Six

When Michael got back to their suite, he looked around the room and shook his head. The wall was now wearing the congealed nachos Ben had been eating before their meeting with his father, and the coffee table that held them looked like it had exploded into kindling and strewn itself around the room.

“Like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, letting his gaze settle on his partner, sitting on the couch, playing Xbox.

Ben shrugged while working the controller. This time he was killing zombies by the dozen.

“Who’re Mason and Emily?” Michael said.

Ben was quiet for a few seconds, like he wasn’t going to answer. “Mason was my brother.” He shifted the rest of the words around like he was having trouble making them leave his mouth. “Emily was his wife.”

Michael rubbed the back of his neck and winced at what he was about to say. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Nothing to talk about, Dr. Phil. They’re dead.”

“Fair enough.” Michael looked at his watch. It was just after five in the morning. The marketplace where the Maddox kid disappeared would be up and running, the vendors and peddlers setting up for the day. If they were going to find the girl, now was the best time to do it. “Come on, let’s go find the girl in the surveillance video, see what we can get out of her.”

Ben shook his head, let out a brief bark of laughter. “Don’t you ever get tired of asking how high when he says to jump?”

Now it was Michael’s turn to laugh. “Really? I don’t have the luxury of saying no,” he said. “What I have is a goddamn dirty bomb in my back and a boss just looking for an excuse to blow me the fuck up, so you can take your little pity party or whatever the hell this is and shove it up your ass.”

Ben cut him a look. “He’s not the only one who’s got your number, you know.” It was a reminder that, if he wanted to, Ben could make him just as dead as his father could.

“You aren’t gonna kill me.” Michael sounded more sure than he actually felt. “No one else will work with you.”

Ben smiled. “True. Besides, you owe me a favor. I can’t kill you until I collect.”

It was a reminder of exactly what Ben had done for him twenty-two months ago. He’d been shanghaied into another job. Taken away from Sabrina at the precise moment she needed him most. Ben had given him a small reprieve. Somehow he’d used his status as the boss’s son to his advantage and gotten Michael back to Sabrina in time to save her life. She’d be dead if not for Ben. He hadn’t forgotten that, nor had he forgotten that Ben’s help had come at a price.

“I know.”

Ben shrugged and changed the subject. “Let me guess. My father told you that if you find this kid, he’ll cut you loose, right?” Ben’s glare was steady and fixed on the screen full of flesh-eating mutants.

“Yes.” Michael leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest in an effort to keep his fingers from finding the capsule embedded in the small of his back.

Ben finally paused the game. “He’ll never do it. He’ll never let you go. That’s not how my father is built. He’d kill you in a heartbeat if he thought you’d outlived your purpose, but let you go? No way.”

He shrugged. Ben was right; Livingston Shaw kept his word only when it suited him. “I know, but that’s a pretty hefty carrot to dangle, which means finding the Maddox kid isn’t just about looking out for an old friend. There’s a reason he’s helping Maddox. If I can figure out why, I might be able to use it as leverage somehow. The only way to do that is to find the boy.”

Ben un-paused the game only to let his on-screen icon be overtaken by the undead. He watched the carnage for a few seconds before shifting his gaze back to Michael. “Do you miss her?”

The shift in conversation topic was abrupt. Michael didn’t understand the correlation between his feelings for Sabrina and Shaw’s motivations in finding Leo Maddox, but he knew he’d need Ben’s help if he had any hope of succeeding.

“Every second of every day.”

“What would you be willing to do to get back to her? To be able to stay with her?” Ben’s face had taken on a strange gravity, as if the weight of the world rested in this one question.

“Anything.”

The answer must have been the right one, because Ben tossed the game controller on the floor where the coffee table had once been. He stood. “Good to know. Give me a few minutes to change and we’ll go.” Ben left the room, leaving Michael to wonder exactly what kind of debt he owed and what kind of man he owed it to.