Renny (The Henchmen MC #6) Page 6

  "Why did you move here, of all places?" I asked, brow raised. While Navesink Bank had its very nice areas, the crime rate was, well, a deterrent for most people.

  He shrugged a shoulder. "I was in the City. Got all kinds of fucked up and needed to get away."

  "Fucked up meaning drugs," Renny supplied, watching the man with a quiet intensity I shouldn't have, but absolutely did, find incredibly attractive.

  "Booze to thirties to H."

  "And you decided Navesink Bank was a good place to recover?" Renny went on. "You do realize we have an impressive drug problem here, right?"

  Laz shrugged. "I've got some time in. Can't hide from your triggers. Gotta face 'em up. So when I'm having a bad night, I walk."

  "Which was how you came across the guys breaking into the gym," I concluded.

  "Yeah, babe. I walk for hours some nights. See a lot of shit."

  "She hates being called babe," Renny supplied, not bothering to look my way and I knew he was still ticked at me. But that was probably for the best. "If you see a lot of shit, why bother reporting this? And why to us and not the cops?"

  "Fact of the matter is, when you're a junkie, you get a different perspective on the world. It's not as easy as the cops are the good guys and the criminals are the bad guys. It's a fuckuva lot more complicated than that. And I've been here long enough to know that you guys don't fuck with innocents. You keep the shit between you and who you're having issues with. If you're overthrown and a new power takes over, there's no guarantee of that being the case with them. The lesser of two evils, if you will."

  I looked over to Renny, wanting to see if he came to the same conclusion as I did- he was being honest with us.

  But he was stubbornly keeping his gaze away from me.

  "What do you do, Laz?" Renny asked as I felt something akin to regret burrow into my belly.

  Why? I wasn't sure. Because distance was what I thought I wanted. I had accomplished that goal by being a bitch. But being faced with the distance, yeah, I found I wasn't a fan.

  "Why?" Lazarus surprised me by asking, snapping my attention back to him. So far, he had been nothing but forthcoming. Clamming up about his job seemed odd.

  "Hands are covered in bruises and scabs," Renny said and I felt myself stiffen. I moved to the side slightly to look behind him at his hands to find he was right; Laz was covered in injuries in various stages of healing. Really, his observational skills were second to none. While everyone else was freaking out about his declaration earlier, Renny had been cataloging small, seemingly unimportant details about him.

  Lazarus sighed, shaking his head. "Not a lot of employers will hire someone with my record."

  "So you got inventive," Renny agreed. "Who do you work for?"

  "Ross," he supplied, voice a little hollow.

  "Ross Ward?" I asked, putting two and two together.

  Ross Ward was a different kind of criminal. The genius of his business was that he literally employed three people- guards. And they worked on a contract business, not full-time. His overhead was low and therefore, he never had to worry about dissent in his ranks. He was smart, cold, calculated, and delivered something that no one else in the area did.

  Ross Ward led an underground fighting ring.

  "Guard or fighter?" Renny went on.

  "Depends on the night," Laz said easily. "Someone bitches out or is too hurt to fight, one of us steps in. Either way, it's good money."

  It would be very good money. While Ross took a huge cut for providing the venue and the audience to bet on such things, there was enough of a demand for it that even the fighters raked in the big bucks.

  Renny gave him a nod and moved toward the stairs without saying a thing to me.

  I looked at Laz who was smirking at me. "Lovers spat?" he asked, dark eyes seeming amused.

  "He wishes," I countered, moving off toward the stairs as well.

  "I bet he does," I heard Lazarus murmur before I was upstairs, going into the main room to listen to Renny interrupt the conversation going on there.

  "We can let him go," he said with a shrug. "He works for Ross Ward. There's no way Ross would let him work with the mob and still work for him. She agrees with me," he added when eyes shifted to me as I moved in.

  "I didn't say I..." I started to object, though I did agree with him. Ross Ward, as far as anyone was concerned, was the ultimate of careful. He was even picky about the associates of his fighters. He didn't take chances. He didn't get in bed with anyone because he knew that by choosing to stay neutral, that all the local bad guys could come to his little underground club and throw money around, which wouldn't be possible if, say, he picked to associate with the Russians and thereby pissed off the Italians.

  "She agrees with me," he cut me off again, tone sharp. "Let him go before Ross gets pissed. We have more important things to focus on right now."

  I felt my spine straighten; my shoulders pushed back.

  Right then.

  My head turned and I found Lo watching me, head tipped to the side slightly. I moved toward her, making my way toward the hall because I had some of my things stashed in the new addition room to the back that had been used mostly as a gym space for the kids. "I'm done here," I said under my breath as I passed, feeling my guts twist slightly and trying my best to ignore it.

  I wasn't going to stay around to be silenced by Renny.

  And I wasn't going to stay to learn any more ugly things about myself.

  I was going to do what was best for myself.

  I was going to leave.

  The bonus room was a mess, as it usually was. Dolls and monster trucks and blocks and bikes and puzzles were everywhere. I hadn't spent a lot of time around kids until I walked into The Henchmen compound, but I learned quickly that trying to keep a play room neat was a pipe dream. As such, I kept my things on a bookshelf way above arm's reach even for Ferryn.

  I reached up and pulled down my backpack that was filled with files and a change of clothes in case I had to crash at the compound. I had just gone down on my flat feet when I realized I wasn't alone.

  I didn't have to turn to know who it was, but I turned anyway to find Renny standing there- way too close.

  His light eyes were penetrating and unreadable as he looked at me for a long minute.

  It happened so fast, too fast for me to think let alone react.

  One hand moved out and landed in the center of my lower back, plastering my front against his, making my breath rush out of me as my neck craned up to look at him. His other hand went behind my neck, holding me there hard.

  Then his lips crashed down on mine.

  There was no other way, not for all the weeks of unsatisfied desire, of snapping at each other, of flirting.

  It was a crash.

  There would be damage in the wake.

  But suddenly, I couldn't find the will to care about the consequences as my backpack fell from my hand and landed with a thump as my arms went up- one grabbing his bicep, the other digging into the shirt over his chest.

  And I melted into him.

  Feeling it, his head slanted, deepening the kiss until I swore I felt it everywhere, until all there was in the world was us and that moment, until my lips felt tingly and my head felt light. Until I let out a low whimper and he took the opportunity for his tongue to move forward and thrust inside my mouth to claim mine. His body curled forward, making me arch backward slightly to keep contact, leaving me fully at his mercy because if he wasn't holding me, I'd have fallen backward.

  He made a low, rumbling noise in his chest that shot toward my core, making a rush of wetness meet my panties as my hips pressed into his, feeling his hard cock against my belly.

  Just when the urge to rub myself against him to ease the ache growing inside became almost overwhelming, his lips released mine and he let me go back onto my own feet fully, his forehead pressing into mine.

  "You're such a fucking coward," he said, voice low but full of depth.

 
Then, just as suddenly as it started, his arms released me, he turned, and he was gone before I could even think through the fog of desire in my brain.

  I slumped backward, leaning against the wall, taking a slow, deep breath.

  To be frank, I'd been kissed plenty in my life. They had ranged from absolutely no spark to fireworks. But kissing Renny, yeah, it was more like a goddamn explosion.

  I should have known as much. Really, the chemistry had been strong from first introductions, even with blood in his teeth from his fight with Duke, even with an eye that was quickly blackening, even then I had felt it. It had done nothing but get stronger the longer I was around him, the more impressed I became by him, the more worn down I got from his charm.

  It would have been laughable that after all that the kiss was underwhelming.

  But it wasn't.

  It was, well, the kind of kiss you wait a lifetime for. And I wasn't even a romantic like that. It was just the fact. He grabbed me all alpha-style and kissed me silly.

  Then as if that wasn't bad enough, he had gone ahead and dropped that line and stormed off.

  The worst part, though, was that he was right. I was a coward. I was running away because I knew whatever was happening between me and Renny was something epic, something big. The thing was, I wasn't prepared for that. The main reason being that I knew what it would be; it would be crazy and unpredictable and messy.

  I just wasn't ready for that.

  It was easier to leave.

  Cowardly? Absolutely.

  But smart? Yes. At least I thought so.

  Really, it was the only option.

  So why there was a wobbly, uncertain feeling in my stomach as I picked up my backpack and made my way to the gates to where my car was parked on the street, yeah, I was pretending that was just the feeling of leaving a job half-finished and not the disappointment of a great opportunity lost.

  SIX

  Mina

  "You're breathing on me," L growled, frustrated.

  He wasn't wrong. I had been hovering over his shoulder as he typed up some more information he had dug up about the guys that were caught breaking into the gym three days before.

  I couldn't claim he was exactly tickled to be working with me, because that would be an outright lie. I was pretty sure he almost wanted to slap me when I drank the rest of the coffee without immediately putting on a new pot. Apparently, in his workspace, there were rules. But since he was about as communicative as Wolf was on a bad day, those rules I learned mainly through trial and error.

  For instance, I wasn't allowed to touch his laptop.

  I also couldn't alphabetize his files on the Abruzzos because he had some kind of asinine system that made sense to only him.

  But no offenses were as bad as the coffee one.

  "Where can I set up?" Alex asked, having walked in two minutes before declaring she was 'sick and fucking tired of being in lockdown' so she decided to leave Breaker with their son, Junior, and headed up to Hailstorm for the day as a form of small rebellion. Breaker didn't seem overly convinced that the blowback from The Henchmen war wasn't going to find its way all the way up to his little house on the hill. Actually, that was the general consensus around Henchmen allies ever since Hailstorm went into the gym and found not only bugs but a small, badly built pipe bomb. Bad enough that it likely wouldn't have done much damage beyond the locked office they had placed it in.

  Janie would have had a good laugh about it. You know, if we were sharing that with her. Which we weren't. Lo, to my surprise, had sided with Reign and she was getting radio silence about the whole situation.

  "Back at your own goddamn house," L growled, clearly less of a team player than even I was.

  Frankly, I welcomed Alex's company.

  For me, Alex was an easy coworker and friend. This was mostly thanks to the fact that I never had to analyze her. She was blunt and fearless with her thoughts and opinions. If she had something to say, she said it. There was no guesswork. Which was good for two reasons. One, I didn't have to profile her. Two, she didn't have to resent me for profiling her.

  "I brought you a twenty-four ounce coffee with six shots," Alex reminded him, slamming her laptop down right beside him, despite there being plenty of desk space beside me where I had set up a full arm's length away from L so I wouldn't piss him off any more than I already had with my presence. Alex wasn't exactly the sort to accommodate just because someone growled at her. That was likely thanks to having put up with Breaker's grunting and growling and demands for years. "So go ahead and pull those wadded up panties out of your ass and relax, L. You're outnumbered now. Mina and I are totally going to gang up on you now. Right Mina?"

  "I ah..." I started, thrown off.

  "See? She agreed. Now, the Abruzzos..."

  "I don't know why you're here," L said, swiveling his chair toward her. Though, I got the impression it was less to face her and more because it pushed him a little further away from her. "In fact, I don't see why you're on this case at all. I know everything there is to know about the Abruzzo crime family."

  "I got your files," Alex agreed, nodding, as she brought her laptop up.

  "And?" he prompted when that was all she said.

  Because her face was turned just ever-so-slightly toward me, I got to see a small smile pull at her lips before she forced them into a straight line. But it was enough for me to know that she had something up her sleeve.

  "And I found it lacking."

  "Lacking?" he asked, voice deceptively quiet. But with the tension in his jaw, I could tell he was barely holding onto his anger.

  Being as smart as he was, it was hard for him to accept that he didn't have all the answers, especially about his specialty.

  "See, I really liked knowing how Mack takes his coffee and all, don't get me wrong," Alex said in a dry voice. "But I was a hell of a lot more interested in the fact that he has a weakness for girls. Meaning, young ones."

  "What?" L exploded, almost sending his chair flying he jerked upright so fast. "Young girls? There's been no record of that."

  "On the books," she nodded, "you're right. Hell, you can't even find any suggestions of that kind of thing. But then you find him in the dark web and you see that he has this SN and that that SN has been used to view kiddie porn on a website that just received a very malicious form of malware that may or may not be funneling money out of the subscribers' accounts and into a non-profit that helps survivors of child sexual abuse."

  Alex, since joining forces with Janie years back, had grown a lot in her skills. And because the two had their own connection to the shithead who ruined good chunks of their lives, the man Wolf eventually killed after Janie's botched plan to blow him to kingdom come, they had joined forces to become a sort of police force on the dark web. They trolled the worst sites and attacked the members, brought down the sites themselves. They were a duo of vigilante cyber do-gooders. There was even a fan page for them on the dark web somewhere. They would both pretend that they didn't know that that fan page existed, but they both absolutely knew.

  So Alex stealing from rich pedophiles and giving to victims, that was just the work of any Tuesday.

  "That wasn't even in your profile," L shot at me, wanting to spread blame around, though it didn't exactly matter to the case that he was a sick whack job.

  "I can't catch everything, L," I reasoned, shrugging.

  "If there is any justice in the world," Alex went on, typing something on her laptop, "while he's in jail, he will be getting a little taste of what it feels like to be a victim."

  As someone who didn't subscribe to a common belief in the psych community that sex offenders could be reformed, I had to agree with Alex. There was no fixing that kind of sick. Sexual recidivism was at about forty-percent. And that was only what was reported. The thing about child sexual predators is that they target children, they can manipulate and scare them into silence. Most experts would put that number more at sixty to seventy percent.

 
And yet they kept putting those fucking sickos back on the streets.

  "You know, I'm with George Carlin," Alex said randomly. When we all gave her blank looks, she shrugged. "In one of his stand-ups, he said something about how all criminals should be sectioned off in some of the useless flyover states based off their crimes. Murderers here, sex offenders there. Load them up with weapons and drugs and every month, open a door between each of the camps and let people sneak through. Let them suck and fuck and shoot up and torture and kill until there are none of them left. And, yes, I know this is weird coming from a criminal who is married to a criminal and is good friends with mostly criminals. But you know what I mean. This is all kinds of fucked up that these bastards walk free."

  "Do any of the others have his particular brand of fucked-up?" L asked and I could tell it was killing him to do so.

  "Not that I can find. I mean, El Jefe himself, Little Ricky, sure likes his teen girl with old disgusting fat man porn. But the girls are all legal. Can I call him El Jefe?" she asked, looking between us. "I mean they're Italian mob and that's a Spanish term..."

  "Il Capo," L supplied, surprising me. "That would be the Italian way of saying 'the chief'."

  "Right, well Il Capo likes to entertain the idea that any pretty young woman would be willing to suck and fuck his disgusting ass despite the only reason the girls doing it in porn is for the payout. But, you know, guys are stupid that way. Them and their twisted porn..." she trailed off, shaking her head. She swirled her chair then, head tucked to the side, looking at L. "What kind of twisted porn are you into, L?" she asked, then went right ahead and laughed. "I'll bet it's women who suck you off while you drink gallons of coffee or some shit like that. Anyway, yeah, I can't get a drop on a location for these guys. Their purchases and shit were all over the map. Has Janie made any progress on... what?" she trailed off when L and I shared a look.

  "Jstorm isn't on this case," L said carefully.