Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(122)

“Yes.”

“I have that meeting, but we’ll get well over an hour of privacy.”

“Perfect.”

There was a long pause, one that she had the alarming sense might well have been filled with I love you on both sides if they’d had the courage.

“Sleep well,” he breathed.

“You, too, if you can. And listen, if you can’t sleep, call me. I’m here.”

“I will. Promise.”

There was another stretch of quiet, as if each were waiting for the other to hang up first.

Ehlena laughed, even though the idea of letting him go made her heart ache. “Okay, on the count of three. One, two—”

“Wait.”

“What?”

He didn’t answer for the longest time. “I don’t want to get off the phone.”

She closed her eyes. “I feel the same way.”

Rehvenge released a breath, low and slow. “Thank you. For staying on with me.”

The word that came to mind didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and she wasn’t sure why she spoke it, but she did:

“Always.”

“If you want, you can close your eyes and imagine me next to you. Holding you.”

“I will do just that.”

“Good. Sleep well.” He was the one who ended the call.

As Ehlena took the phone away from her ear and hit the end button, the keypad lit up, glowing bright blue. The thing was warm from where she’d held it for so long, and she smoothed her thumb over the flat screen.

Always. She wanted to be there for him always.

The keypad went dark, the light extinguished with a finality that made her panicky. But she could still call him, couldn’t she? It would look pathetic and needy, but he remained on the planet even though he wasn’t on her phone.

The potential for the call was there.

God, his mother had died today. And of all the people in his life who he could have passed the hours with, he had chosen her.

Pulling the sheets and the duvet up her legs, Ehlena curled herself around the phone, cradled it close, and passed out.





THIRTY-NINE




Marking time in the crappy ranch he’d decided to use as a drug house, Lash sat upright on a chair that in his old life he wouldn’t have allowed his rottweiler to take a shit on. The thing was a Barcalounger, a cheap, fat padded POS that unfortunately was comfortable as f*ck.

Not exactly the throne he was going for, but a damn good place to park his ass.

On the other side of his open laptop, the room beyond was fourteen by fourteen and decorated in low-income can’t-afford-replacements, the sofas worn at the arms, the picture of a faded Jesus Christ hanging cockeyed, the stains on the pale carpet small and round—thus suggesting cat piss.

Mr. D was out cold with his back against the front door, gun in his hand, cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes. Two other lessers were parked in the archways of the room, each propped up against a jamb with their legs stretched out.

Grady was over on the couch, a Domino’s Pizza box open beside him with nothing but grease spots and stripes of cheese in a spoke pattern left on the white cardboard. He’d eaten an entire large Mighty Meaty by himself and was now reading a day-old Caldwell Courier Journal.

The fact that the guy was so frickin’ relaxed made Lash want to do an autopsy on him while the SOB was still breathing. What the hell? The son of the Omega deserved a little more anxiety out of his kidnap victims, f*ck you very much.

Lash checked his watch and decided to give his men only another half hour of recharge. They had two other meetings with drug retailers set up today, and tonight was going to be the first time his men hit the streets with product.

Which meant that symphath king’s business was going to have to chill until tomorrow—Lash was going to do the deed, but the financial interests of the Society had to come first.

Lash looked past one of his snoozing lessers into the kitchen, where a long folding table was set up. Scattered across its laminated top were tiny plastic bags, the kind you got with a pair of cheap earrings at the mall. Some had white powder in them, some small brown rocks; others contained pills. The diluting agents that had been used, like baking powder and talc, were in fluffy piles, and the cellophane wrappings the kilos had come in littered the floor.

Quite a haul. Grady thought it was worth about $250,000 and would move, with four men on the street, in about two days.

Lash liked that math, and he’d spent the last few hours examining his business model. Access to more product was going to present a supply issue; he couldn’t keep up the pop-and-pinch routine forever, because he was going to run out of people to target. The issue was where to insert himself in the chain of commerce: There were the foreign importers, like the South Americans or the Japanese or the Europeans; then the wholesalers, like Rehvenge; then the larger retailers, like the guys Lash was picking off. Considering how hard it was going to be to get to the wholesalers, and how long it would take to develop relationships with importers, the logical thing was to become a producer himself.

Geography limited his choices, because Caldwell had a ten-minute growing season, but drugs like X and meth didn’t require good weather. And what do you know, you could get instructions on how to build and work meth labs and X factories on the Internet. Of course, there were going to be problems securing the ingredients, because there were regulations and tracking mechanisms in place to monitor the sale of the various chemical components. But he had mind control on his side. With humans being so easily manipulated, there would be ways of dealing with those kinds of problems.