Clint was counting on that solid practice.
The front door opened and bodyguard number one appeared. The big guy gestured to one of the towering columns that flanked the front of the grandiose house. “Spread ’em,” he ordered. He sported the traditional uniform, black suit, black tie, communication earpiece making him look a little like a Secret Service agent. Clint figured the costuming provided Fairgate with a sense of importance.
He propped both hands against the column and spread his feet wide apart. He knew the drill. He’d watched others do it enough. The jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers he wore didn’t provide for any clever places of concealment, but that didn’t spare him a thorough search from his neck to his ankles.
“Let’s go.”
Clint straightened and walked through the front door with number one right on his heels. Two more goons waited in the entry hall. Both huge. Pumped-up bulk achieved at a gym, not lean fighting muscle culminated from basic survival.
“Mr. Fairgate is waiting for you in his office.” This goon grinned, his lips curling away from his teeth the way a dog did right before he attacked. “He says you’ll remember the way.”
Clint walked straight to the spacious staircase in the center of the hall and started up. Sly hadn’t chosen a first-floor room for his office. He preferred another layer of security between him and the outside world. He’d had the second floor renovated so that his office sat in the precise middle of the couple thousand square feet on that level. His office included his bedroom suite. The rooms where his bodyguards slept fanned out all the way around him, a barrier between him and any exterior wall.
If a threat entered the house, they would literally have to go through his bodyguards to get to him, no matter the time of day or night.
Sly had rarely left his compound. Clint doubted that his son did any differently.
More bodyguards waited on either side of the double doors that led into the office. Neither spoke as Clint walked past them. A wave of déjà vu slammed him as he surveyed the room with its posh velvet chairs facing the wide mahogany desk positioned in the very center. Sid, wearing the predictable business suit and looking just like his daddy, sat in the same Italian leather chair his father had once occupied. Sly had always said you couldn’t put an adequate value on good quality property, but every human being on the globe, no matter how God-fearing, had his price.
Sid stared at Clint a moment with those beady black eyes, the fingers of his right hand busily twisting the ring on his left. Big, platinum, hosting a shiny rock embellished with the Fairgate family crest. Sly had worn one just like it. Thin brown hair, thinner face. Blade of a nose. The Fairgates weren’t much to look at, but no one who wanted to keep breathing would risk saying so.
Sid’s fingers stilled, the glare from those black eyes intensified. “How dare you come here like this,” he rebuked. “You rise up out of that hole you were sentenced to and you think you can come to my home and threaten me. I could kill you and nobody would care. The whole shitty community would celebrate.”
He was probably right about that.
“Your daddy was a lot of things, Sid, but he wasn’t a coward.”
Sid stood so fast his chair flew backward and banked off the credenza behind him. He rounded his desk and walked straight up to Clint. “You still a tough guy, Austin?” Sid reached beneath his tailored jacket and pulled out a big black pistol to wave. “Funny, you don’t look so tough anymore.”
Clint let him talk.
“Tell me, how did a young, pretty boy like you survive inside those prison walls with all those hard-ass motherfuckers who hadn’t seen a woman in a couple of decades?”
Clint didn’t let the bastard see the fury spiraling inside him. He maintained a perfectly calm exterior, even smiled. “I’m sure you’re not really interested in my recent social life.” He made it a point to tilt his head down to maintain eye contact with the shorter man.
“Don’t waste my time, Austin. What do you want?”
Funny how no one had cared when almost eleven years of Clint’s time was being stolen from him and wasted.
“I want my life back, Sid,” he said bluntly. “Your daddy stole it from me and I’ve come to collect.”
Red’s most violet shade rose up Sid’s neck from the collar of his white designer shirt. His closed mouth twitched two, three times before he managed to spit out the words trapped behind his clenched teeth. “Do you have a death wish, Austin?” The red darkened to the purple of rage. “You show up here and degrade the memory of my father! You must have a desperate desire to meet your maker!”
Clint chuckled. “Get real, Sid; you hated him just as much as everybody else. I’ll bet you had a party the night you buried him to celebrate your good fortune.”
The muzzle of the weapon bored into Clint’s ribs. “Shut up! Or I will kill your ass where you stand.”
“Go ahead.” Clint nailed him with a look that let the rage and determination building inside him make an unholy appearance. “I spent ten years in that shithole they call a prison. I’ve been beaten unconscious so many times I don’t feel pain anymore. I’ve been used in ways you don’t even want to imagine. So if you think the idea of being shot by a prick like you scares me, get a grip;nothingscares me.”
The color slowly seeped from Sid’s face, leaving a pallor that announced just how nervous he was. “Make your point, Austin. I have things to do.”
And people to rob, Clint tacked on silently. “Your daddy gave me a job that turned out to be my last one for him. I’m sure you recall the one.”
Sid simply stared at him, without the vaguest reaction.
“He lied when the police asked him about my alibi.”
Sid’s mouth twitched again. “The old man was a compulsive liar, Austin; you of all people should recall that. I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.” His lips compressed back into that line that screamed of his impatience.
