Fuck that. This guy wasn’t going to die famous.
“Adam, Jericho, take all of this—the boxes, the tools, all of it—and stow it in the car, everything you can carry. Zane, Felix, get these pictures down, make sure not a single one is left. They’re coming with us. Archer, get the tarps out of the back of the truck. We’ll need to take him with us and dump him somewhere along the way.”
“Dad, what’s the plan?” August asked.
Thomas sighed. “We’re gonna blow the place ourselves.”
“What?”
“We don’t have any choice. It’s safer than trying to explain why someone broke into our abandoned property and set up explosives around our house, and oh, yeah, they happened to be a serial killer.”
“Still, there will be an investigation,” Aiden said, looking at Thomas like he was crazy.
Thomas shook his head. “No, there won’t be. I’ll do what I always do. Call in some favors with Kendrick.”
“And say what? Another gas leak?” Asa asked.
Avi nodded. “Yeah, who has that kind of bad luck?”
“We don’t have any choice. I refuse to make this shithead famous and we can’t take a chance of them starting to put the pieces together. We clean up like we always do, we leave nothing behind. Then after some time has passed, we’ll decide if we want to make the real story of my parents’ deaths known. But not now, not like this.”
“What do we do about the others?” Aiden asked. “His ‘sons’?”
“We’ll deal with them later. They’ve been hunting all this time. They’re bound to have left some calling cards. We’ll dig into Jeffries until we find something.” He looked at Jeffries. “And then we’ll hunt them down, one by one, and put them down. Just like him.”
He snatched the scalpel from Avi and jammed it directly through Jeffries’s eye socket. He watched as the man twitched a few times, then sagged.
“Let’s get this cleaned up. Clock’s ticking.”
Aiden and Thomas were back in the bath, this time with Thomas sitting between Aiden’s open legs. There was nothing sexual about it. They were both exhausted. They’d managed to stand under the scalding hot shower just long enough to clean away the dirt and sweat from digging the hole where they’d dumped Jeffries.
They’d been sitting in the tub for the last hour, letting the water grow tepid, then adding more, neither of them in any hurry to leave each others’ arms.
Thomas was drifting, his head lulling on Aiden’s chest in a way that made him smile. “You were such a badass today,” Aiden said, combing fingers through his damp hair. “I’ve never really seen you in action in the field,” he teased.
Thomas snorted. “I didn’t do anything.”
That wasn’t true. Thomas had been in control of that situation from the moment they’d entered. He’d been so calm because he’d already worked through a dozen scenarios in his head before they’d breached the premises. It was impressive. It was hot. Thomas Mulvaney when he was in business mode was a sight to behold.
“You created a plan and an exit strategy for us in ten minutes without giving Jeffries what he wanted. He’ll die nameless and faceless. And Calliope will find a way to anonymously make sure the victims didn’t die the same way and that their families have some kind of closure. You blew up a fucking house and covered it up with two phone calls. On our terms.”
Thomas shook his head. “Yeah, but I had to call in favors with your dad. You know how much I fucking hate that.”
“That man is not my father,” Aiden said, though not with any particular heat. “Don’t call him that.”
It wasn’t as if Kendrick had ever even attempted to be Aiden’s dad. Even as a child, he was never there, far more devoted to his career than his children. Aiden had raised himself and it had been lonely. Until he became a Mulvaney.
“Sorry,” Thomas muttered, soothing his hands over Aiden’s thighs like an apology.
“It’s okay,” Aiden assured him. “But what happens now?”
Thomas turned, craning his head back to look up at him. “With what?”
“With us?” Aiden asked.
Thomas studied him for a long moment, like he was trying to gauge what Aiden was really asking. Finally, he said, “Like I said before, you come home…to me. For good.” He took Aiden’s hands and threaded their fingers together.
Aiden’s heart pounded. Those were the words he’d wanted to hear forever. Thomas had said it the other day, but he’d said a lot of things over the years, had run hot and cold a million times. Some part of Aiden needed more than just words. “And then what…”
