Page 66 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

He went to the window and gapped the blinds, searching the tiny patch of lawn, its iron fence, and the alley beyond. He saw the flash of silver raindrops in the security floodlights, the humpbacked shapes of trash cans lined up on the other side of the fence. No movement. No headlights.

“Hey.”

He dropped the blinds and turned.

Mercy stood in the threshold between den and sunroom, one big shoulder propped against the doorjamb, arms folded loosely. “How you holdin’ up?”

Shep cracked his knuckles, realized he was doing it, and shoved his hands in his pockets instead. “I’d be a lot better if these assholes would go ahead and show up.”

Mercy grinned, part amusement, part something that reminded him disconcertingly of Maverick.

Of the smiles Devin had been shooting him the past twelve hours.

Thankfully, Mercy didn’t call him “son,” but he did say, “Yeah, but that’s not what I asked.

” He angled his head so he glanced up from under his dark brows. “You feeling okay?”

“How do you think I feel?” he shot back.

Mercy’s smile didn’t waver. “Like you want to tear someone’s throat out with your fingernails. Like you wanna knock a man down and start hitting him, and keep hitting him until your hand shatters. Then you wanna swap hands and keep going.”

Shep had been prepared to argue, but Mercy’s blunt words soothed him instead. He swallowed, and it hurt, like he had a ball of unshed tears lodged in his throat. “Yeah.”

Mercy nodded, and his gaze said he understood; that he knew that feeling better than anyone.

Shep had watched him work on guys he didn’t have a personal vendetta against, and couldn’t decide if the idea of watching him wreak personal vengeance would be thrilling or the stuff of nightmares. Bit of both, maybe.

“You’ll get your chance,” Mercy said. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Someone whistled in the other room, one short, sharp blast. “Heads up,” Reese called.

Mercy rolled off the doorjamb and Shep followed.

Over Reese’s shoulders, they watched him cycle through security feeds on his phone. Cars pulled up in the alley, and on the street out front. Multiple cars at each location. Doors flew open and men spilled out, dressed in dark clothes, stocking caps pulled low.

“Oh ho, boys,” Mercy said, and picked up the sledgehammer he’d left propped against the kitchen island. “This isn’t a meeting, it’s a raid .”

“Lights,” Fox snapped from the living room.

Reese clicked off his phone, and someone turned off the lantern in the next room, and the house was plunged in darkness save the soft lamp glow and TV flickers from the den and sunroom. Shep had the sense of people moving in the living room, but their feet made no sound over the floorboards.

Mercy tapped Shep on the arm. “You wanna stick here with me? Be the welcoming committee?”

“Yeah.”

They’d talked at length, back at the apartment, about this scenario, should it unfold. “It’ll be dark,” Fox had said, “and close quarters. Don’t shoot anyone unless you know for a fact he’s a hostile. Don’t get into a wrestling match. Stick and move. Head on the swivel.”

Shep had known those instructions were for him, mostly. Everyone else involved was either a trained assassin, or Mercy.

Shep pulled his gun with his right hand, and the KA-BAR on his hip with the left.

His heart had been hammering for hours, but now, as man-shaped shadows reared up against the sunroom blinds, it settled.

Steadied. His breath came easier, the knots in his lungs turning loose on one big, much-needed inhale.

He’d been so helpless, hovering at Cass’s bedside, stroking her hair, and worrying about how long it would take her to recover, if she would recover; worrying that her life was as damaged as her shoulder, that she’d come out the other side of this fearful and withdrawn, a shadow of the girl she’d always been.

But here —he could do something here. He didn’t feel even a little bit helpless, and all his anger, all his frustration, turned him calm, and capable, and ready .

He heard Mercy take a deep breath on the other side of the threshold.

Somewhere behind him, Reese’s blades left their sheathes with quick snick-snick sounds.

The doorbell rang out front.

Then the door splintered.

The back door exploded a split second later, and Shep saw the matte black of handguns in the grip of the men who came boiling into the sunroom, shouting, and running, and clearly setting out to terrify and intimidate the Blackmons.

Shep lifted his Colt, and fired from the shelter of the doorjamb.

The goon he’d struck lurched, as though he’d tripped over an invisible obstacle, staggered, and twisted as he went down, taking one of his friends with him.

The guy at the front of the assault shouted in Spanish—and then Mercy swung around the doorframe and caught him in the face with his sledgehammer.

Shep was in uniform in Iraq the last time he saw someone’s cranium cave in like that. It wasn’t pretty, but he grinned at the sight of it now; enjoyed the crunch of bone and spray of blood.

Mercy laughed as he stepped back, pulling his blood-slick hammer free as he went, so his target collapsed in a wet heap.

Then the rest of the Diablos were on top of them, and Shep lifted his gun hand to block the fall of another man’s arm. The guy cursed at him, and shoved. When Shep didn’t budge, he made a grab for him with his free hand.

Shep struck out with the knife and was rewarded by a scream. He struck again, then pushed the man back; he collided with one of his comrades, and Shep put the muzzle of his Colt right up against the man’s chest and fired.

Two birds with one stone.

Behind him, furniture crashed, and men screamed and shouted, in Spanish and English. It was chaos: thuds, and grunts, and harsh curses.

Shep couldn’t worry about them, because a man with a Bowie knife lunged straight for him.

He dodged, and the man’s shoulder clipped his, and then they were tussling, stumbling together into the darkness of the kitchen.

The guy was big, a half-head taller than Shep, and bulkier, wide and heavyset. His breath rushed hot across Shep’s face, and Shep brought his gun up in a hard arc and cracked him in the side of the head with it.

It landed with a satisfying smack, and the big guy wobbled on his feet, but his grip on Shep’s hoodie didn’t waver. Shep twisted his wrist in an attempt to press the Colt to the man’s temple, and got shoved back hard against the wall instead.

Knife, then.

The man snarled something at him in Spanish, and even if Shep couldn’t make out details, he knew this was the man who’d stared him down at Hauser’s.

“Eat shit,” Shep growled back, and thrust the KA-BAR into the man’s large, soft belly.

He wasn’t wearing a vest, just a t-shirt and a dark hoodie, like Shep, and the freshly-sharpened knife went through the material like it was smoke, and then sunk up to the hilt in giving flesh.

The breath punched out of the man, along with a garbled, wet-throated sound of shock. Shep pushed him back…straight into the path of Mercy’s sledgehammer, and whatever pain he felt in his gut was wiped out when the hammer caved in the side of his skull.

“Shit,” Shep breathed. “I gotta get me one of those.”

“Hell of an arm workout,” Mercy said. One of his catcher’s mitt hands gripped Shep by the shoulder and pulled him forward. “Come on, this side’s cleared out, let’s see what’s going on next door.”

There was a lot of moaning and whimpering and pleading happening in the living room. Someone had turned the lanterns back on, and Shep saw bodies sprawled across the floor, some moving, some not.

Toly had a guy by the hair and lifted him up so she was kneeling, blood coursing down his face, mouth moving soundlessly as he grappled with pain. His hands lifted, but he couldn’t seem to reach up over his head and try to claw Toly off of him.

It was Ruiz. “I’ve got him,” Toly said. He cast a glance around the room. “Anyone want a last word?”

Fox straightened from where he’d been rummaging around in a dead man’s pockets, and came out with a cellphone. “Make him scream when I give you the signal.”

“No, please,” Ruiz said. Don’t—”

Toly clapped his free hand over his mouth.

Fox fiddled with the phone a moment, then held it up six inches from his mouth and started screaming in Spanish. After a string of panicked shouting, he pointed at Toly, who took his hand off Ruiz’s mouth and did something with his other hand that made Ruiz bellow and twist, and writhe.

Fox disconnected the call mid-rant, dropped it onto the dead body he’d pilfered it from, and turned to Shep as Ruiz’s screams subsided into pathetic sobs. “Anything you want to add?”

Shep watched the Tres Diablos boss fighting Toly’s grip on his hair, eyes shut, tears carving clean rivulets through the blood on his face, and felt only cold contempt, and nothing personal. “Nah. He’s just a hired gun.”

Fox nodded, and made a go ahead gesture.

Shep picked his way across limp hands, and upturned, sightless faces, until he was close enough to press his gun to Ruiz’s temple and pull the trigger.

Toly let him fall, his sleeve splattered with blood and brains.

Then the room was silent…saved the muffled sounds of distress coming from Sig and his father. That was when emotion came into play; when Shep’s fury boiled up like an infection that needed lancing.

Mercy handed his hammer off to Toly, who lurched beneath its weight a moment before he got it under control.

Mercy stepped over Ruiz’s body and moved around behind the two dining chairs where the Blackmons waited, eyes shut and cowering.

Blackmon senior’s eyes snapped open when Mercy crouched down with a grunt—he had an old, bad knee injury Shep recalled—and sliced the duct tape off his ankles.

“If I’m being honest,” he said, while Blackmon goggled down at him, face ashen in the lantern light, “I’m more than a little insulted, mon cher.

You chose to mess with the Lean Dogs, and you sent a street gang after us.

You messed with the Dogs, and you thought you were gonna get away with it .

” He tsked and shook his head as he lumbered back to his feet and moved behind the chair to slice the tape at Blackmon’s wrists.

“Either you’re the cockiest fucker alive, or you haven’t heard of us, and that…

that just kinda kills my self-esteem, you know. ”

“Hey, Shakespeare,” Fox said, but there was a laugh in his voice. “You gonna get on with it or keep monologuing?”

“I’m getting there. You know I like to be sociable.”

“Oh, I know.” Mercy ripped the duct tape off Blackmon’s mouth—he gasped, and sobbed on the inhale—and Fox gestured with his gun. “Get up. Walk toward the front door.”

Blackmon buried his face in his shaking hands and let out a low, wounded sound.

Mercy smacked him in the back of the head. “He said get up and walk toward the front door. Do you want me to help you?”

Clearly not: Blackmon nearly fell twice in his attempt to stand. Trembling all over like a newborn foal, upper lip shiny with snot, he began shuffling toward the door, tripping on bodies.

Still taped up in his chair, Sig struggled against his bonds, shouts muffled behind the tape, but clear all the same: he was calling for his dad.

Fox let him get as far as the foyer before he turned and gave Shep the nod.

The bullet went into his back, just to the left of his spine. He fell forward like a cut-down tree, already too far gone to break his fall. His nose impacted the tile with a crack and a wet squelch.

“Alright, Siggy,” Mercy said, and moved toward him with the knife. “Your turn. You’re the big finale.”

There were men, Shep reflected, his own father among them, whose lips would curl in disgust if they witnessed what he was about to do.

Sigmund Blackmon was only twenty, and he was unarmed, was surrounded, outgunned by much older and more experienced men.

He was an asshole, and a little rat bastard, a spoiled brat, but did he really deserve this?

In Shep’s estimation, he did.

Should Shep have picked on someone his own size? Given the kid a fighting chance?

Those were not questions he asked himself, in the moment.

When he was unbound, Mercy hauled him up by his hoodie and maneuvered him into place. Sig’s feet didn’t seem to be working, but that didn’t matter; Mercy moved him around like a doll, until he stood in the middle of the room.

Shep stepped forward, and Sig looked up at him, eyes swollen and face wet. “P-p-please,” he stuttered. “Please, I’m sorry …I never meant…I didn’t know…”

Shep sought some biting, devastating final proclamation inside himself…but he had no words. Only this: he took Shep’s hand, and fitted it around the grip of the Colt. Lifted both together so the barrel was pressed to Sig’s temple, his limp finger inside the trigger guard, spreading prints and DNA.

Sig closed his eyes, and his teeth chattered. “Please,” he whispered, one last time.

Shep fit his finger over his, and pulled the trigger.

Mercy released him, after, so he would fall, so it would look natural. He landed on top of a Diablo, so his back bent at a funny angle. His hand had spasmed at the end, so he still held the gun.

“Okay,” Fox said. “Clean up, and then we go. Fast. We’ve got less than a minute.”

Everyone started moving in a hurry, then, but Shep stayed rooted.

He’d never experienced such acute relief. All the energy bled out of his limbs; the final trigger pull had yanked the plug on his adrenaline, and he swore it emptied out through the tingling soles of his feet; he imagined it as a glugging dark liquid, leaving him empty and sparkling in its wake.

His vision sparkled, too, bright flares crowding in at the edges. Reese hurried past him, and he seemed to be walking up a wall, somehow.

Someone appeared in front of him. “You good? Good job, son.” It was Devin. He was grinning. At first. And then his smile slipped. “Shepherd. Frank.”

He snapped his fingers, and Shep could see the movement, but the sound came three seconds later.

“Charlie,” Devin snapped, over his shoulder. He reached for Shep, and his hand was cool and heavy when it landed on Shep’s waist. When it drew back, it was shiny and red. “Aw, Christ, man. You got stabbed.”

“Did I…” Shep started, and then the bright sparks swallowed him whole.