Blood Howl (2 page)

Ah, there it was. Jed flipped off the bottle cap and took a long swig, wondering who the fuck had recommended Mr. Movie Phone. Maybe it was Kenny. Except Kenny was still pissed at him about Ireland, which was understandable, considering he’d left him on a burning runway with a bunch of unhappy IRA members closing in. They hadn’t exactly looked like they were planning a clambake.

“That is unacceptable. I need to see—”

“Deal breaker,” Jed interrupted cheerily, clicking off the phone and collapsing into his couch. Rubbing absently behind Knievel’s ears, he flicked through the channels, waiting. New clients usually needed the tough-love routine. They weren’t exactly Joe Smith, the people who called him. They were used to getting exactly what they wanted at all times. What they had to realize was that Jed didn’t work for them. Not like that. He was a professional, best there was, and he didn’t listen to civilians, no matter how much money they pulled in.

The phone rang again ten minutes later, and Jed grinned, letting it go to voicemail. His new best friend rang right back, and this time he answered, not keeping the smirk out of his voice. “Everything happens over the phone or e-mail, disposable and untraceable only, please. Now, are you secure, or do you want to call back once you’ve gotten yourself settled? Please do take your time. No rush on my account.”

“I’m sending you the details.”
Ooh, the voice sounded
pissed
. Jed really did love his job sometimes. “Contact me if the terms are agreeable. And Mr. Walker? I do not enjoy being toyed with. Do not do it again.”

And then the conversation was over. Tossing his phone away, Jed groaned, sprawling out and grunting when Knievel decided his back was a good perch to sleep on. Well, somehow he thought this was going to get a little more interesting than he usually liked.

Chapter Two

Jed

W
EEKENDS
should be for relaxing. Maybe tossing a football around wherever one did such cliché, American things. A cold beer, a nice barbecue, perhaps. Lots of naps, definitely. Things that invoked a sense of lazy, first-world wealth.

Weekends should
not
be for sitting in his kind of smelly car, watching an apparently empty house. The smell thing wasn’t his fault. Knievel got sick during long trips, and he may have lost a hamburger somewhere in the back seat.

Okay, maybe it was
slightly
his fault.

Something about this job was itching him the wrong way. The pay was too much, for one. And although Jed didn’t make a habit of asking questions, the sheer insistence the client had on not telling him one damn thing was irritating. Hell, he didn’t need to know the whole sordid story behind the thing, but on an acquisition job, it’d be nice to know if the thing he was smashing and grabbing was bigger or smaller than a goddamn breadbox.

Whatever it was, it was apparently in this house. The client—who would only go by the name “Fil,” although Jed had nicknamed him Movie Phone in his client notes, because who didn’t like a kooky nickname?—said he’d know once he got in there. Which was ever so helpful, really. Whatever he was getting was the only valuable thing inside the house, according to the instructions.

Jed honestly just wanted to get this done and get home. It’d been a long week, and he was more than ready to take a well-deserved vacation. Maybe go someplace where they served drinks with those little plastic swords. He could get a beach house of some kind, right on the ocean, sit on the dock, and fish all day. He’d never been fishing. Somehow he thought he’d be good at it.

Six hours Jed had been sitting there. Six fucking hours and not even the curtains had moved. If anyone was home—which he doubted highly—they were the biggest goddamn shut-in since Michael Jackson: the Lost Years. “That’s it,” he muttered to himself, shoving a gun into the waistband of his jeans, against the small of his back, and strapping another into the holster around his shoulder. “I’m going in.”

He was dressed in some generic workman’s uniform. Gray jumpsuit, name badge proclaiming him to be “Ted,” clipboard, the works. Four thirty in the afternoon meant no one was looking at him twice. Then again, the house looked like the last time it’d seen paint, lead had been the main ingredient, so maybe no one would care, regardless.

Knocking briskly on the door, he squinted up at the eaves, waiting. The whole house should’ve been condemned, goddamn. Though he could see where once it’d been nice, years of neglect had rendered it a sick gray, weather stained and falling apart.

Hand raised to knock again, the door was suddenly opened, and if such an action could be said to be
nervous
, this one was. Eyes that looked like the sea, like the ocean during a storm, blue-gray and fathomless, stared out at him under a shock of wayward brown hair. Jed stuttered to a halt, scrambling for a lie. One of many, one of
any
of the thousands he had at hand. All he did was lie, and yet those damn eyes, wide and surprised and staring straight through him, seemed to fade them all into smoke.

“I…” Taking a deep breath, Jed drew himself up and flashed a charming grin, lopsided and confident. “I’m just here to check your pipes. Your neighbor there, they’ve been having some troubles with a leak, but I just want to flush the system from your end, see what comes out. All right if I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer, he easily stepped past the man and let his eyes scan quickly across the room. If he’d thought the outside was depressing, the inside took it to a whole new level. There had been a movie he’d seen once, overseas, on some stupid base in the middle of yet another country. His team had been using the base as a layover before going into the jungle for a good old-fashioned assassination, and they’d arrived just in time for movie night. God only knew what the damn thing had been about—Jed had left halfway through for some definitely non-government-sanctioned stress relief—but there had been a scene in a mental institution that had haunted him for years after. Just the same drab color everywhere, nothing that was warm, nothing that made it feel like anyone left
alive
should be there.

That was what the house reminded him of. No pictures. No warmth. It was like someone had died here, years ago, and the house knew it, but no one else did. One battered couch was in the living room, bookcases covering the far wall, the book spines creased with use. It was so clean, though. All of it. Dead and faded, colorless and unmoving, but clean.

“What’s your name?” Jed asked, moving from the living room to the kitchen, the hallway, the mudroom, finding more of the same. It was like the whole house had stopped breathing.

“Redford.” It was whispered behind him, cautiously, voice tentative and bewildered. Jed jumped a little, turning around to stare at the man.

“Jesus, you’re quiet,” Jed muttered, running his hand through his hair, charging into the bedroom. “Going to get you a little bell or something.” Redford followed him, obviously confused but not doing anything to protest. Good. Saved him some sweet-talking. “I’m Jed. Er. Ted. Whatever, I’m the repair guy. Be out of your hair in a jiffy.”

The bedroom was not someplace he imagined anyone sleeping. The bed was big and brass, coated with the dust of years of neglect. Here was the source of the airless oppression; here was where it’d all ended. Cabbage roses, faded now from what Jed had to imagine had been vivid red to a sick pink, dotted the comforter which lay, pristine, under a plastic cover. There was a lamp on a table next to the bed, delicate lace doilies laid out like tearstains along dark wood. Here there was no worn and weary battered furniture. Here there was no splintering wood or torn upholstery. It was simply held, frozen, while time laid its gray cloth over it and forgot.

“Where do you sleep?” he asked, slightly impatient now, turning on his heel, studying Redford’s face. Whatever he’d been sent for, it wasn’t just lying out with a sign that said “Take Me.” And somehow, he thought old Movie Phone wasn’t someone you wanted to ask for clarification. “This isn’t your room. Where do you stay?”

Redford looked at him like his voice was unusual, like there had been barely any sound uttered in this house for a very long time. There was this fear in his eyes, lurking back there, like Jed was too big and bold, too
much
, and this thing, this horrible oppressive silence, had to be maintained. “This is—” He paused, taking a breath. Gathering his courage. “In the room down the hall.” There really was something sweet about him, though. Something lonely and wild and very sweet.

But he didn’t have time for it. Nor did he have the desire to figure out why some guy with gorgeous eyes and a hollow gauntness in his cheeks was haunting this place. Not his problem. “Fantastic,” Jed said, spinning around sharply and leading the way back down the hallway.

Padding after him was Redford, nearly silent unless he was listening for him. Jed could feel the other man’s gaze on the back of his neck as he pushed open the door to Redford’s room, increasingly desperate as he searched through things. “The neighbors, you said—are they okay?” Red murmured, voice so soft, not at all fitting with the scars across his face, two thin lines striping across the bridge of his nose and down to his cheek. His shoulders were rounded, curling in on him, and Jed felt a pang of guilt. The room only held more books. Not even a bed. Books and books, all genres and descriptions, even a full set of encyclopedias, which Jed hadn’t realized were something people actually owned anymore. In the corner was a small wooden toy, a carved horse, and Jed let his finger brush down the smooth nose of it with a sigh.

“Yeah. Yeah, Red, everybody is just peachy.”

You’ll know it when you see it
, the instructions had said.
The only thing in the house of any value
.

“You wouldn’t happen to be hiding a diamond necklace or some priceless artifact around here, would you?” he asked, half hopeful, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the wall. Looking lazy, barely awake, Jed’s eyes were intent under lowered lashes, studying Redford carefully.

In contrast to the innocently shy bewilderment he’d previously been displaying, Redford’s expression grew a little suspicious, eyes darting from Jed to the open door of the bare room. “You said you were here to fix a leak in the pipes.”

Normally Jed would be making a joke about flushing pipes or possibly offering to strip search Redford to find what he needed. But he had that feeling, that sinking in his stomach that said he was about to get screwed with his pants on. Not in any fun way, either. Moving a step forward, eyes locked on Redford’s, he asked again, very quietly, “Please, Red, tell me you’ve got something else in the house. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just—” Cutting himself off, shaking his head and briefly closing his eyes, he shoved a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Leaky pipes. That’s what I’m here for. Never mind I don’t have a toolbox or a work order or, hell, a
reasonable story
. Jesus, do you just sit in here and get dumber? Come on,
tell me where it is
.”

Redford’s eyes went round, and if he’d been wary before, now something like actual fear began to dawn in his eyes, so goddamn naive that he’d just let a plumber impostor into his house without so much as asking his name. He moved half a step back, hunching in on himself. “Tell you where what is? There’s nothing here. Just me.”

Shit.

Swallowing hard, he paced away, rubbing his forehead as he thought. He might not have the highest moral code in the world. A hit was a hit, and he’d done his share. But he wasn’t in the military anymore. He got to pick his targets, his jobs, and he didn’t just
grab
someone for no damn reason. Fil, the bastard, had set him up. There wasn’t some priceless object. Just a scared guy in too-big clothes with really nice arms.

“Damn it!” Jed slammed his fist into the wall, dust sifting down over his knuckles. Redford flinched back at the noise and the sudden violence of the movement. With a sigh Jed bowed his head, closed his eyes, and ran through options. Easy way out was just to do the job. Redford wasn’t a match for him. It wasn’t what he’d been prepared for, but it was doable. He took him, turned him over, and collected a nice, fat check. Which was exactly what Movie Phone Asshole wanted.

There wasn’t a damn reason in the world why he shouldn’t do it. Except when he looked over at Redford, something twisted painfully in his chest, and he found himself already wondering where he could stash the guy until this blew over.

Damn it twice and fuck him sideways.

“You like beer?” he grunted, moving past Redford and toward the door. He wanted out of this house. That was for sure. “I need a goddamn beer.”

“You’re… you forced your way into my house, pretended to be a plumber, asked me if I had diamonds, and now you’re… asking if I like beer?” Redford blinked at him a few times, clearly not completely following what was happening. He still looked like he wanted to turn tail and bolt right out of his own house.

“Hey,” Jed protested, turning on his heel and holding up a finger. “Didn’t nobody force their way in, sweetlips. I knocked; you answered.” And yes, this was all probably a bit much. Sadly, they didn’t actually have time for a heart-to-heart special. “Look, I have probably about twenty minutes before my cell is going to ring. When it does, there’s going to be a man at the other end, asking if I’ve got you trussed up and locked in my goddamn trunk. So
you
, amigo, have got about
fifteen
of those minutes to help me convince myself that’s not a damn good idea. Got it?”