Bound by Law: Men of Honor, Book 2 Page 14

  The men knew they were up against cops, agents and Delta Force. They wouldn’t take chances.

  Paulo could slide easily out of his hiding spot. Once the men entered the house looking for him, he’d put the tracking device on their car. Follow them back to the city.

  This time, there was less stealth on their part. They rolled up to the house where Paulo had left the TV on and some lights, a coffeepot that was still warm. The men would find tire tracks going down the old road and assume he’d heard them and ran.

  It would barely give Paulo enough time to do what he needed to, but he was ready.

  Once they went in, he snaked across the front lawn in the dark, placed the tracker under the front tire of their car and snuck into the woods instead of risking the walk back to the house.

  He lay in wait, closer to the men than he’d been before, pistol pulled in case he’d been made. When the men walked back to their car, it was apparent they were angry.

  “Fossman got the intel right, but the guy made us,” the shorter of the two was telling someone on the other end of his cell phone. “We’re going after him now to see if we can pick up his trail.”

  Paulo used the light from the car’s interior to catch a glimpse of his features—he looked nothing like Styx but still he committed the face to memory so he could describe it to a sketch artist if necessary or look through some CIA wanted pics. He couldn’t see the other guy worth a damn.

  At least they knew Fossman was the leak.

  He forced his breathing to calm until they drove away, didn’t stay put because he had a feeling they’d circle back around to check the house again. He threaded his way back through the woods to meet Tomcat at the end of the hidden road.

  The hunter’s instincts Paulo’s father had always prided himself on his son having were even stronger now, despite missing buck season for at least eight years. It was something he’d used to try to bond with his father, whose cop instincts had always known there was something different about Paulo.

  “You’re a queer, aren’t you?” he’d sneered one day up at the old cabin.

  “No one uses queer anymore,” Paulo told him calmly, waited to eat the back of his father’s hand, but the shot never came.

  His father was scared to touch him as though being gay was a communicable disease.

  To Paulo’s father, it was. And that had been the last hunting trip.

  Three weeks later, his father had been arrested for prisoner abuse and Paulo’s world turned inside out.

  It was that way again, and he’d begun to doubt whether he’d ever feel completely safe anyplace again.

  He spotted Tomcat’s truck and headed toward it, allowed himself to think briefly on Law and Styx…and then cursed himself for doing so.

  Fuck, he missed them, and it had only been three goddamned days.

  Maybe they missed him too, or maybe they’d begun to realize that the three of them together wasn’t necessary, that Paulo had simply been a way to facilitate their reconnecting.

  Thinking about that made his heart pound unnaturally. He stopped, put his hand against a tree trunk, needing to pull himself together before he got into the truck with Tomcat.

  What had he expected? He’d known Law for less than six months, had been on a couple of dates that were little more than fucking sessions.

  Just because he’d fallen in love didn’t mean Law had. And the fact that he’d been the only one to use the word love in the past weeks hadn’t been lost on him—it just hit him with more force now since he’d left.

  He’d known Styx for only a few days and felt more of an attachment to him than he had with men he’d been lovers with for a year.

  There was definitely something fucked up about him. At twenty-eight, he wasn’t supposed to be having this love-at-first-sight bullshit happening to him. That should’ve happened when he was a teen, but at that point, he’d been too busy dealing with the fallout from his family after coming out to them—bringing a lover into that environment wouldn’t have worked at all.

  And now he was alone again.

  You saved him. You gave him and Styx their second chance. And hell, those two deserved it. He’d only had to be around them for a few minutes to feel the electricity between them.

  He pushed off the tree, shoving the pity party down, and walked to the truck.

  “You okay?” Tomcat asked when he got in, and Paulo didn’t bother to lie.

  “Just took a trip down memory lane I shouldn’t have.”

  “Stop letting your past fuck with you,” Tomcat admonished, like it was that simple. And maybe it was—maybe that was the key.

  “Are they transmitting?” Paulo asked.

  Tomcat pointed to the red star on the GPS mounted to his dash as he drove away down another back road. “Don’t want to spook the spooks, so we’ll let them get an hour ahead.” In the meantime, the men lay low at a local diner, with Tomcat’s truck hidden among the semis in the back lot.

  “They’re worried,” Tomcat told Paulo finally, and Paulo had known it was only a matter of time before he brought up Law and Styx.

  “You said you wouldn’t go there.”

  “I lied. I do it professionally.” Tomcat stared at him innocently, like that was a complete justification.

  “Don’t you have a love life of your own to worry about?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Tomcat’s face clouded briefly, and because he could see that Tomcat was suffering too, it made it easier to talk.

  “They’re together. That’s the way it should’ve been from the start.”

  “They want you back.”

  “How’s that supposed to work?”

  “Don’t know. I can barely handle a non-relationship with one man.” Tomcat checked the time and called to the waitress for more coffee to go. “I’ll take care of the leak personally.”

  “Can we use him to track Styx’s father?”

  Tomcat slid him a glance. “Didn’t realize you were CIA.”

  “I’m a cop—that’s better.”

  “You sure you’re up for what comes next?”

  Paulo had been training for this—ready for it—his entire life. He just hadn’t known he’d be doing it for two men he loved. “More than. For Styx and Law.”

  “For Styx and Law,” Tomcat repeated. “Let’s go over the plan again—I want you to eat, sleep and breathe it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Paulo surrendered himself to the two hit men he’d seen at the safe house two days earlier. He forced himself to remain calm as they put a bag over his head and dragged him inside a warehouse, hoped Tomcat had been able to get through the steel doors before they locked again.

  There was no way out now, not without Tomcat’s help.

  He’d wanted to be dragged in front of Styx’s father, but that wasn’t going to happen. He figured these men would never talk during an interrogation, but maybe they’d flip on one another.

  All Paulo knew was that he had to stay alive long enough for Tomcat to gather the intel they needed to take things to the next level.

  He thought about what Law had told him about his Delta training after they’d watched a war movie together, about how torture was so effective not because of the actual pain—although that was a bitch—but because the threat of the unknown, of what your captors could do to you, was ever present.

  “It’ll fuck with your mind if you let it,” Law told him. “Best to stay in the present.”

  It had made so much sense when Law said it, more so now as Paulo remained tied to a chair, attempting to interrogate the men threatening to end his life.

  “I want to see your boss,” Paulo said through gritted teeth once they pulled the hood off him. He blinked a few times, because the room was bright and the sudden light hurt his eyes. He’d been tied to a chair and it was the only furniture in this room. Beyond it was an open door that led to a smaller room with a desk and an opened laptop, and he hoped that would contain the intel they needed.

  “He doesn�
��t want to see you,” one of the men spat at him. “But your family’s worried.”

  Yeah, that was bullshit. But Paulo clenched his jaw as if their words angered him.

  “You tell us where Styx is, and maybe your family won’t be hurt. That’s the deal.”

  “I want to hear it from your boss,” Paulo said, earning a hard slap across the face with the back of a hand.

  “You give me something and then I give you something.”

  “Last I heard, they were in the house upstate.” He rattled off the address of the house the men had already searched.

  “Try again—he’s not there,” the man growled in his face.

  “Then he’s probably coming for you.”

  Another backhanded slap and then a punch to the side of the head and he lost consciousness. When he came to, everything throbbed and he wasn’t sure what was happening.

  The men were standing behind him and he didn’t see any sign of Tomcat, and he wondered if this whole thing had gone south.

  “He’s not the important one,” one of the men told him, and yeah, that could stomp on his heart if he let it.

  “He’ll talk more, then.” The second man with the green shirt pushed at Paulo, who couldn’t open one swollen eye more than a slit. “Where are they?”

  Paulo spit at him and laughed, which earned him a right hook. He kicked and made contact with one of them, which brought both men down on him, because he’d caught sight of Tomcat by the computer in the corner of the next room.

  The chair went down, with the men concentrating on him—and if Tomcat was right, that computer would have all the possible addresses where Styx’s father lived.

  They needed to catch him at home, where he was most vulnerable. Everyone was most vulnerable when they were home, no matter how good their alarm system was.

  He managed to get a hand free of the ropes, dug into one of the men’s pockets for his cell. In the ruckus, he slipped it into his own pocket and shoved his hand behind him again, hoped the cell wouldn’t ring. And then there were more men, shining lights in his face, threatening his family.

  Then they started talking about Styx. “He won’t show for this one. He likes the other fag.”

  They were talking about Law, and Paulo wanted to kick all their asses. He might’ve, because he didn’t remember much—there was a lot of yelling and punches and grunting, and he freed himself using the sharp edge of a broken chair on the ropes holding his wrists.

  And then, just like that, the fighting stopped and he was lying on the floor, dazed. Looked up to see Tomcat hovering over him.

  “My pocket,” he remembered telling Tomcat before he passed out.

  He remembered passing out—after that, the sensation of being carried and then floating outside his body.

  Must’ve been in the hospital then, the drugs helping the I-don’t-give-a-shit feeling. He clung to that when he opened his eyes to find himself on a bed and alone in what looked like a hospital room.

  Alone.

  He closed his eyes again and let sleep overtake him.

  “Law, come on.”

  Styx was shaking him hard and at first Law thought it was one of Styx’s dreams. But it wasn’t. He sat up and saw the worry in Styx’s eyes. “What the hell?”

  “It’s Paulo. He’s hurt.”

  “Shit.” Law got out of bed and yanked on clothes, didn’t waste time asking questions because they’d have a long drive for that. Styx was already packing for them—handed Law a rifle and a gun, and together they left the house under the cover of darkness.

  Styx drove along the old country roads, full of snow and ice, and Law tried to tamp down the panic about Paulo.

  “What did Tomcat say?” he asked finally.

  “Not much,” Styx said grimly. “The doc’s with Paulo now—apparently, he’s pretty beat up.”

  “What happened?”

  “I think he and Tomcat tried to go after my father.”

  “Fuck.” Law took a long drink from the soda he’d grabbed on the way out. “How much longer?”

  “Couple of hours. Tomcat will call with updates as soon as he gets them. But he’s okay, Law. I know that.”

  Law did too. There was a connection there and he would’ve felt the loss. “He needs us.”

  “That’s why we’re headed there.”

  Seventy-two hours had passed since Paulo left. “How could the hit men have found him—I thought Tomcat took care of the leak?”

  “He would’ve kept Paulo’s whereabouts private either way,” Styx said, his voice dark with anger. “This had to be some crazy fucking plan of Tomcat’s that Paulo went along with.”

  It would certainly explain Paulo’s shift in attitude, and it had happened after talking with Tomcat. Everything was starting to fall into place now—and Law knew there wasn’t anything Paulo wouldn’t do to help get them out of their dangerous situation.

  “Tomcat’s been good to you. Give him the benefit of the doubt, all right?” Law reminded him, then stopped the preaching because he needed to be quiet in order to hold it together. He watched the road with Styx, listened to the weather on the radio and finally, after what seemed like forever, they were in the underground hospital parking lot on level seven, where Tomcat was waiting to take them up the elevator typically reserved for staff only.

  “He’s going to be all right—the doc was just with him,” was all Tomcat said before he ushered them into a private room on the sixth floor. It was in the corner and a guard stood inside the room for now, in front of the curtain.

  It hadn’t been that long ago that Law himself lay in the hospital bed in pain and pissed and scared because Paulo had come to see him.

  Scared, because he knew he’d have to push the man away. Now, Law and Styx stopped short of going to the bed where Paulo lay, and Law heard Styx pull in a rough breath.

  “It looks worse than it is,” Tomcat told them, but his face was slightly ashen. “He’s fine—you can talk to the doctor and he’ll tell you.”

  Law chose to believe that because he needed to cling to something, and he pushed past him to get to Paulo.

  He’d been worked over good—but his face bore less of the damage than his chest. Yes, there were multiple bruises and a split lip, a knot on his forehead at his hairline, but the bruises clustered on his right side worried Law the most. He put a hand out that hovered over them as if that could heal him and oh, how he wished that were true.

  “Jesus Christ,” Styx whispered from the other side of the bed, his face pale.

  “He’ll rouse, but they’ve got him pretty well snowed because of the pain,” Tomcat explained. “He’s got to stay here for a few days and after that—”

  “He comes back to the cabin with us,” Styx told him and got no argument. “You going to tell us what happened?”

  “Yeah, I will,” Tomcat said, his voice heavy with recrimination. “It’s his family—they were threatened.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “No, I didn’t. This was Paulo’s call to make.”

  “Why the hell are you trying to shield me?”

  “Because someone has to,” Tomcat said fiercely. “They used you the first time and you paid a hell of a price. I swore to myself if things went down with your father again, I wouldn’t let you out there to hang yourself.”

  “So you let Paulo instead.”

  “The man can handle himself. You have no idea,” Tomcat told him. “He took out four of your father’s best men in this condition. And as soon as he wakes up, I can guarantee he’ll have more intel for me.”

  “Why the hell would he do that? His family disowned him. Let them go into hiding. All they’re going to do is use this against him.” Law was so angry at Paulo’s family and even at Paulo, although he understood that Paulo’s guilt about his father’s prison term—and what he’d done to get there—ran too deep to shake.

  “It’s all wrapped up in saving us, too,” Styx said quietly, and the two men held hands over Paulo a
s the man’s breathing stayed strong and even.

  “What are you not telling me?” Law’s words were directed to Styx and Tomcat held up his hands and stepped back.

  “My father didn’t want me back this time. He wanted me dead.”

  “Ah, fuck.” Law ran his hands through his hair and glanced back at Paulo. “Did he know that?”

  “I told him,” Tomcat said, and Styx took a step toward him.

  “Styx, don’t. He did it for your own good. And Paulo knew what he was getting into.” Law put a hand on Styx’s wrist. “From now on, no more goddamned secrets. This affects all our lives, including Tomcat’s. So while Paulo’s recovering, we’ll have a war room conference here. And we’ll come up with something.”

  Both Tomcat and Styx nodded, and Law took a breath.

  “He could’ve told you. I left that up to him,” Tomcat added.

  “So that’s why he picked the fight,” Law murmured.

  “You can’t blame him for wanting to protect you,” Tomcat pointed out. “Can’t blame me either.”

  “What about the getting beat-up part? Who do I blame for that?” Styx asked, but there was no rancor for his partner.

  “Part of the plan. I was there to make sure it didn’t get too out of hand,” Tomcat said quietly. “I didn’t leave the other side of the wall. I waited until he called me—until he got what he needed. He was in control, Styx, even though what you’re seeing shows something different.”

  Law didn’t want to think about what Paulo had submitted to on purpose. “Tell me it was worth it.”

  “It was. I got an address, an alarm code and several other key pieces of intel because of Paulo’s bravery,” Tomcat said. “We’re so close—we’re there. It’s not going to be long now before we can put this behind us. Styx’s father’s angry at him—and anger makes people sloppy.”

  Law nodded, because he agreed with that. And then he went to Paulo and took his hand, much in the same way Paulo had his when he was in the hospital a few months earlier. Leaned down, whispered, “We’re here,” in his ear while Styx went to the other side of the bed and smoothed the hair from Paulo’s face.