The Hammer Falls Read online

  Trask seemed to notice it at the same time as Horace. “I gotta say, giving people back rooms to get it on in is a stroke of genius. Extra charge?”

  “By the minute. But still cheaper than a hotel.”

  “Can folks at home watch them?”

  “If the participants allow it. The people who come here can customize the kind of fame they’re trying to build. Their sex rating is one facet of that. You want to get into porn, you jack up your sex rating. You want to build your romance rating, maybe get a career as an actress or model, you play at some family-safe love games. Some people have a gift for drama—”

  Horace laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”

  Vincent turned his gaze on Horace, cocking his head.

  “Sorry, brother, I’m not making fun. But that has to be one of the most twisted things I have ever heard. All those backstabbing, manipulative games that the worst of us played in high school. Now they’re used to build fame and fortune.”

  “You disapprove?” Vincent said, leaning forward as if ready to engage in a spirited debate.

  Horace shrugged. “How can I? I kill people for a living.”

  They all laughed.

  Horace let a slow trickle of expensive whiskey warm his throat. He turned to Roxanne, “How about you, sister? You ever play games like this?”

  She sipped another glass of red wine. “In my world, the games have much higher stakes.”

  He clinked her glass with his. “Here’s to that. There’s one thing bothering me, though.” He traded his gaze pointedly between Roxanne and Vincent. “Why are you so willing to help me?” He fixed his gaze on Vincent. “I appreciate you being a fan and all, but...something else is going on here.”

  Since Horace had first gotten on Trask’s road train, people had been sticking their necks out for him and gotten their heads blown off, people who did not deserve it. At Horace’s blunt question, Trask’s face darkened across the table as he chewed on his cigar—but this was different.

  Vincent’s eyes glittered with shrewdness so sharp it could cut a throat. “You ever wanted something, seriously wanted it more than anything, but had no idea how to take the first step toward getting it? It was so distant, so surrounded by obstacles, you couldn’t imagine how you would ever get there? And then, someone shows up out of the blue with a magic secret passage, a go-to-the-head-of-the-line pass, a guided smart bullet. And you still can’t believe your luck, but you still gotta have balls enough to take the shot?”

  Horace said, “Sounds like the story of my life.”

  “So here I am with a magic smart bullet right in my lap. Trouble is, the act of shooting the bullet deforms it or shatters it. No good anymore. Can’t ever be used again. So if this is a smart bullet, does the bullet care if it only gets one shot?” The gleam of hate-fueled ambition and ruthlessness seared through Vincent’s affable demeanor.

  Roxanne leaned onto the table, folding her hands between her elbows. “What has happened, Mr. Harkness, is that you have found yourself in a nest of vipers.”

  Vince raised a finger to protest. “Hey now—!”

  She silenced him with a gentle hand across his, keeping her dark, bottomless gaze upon Horace. “Fortunately for you, all of them despise the man who is trying to kill you. Vincent and I are but two members of an alliance, you might say, an alliance that wants the Mogilevich consortium liquidated. For them, for me, you are the perfect weapon, an unstoppable engine of destruction—and an expendable one at that.”

  “You don’t mince words.”

  “I am not so heartless that I would throw your life away callously. I would very much like to see you survive this. You are...an interesting man.”

  Before he could absorb the implications of her words, his netlink buzzed in his breast pocket. He pulled it out and saw Lilly’s face. A spike of emotion went through him. Swallowing hard, he answered.

  “Hammer?” she said. Her voice sounded a little nervous.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay?”

  Three sets of eyes fixed on him.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Look, I need to see you.”

  “Well, I’d like to see you too but—”

  “I’m in Buffalo,” she said. “Where are you?”

  Hot and cold prickles dashed up his spine. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I saw you on the net. I drove half the night and all day to get here. I need to see you. Right now.” She sounded tired and nervous, unsure but not afraid, and most importantly, not under duress.

  He said, “You need to stay as far away from me as you can. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Look, dickhead. I’ve been on the road for days. I stink. My ass is getting calluses. My kids are cranky and confused. And I came all this way to see you!”

  Vincent leaned forward. “Is that her?”

  Horace nodded. His brain reeled as he tried to work through ways to retrieve her without either of them having her speak her location over data feeds that were almost certainly monitored.

  “I’ll send a car for her,” Vincent said.

  While they waited for Lilly’s arrival, Horace found his stomach doing flip-flops. What the hell does a guy say to a woman whose life he inadvertently threw into mortal danger? Her half-joking threat to put a stiletto heel through his scrotum was not to be discounted. He had once seen her eyes flash with fire at a customer who must have said something exceedingly nasty, a customer who was subsequently dragged unconscious out of the Titty Twister from a platform-heel kick to the ear.

  At the same time, embers of hope bloomed in him. He at least trusted Vincent enough to offer Lilly and her children real protection, if only temporarily. The softening of that gnawing worry brought a lump to his throat. If they were safe, he could focus on what he needed to do—sift the remains of Yvgeny Mogilevich into a nice sterling silver urn next to his son.

  Horace turned to Vincent. “You have to scrub her from the feeds, too.”

  Vincent said, “Show me a photo.”

  Horace produced one on the screen of his netlink.

  Vincent studied it for a few moments, then said, “Done.”

  For forty minutes, Horace waited on pins and needles, amusing his companions as his excitement built. Then the crowd parted for an Italian rhinoceros of dark-suited muscle, and there Lilly was behind him. She had already seen Horace, and a storm of emotions cascaded through her face, a slurry of hard and soft, warm and cold.

  He slid out of the booth, and she ran to him. Long legs, miniskirt, sparkling gray-blue blouse, and big brown eyes brimming with emotion.

  She threw her arms around him and laid warm lips against his cheek again and again. “You big, beautiful fucking idiot. You beautiful fucking idiot.”

  He squeezed her slim softness against him. She almost disappeared in his massive embrace. His heart tripped and fell over itself a few times, righted itself like a boy who’d just stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. Could this be happening, finally, after all this time?

  She drew back and looked up into his face. A hasty application of makeup couldn’t entirely erase the lines of fatigue and fear from her elfin features or the red from her eyes. Then her gaze fell to the center of his chest, and she touched the hard box under his clothes, ran fingers around its perimeter.

  He smiled down at her and said, “You’re a redhead now.”

  She smiled back. “Rest-stop bathroom dye job.”

  The pressure of curiosity was palpable from his three companions. The flavor of each was unique but bore some flavor of So this is her.

  At her quizzical look, he said, “I’ll tell you everything, but lemme introduce you to a few people.”

  Horace led Lilly by the hand down the long hallway of the private wing. Their room was quiet, dimly lit by warm lamps of multi-colored glass, and smelled of the cologne and perfume of the previous occupants. A luxuriant couch. A small bar. A panel for room controls, music, and video selection. He made sure the video feeds were locked out.


  “A little more upscale than the private dance rooms at work.” A tremor of uncertainty crept into her voice.

  “It’s great to see you.”

  She smiled at him again, and her gaze fell away and looked around the room.

  The awkward tension hung between them for several long moments until he gestured toward the spacious couch. “Let’s sit down.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He sat, and she sat away, edged closer, then halted, pulled back a centimeter, fidgeting.

  “So where are your kids?” he said.

  “Hopefully asleep at my aunt and uncle’s house across town. My uncle used to be a marine, and he keeps half an arsenal under his bed. He can handle trouble. I used to be pretty close with them when I was a kid. It’s been a long goddamn couple of days in the car, you know? Haven’t showered—”

  “I’m sorry!” he blurted in a choked gargle. The need for forgiveness smashed into him with physical force, straight into the box on his chest. “I never meant to get you mixed up in this. Hell, I didn’t expect to be alive today.”

  She stiffened away from him. “I gotta say, Hammer, I was pretty fucking pissed after I got over being scared shitless. Or maybe I’m just going back and forth between those two things.”

  “It’s gonna be okay, though. I got a plan now. And Vincent out there is going to take care of you and your kids for a little while.”

  “Who is he? He smells of gangster.”

  “You got a good nose. But I trust him enough to protect you until I can do what I gotta do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Better not tell you that part. But I promised to tell you what’s going on.”

  And he told her everything, in as much detail as he could manage. For what seemed like an hour, he talked and she listened. Through long stretches of the tale, he could not look at her. For others, he could not look away.

  When he told her about the snuff video starring her, she asked to see it. He pulled it up on his netlink, and then had to laugh a little. In the video, the ropes were present, hanging from invisible wrists, the shadowy onlookers were present, the knife was present, as was the sound of her gasp, but there was no image of Lilly on the screen.

  At her quizzical look, he chuckled. “Vince is good to his word. You’re scrubbed from every frame of video coming in or out of this place.”

  As she watched with a quizzical expression, her chin lifted in a moment of confusion, then recognition. She said, “A couple of years ago, this regular from the club asked me if I wanted to make a little extra money for some after-hours work. He wanted to tie me up, some roleplay. There was this cold, dark room, this creepy place. He’d been reading about this guy named Marquee de Sod, or something, I dunno. I needed the money ’cause I had to pay the hospital for having Cassie. I wanted to give a clean slate, you know? It wasn’t my kinda thing, but I played along, let them tie me up, shoot some video. I was never in any danger, I took Max with me. Tell the truth, I forgot about it completely until just now. Still, the room there is all wrong, creepy fucking wrong, but the ropes look right. And there was no knife. It was a riding crop. Max would have beat the shit out of anyone with a real weapon.”

  He put the netlink away and resumed his narrative. When his account realigned with the present, he eased back into the couch and took a deep breath. “I’m gonna make this all right. Don’t you worry, darlin’.”

  “You’re a sweet fucking beast of a man,” she said. And she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth.

  Something let loose in him, a tongue of flame deep inside. He took her in his arms and pulled her to him. The kiss was long and deep, tasting of strawberry, coffee, and whiskey, and her body molded to his, the softness of her pressing against the hard, square chunk of technology fused to his chest. The tongue of flame snaked up the side of his heart and sped its rhythm. His blood heated.

  She pulled away, eyes wide and dilated. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did for Jimmy. It was the most generous thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  “And he’s gonna be fine, right?”

  “They said so. They’re reinforcing his bones and fixing his DNA.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  A flutter of fear crossed her face, quickly squelched. “He’s dying to meet you. When I told him I knew a real pit fighter, he almost lost his mind.”

  Horace said, “Got any pictures?”

  With a proud mother’s smile, she pulled out her netlink and showed him some photos. A swarthy, curly-haired boy and a red-haired, fair-skinned little girl, complete with beaming smiles and flashes of personality in their eyes.

  “You got some good-looking kids,” he said.

  “Don’t I know it.” Her gaze lingered on the photo. “So what are you going to do next?”

  “Like I said. I can’t tell you that.”

  “Get yourself killed?”

  “I’ve died twenty-seven times.”

  “Shut up. Don’t remind me.”

  “Listen, if this all works out, we’ll both be in the clear. We can put this behind us.”

  “And then what?”

  Silence hung between them like a heavy shroud.

  Finally he said, “I don’t know, darlin’. We kinda have to get through all this first.”

  She nodded and sniffled a little. “In the meantime, though...”

  Standing abruptly, she moved to the control panel on the wall, bending away from him with that familiar grace, that familiar sinuous poise, those familiar hips and taut buttocks. He drew a deep breath. The tongue of flame licked him again, hotter.

  A familiar song drifted into the room, one of her favorites, a simmering, slinky blues instrumental from Darryl Ray Vaughan. Then she faced him, lifted a foot against his chest, and pushed him back against the couch.

  “What the—”

  “Shut up and let me do this.”

  Smooth guitar licked a soft, subtle undercurrent of Hammond B3 organ, with a heartbeat of bass guitar and pulses of high-hat. The music embraced them like gentle hands, the kind of music to sway to.

  A soft, see-through pink thong emerged like a delicate tongue from under her miniskirt.

  How many nights had she danced for him over the last several months? There had been times she was wild and acrobatic, others soft and silky, others playful and teasing. There was no part of her naked flesh that was not emblazoned in his mind with eternal clarity, no part of her he hadn’t seen in exquisite detail. And just like all those other times, his heart exploded in his throat.

  But something was different here. This felt like the strip club fantasy, what every man dreamed of, for such a stunning woman as this to make his every dirty dream come to life, but something about this was...off. She was performing her role more beautifully than ever, but...

  The blouse went over her head and fell into a sparkling pool on the floor. A sheer lace bra the exact color of her flesh, all but invisible at first glance, filled his vision as she leaned close and breathed into his ear. The scent of her filled his nose—her delicate yet provocative perfume, the scent of her hair, the musky underlying scent that could only be hers. Her hair brushed his cheek and her breath brushed his throat. The miniskirt dribbled away and there was her pink thong and meticulously trimmed pubic mound, exquisitely sculpted buttocks flexing, the delicate dimples above them as she spun and swayed for him.

  He cleared his throat and blinked.

  Her hands slipped up her spine and released the bra. The straps slipped oh, so slowly over her shoulders and down.

  There was her rippling back, and the two little moles nestled under her right shoulder blade. A spasm of pain and sharp intake of breath shot through him as the memory of a knife blade slid across her ribs.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  He blinked and tried to relax, cleared his throat again. “I—” He couldn’t explain it, but something was wrong. This felt more like a fantasy than reality.

  “Just relax, baby,�
� she said. “Let me take care of you.” Her voice was smooth as warm cream, puffing in his ear.

  Her hands stroked his stubbled pate, driving shivers down the back of his neck, straying fingers down his chest, slipping under his suit jacket, tweaking his nipples, rubbing them, cupping his pectorals, sliding down over his belly, onto the tops of his thighs, warmth seeping through the textured silk into the muscles that still ached from the travails of the previous twenty-four hours. She thrust herself between his knees and knelt, her shoulders between his thighs. Her soft, silky flesh pressed against him, snaked up his belly, up his chest, her cheek soft against his, sliding up until an erect nipple brushed his cheek.

  “You can touch me this time,” she whispered in his ear.

  His hands had been clamped onto his knees with a force that would have pulverized the patella of a lesser man. With carefully restrained strength, he touched the backs of her legs, tentatively in this new territory, slid his hands up to cup her buttocks, squeeze them, then up her hips, sides, back, until they roamed over her with increasing confidence, tweaking the bands of the thong circling her hips, stroking her soft shoulders and trailing down toward her hands.

  This had never happened before, and his blood thrummed at being given free rein.

  Her breathing quickened.

  With each rhythmic pulse of the music, she moved against him, sliding, throwing a leg over to straddle his thigh, grinding a friction of heat against him. The intensity of the song built from a casual, almost playful feel to greater earnestness, driving the notes deeper, harder.

  His erection tightened his trousers with an ache of need.

  A moment later, her thong came off, spun twice around her finger, and lofted across the room.

  His eyes guzzled her, feasted upon her. But her expression was one he had never seen before. Ripples of fear and uncertainty. In the club, there was never a moment where she was not in complete control, but now... And there was something else, too, something he couldn’t quite identify.