Prologue
Unexpected Cargo
At a gas station in Victoriana, California, which is literally the middle of the goddamned desert….
ACE ATCHISON watched the RV pull away from the gas station across the two-lane highway from his garage with flat eyes, Jai, his employee and giant ex-mob muscle at his side.
“D’ya see that?” Ace asked grimly.
“Da,” Jai said, voice also grim.
They’d been taking a break when the RV had pulled into the gas station. The vehicle—old, decrepit, gasping like a fish swimming in smog—had probably left parts strewn across Highway 15 heading from LA to Las Vegas. The guy who’d gotten out of it was possibly in his thirties, but they were thirty the hard way, and he moved like… well, a killer.
Ace and Jai had experience with killers. They’d each crossed that line when the situation had been dire, but it wasn’t a habit for either of them.
This guy moved like he’d shoot a baby because the stroller crossed his path. Ace and Jai had been leaning against the minivan they’d been working on. The family who owned it was across the street at the Subway, getting lunch while Ace and Jai tried not to let the thing die here where there wasn’t even a fucking hotel. They saw the killer open the door, shout something harsh into the RV, get gas, and then go into the mini-mart/food court for a soda, probably because that thing didn’t look like it had any AC.
And the guy had left people sweltering inside it.
As they watched, the tattered yellowing draperies that covered the back window rustled, and two faces pressed against the glass.
Young faces, dirty, and then those faces moved, and two more appeared. And then came two more. And two more.
While Ace and Jai watched, they must have seen twenty faces. Kids, maybe fifteen at the oldest, peaked, terrified, all of them looking out into the sunshine like it was going to be their last chance to see freedom and space.
“You know,” Ace drawled, keeping his fury inside. “I don’t think that man is actually related to any of those children.”
“I would doubt that very much.” Jai kept his voice neutral, but Ace knew Jai had essentially been given to Ace because while he was a very good man, he was not necessarily a good mobster. Jai was not a fan of people who abused the innocent any more than Ace was.
But God, Sonny had barely survived their last adventure. Not that he’d gotten hurt, but Ace had gotten captured, and Ace’s boyfriend… well, Sonny didn’t do well when Ace was in danger.
Because Sonny’s childhood had been a nightmare, just like that of those kids in the RV.
And that decided him.
Ace swallowed. Most of the time, he kept any illegal activities limited to defending or sustaining his immediate family. But this was evil in a way that ate a hole in his stomach.
“Should we take the SHO?” he asked, talking about the souped-up racing machine he and Sonny had built from sweat and tears and the last of their savings from their time in the service, after they’d bought the garage.
“Nyet,” Jai muttered. “He is a coyote, not the main mobster. We take a car we can make disappear.”
They looked at each other. “Ernie’s,” Ace decided. Ernie didn’t technically live with them anymore, but he was still part of the family. Burton, his boyfriend, still went on missions, and Ernie came and stayed in Burton’s old safe room when he did, going home only to bake and to feed the cats. Burton was on an op now. Ernie was adamant he wouldn’t be gone long, and Ernie was a witch and knew those sorts of things.
“Da,” Jai said, and both of them pushed off the minivan.
“Sonny!” Ace called toward the small house that sat off to the side of the garage. “Sonny, Jai and me have to go handle something. You need to come out here and finish this damned minivan.”
Sonny had gone inside to start dinner, because it was getting near closing time, but he popped out of the house like he’d been waiting for Ace’s call.
“The hell?”
Sonny Daye was a small blond man, slender, muscular, mean as a rattail dog. Ace strode up to his lover and gave him a short hard kiss on the mouth, and he melted under Ace’s touch.
“We’re taking Ernie’s car to go stop something bad. We may need Burton to bail us out. And that family needs their minivan ’cause they’ve got three kids and this is no place for them to be.”
Sonny’s face paled at his first words, and Ace kissed him again.
“No fretting. Jai and me, we’re good at this, remember?”
“But Ace—”
“We’ve got to go,” Ace said, feathering a sort of caress down Sonny’s cheek with his thumb. They were not soft men. That touch was sufficient to silence Sonny and give him pause enough to back off and let Ace go.
“So I’m just fixing the minivan? Seriously?” he said, but he’d already taken that step back.
“You’re what?” Ernie said, coming out of the cashier’s cubicle where he worked for them sometimes.
“It was an RV full of kids,” Ace said shortly as Jai brought Ernie’s little Sentra around the far side of the house. “We need something that can catch up but that nobody will recognize.”
Burton worked covert ops—and Ernie was supposed to be dead. Between them, Ace, Sonny, and Jai kept Ernie in a revolving train of piece-of-shit cars with sketchy VIN numbers. Ace could literally leave this car by the side of the road, and it would disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.
Ernie’s eyes went wide, and then he opened his witchy mouth and said, “Get the children to safety—this blood’s not yours,” just as Jai got up and jogged around the side of the car.
Ace nodded shortly. “That’s really all I needed to know. Keep Sonny calm, willya?”
He didn’t wait for the answer as he slid behind the Sentra’s wheel, grateful Jai hadn’t pushed the seat all the way back. Jai was nearly six foot seven, and that would be damned uncomfortable for Ace.
“You see which way—” Jai began as Ace peeled out.
“East.”
“What is your plan?”
“Hope he doesn’t want to go through the window of that RV,” Ace said shortly.
“Is a shitty plan.”
Jai’s honesty wasn’t always Ace’s favorite thing.
“The question,” he muttered, “is what we’re going to do with the kids once we have them.”
“I’ll ask Ernie for suggestions.” Jai pulled out his phone and started texting.
“Think your nurse friend can help?”
Even with his eyes glued to the road, Ace got a feeling for the pained expression that crossed Jai’s features.
“I dislike dragging him into this,” he admitted.
“Well, I dislike leaving my boyfriend back at home scared to death, but everybody’s got to make sacrifices, Jai. The only way our little operation works is if we keep it under the radar.”
“Da,” Jai said reluctantly. “Let us get rid of the rattlesnake behind the wheel and see if there’s more bad guys. Then we can make plans.”
The RV moved as slow as frozen shit through a pipe. They could see it waddling in the distance, and Ace looked in his rearview mirror and noted at least five miles of nobody behind him and another five miles of nobody in the front. He stood on the accelerator of the little car, and it buzzed its heart out for them, making him feel bad for planning to kill it when this was over.