as Ghost’s, but infinitely kinder. Aidan who was going to hate him forever after all of this.

Pictured Carter, the kid he’d been, and the man he’d become, more loyal than any of them could have imagined. Pictured Hound’s angry, old-man snarl at church, and Rottie’s desperation to pull him out of the room before he said something unforgiveable; RJ the perpetual fuckup, and stalwart Dublin and Briscoe. Roman, his sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, with a younger man’s haircut and an older man’s wisdom, finally, cautious in his re-patched position with the club.

Pictured all of them, from Phillip Calloway in London, to Candyman in Texas, to the surfer-vibe crew all the way out in Cali, and everyone in between.

He hadn’t been wrong in the car when he told Ian that men needed some sort of society. His was a society not made of faceless suits following orders, bent passionlessly to a task that a cruel master assigned them. They were people. His people. A whole motley crew of individuals who all had one thing in common: they didn’t fit in anywhere else. They had found brothers who loved them, and loved their commitment to live on their own terms, amid their own tribe.

And the man they’d come to meet, who’d been pulling puppet strings for decades, infiltrating security agencies and law enforcement branches in every country of the world, had sent men in suits for them, each indistinguishable from the next.

The doors stilled, fully open, and Ghost stepped neatly in front of Ian and told the lead guards, “You gotta strip search us, or can we get this shit over with?”

One guard leaned over and whispered something to the next, who touched his earpiece, and a moment later, nodded. “This way.”

Behind him, just before he stepped off the elevator, Ghost heard Ian take a shaky breath. No doubt Ian had meant to swan his way down the hall in front, tossing his hair, putting on a show, a gleaming jewel drawing all eyes. But not this time, not since Ghost was there to stop it.

Ian was as much his charge as all the Dogs. As his kids. And it was him Abacus was going to have to deal with today.

He took the first step – and between it and the second, he felt the lightest brush of fingertips against his suit jacket, right between his shoulder blades. Thank you , he read in that single touch. I’m with you .

Ghost fell into the pocket the guards made for them, and put all his faith in his whole life’s experience, Ian’s razor-sharp wit, and Fox’s ability to pull off the impossible.

~*~

A short, utilitarian hallway led past what looked like a typical office setup: open doorways revealed a breakroom, and a bunk room, and a series of desks and computers and wall-mounted TVs. The security HQ, Ghost figured. Then their little convoy paused, a door was swiped open with a keycard, and the landscape changed.

The low light – umber, gold, and flickering – set Ghost on high alert immediately. Candlelight, firelight, both of which they found as they entered a room done up like something off Masterpiece Theater . It was wide, with low, timbered ceilings, and dark, glossy wall paneling set with sconces. Ghost caught glimpses of ornate tables and dark-shaded lamps, bookshelves and the glimmer of dozens upon dozens of bottles on a sideboard that belonged in a castle. There were candles, set in a series of heavy silver sticks down the length of a long dining table, one that stretched nearly the length of the room, along the windows that offered a view of the darkening night sky, and the city’s earthbound stars.

Nearer to hand, there was a fire as well, real wood, by some genius of high-rise engineering, logs crackling beneath a marble mantelpiece. In front of it, two armchairs sat cocked at angles. In one of them sat a shrunken, hooked shape that Ghost realized, once his eyes adjusted, was a very old and frail man.

The guards that flanked him and Ian ushered them over to the dining table, but Ghost caught glimpses of other guards going to the old man, producing a walker, helping him to stand. He turned his head to shoot Ian a glance. Are you kidding me?

Ian was back in supervillain mode, but spared a brief headshake. Unbelievable .

Guards pulled out chairs for them, side-by-side, to the left of the head of the table, which put their backs to the windows. They sat. Ghost heard a far-distant rumble of thunder, as the evening’s humidity swelled, and boiled, and finally began to shift toward a breaking point.

He shared one last look with Ian, while they had the chance, guards prowling, filling the room, blotting out the light of the sconces. Ian’s gaze was tense, but ready. Determined. Ghost nodded, and turned toward their host, as he was helped, with painstaking slowness, toward the table.

It would have been faster had the guards on either side of him bent down to move his legs for him. As it was, they steadied his trembling arms as he eked his way inch by inch across the rug. The closer he drew, the more obvious his wheezy, labored breathing became. Ghost could see the strain of tendons in his neck, and jaw, and temples, softened by layers of crepey, liver-spotted skin and sagging subcutaneous fat.

The man who called himself Abacus, who’d claimed to have founded this whole hideous organization, wore a several-thousand-dollar suit over his wasted frame, and small, round, gold-rimmed glasses that wanted to slide down his nose. He still had a shockingly-full head of hair, bone white, swept neatly clear of his forehead, a Dalmatian landscape of age and sun and liver spots. His hands, humped and strangely curved with arthritis, were decorated with jewel-set rings. Ruby cufflinks flashed on his wrists, and his buttons winked with diamonds.

It seemed to take hours, but, finally, Abacus was placed in the chair across from Ian, and snugged in to the table by the strong arms of his suited guards. One of them, before withdrawing, produced a handkerchief, and leaned in to wipe the man’s mouth.

Only then did Abacus knuckle his glasses back into place with a shaking hand, and look at them for the first time. Ian, then Ghost, then Ian again. He cleared his throat – a sad and frail sound – but when he spoke, his voice was clear, and smooth, faintly accented in a way that Ghost couldn’t place. Not British, he could tell that.

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

Thunder rumbled again, closer, the continuous percussive echo of a rockslide.

“I must admit, I was expecting only to meet with Mr. Shaman. You, Mr. Teague,” he said, gaze cutting youth-quick behind his glasses to Ghost, “are a surprise.”

“That’s what my mama said when I came out three weeks early.” Ghost leaned on his Tennessee roots, his accent. “You didn’t expect Shaman to come alone, did you?”

Though tremulous, a sickle edge of delight carved the old man’s smile into something sinister. He had anticipated this moment, and intended to enjoy it: enemies finally seated across from him, and wholly defenseless. “It’s what I told him to do. And…” His gaze shifted to Ian, and his smile deepened, pressing folds into his papery cheeks. “I would have been within my rights to kill you when you disobeyed that command.”

“Hey,” Ghost said sharply. The guards shifted, hands going to gun butts, gazes pinging. “You don’t get to command him. You asked him to come, and he came, and I came with him.”

Abacus turned back to him, slowly, gaze half-lidded in clear contempt. You’re beneath me , that look said, and it put Ghost’s hackles up. “Forgive me” – his voice was silken – “but it’s not my practice to negotiate directly with persons of your…station.” He lifted his wobbling chin, and despite his clear physical infirmity, managed to look regal. “I wished to speak today with a man in a position of power.”

He started to turn away.

Ian started to speak.

Ghost laid his hand on the table in front of Ian and said, “Hey, shithead. Yeah, you.” The guards shifted in closer, restless, and Abacus turned back to him with flared nostrils, and lips quivering with quiet outrage. “You wanna talk to the decision maker? That’s me. In case you forgot, you decided you wanted to go to war with the Lean Dogs MC, and I’m the president, not Shaman. You wanna talk to the boss? You talk to me, and you consider Shaman one of my boys, ‘cause that’s what he is.”

Abacus smiled, that same knife-sharp delight. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. If you’re gonna make a sales pitch, make it to me.” And he spread his hands on the table in invitation.

“Very well, then.”

A uniformed waiter brought a tray, and poured red wine into three glasses; handed out little plates of sliced cheese, and berries, and crackers.

Ian folded his hands in his lap, but Ghost pushed his aside so he could keep his elbow resting on the table.

“I assure you it isn’t poisoned,” Abacus said, bringing his glass to his lips and managing not to spill wine all over himself despite the quaking of his hands.

“I’m not much of a wine guy,” Ghost said, flatly.

“Shame. This is a good vintage.” He then proceeded to gum his way through a few slices of cheese on soft crackers, and sip his wine, a guard there with a blood-colored cloth napkin to wipe his mouth between bites.

Ghost had expected exactly this sort of stunt, a display of power: they were awaiting the king’s pleasure, forced to watch him slurp at brie and dribble wine into the waiting napkin of a servant, unable to do a damn thing about it. And so he waited, quietly, until the last drops of wine had been dabbed from Abacus’s lips, and he’d belched quietly into a clawlike hand.

“Ah. Excuse me. Now.” He didn’t so much lean back in his chair as fold downward into it, so that the edge of the table caught him in the middle of the chest. “Where were we?”

“Your pitch,” Ghost prompted.

“Oh yes. Right.” He sent Ghost a speculative look, really analyzing him for the first time. “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to do yourself, and me, the courtesy of truly considering before you answer. I don’t want you to think about anything so trivial as the law, or your – club customs .” His lip curled in disgust. “Don’t think of your family, or your past experiences. I want you to think only, and truly, and deeply, about what it is that you want , Mr. Teague.

“You see, the thing I’ve learned about want over my many, many decades on this earth, is that it is bottomless. When constraints – be they social, societal, moral, religious, financial – are stripped away, a man is a creature who can have plenty of something, and always want more. The imagination is limitless; once he begins traveling down the mental pathways of want, it is only a forced about-face that makes him say, ‘That’s enough.’ Because in truth, if allowed unchecked, a want will only grow and grow.

“But those constraints I mentioned, those are important. Those cripple our wildest dreams. Consider the normal course of life.” He held out a hand palm-up, fingers curled into fat-knuckled claws. “Man wants carnal pleasure. He wants it so terribly he can barely think of anything else. And so he pursues a romantic relationship, as society dictates. He goes to bars, and parties, and to websites in search of women. Women he then must take to dinner, and to the cinema. Women whose parents and friends and coworkers he must meet and make nice with. Should the woman eventually consent to sleep with him, he might ask for her hand in marriage some day. Not that marriage is without its merits: marriage, and the passing-on of names, the production of children, is essential in preserving our lineages…though I don’t suppose all bloodlines ought to be handed down, hm?”

It seemed to be a rhetorical question, and a pointed one.

He continued, “But those men still hunger . They still want . But they are locked into circumstances that limit them. Are they victims? Perhaps. But only of their own lack of ambition. They are content in their wanting. They lack vision .

“But some of us are blessed with a vivid imagination, and the skills and cleverness to pursue it. Those men – men like me, men like my friends, perhaps” – he cocked his head – “even men like you – have the means and the courage to take what they want.” His hand, still held aloft, closed with startling speed, the fingers overlapping at painful, awkward angles. He lowered his arm, whole body shaking from the effort of having kept it elevated so long.

“You’re married, aren’t you?”

Ghost nodded.

Abacus smiled, sideways, stroke-victimlike, but his eyes were still narrow and sharp. “Margaret Lowe, now Teague.”

Ghost’s stomach tightened painfully.

“Younger than you, yes? Young enough you could have gone to prison had anyone learned of your relationship with her when you first met.”

“I don’t think you really wanna talk about prison, do you?”

“Of course not,” Abacus said, smoothly, unperturbed. “I’m simply putting a few things in context. Your wife was quite young when you met her.” The look that came over his face then, wistful and reflective, made Ghost’s skin crawl. “Supple, smooth skin. Tight body. Gravity still working in her favor: a girl on the cusp of womanhood, perfectly ripe for picking.”

Ian kicked Ghost’s ankle under the table, and Ghost stepped on his toes to keep him still.

“I’m sure you wanted her,” Abacus said, “enough to risk prison. Enough to risk everything.

“But that was many years ago, and while your want doubtless hasn’t abated, your wife has changed. Matured, softened, fattened. She’s borne two children, and her body will show that strain. Does she dye her hair? Gotten any cosmetic surgery? Perhaps she harangues you about taking out the garbage, or remembering your anniversary. Tells you to drink and smoke less. She nags, and nags, and nags, and you’re left wanting more than ever.

“Now, I know how…clubs…like yours operate. I know there are groupies. Ladies who admire your… aesthetic . But are they what you truly want? Are they the subjects of your fantasies, late at night, when you can’t sleep, and your wife is snoring, and you wonder how your life ended up so pedestrian and unfulfilling?

“There are tens of thousands of men – and even women, couples – in your position. And for those who are willing to pay, I can fulfill every want that’s ever possessed them.”

With great effort, he hitched himself up higher in his chair, waving off the helping hands of a guard. He leaned across the table, and Ghost could smell the sour wine on his breath, undercut by something medicinal and foul, the smell of old . “Imagine it: imagine stroking your hands up the unblemished thighs of a girl just turned eighteen, with breasts like gumdrops, and she’s ready to tend to your every wish. Whatever you can imagine, you can act out with her.”

“You’re talking about slavery.”

“No. I’m talking about ambition, and the rewards of it.” He turned his head, a slow and creaky effort, and pawed at the air in a gesture that sent a guard out of the room. The old man’s expression took on a self-satisfied air that Ghost didn’t trust.

The guard returned a moment later, marching a girl in front of him.

She was barefoot, dressed in a silk negligee that revealed dark bruises around her throat and along her collarbones. Her hands were bound before her, ankles connected with a short length of steel cable, so she only had room to shuffle, and couldn’t have run if she’d tried. She moved with bent head, and bowed spine, curved into herself and trembling.

Ghost watched Abacus twist his head with aged difficulty, watched him smile at the sight of her that way, and had never wanted to kill a man more.

“Here, bring her here,” Abacus instructed, and the girl was steered up beside him, right at the edge of the table. A second guard stepped forward, tipped her head back with a rough touch at her chin, and swept her dark hair off her face. She’d been crying for a while, eyes red and puffy, tears shiny with dried tear tracks.

“Stunning, isn’t she?” Abacus asked, and reached with one gnarled paw to stroke her arm. She jerked in response, but didn’t step away, caught between her two captors. “All that youth, all that promise – and she was wasting it. Buying cocaine in a club.” He tsked. “Now, though.” He passed his hand back up her arm, and Ghost saw gooseflesh break out down the length of it. “Now she can serve a purpose.” He gripped her elbow, for all that he was able, and turned to Ghost. “A gift for you, Mr. Teague. A gesture of good will, should you agree to my terms.”

“And what are those?”

“Few. But they’re nonnegotiable.” As he spoke, the guards ushered the girl around the table toward Ghost. “Firstly, all of your countermeasures against us will come to an immediate and total end. Secondly, you will be required to tailor your business practices in such a way that best serves the needs of my organization.”

The girl arrived at his side, shivering, smelling of stale sweat and urine.

“Meaning?”

“He wants you to procure girls for him,” Ian spoke for the first time, voice unusually heavy. He sounded like he had a lump in his throat. “Right?” he asked Abacus. “That’s how it works with you: everyone contributes, and then everyone has skin in the game so no one turns on each other.”

Abacus shrugged; a small motion that nevertheless left him wincing when something popped audibly in his shoulder. “Contributions vary from member to member, that is negotiable. But a contribution must be made.”

The girl leaned against Ghost’s side, and he had the impression it was out of a genuine need of physical support. “We have a powerful paralytic at our disposal,” he offered. “Not currently on the market.”

Abacus’s smug looked dropped away. The sagging of his face into anger would have been comical under different circumstances. Thunder grumbled, close enough now to rattle the windows.

“It’s not on the market because it was designed for our exclusive use.”

Ghost shrugged, and felt the girl shift, leaning in closer against him. She was trembling. “Shoulda found someone more trustworthy than Luis to truck it in from Mexico for you, then. ‘Cause it’s ours, now.”

Abacus’s jaw and throat worked a moment, before he finally said, “I can’t help but feel you aren’t taking this meeting seriously, Mr. Teague.”

“You’re right. I’m not.”

Abacus drew a breath through quivering lips to respond, his droopy eyelids lifting so that his forehead was nothing more than a liver-spotted stack of wrinkles.

And one of the guards on the far side of the room yelled, “Sir!”

Another shouted, “Sir, there’s been a security breach. Twelfth floor!”

A guard came charging into the dining area, threw back a wall panel, and revealed a bank of security footage monitors. He pointed to the one in the top righthand corner, where a lens-distorted, full-color feed revealed men dressed all in black with stocking caps and flak vests overpowering the two guards stationed in a doorway there and flooding through.

Abacus wobbled, and flailed and turned to regard the monitors with a panic that brought his feebleness to the forefront. In moments of calm, he could maintain a certain aura of threat, but right now, he was trembling and wheezing, and convulsing like a starved dog.

Ghost put a supportive arm around the girl’s waist, and said, smiling, “I hope you don’t mind, but we invited some friends to the party. That’ll be the Kozlov bratva.”

Abacus turned to him creakily, pulse fluttering in the paper-thin skin of his temples. Ghost hoped he didn’t have a sudden aneurism, because where was the fun in that?

“Security breach on level nineteen!” another guard called, and Ghost found the feed easily on the monitors. Saw a guard take a shot to the head and spill messily backward to make way for the masked men who stepped over him and hit one of the rear staircases that led up to the penthouse.

“That’s Prince,” Ghost said. “More of a new acquaintance, but I like what I’ve seen so far.”

Abacus gaped at him, then pawed at the air. “Shut them down! Shut them down, now!”

Men scrambled to comply, leaving the room much emptier than it had been to start with. Ghost counted seven guards left.

The one standing at the monitors gestured to the one in the center. “Sir, the lobby…”

There was no mistaking who was coming in there, guns drawn, flashing badges. Pongo’s girlfriend, her blonde hair and short stature unmistakable on-screen, and her partner led the charge, backed up by uniforms with shotguns and vests emblazoned with the NYPD logo.

“Those are the cops, obviously,” Ghost said in an offhand manner. The girl rested her hand on his shoulder, and when he tapped his fingers against her hip, she hunkered down, so she was perched on the arm of his chair. “This lapel pin?” He flicked it with his free hand, when Abacus turned back to him; the old fucker’s neck was going to snap the way he kept whipping his head back and forth. “It’s a wireless mic. Shit knows if any of what you said will hold up in court, but it was enough to establish an immediate threat and get them in the door. That’s the Sex Crimes division.

“The guys on the floor right below us?”

“Sir!” the guard said, and Ghost didn’t bother checking the monitor this time. “Those are my boys. You’d think, given the way we fucked up the Beaumont Building a year-and-a-half ago, you’d have beefed up security a little bit. But.” He shrugged. “You didn’t. And now here we are.”

Ian grinned like a shark, and said, “How’s it feel to get fucked , old man?”

Abacus blinked at them, mouth hanging open, and then let out an animal sound of impotent rage, hoarse with age, shaking with fury. “You’re dead!” Spit flew off his lower lip and landed with a pitiful splat on the tabletop. “Kill them! Shoot them!”

“Now,” Ghost said, gripped the girl hard, and threw both of them to the floor. He heard Ian hit the ground on his other side, and then he heard the high, crystalline chime of glass breaking.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered the girl, who whimpered and pressed herself flat to the floor. He shielded the back of her head with one hand, and turned his head, peering beneath the table.

The thunder had reached a fever pitch outside, and so he couldn’t hear the gunshots, but in the white flares of lightning, he watched suit-clad legs kick, and stumble. Saw bodies hit the floor. Some of them twitched, most of them didn’t. He counted them: one, two, three, four…until all seven lay still.

The thunder rolled to a slow cessation, and he heard the sharper, deeper echo of the last gunshot fade.

“Stay down,” he told the girl, and got to his feet.

Somewhere beyond the crackling fire and the glittering sideboard, he heard a gunfight happening in a hallway; the muted shouts and muffled thumps of the guards making one last stand.

Ian stood and dusted bits of glass from his shoulders, tsking over a smudge on his jacket cuff. “I just had this dry cleaned.”

“I’ll comp you the bill,” Ghost deadpanned. He turned and waved through the shattered window, breeze whipping in hard, smoothing his hair off his forehead and stinging his eyes. Lightning tongued down between the high-rises, dayglow vivid, and he saw a silhouette in the building across the street wave back, and then stand. “You did good, kid,” he said, to himself, since Evan couldn’t hear him. “Talk to me about a patch when we get home.”

A keening sound drew his attention back to the table, and he saw that Abacus had dropped his face down onto its shiny surface, hands clasped over the top of his head, the wavering candleflames – undisturbed by the sniper fire – giving the impression that his whole body was waving and whipping in tremors so great he might simply phase out of existence like a ghost.

Soon.

“Pick your head up, you miserable piece of shit,” Ghost ordered.

Outside, the gunshots had ceased.

Abacus whimpered, and didn’t move.

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 to join you? 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 really are the 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 my own 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.