Page 85 of Out of Control

“This way.” René partially blocked the door he gestured toward.

Spencer was forced to brush against René’s body to enter the darkened room. The man smelled like Chanel No. 5. Nice. Maybe someday when he grew up, he’d be that put-together.

As he stepped inside, his ears popped faintly. Hmm. Airtight space, maybe? Armored? The silence in here was complete.

The lights switched on, and he blinked at the array of weapons lining the walls. Every conceivable kind of modern firearm was displayed somewhere in the space.

“Collector?” Spencer murmured.

“After a fashion,” René answered smoothly. “And a dealer.”

An arms dealer? This fashionable, urbane man? Whoa.

“What’s your pleasure, my dear boys?”

Spencer gaped around. He didn’t even know where to start looking. There must be two thousand weapons mounted on the walls.

Drago spoke up. “Nothing complicated. A pair of fully automated assault weapons, sidearms for each of us. Maybe one precision rifle outfitted with a long-range sight. Oh, and a spotter’s scope. A good pair of binoculars. And ammunition, of course.”

“Of course,” René replied.

Spencer noted that the man never asked what they wanted all that firepower for. An arms dealer indeed. The man’s best defense was total ignorance of their plans.

René led them out of the vault and back to a salon in the front of the home fully as posh as its owner and left them there. Spencer perched gingerly on a postmodern designer chair, afraid to touch anything else lest he break it.

“A fascinating gentleman, our host,” he murmured.

“Indeed. He knows more about what’s going on in the world than most CIA analysts.”

“Well, yeah. If he’s supplying the weapons to the nonstate actors, of course he does.”

“He’s quite selective in who he’ll sell to.”

“Thank goodness. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an array of weapons like that.”

René swept into the room and set down a black duffel bag by the door. “Why, thank you. I’m rather proud of my little collection of toys.”

“That’s where you and I differ,” Spencer said soberly. “I don’t see weapons as toys. In my hands, they’re instruments of death… and must be wielded with the care they deserve.”

Spencer rose to his feet as René came over to stand in front of him, leaning in until his ear practically rested on Spencer’s shoulder. “And that, you beautiful man, is why I am willing to part with my toys for you. Were your eyes any less intelligent and alert, you would never have crossed the threshold of my home.”

René stepped back, and Spencer noticed Drago letting out a long breath, as if he’d been holding it. Apparently he’d passed some sort of test. Was it that he hadn’t flinched when René had approached him? Or was it simply that René liked him? Truth be told, he liked René. Not romantically—his heart was with Drago. But the man was fascinating.

But then, intelligent men always had captured his attention. Hence Drago.

Speaking of which, he glanced over at his lover, who jerked his head infinitesimally toward the door. Spencer nodded back and headed for the bag of weapons while Drago did something on a cell phone that René handed him. An electronic transfer of funds, if Spencer had to guess.

They stepped out into the night, and fog was starting to form. They walked away from René’s house in silence for several minutes before Spencer murmured, “I like him.”

“He likes you too. Which is why you were invited in and why you walked out alive.”

“What would he have done? Shot me?”

“He’s the most deadly knife fighter I’ve ever seen. He’d have had at least three blades somewhere on his person. Taught me everything I know about winning in a street fight.”

“Is that where you learned to fight like you do?” he exclaimed. “I’ve never seen anyone as lethal as you when you’re outnumbered in a fight.”

“René learned how to fight outnumbered when he was a gay kid in the ghettos of Moscow.”

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