Phantom in the Night (B.A.D. Agency, #2)(7)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Nathan winced from anguish tearing through him again at the thought of his brother not being here to greet him. At the thought of his brother lying dead on the ground like disposable trash…

His grief turned to rage. The bastard who shot Jamie had made a dangerous mistake and he would pay for it tenfold. In blood and with his flesh.

Nathan stared around the room where moonlight spilled in. Where was Jamie’s personal hiding place in this house? When they’d played as kids, Nathan had found Jamie’s secret stash of possessions when he picked the same spot for concealing his personal booty. After that, they just shared any hiding place since one would never take anything from the other.

Knowing his brother, Jamie’s new spot would be well concealed.

Nathan checked his watch. Twenty minutes after eleven_he was out of time. He had a half-hour drive to make and didn’t want to be late.

After locking the front and then back door, he went to the garage, where two vehicles sat side by side. A six-year-old Chevy Lumina that had once been a shiny cinnamon red had lost its polish. Now it looked more like a well-savored Tic Tac.

The second car was hidden beneath an all-weather beige chamois cover. And the instant he saw the shape, he knew what it was, even as his mind denied the possibility. His breath caught as anticipation filled him.

Nathan approached the cover reverently so that he could touch it again. His fingers sank into the supple chamois, which was like touching the finest velvet. Only a woman’s skin was softer, but not by much.

Soft as the skin of the B&E artist he’d just touched… and wouldn’t again, unfortunately. Forget the woman. Nathan traded the frustrating thought for an endearing one.

He couldn’t believe his brother had kept this…

A 72 AMC Javelin. Even though his father had told him to never covet a possession, this car was everything to Nathan. Sliding the cover back, pleasure filled the empty pockets of his battered soul as he saw the gleaming black paint. Even in the dim light, his baby shined and beckoned him like a lover. There wasn’t a piece of this car that he hadn’t held in his hand at some point.

Not a single part he hadn’t cradled when he’d done his frame-off restoration.

His breathing ragged, he finished removing the cover to expose the gleaming blower that jutted out from the hood almost a foot high. Unlike the side pipes, which he’d ordered in matte black, this was the only part of the car that stood out against the stark black. And when he held the throttle open, this machine rumbled like thunder. It was so deep in sound that he could feel it all the way to his bones.

That sound of power, that unique feel of raw, unbridled potential…

With perfect, clean lines and a chassis built for speed, this was the car his father had bought as a teen but never had the money or time to restore.

Nathan had told Jamie to sell this for the money it would bring.

Thank God for once his brother hadn’t listened to him, and the fact that Jamie hadn’t brought a sting to his eyes. His brother had known what the car meant to him and he’d saved this one piece of Nathan’s former life for him.

His gaze blurring, Nathan glanced around the unfamiliar garage until he found a tall cabinet next to a workbench. Without a doubt in his mind, he strode over and wiped his hand over the top left edge until his fingers bumped a key on a leather ring.

He and Jamie had always left the car keys where they could find them easily. Searching thin drawers on the tool chest, he located a stash of wire ties long enough to work as handcuffs. Four folded shop rags sat in a stack at the end of the workbench. He grabbed the stack. On the way back to the Javelin, Nathan opened the Chevy doors and stuck his head in to retrieve the garage door opener.

White Shoulders cologne danced through his nostrils.

His mother’s favorite. He and Jamie had never failed to buy that for her birthday after their dad had died. Unimaginable pain and guilt speared him as he remembered the past. He longed to see her pretty face full of life one more time. To hear her tinkling laughter.

To tell her he loved her and was sorry he’d failed to keep Jamie safe. Two years of hell in prison was nothing compared to coming home to an empty house and knowing all that truly mattered to him was gone. He’d given up his freedom, his career.

Jamie had given up his life.

Rage punched its way past the hurt and pain to remind Nathan why he was here and what he had to do.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and snatched the plastic garage door opener from the visor. Paybacks were hell and, in this, he was the devil out to collect that bill.

He shoved the car door shut and climbed into the Javelin.

One turn of the key and his baby fired up without hesitation. Jamie wasn’t a half-bad mechanic in his own right. He’d kept the battery charged and the engine tuned. Throaty mufflers rumbled as low and predatory as a black jaguar stalking its mate, owning the night and anything in its path. The vibration in the seat made his heartbeat race.

He pressed the small black box and the garage door raised.

The engine revved softly. His pulse vibrated with the feel of freedom and the power now his to control. He shifted the car into gear and drove slowly out to the street, closing the garage door behind him. When he reached the next block, the engine was warm, oil flowing through the valves, and the road was clear.

Nathan stomped the accelerator and dumped the clutch, laying a strip of rubber for fifty feet as this bitch screamed with power. Adolescent, but he didn’t give a damn right now. He needed to hear this car purr and roar.

Nathan shouted, drunk with exhilaration. He was finally in control again. His life was his own. No guards or anyone else telling him what to do and when to do it. No one shouting orders or insults.

Time to ruin a few peoples lives, the way they’d ruined his and Jamie’s.

He navigated the streets of New Orleans with ease, then parked his car down a deserted street connecting a maze of alleys in the Warehouse District. After locking the car, he shuffled between buildings squeezed so close together a rat would get claustrophobia. Two blocks over he emerged next to a Dumpster that reeked of rotting food. Best place to wait since the smell alone would drive others away.

Decaying food was nothing compared to the things he’d experienced in the army or in prison. Few odors would ever match the one of that cave in South America.

Not a memory he wanted to relive, but one that had come back to life with the news reporting how a settlement in India was wiped out mysteriously this week. Those deaths were too similar to the ones in the South American village two years ago.

Same pattern of dying, right down to the grotesque bodies.

Nothing on the news about biological warfare, but he’d had plenty of time to think about those South Americans killed by an unknown virus that had not shown up anywhere else. Until now, and, from what the news reported, ten months ago when an entire village in the Congo had died of a mysterious virus.

Too many coincidences. Intelligence agencies and the military had to be thinking biological warfare. They should…

Nathan caught himself. He had to stop trying to solve the worlds problems. Didn’t he have enough of his own to keep him busy? He had maybe five days_if he was lucky_before he’d be faced with disappearing permanently.

The low putter of a big engine with custom pipes approached. Nathan tucked deeper into the crevice created between the Dumpster and the wall, and waited.

A Hummer rolled into place, right where it had parked earlier today. Some vermin were creatures of habit, Bennie Larriot being one. Same place he’d been for five years. Just a new set of wheels. True to form, neither Bennie nor his driver had been packing earlier. Being an attorney_one of Marseaux’s_Bennie took no chances with being caught with a weapon in the car.

Nathan had no doubt a weapon was hidden in the car any more than he doubted the possibility of easily finding it.

Narrowing his eyes, Nathan steeled himself for the coming fight. He had the wire ties and a shop rag tucked inside the waistband at the small of his back, ready.

The driver got out, scanned the tight area, and dismissed any threat as nonchalantly as he had before. No bodyguard would be better than a lazy one. The driver stalked around to open the passenger door.

Nathan made his move the minute the driver turned his back to him. Launching himself from the shadows, he slammed the bodyguard against his head to daze him and kicked the back of his knees, taking down two hundred fifty-plus pounds in less than three seconds. The guard’s head bounced against the ground, finishing him off.

The shocked expression on Bennie’s face lasted the same three seconds before he produced a switchblade.

Nathan was faster. He wrenched Bennie’s arm up and back. When the pig opened his mouth to scream, Nathan shoved the shop rag into the gaping hole, then hit Bennie upside his head hard enough to knock him out. He loaded Bennie into the backseat, where he wire-tied his hands and feet, then lifted the keys off the unconscious driver and drove the Hummer away.

Nathan planned to find out how Jamie had become entangled in Marseaux’s plans. Who had drawn his brother into this bunch? The NOPD and DEA had never been able to nail Marseaux. If Nathan uncovered anything that would help put the drug lord away, he’d send the evidence to someone.

That is, if there was anything left of Marseaux to arrest once Nathan was through with him.

He wended his way through the streets, where the midnight crowds could fulfill their fantasies with easy sex and euphoric drugs. He parked the Hummer next to Le Morte Noir_the Black Death_the name he and Jamie had jokingly dubbed the Javelin after a late-night cruise for frog hunting.

Pushing the memory aside along with the bitterness that followed, he unloaded Bennie, then drove the Hummer a mile away to what was left of the Ninth Ward, where he’d grown up.

Local chop shop owners wouldn’t believe their luck when their street scouts found this sitting duck out in the open. They’d have this baby fully dismantled in twenty-four hours… or less.

Nathan hiked back to his car and fired up the Javelin. He drove a circuitous route until he reached his carefully thought-out lair. The last place anyone would look. He parked behind the silenced printing company abandoned in Katrina’s wake.

After his father died, his mother had worked here to put food in their mouths and clothes on their backs. Jamie and he had run amok in this same parking lot after school, waiting for their mother to come off shift so they could go home and eat watered-down soup.

He managed to get Bennie out of the car, grunting under the titanic weight. So what if he banged the bastards head a few times? The least of Bennie’s worries after tonight would be a painful headache.

It took several minutes to get Bennie inside the trashed cement-block building and lug him to the proper room, which he’d already set up in expectation of the next couple of hours. Hanging the bastard by his wrists wasn’t quite so simple, but a half hour of sweat had Bennie right where Nathan wanted.

The pig could hang there, drooling, a minute while Nathan finished the last details of his surprise. He grabbed a screwdriver to remove set pins on the miniature stage floor beneath Bennie. The whole contraption was only five feet across. Plenty of room for an entertaining show.

Manic scratching and chattering from rats looking for a meal and freedom disrupted the peace. Given the number of rats who used to call his house their home, the sound was almost comforting to Nathan.

He patrolled the exterior once, assuring himself no one was near. The owners had built this far outside the city’s center to save money. Nathan appreciated their planning now. He returned to the corner he’d cleaned up for this exercise and sat on a ragged barstool.

After Bennie, the next on his list was Thibadeaux "FinMan" Finney, an equal-opportunity snitch with ties to any organized crime family that paid his price. He managed to stay alive by keeping a goon squad of bodyguards supplied with drugs. He thought they could keep him safe.

But there was nothing and no one who could keep the devil at bay once it was time to give him his due. FinMan had a few more hours of peace.

Then the devil would be beating down his door.

For now, Bennie had napped long enough.

Nathan lifted a pitcher of cold water sitting at his feet and splashed him in the face. Bennie came to, spitting and coughing, slinging wet hair from his eyes. Water dripped from his chin onto the plywood board thirty inches below his dangling feet. Chicken wire with small holes surrounded Bennie in a circle five feet in diameter, six feet off the floor.

Bennie still wore his boxer shorts just because Nathan didn’t want any more information on that flaccid body than he already had. Especially with a barrel gut on Bennie that hung out like biscuit dough from a half-popped can.

"What the hell is this? What do you want?" Bennie shouted curses and demands without relief. He twisted back and forth, causing the ropes tied to his wrists to cut his skin.

The only light in the room shined on Bennie, right into his eyes. Nathan kept the hood of his sweatshirt jacket on and moved close, but not close enough for Bennie to get a glimpse of someone from his past just yet.

Nathan curled his lips into a smile of contempt, ready to get down to business. "Bennie!" He waited for Bennie to shut up, then said, "Heard about all the homeless boys you’ve taken in. Real benefactor, aren’t you? Bet they didn’t think so after you raped them. I tried to copy the way you tied them up when you left those kids alone. Did I get it right?"

"Fuck you, a**hole. You’re a dead man," Bennie warned, but his voice quivered when he delivered that boast. He squinted into the light.

"What do you know about Nathan Drake?"

Sweat poured down Bennie’s face. "Stone-cold dead. You working with that DEA bitch? I had nothing to do with Drake."

Could the attractive B&E poser who broke into his mom’s house be DEA? "What DEA bitch?"

"Gimme a break. Like you don’t know. Everybody knows her. She’s been busting everyone’s balls about Drake. What? She wag her hot butt at you? Huh? You get any of that? If not, you lose. I heard she’ll swap that ass for any amount of information." His nostrils flared as he fought even harder against his bindings. "I’m gonna kill that whore and you, too, if you don’t let me go."

This piece of shit deserved some serious lead therapy_if only Nathan had a gun.