The Mercenary Read online

  “Ains?” Jodie knelt down beside her, but Ainsley wouldn’t meet her eyes. Sighing, she looked up at Laura leaning over the safety wall watching the fight.

  “They’re good,” she observed.

  Joining her, Jodie rested her arms on the edge of the wall and peered over. “That doesn’t make it any easier to watch.”

  “I don’t want to see!” Ainsley cried from under the desk.

  “It’s okay Ains, we’ll tell you when it’s over.” Jodie said with sympathy.

  Casting her gaze toward the main entrance to the club, Jodie wondered why Rufus hadn’t come back in. She knew with his size and weight he would have made a significant difference to the fight. For him to still be out there, things must be just as bad on the street.

  Sirens pierced the air and a sudden silence fell over the room. The intruders, which Jodie had assumed were pigs or at least affiliated with them, scattered. The only ones who didn’t bolt were the ones unconscious on the floor. Or dead? Jodie couldn’t tell. Adam hauled open a cavity in the wall that Jodie hadn’t even known existed. She exchanged worried looks with Laura as the guys dragged the unconscious men inside, closing the door again as fast as they could. Mark flew up the ladder to where they were standing and then froze when his eyes fell upon them.

  “What are you three doing - never mind! Stay down and shut the hell up.” He ordered.

  The Police and Fire Department entered the building with Rufus. Jodie and Laura had their hands full trying to keep Ainsley quiet as the emergency services surveyed the scene. Jodie squeezed both arms around her quivering friend, daring to take only the shallowest of breaths as she prayed the official technicalities didn’t take long.

  The authorities questioned each of the club’s staff in turn. Jodie understood now why Mark had chosen to hide up there with them. It would be easy to see he didn’t work there, and obvious he’d been in the fight with his grazed chin and blood smeared white chef’s jacket.

  Satisfied no danger remained of the place burning down and no serious injuries had been incurred, the policemen and fire crew left with their reports. A brief moment of silence ensued before the unmistakable sound of the wall cavity opening could be heard again. Mark leaped up and looked over the edge, before dropping down the ladder to rejoin the others.

  Jodie and Laura followed close behind, Ainsley wouldn’t come out but they would deal with that later. Approaching the guys clustered around the unconscious pile of bodies, the two women tried to act casual.

  “We have to keep at least one,” Rufus was saying.

  “I understand that, but we are walking a dangerous line if we do. If we got caught we would really be in the shit,” Danny threw back, blue eyes conflicted with indecision.

  “We have to get some answers bro,” Eddie sided with Rufus, nearby Leon and Mark nodded in agreement.

  “Fine. You’d better be there when I interrogate him then,” Danny didn’t like being outvoted.

  “For sure bro,” Rufus nodded.

  “The chicks are still here,” Mark interjected, pointing. Danny and Eddie’s heads jerked to face Jodie and Laura.

  “Where’s Ains?” Eddie asked, wide eyed with worry. He looked around as if expecting to see her pop out somewhere.

  “She’s still up there,” Laura gestured to the DJ box. “Did any of you see Jessie leave here?”

  “I escorted her outside myself,” Mark answered and Jodie breathed a sigh of relief. However annoying Jessie might be, they didn’t want anything to happen to her.

  “Are any of you hurt?” Danny questioned with concern.

  “No. Ainsley’s just freaked out,” Jodie explained. “She’ll calm down once she realizes the danger is gone.”

  The rest of the room seemed to disappear for Danny as he approached Jodie. “Honey, we have a bit of damage control to take care of. Will you wait for us at my place?” “Okay,” she said.

  It felt strange to be going back to Danny’s place when she knew that he wasn’t going to be there. Jodie wanted to be alone with Danny, but also wanted very much to be living someone else’s life right now. She’d long since grown tired of all the scary stuff that kept happening, the things nobody ever seemed to fully explain.

  Laura waited nearby with her hands planted expectantly on her hips. Standing amongst the roughed-up Therians, her perfectly presented lemon tube-top and figure hugging cinnamon colored pants looked out of place. Laura didn’t do ‘excited’, so only someone who knew her well could read the danger signs. Infuriated with the position she’d been put in tonight, Laura wanted answers and wouldn’t be satisfied until she had them.

  “Will your damage control take long?” She asked in a cool tone.

  Danny looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. “I’m hoping it won’t. You’re welcome to leave at any time Laura.”

  “I don’t bloody think so,” she retorted. Her smile stayed in place, but it was an expression that you didn’t mess with. Even Jodie didn’t challenge that look.

  “Well then feel free to come back to our place. We’ll have a few drinks once this is all ironed out.”

  “I will do that,” Laura nodded, her tone brusque and her facial muscles still tensed.

  “Danny,” began Leon, obviously not thrilled about Laura entering his home. Beside him Mark frowned too, though he chose not to comment.

  Giving him a look that invited no challenge, Danny’s eyes darkened. “Leon, don’t start with me. Not tonight.”

  “It’s cool man,” Eddie said to Leon. “Just chill okay?” Despite his earlier violent demonstration, Eddie would always be the peacekeeper. His voice held a certain charm that most people found dicult to dismiss.

  Leon scowled and kicked one of the bodies on the floor. “Bro!” Eddie yelled. “Have some respect.”

  “They’re worthless pieces of shit.”

  “Who only did what their superior told them to do,” Mark added as he dragged Leon back from the temptation, eyes darting to Laura and Jodie before he continued. “We may not be on the same side, but we don’t have to sink to their level. We’ll take them to a park somewhere and leave them to recover in their own time. We will not treat them like this.”

  “Whatever.” Leon’s level of pissed-off rose another notch. What on earth had upset him?

  Surely it wasn’t the fight. None of the other guys were this rattled. Jodie could see that Mark didn’t seem happy about Laura and Ains coming back to the house either, but he didn’t freak out the way Leon had.

  “I think it’s time we all went on our way,” decided Danny, who received no arguments.

  Danny, Rufus, Adam and Eddie took on the job of moving the bodies while Leon would drive Jenna, Summer and the kitchen-hand home. The bar staff seemed pretty shaken, all three were Therians and knew the others were shifters too, but the night had still come as a shock to them. As soon as they’d gone, Mark announced he would take Jodie, Laura and Ainsley back to the house.

  While everyone busied themselves with their assigned tasks, Mark went back up and retrieved Ains, though it took some coaxing to convince her to come out. The three women piled into Mark’s black Ford F250. Ainsley had calmed down a lot but remained well beyond her comfort zone. She sat between Jodie and Laura in the truck’s back seat, her lip trembling periodically.

  Mark parked in the six-door garage and everyone climbed out. Linking arms with Ainsley, who was still whimpering now and then, Jodie started for the back door. After finding the kitchen empty, they continued on into the house. While Laura and Ainsley sat down in the foyer, Jodie and Mark went looking for Jarvis and Doug. Both were in the oce, which wasn’t unusual.

  Doug appeared to be using Google search, hunting out footage and claims of shifter sightings in New Zealand. Watching his concerted efforts, Jodie wondered how large a task that might be. How many shifter sightings are there? With a soft sigh, she pulled her gaze to the left to the other PC where Jarvis’s features were pulled into a look of intense concentration. Jodie’
s eyes went to the screen and saw him planting rows of produce one after the other. Oh good grief, he’s playing Farmville on Facebook. She almost burst out laughing.

  “Good to see you getting some work done Jarvis.” Mark quipped.

  Jarvis whirled around to look at them, “I’ve been working all day man, shut up.” Closing the window, he lurched out of his chair and stepped away from the PC as though trying to deny everything.

  “Anything unusual out there, D?” Mark addressed Doug. “There have been a few more sightings lately, but nothing of notable interest. Most could be attributed to hoaxes, or the shots are such bad quality that nobody could confirm anything,” Doug replied. He hardly looked up from the grid of monitors and Jodie realized that she didn’t often see him outside this room.

  Moving back toward the center of the building, Jodie noticed that curiosity had gotten the better of Laura, who stood gazing up the hallway from the foyer into one half of the house.

  “How many people live here?” “Eight.” Jodie said.

  “I need something to drink,” Ains announced as she examined her nails. She’d entered planet Ainsley again and if she had just walked into the middle of a sandstorm, she’d have barely noticed.

  “Well there’s beer in the fridge and we have plenty of wine.” Mark said. “If you want anything else you’ll have to raid Danny’s liquor cabinet. You’ll find just about anything in there.”

  “Wine will be lovely,” said Ainsley as she slowly moved from trauma victim to flirty socialite again.

  “Jodie why don’t you show the girls around and I’ll go find some wine,” Mark suggested.

  So Jodie gave them the tour. When they got to Eddie’s room, Ainsley almost had a cardiac arrest. It didn’t surprise Jodie, Ainsley was more of a neat freak than anyone Jodie had ever met. Her mahogany ringlets started jiggling as she paced around mumbling and muttering to herself.

  “Let’s go to the living room, it will be much more comfortable there,” Laura suggested in a soft tone, almost as though she were talking to a child.

  “No, I’ll be okay. I’m just going to stay here for a bit,” Ainsley decided.

  “She’ll be safe here, we can come back and check on her in a while,” Jodie said to Laura.

  Laura agreed and they walked to the living room, but Jodie could tell she was worried about Ainsley. Ains could be like an ostrich sometimes, she tended to bury her head in the sand when things got scary. When she couldn’t do that, she would have an attack of hysterics beyond anything Jodie or Laura had ever encountered with anyone else. It could have been much worse at the club. If hanging out in Eddie’s room and pretending nothing weird had just gone down would make her feel better, Jodie wouldn’t question it.

  Given its unique aspects, Jodie wondered who had designed the house. Every room was presented in meticulous detail, from the chosen colors down to every last chattel. An abundance of couches filled the large living room, decorated with fancy colored pillows and throw rugs. A few ornate tables were dotted between and a beautiful piano sat near the back of the room.

  One of the long walls housed a realistic gas fireplace with actual logs in it and above the stone mantelpiece hung eight strings of beads, each one a different length. Given the rich furnishings and modern artwork, the beads seemed out of place and Jodie knew they must hold some significance.

  The adjacent walls visible from the doorway were covered entirely with expensive rimu shelving and cupboards. Since the room covered such a large area, the capacity two walls of storage provided, bordered on ridiculous.

  A third of the shelving housed books and ornamental keepsakes, the rest hid behind magnificently carved doors. Upon further examination, Jodie noticed there were eight double-doored cupboards. That meant each one of the guys had a bookshelf and a cupboard. It’s like something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, all that’s missing are the names etched into the wood.

  The room felt almost as new to Jodie as it did to Laura, since she’d never spent any time in there. Curiosity got the better of her as she walked over to a cupboard and quietly pulled open the door. Inside, several dozen jigsaw puzzles were crammed into the space. Everything from kittens and puppies to Bulgarian castles to where’s Waldo. Jodie looked at Laura who seemed to be fighting the urge to laugh, and felt glad she wasn’t the only one who had difficulty imagining any of these guys doing a lovely 1500 piece puzzle of two Pekinese in a basket.

  Carefully closing the door, Jodie opened another filled with photo albums, neatly stacked notebooks, art supplies and a few board games. She didn’t want to pry in that cupboard. The next one held all kinds of random junk and knick-knacks. Nothing seemed in any particular order and some of the things looked like they should have been discarded years ago. With a soft chuckle, Jodie wondered if this one belonged to Eddie.

  “If you are looking for Danny’s cupboard, you’re on the wrong side of the room.”

  Jodie jumped a mile and spun around to find Mark standing in the doorway, two bottles of wine and four long stemmed glasses clutched between his fingers.

  “Oh!” She blurted, shooting a side glance at Laura who said nothing.

  “Where’s Ainsley?” He asked.

  “In Eddie’s room,” Laura chipped in, taking a seat on one of the many couches.

  “Whatever,” he shrugged. “Wine?” Laura and Jodie both nodded.

  “It’s the one right in the corner. The adjacent bookshelf is his too,” Mark said as he poured three glasses.

  “Oh, I – “

  “If Danny’s cupboard isn’t what you were looking for,

  I might be inclined to wonder what you were doing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jodie felt terrible for snooping.

  “You might as well look at his cupboard now.” Laura pointed out.

  Jodie opened the double doors and stared at the interior. More than half the space was taken up by alcohol and fancy glasses, so she’d obviously found Danny’s liquor cabinet. Two shelves contained sheet music written in German, which Jodie had no hope of reading. The bottom shelf had a photo album and a shoebox. Jodie didn’t feel right touching those, so she left them where they were.

  Looking at the items on the open shelf adjacent to the cupboard, Jodie’s eyes scanned through the contents. Danny had a small collection of books, which seemed quite ordinary. Another shelf held a strange wooden bowl with a scroll design burned around the rim.

  There were two extremely scary looking knives on stands, the kind that looked like they belonged in a museum and were more like small jagged swords. They had strange words etched onto them including letters that were not from the English alphabet, Jodie guessed Russian. She hated the thought of Danny ever using such vicious weapons and hoped they were just for show.

  Danny’s corner of the room didn’t give her much of an insight into his personality, like his bedroom, it held little that reflected the man behind the dimpled smile. When Jodie turned again, ready to walk over to where Laura had chosen to sit, she found Mark staring at her.

  “Sorry if I seemed rude,” he apologized.

  “It’s okay,” Jodie bounced back.

  “One of the reasons Danny is good at his job is that he’s detached. He’s so good at closeting his emotions that half the time even we don’t know what’s going on in that head of his. I’ve never seen him act the way he does around you, it’s like he’s a different person,” Mark told her. “We may not know you well yet, but we respect Danny and trust his judgment.”

  Laura sipped her wine casually, looking very relaxed as she leaned back on the couch, legs crossed. Adept at discretion, Laura would not be missing a single word of the conversation. Meanwhile Jodie had just experienced another one of those moments where she realized that she didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle. She gazed at Mark as he kept talking, an inquisitive expression fixed upon her face.

  “I don’t know what Danny went through before I met him, but I have never seen anyone so unforgiving of themselves. H
e doesn’t talk about it, but it shows in his perfectionism and his obsession with detail. When we were training, he worked ten times as hard as any of the rest of us. He had something to prove to someone and it was all he cared about. You’re only the second woman he’s ever looked at twice in the whole time I’ve known him. That tells me you must be pretty damned special.”

  “I don’t even know what I am.” Jodie moaned in despair.

  “What do you mean you don’t know what you are?” Laura snapped to attention.

  Jodie groaned, having forgotten Laura didn’t know about that. “Was the other woman a shifter?” She asked, hoping to avoid Laura’s interrogation.

  “Yes, she was a Therian housecat.”

  “A housecat?” Laura’s eyebrows shot skyward.

  “She’s Leon’s cousin,” Mark smiled at her reaction.

  “Leon is a housecat?” Laura’s mouth twitched upward at the corners, “big bad Leon is a little kitty cat?”

  “It’s actually very good,” Mark insisted. “He can blend in better than any of us. Nobody questions a marmalade ball of fluff.”

  “Wait a minute – are we talking about Amy Ormsby?” Things suddenly clicked in Jodie’s brain.

  “You know her?” Mark seemed surprised.

  Jodie nodded. “Her brother is my boss. That actually explains a lot.” Jodie said. Wow, Matt is a housecat... that is just too weird for words.

  “Anyway back to the point,” Laura interjected. “What were you talking about?” Her grey-blue eyes drilled into Jodie, who had no choice but to answer.

  “Danny told me that Luke and I were Therian, inherited from my father. I talked to Gran and she confirmed it, but she won’t tell me anything.”

  A stunned silence followed and the way Laura gaped at her made Jodie feel as though she’d just revealed she had contracted a nasty disease. Oh God, she almost wept, is this going to ruin our friendship?