Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3) Read online

  Prodigal Son

  Lean Dogs Legacy Book Three

  Lauren Gilley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Names and characters are the property of the author and may not be duplicated.

  PRODIGAL SON

  Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley

  Cover design Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley

  HP Press®

  Atlanta, GA

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  One

  The bell above the door jangled, and Albie kicked himself mentally for not having locked up yet. “We’re closed,” he called without looking up from his sketch. He was designing a new side table, very rustic and American-looking, clean lines and sturdy legs.

  “Shame,” a female voice said, accompanied by the clip of high heels across the floor. “I do love that wingback chair over there.”

  He lifted his head to find a striking, sharply-dressed woman walking toward his desk. She had one of those faces that inspired second and third looks: aristocratic bone structure, soft pink mouth, heavy-lidded eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back, a few artful loose strands left to fall against her jaw, her throat. She’d taken great care to draw curious glances upward, above her shoulders – but Albie knew to look for the faint shadow on the inside of her suit jacket, the Browning tucked into a waistband holster.

  “Hello, Eden,” he said, without inflection. He liked her, but he wasn’t going to encourage this visit, whatever it was about. He didn’t see much use in allowing someone who worked for the government to linger one floor above his weapons stash for too long.

  “Hello, Albie.” There was a stool opposite his desk, and she slid onto it gracefully, crossing her legs at the knee. Her black slacks were tight and chic, expensive-looking. Everything about Eden Adkins was expensive. “I’m glad to see the shop hasn’t changed since I was last here.”

  “What do you want?”

  She smirked. “That wasn’t an insult.”

  “Eden. What do you want?”

  She released a tired-sounding breath, expression fading into one of frustration. He’d always thought her cold and efficient, and it was disconcerting to see her show human qualities. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with your brother. He won’t return my calls.”

  “Which one?” Albie asked, playing dumb.

  She gave him a sharp look. “You and Charlie both know I don’t make social calls.”

  “Your most charming quality, I think.”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is important. Tell him to ring me back.”

  “What’s it about?”

  She stared at him a long moment, face unreadable. She was beautiful. And dangerous. Charlie always did have shitty taste in women.

  After a long, tense moment broken only by the ticking of the cuckoo clock on the wall behind them, she shrugged. “I might as well show you as well. Maybe it will get him here faster.”

  “What…” he started, but she was pulling out her phone and tapping at the screen.

  She found what she wanted with a quiet “there,” and turned the screen toward him.

  A video began to play. Black and white security footage, but unmistakable.

  Albie felt his jaw clench tight. “When was this taken?”

  “Two weeks ago. It’s the seventh time he’s been caught on camera in the past six months.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Call Charlie,” she instructed.

  “Yeah. Let me do that.”

  ~*~

  “He don’t look like much,” Fox said, bending at the waist to get on eye level with the Tennessee chapter’s newest acquisition.

  “Look who’s talking,” Ghost said with a snort.

  “Trust me, it wasn’t meant as an insult.” The boy sitting in front of him stared back without flinching, gaze not blank, but shielded. Very alert, very intelligent, and very, very inhuman. “The best killers are always the ones no one expects. Save Mercy, of course, no offense.”

  Over his shoulder somewhere, Mercy chuckled.

  The killer in question – Reese – studied Fox just as Fox studied him, an unselfconscious scrutiny that raised the tiny hairs on the back of Fox’s neck. It was rare that anyone spooked him. He didn’t feel frightened now, but he had to admit Reese was no ordinary dime-store hitman. There was real potential here…and a truckload of identity issues.

  Someone had tried to turn this boy into a machine, and the finished product was doubtless more alive than the creator had intended. Fox had the impression of staring at a highly trained military attack dog whose handler had been removed.

  He straightened and scratched at the back of his neck, soothing the goosebumps there. “Well then.”

  “Well then what?” Ghost asked. He looked tired, like maybe the new baby wasn’t letting him sleep through the night, his stubble coming into a real beard. Which of course meant he looked grouchy. Ghost Teague was nothing if not the most charmingly grumpy person Fox had ever met.

  He tipped his head to the side and walked away from the picnic table, the president coming with him, leaving Mercy behind as stand-in dog handler for the moment.

  “What’ve you boys gotten yourselves into?” Fox asked when they were out of earshot, fishing a smoke out of his pocket. He offered the pack to Ghost, but he shook his head and waved it away. Ah, right. Baby.

  “I already told you the story,” Ghost said.

  “Yes, but you failed to impress upon me just how fucked up this kid is.”

  “Is he fucked up?”

  “He’s damaged,” Fox corrected. “But he doesn’t know it. He seems perfectly content to be a robot.”

  “You see my dilemma, then.”

  “A robot can’t be a brother. And you can’t be in the club if you can’t be a brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want him to be in the club?”

  Ghost made a considering face, hands on his hips, gaze sweeping across the massive sprawl of the Dartmoor property. “I think he’s valuable,” he said. And then, quieter: “And I think he deserves a shot at being alive, you know? He won’t get that shot anywhere but here.”

  Fox nodded. The rest of the world would see a violent liability. Within the Lean Dogs, a kid like Reese could
be both an asset, and a valued family member. Loved and cared for, allowed to be as broken and scattered as he needed to be. There was no better place for unwanted and dangerous things than right here in this parking lot.

  But Ghost would never allow his wife, and children, and brothers to be at risk. Not from anyone.

  “You think he’s salvageable?” he asked Fox.

  Fox shrugged. “The only unsalvageable people I’ve met were evil. And he’s not that.”

  “Hmm.”

  His phone trilled in his pocket. It was the third time in the past hour.

  “You gonna get that or what?” Ghost said.

  He’d checked the caller ID the first time. “It’s Albie.”

  “Trouble back home?”

  “Home is Texas.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The phone chimed with a voicemail alert. And then started ringing again.

  ~*~

  The dorms in Amarillo were clean – Ghost’s cleanliness had rubbed off on every other chapter – but they weren’t Dartmoor clean like the dorm in which he now stood. Orange carpet and worn bedspread, sure, but the room smelled like a fresh rainstorm. Fox breathed deep and said, “Come again?” into the phone pressed to his ear.

  Albie took a ragged breath on the other end of the line. Fox pictured his brother bent over the desk in his shop, dark circles under his eyes, cup of spiked tea at his elbow. “It was Dad. Plain as day. On three separate occasions.”

  “Doing what?”

  “No idea. It was like he was looking for something. Going through offices and filing drawers.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  Albie exhaled; he was smoking, by the sound of it. “You know he won’t talk to any of us but you.”

  “Bullshit,” Fox said, anger bubbling up in his chest. “You, and Phil, and Tommy, and Miles are all over there in his goddamn neighborhood. And it’s up to me to get on a plane and come handle it?”

  “You want our little brothers to do it?” Albie shot back, sounding just as angry.

  “This is Phillip’s problem. He’s the oldest, he wants to be the boss. Let him handle Dad.”

  “Yeah, well, Eden Adkins didn’t come by the shop looking for Phillip now, did she?”

  “Eden?”

  “Where do you think I got the security footage?”

  “Fuck,” he swore, softly, his anger collapsing into a darker, imprecise emotion that made him feel sick to his stomach.

  The thing was, Fox was not by nature a nervous person. He didn’t have any hang-ups, no social anxiety. Sure, there were people he didn’t like, but he never felt compelled to avoid anyone. Generally, a flat look and a shrug was enough to infuriate the disliked party and put them on the offensive. If anything, others avoided him.

  But there were two people on the planet who upset his equilibrium. Two he didn’t ever care if he saw again because he hated the way they stirred nervousness into an acute physical sensation in his belly. One of them was his father.

  And one of them was Eden.

  Right now, he would have cheerfully paid one of his Tennessee brothers to fly to London and handle things for him.

  But Albie didn’t call for help idly. Neither did Eden. And Dad…well, Dad was going to be a problem ‘til he finally went tits-up.

  “Ugh,” he said, hearing the start of a whine in his voice. “You’re such a bastard, Albert.”

  “So are you,” Albie said, without heat. It was a statement of fact: they were all bastards.

  Fox closed his eyes. For a moment – a long one – he entertained the idea of hanging up on his brother and pretending this conversation had never happened. He could spend a few more days here, maybe a week, enjoy Ghost’s hospitality. Maybe see if he could dig into Reese a little, see if there was a human inside worth salvaging. Then he could go back home to Texas, to his orthopedic mattress and his favorite honky-tonk waitresses, and his favorite niece’s dry sense of humor. Where it was warm, and dry, and so blessedly American that it never made him think of his other home, and the fucked-up legacy Devin Green had scattered across London.

  But there was a reason the club called on him when they were backed into a corner. He always came, and he always performed the impossible. It was kind of his thing.

  He said, “I’ll be there tomorrow,” and resolved to drink enough tonight so he didn’t have to think about it.

  Two

  The Black & Tan was a coffee and sandwich shop within easy walking distance of Baskerville Hall. It was where Fox agreed to meet Eden when he landed at Heathrow and finally texted her back. It had been months since that first text, and he couldn’t make himself feel guilty about ignoring her.

  Her reply was instant. 7?

  OK.

  And so, it was seven, and a fine, misty rain was falling, and Fox pushed through the door of the shop to find her sitting in a corner table away from the window. She had an iPad on the table in front of her, scrolling one elegant, black-nailed finger across the screen; she hadn’t noticed him yet. Or at least didn’t appear to. In any event, she wasn’t looking at him, so Fox took a moment to look at her.

  She had always been too classy for him. This evening, she wore a high-necked cream dress that hugged her figure and a tailored black jacket. Black pumps. Understated elegance, her hair in artful dark waves to her shoulders. She looked like a businesswoman meeting someone for coffee after work – which wasn’t a lie, per se. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

  Eden, like him, lived in the realm of half-truths.

  An elbow jabbed him in the ribs. “Out of the way, fucking idiot,” a customer muttered, shoving past him to get to the counter.

  Fox shot him a flat look and moved out of the way.

  The scuffle had caught Eden’s attention, and her head lifted, gaze landing on him as he weaved through the tables to get to her.

  He’d forgotten, in the intervening years, just how intense her eyes were when they were aimed right at you. Her gaze was never picking you apart on a superficial level; she looked straight through your skin, into your soul. Hers was the only scrutiny that had ever made Fox want to squirm.

  He didn’t, of course, because he had self-control. But the urge itself was unsettling enough on its own.

  Features schooled into a blank mask, he reached her table and dropped into the chair across from her. “Eden.”

  “Charlie.”

  Rain pattered against the windows; long slide of droplets casting shadows across the floors, across her beautiful face. Conversations ebbed and flowed around them, the musical lilt of his birthplace, so foreign after all his years in the US. Coffee smell, and the tang of tea. Roast beef sandwiches.

  He felt reduced. Like he’d been dragged back through time, wind-ruffled and claw-raked, deposited in a moment when he still thought a more legitimate way of life was feasible. Back when he’d thought Eden might be better than him.

  He’d meant to tease her, get her flustered, stray off topic and try to suss out what she was doing with her life these days. But now that he was right in front of her, he wanted to get things over with. “Albie said you have something for me to see.”

  “Yes.” Her sigh sounded relieved. “Your father appears to have been busy. As usual.” She turned the iPad to face him and slid it across the table.

  “As usual,” Fox echoed, and pressed the Play icon.

  There was no sound. The footage was grainy, taken through a stationary security camera, but clear enough to see the larger details. The scene was some sort of office building, the lights dimmed for the night; cubicles, file cabinets, copiers, printers, name plaques at the office doors. A man walked into the shot, glancing back over his shoulder to check for a tail. He was older and scruffier than the last time Fox had seen him, but there was no mistaking Devin Green.

  Like always, the sight of his father sent competing surges of sadness and fury through him. He hated Devin’s guts…and there would always be a part of him that remained a little boy in need of his d
addy’s love.

  On-screen, Devin went to one of the file cabinets and produced a key from his pocket, unlocked it and pulled the top drawer out. He flicked through the files with his fingers a moment and finally pulled one out. Scanned it. Tucked it under his arm, shut the cabinet, and left.

  The video ended.

  “Is that it?” Fox asked, lifting his head.

  The corner of her mouth twitched in irritation. “The office belongs to Pseudonym Pharmaceuticals. It’s on the eighteenth floor of a private building with round the clock security. The office requires keycard access and the only two people on the floor with the keys to that file cabinet were at home during the time of the break-in,” she said, voice dry, look flat.

  “Was it actually a break-in?”

  “A theft,” she amended. “He didn’t break anything.”

  “That’s dear old Dad for you.” He passed the iPad back. “Always up to his old tricks.” He felt a smile touch his mouth. He hated the man, but he had to admire his commitment to being an asshole. “My question is,” he said, fixing her with a look, “what business is it of yours?”

  Her polished façade cracked. Just a little. A glimmer of the real Eden peeking through, the one who drank cold tea spiked with whiskey, who slept late on Sunday mornings and stayed in her pajamas all day, hair in a messy knot, no make-up and skin hungry for touch.

  “None of my business, ordinarily,” she said, reaching up to tidy her perfect hair, a nervous gesture. “You know I’ve always liked your father.”

  He snorted.

  “In a way. He’s impossible to love, but easy to like, you know that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But.” And here she looked apprehensive. “Pseudonym contacted me. They sent me the video directly and asked me to track down your father – they don’t know who he is, rest assured. The thief, they’re calling him.”

  “You’re freelancing now?”

  “Albie didn’t tell you?” She sounded almost hurt.

  Fox shrugged. “Albie doesn’t care. He just told me to come handle Dad.”

  Eden nodded, visibly pulled her composure back in place. “I’m freelancing,” she confirmed. “Mum and I have a company set up. Two years now.”