“Huh?” Hunter tilted his head to the side and gave me the type of pout that comes from the heart. “I… what do we need to decide?”
Carefully I set my feet on the floor and rested my hands on my knees to keep myself from grabbing him again. “If you’re coming with me back to New York City for a bit, for starters? Anyway, we need to clear the air on at least one project, your old man and I, and then I need to have a long chat with ya, too, because I just got a reminder that this is a vacation and not permanent, leastways not yet. I have obligations to the Company.”
He furrowed his brows until I thought he might be hurting himself, and I had to laugh at the way he absently scratched his flat belly. He licked his lips and a warm smile spread across his face. “Do we have time for—” An obnoxious honking from outside had him twisting his lips down into a crooked frown. “King.”
“I would expect so.”
He rushed through getting dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt, but insisted on stopping to brush his teeth, even though King leaned on his horn in a way guaranteed to have the neighbors complaining.
Hunter grumbled and grabbed his leather Kings’ jacket from the back of the couch as he rushed past it on his way toward the door. I sauntered out after him. Corbin sat on the front porch that faced our picturesque view of the lake, casually reading a newspaper and ignoring the ongoing ear-bending annoyance. Hunter nearly tripped down the stairs, trying to get to a rusted white van faster so that King would knock it off. Corbin tapped my shoulder as he paced after me, and with a nod I let him know to tail the van because wherever King happened to drag us, I didn’t fully trust him.
The man in a black suit behind the steering wheel was someone I didn’t know, and King lounged in the passenger seat, the sun glinting off his silver-dusted light brown hair and black sunglasses. He hooked a thumb toward the back of the van without rolling down a window, and Hunter rushed that direction. He opened the doors at the rear and hopped in, so I followed him.
The inside of the storage area smelled… odd, and I knew immediately what that particular combination of grease and bleach meant. This van had at some point been used to move bodies, maybe even messy ones, because that powerful bleach odor was unmistakable. Chuckling, I bent forward and walked up to the front as Hunter closed the doors, but the van reversed and I almost fell on my arse, so I quickly took a knee.
“King,” I said with a nod when I finally caught his eye, or thought I did at any rate. It was infuriatingly difficult to tell where he was looking with his fecking sunglasses on. I glanced at the driver, and though he was familiar enough that it tugged at my memory banks, I couldn’t dredge up any name to go with him. “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.” He turned toward me, pegging me to the spot with his unnaturally blue eyes. “Oh aye, ya usually wear makeup.”
He gave me a toothy smirk. “Undertaker. Today the title is more functional than fear inspiring.” He snorted and smoothed a hand down his suit coat, and I let out a whistle of appreciation as I took in the nice black wool. My antics earned me a sassy eyebrow waggle. King pulled off his sunglasses and leaned over to drop them on Undertaker’s nose, where he arranged them as if it was nothing. “I’m the club treasurer,” Undertaker said and began carefully navigating the van along the small road near the other lake houses. “King thought you’d be talking money.”
“Did he now?”
“He did,” King growled.
Hunter slid up to sit cross-legged next to me and rested an encouraging hand on my back, as if I needed it. I tried to shake him off, didn’t want to look weak in this particular situation, but in the end let it go as he stroked a firm hand up and down between my shoulder blades. Everything he did was so nice, and King already had his opinions set about me.
“Any particular reason we’re in a body van?” I tried not to look too nervous as I asked, but King snorted.
“Nope. Just happened to be what we were driving when you called. And what we’re doing is heading to NG International.” He turned just enough to glare. “You said you wanted to talk about that, right? Well, sometime back I bought a warehouse near the airport. I’ve been trying to make that fuckin’ airport useful for a while now, but no matter what I do, it just hasn’t worked out. I figured if I ever did find a way to get a foot into the airport, I needed a way station, a place to take whatever I was bringing in and out of New Gothenburg by plane before it went off to its forever home.” He waved his hand through the air like it was an airplane, and Undertaker sighed, reaching over to whack his knee. I didn’t know the story behind their back-and-forth, but they had a comfortable air about them, the same way I did with Corbin, like maybe they’d known each other since forever.
“Sit down. We’ll take the highway to get there, and the last thing we need is for you to crack your skull.”
He pushed my shoulder in an almost friendly way, and Hunter reached out to hook his arm around my waist, dragging me next to him. King gave me a long glare over his shoulder, but I was happy when he only nodded as our gazes met. Maybe he’d made his peace with me starting up something with his son.
“Hunter, kid. Thought I’d be seeing you more, since you’re supposed to live with me now. How’s life?” King asked, and there was an awkwardness in the way he moved to lean on the arm of his seat and turn to look more fully at Hunter.
For his part, Hunter gripped me tighter and rested his head against mine for a second. “Good.”
“Great,” King said and faced the front again.
Undertaker’s shoulders shook as if he could only just contain his amusement, and then he snorted, and I decided that meant he was trying very hard not to cackle like a hyena. If I wasn’t so scared of messing things up with King, on multiple fronts, I’d have joined him. I caught another whiff of bleach and shifted uncomfortably as my gut sank. That stench was the reminder I needed that though King might seem like a good-time man, he was every bit as dangerous as the other high-level mobsters I’d dealt with. I needed to make sure I kept my head in the game.
The quality of the road sounds changed—the pavement was smoother under the tires and the sway of the vehicle let me know we were moving faster—so I assumed we were on the highway, and this whole airport thing was going off without a hitch. I sighed with relief. The last thing I wanted to do was tell Sloan that King was turning into a problem, because then what would I do? Best just to use all my charm to make this work.
“What have ya tried? Tell me.”
“Huh?” King swung around in his seat again, the corner of his mouth turned down, and I finally saw it. My heart skipped a beat, then sped up. It was clear to someone who was looking that he was related to Hunter, but the way he frowned and his eyebrows furrowed was exactly how Hunter looked when I asked him questions about the future—part scared, and the rest flummoxed.
“The airport? What have ya tried there?”
“Oh.” His eyebrows shot high and he grinned. “Well, we’ve had men in there as baggage handlers, but they weren’t exactly my best guys, and they couldn’t get around the airport security. We tried mail freight once, but everyone was antsy about that because packages are inspected more often with the postal service—”
“Fuck, King, look,” Undertaker said before the van gave a lurch and the engine groaned in an unhappy way as we chugged forward. I grasped the back of the seat to keep myself and Hunter upright with the shift in speed. King whipped around to face the front again and let out a growl that raised the hairs on the back of my arms. I sat up and then took a knee again, and Hunter did as well so we could see out the windshield.
On the other side of the window was a frightening sight, and I didn’t have a weak stomach. Leading us by not nearly enough distance were three shiny motorcycles, a sleek cherry-red bike bracketed on both sides by black ones, and the dark riders seemed to be trying to shove the one in the middle off course, even though that didn’t seem the best idea; if any of the bikes went down, they were all likely to get hurt. I glanced at the speedometer for the hell of it, and we were doing well above eighty, definitely enough for a person to become a smear on the road.
“Someone’s going to die,” Undertaker said cheerfully, echoing my thoughts.
“What are those fucking morons doing?” Hunter grumbled. “They’re going to kill her. I think… is that Red!?” Hunter leaned up between the seats and swore under his breath. “The last time I ran a message to Sapphira, I told Red I’d come take her bike and tune it up sometime because she was too busy at Grounds and Gears to do it herself.”
