Page 178 of Homecoming

Ghost stood at his side, their backs to Maggie’s raised garden, both watching as a handler in a police windbreaker kept instructing the bomb-sniffing dog in his grasp to “seek” beneath the clubhouse pavilion. A second dog was searching the inside of the clubhouse, and they would move all down the property, checking offices and warehouses.

“No one’s ever launched that kind of assault on a clubhouse,” Ghost said. He could hear the strained detachment in his voice. He’d had to shove the anger down. Action was all that would help, now. “Not ever. I don’t want to take chances.”

Vince let out a breath that wasn’t a sigh; a nervous exhalation. “What are the odds someone placed a bomb here? You’ve got cameras. You’ve got a dog.”

“An old dog. All Ares does is sleep anymore.”

“Maybe you should get a younger dog.”

“I plan to. Walsh is searching for breeders.”

“Damn,” Vince murmured. “Who was it?”

Ghost wanted to take a deep breath of his own – his lungs tight, his skin prickling. He said, “The short answer is Luis Cantrell: the son of a disgraced FBI agent with a hard-on for the club. The long answer is whoever his friends are: a growing crime syndicate who want the Dogs out of the way for their human trafficking agenda.”

“You’re not serious,” Vince said.

“They’re headquartered in New York: Italian and Russian mob families. Cartel. The stupid rich fucks who want to buy humans. They’re using a consulting firm as cover, and the girls they’re selling are Americans, snatched right off the street from all over the country.”

“Jesus. Why don’t you go to the FBI?”

Ghost turned to him. “You heard the part about the disgraced agent, right?” He cocked a single brow.

Vince shook his head. “Don’t you have anything concrete? Hell, I can…”

He trailed off when Ghost shook his head. “Who would you run to? Who would you tell? The mayor was in on it. Who knows how deep this goes. Is there someone high-up you could trust? Who’d believe you?”

Vince bit his lip.

“Welcome to my world.” He looked back toward dog and handler, watching the sleek shepherd sniff at their picnic tables with tight focus. He loved his own shepherd, and Ares had been a wonderful dog, but when they’d talked at table, prospects and everything, Tenny had said, “You want a Doberman.” That’s what Walsh was searching for.

After a moment, Vince said, “Can you stop them? Kenny…if this is national, if this is as big as you say it is…”

“I can stop them. Iwill.” He wasn’t sure how, yet, but he knew that his club was bigger, stronger, and more resourceful than it had ever been.

Vince said, “You might be the only one who can.”

Forty-Four

“There was nothing at Dartmoor,” Mercy said, spreading his hands through the air in a gesture that, coupled with his low, accented voice, and his serious expression, had a definite, appreciated calming effect. Leah’s heart still ran rabbit-fast, though. “Not in any of the buildings. The dogs checked it all, and didn’t find a thing.”

Ava sat beside Leah on the sofa, arms and legs crossed, tense and brittle and defensive, though Leah could only read that because she knew her friend so well. A stranger would have thought her unaffected. “What about all our homes? There’s a lot of them.”

Leah felt a touch on her hand, and glanced up to see that Carter had leaned forward in his chair, his palm warm and comforting against her knuckles. She managed a bare smile for him, through the beating fear.

Ava had called her, shortly after Carter left her parents’ place in a hurry, with lots of apologies and a quick kiss for her. Her dad had nodded, looking understanding, and she wondered just what had taken place at the kitchen sink after she left. She’d arrived a little concerned – and then become a lot concerned. She and Ava had been on the couch when the boys arrived, and had taken up seats in dragged-over dining chairs across from them, respectively.

Mercy said, “There was only the one explosion in New York. None of the private homes were hit.”

Ava titled her head.

“I know,” he murmured. “Fillette, I know.”

Leah said, “Should we be worried?” A dumb question – she was already worried out of her mind – but it seemed like the mature, jaded, old lady thing to say.

Carter’s hand closed more firmly over hers. He didn’t sayno. But he said, “We’re gonna fix it.”

Ava groaned. “Jesus.” But then she shook herself, even as Mercy was reaching for her hand, and said, “Okay, what do we need to do?”

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