Page 81 of Hell to Pay

“You here on R & R?” Ghost asked.

Nolan shook his head. “Work. We need some intel, right up your alley.”

Ghost lifted his bushy eyebrows, his brown eyes gleaming. “Oh yeah?”

“Got wind of an event that happens twice a year at an estate outside the city,” I said. “Next one is coming up.”

A steel partition seemed to come down over his eyes, and he sat back in the booth, all signs of joviality gone. “Now why the fuck would you be asking me about that fucking place?”

“You know it,” I said.

“Yeah, I fucking know it. I do my job there, take the stack of cash they hand me on the way out, and try not to think about it until they call me the next time.”

“Why?” Nolan asked. “What goes on there?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

The words were an echo of Gage’s at the beach. Once upon a time, they would have been my words too. Why ask for trouble? Take your money, have some fun, leave the heavy stuff to someone else for a change.

We’d had enough heavy stuff in the military.

Except leaving this alone wasn’t an option. At first it had been about restitution, about doing something for Lilah to make up for what we’d done to her in high school, but now she had that fucking brand on her neck, was listed in the Imperium Fratrum catalog like fucking inventory.

And that made it personal.

“Thing is, we really need to know,” I said. “We’ll owe you one. A big one.”

It was no small thing. Favors owed and collected were important in our line of work.

Ghost swore. “I’m going to need more beer.”

He got up, went to the bar, and returned with three fresh beers a minute later. “These are on you.”

I reached for my wallet and set a stack of euros in the middle of the table.

“Like I said, I don’t know what goes on there, but it’s some freaky kink.”

Nolan frowned. “What kind of kink?”

Ghost threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m just saying, the place is covered in red velvet, fucked-up paintings on the wall, the fancy-ass kind you’d see at the Sistine Chapel, except these pictures are mostly people killing each other while they’re fucking.”

“What do you do there?” I asked.

He glared at me. “What do you fucking think?”

Bingo.

“You’re doing security,” Nolan said. “For the events.”

“Nah, bro. I don’t do anything ‘for the events.’ I come in a few days before, wire the place up, check the alarms, and then I take my money and beat a hasty fucking exit.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

His face turned hard. “The fuck you say.”

“You know more than you’re saying.” Doing security meant you saw things, knew things. You pretended not to because discretion was part of the gig, but it was impossible to be all up in someone’s business — in their house or their company — and not see or hear shit.

“It’s important,” Nolan said. “Life-or-death important.”

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