At that, Brody looked at her with respect. “Yeah, I don’t disagree with you on that. Do you have any idea who?” he asked. “After all, you’re the one who was living there.”

  She winced. “Not a reminder I particularly care to have brought up,” she muttered. “But, yes, I did live there, and definitely people were around. I guess the person to talk to would be the manager. He’s … I mean, I called him the manager, but he was kind of what they called the man of affairs because he handled everything.”

  At that, Brody looked at her, with a suddenly sharp gaze. “What kind of man is he?”

  She stared back at him, surprised. “I would have said fine, but I didn’t really have any dealings with him. I got my paycheck on time, and, if we needed anything for Larry’s care, like clothing or things for school, I’d ask him for the money to get it.”

  “Would he just hand it over or what?”

  “Yes,” she stated, with a nod. “Cash, usually, or we had a credit card we could use. The limit was kept fairly low, and, if we needed to go above that, then I just had to ask.”

  “Were you ever turned down?”

  “No, never. The kid could pretty well have or do whatever he wanted.”

  “What did Larry like to spend money on?” Legend asked from the doorway.

  She turned to face him. “Honestly, schoolbooks.”

  Legend smiled. “He really does like his studies, doesn’t he?”

  “He loves them. He loves school. That would be the one thing I especially worry about. If anybody took that away from him, I could see him slowly crumbling. Anything else, he’s pretty resilient. He would cheerfully never get dressed or shower on a day-to-day basis, yet, if he had his way, he would always be at school. And I don’t know if you know this, but he’s intelligent,” she added as an afterthought, “as in seriously intelligent. Genius level perhaps.”

  “Clary mentioned he has a special energy, and you reckon he’s a bona fide genius.” Brody nodded. “Great, so what are we looking at here? Larry comes up with a future cure for cancer or some such thing?”

  She smiled. “I wouldn’t laugh about it because it’s quite possible.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, but only if we can keep him alive. It’s a little hard to convince people of something like that.”

  “There’s no need to convince anybody,” she declared. “Guys like this, they only want money.” She nodded to the prisoner, who was staring at them both with interest. “The thing is, how does he expect to get cash from the kid, unless somebody out there is offering money for the kid.” She looked at Brody, with a raised eyebrow. He just shrugged and didn’t say anything. She looked back at Legend. “You don’t have much in the way of scruples. Do you want to beat him up for me?”

  Legend stared at her, with a tilt of his head. “I don’t?” he asked in a dry tone.

  She shrugged. “I suspect, when push comes to shove, you would be happy enough to see this guy in another dimension.”

  “Well, I don’t know about another dimension,” he clarified, his eyebrow shooting up, “particularly if I’m using it to come back, but sure I could have some fun making him talk. Still, I can’t say I like your way of putting it though,” he muttered, as he walked forward.

  At that, the newest gunman shifted uneasily in his chair.

  She looked down at him. “And you know about all this gangster stuff, don’t you?” she asked the gunman. “It’s the stuff you always did for Mr. Kartal, right? I mean, you’re probably just one of the many henchmen who took care of a certain corner of his life and always expected to get paid for it.”

  “I did,” he replied, “until he lost this war.”

  “Did you really think he would win this one?”

  He shrugged, then nodded. “Hell yeah.”

  “Interesting,” she murmured. She looked over at the others. “Everybody seems to have been so steady in his corner. Yet I wonder if it was just a code or a belief or if Mr. Kartal really had that kind of ability, and something just went wrong.”

  “He was betrayed,” the prisoner stated. “One of his own people, but we don’t know who.”

  “That really sucks,” she noted quietly, “at least for him.”

  “And also for you,” he declared, looking up at her. “You’re the nanny. You were disposable, just like us.”

  She winced at that. “Thanks, that’s always nice to know.”

  He shrugged. “That’s just the world that we live in.”

  “That’s the world you live in,” she snapped. “I was busy working with Larry, teaching him.”

  “Right, but you were supposed to be a nanny, not a tutor.”

  “I was both,” she corrected him absentmindedly, “but that’s neither here nor there.”

  At that, Legend walked forward and asked, “Who hired you?”

  “Nobody,” he replied, “but there’s …” He hesitated and then shrugged.

  “What?”

  “Well, if I won’t get it, somebody else sure as hell will.”

  “Get what?”

  “The bounty. On the kid. Bring him back alive for $250,000.”

  At that, Blair winced. “Well, at least now we know what he’s worth.”

  “Oh, he’s worth a lot more than that to the right person,” the prisoner declared, with a shrug. “I won’t get a chance at that kind of money, even though I came close.” He glared at Legend. “How the hell did you even know I was out there?”

  “It’s what we do,” he said, with a hard smile. “How many people know about this bounty?”

  At that, he laughed. “Everybody within the group.”

  “How many?”

  “Probably twenty, although I understand you’ve taken out a couple.”

  At that, Legend swore, and Brody even stared at him. “Are we seriously thinking we’ll have to deal with something like seventeen more potential assassins?”

  “I want to know who is behind it,” Blair stated. “That seems to be the bigger issue here. If we can get him to pull the bounty, we can get out of this.”

  “You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?” The gunman snorted.

  “Who posted it?” Brody asked, glaring at the prisoner.

  He hesitated, then grunted. “We’re not exactly sure. It was posted anonymously but within the ranks. We have a group of twenty of us, and we’ve all been working there for quite a while. We didn’t think anything of it, until this announcement came out. Not knowing who put it out, we also didn’t know how many people we would be racing against for the prize, but most of us came looking for it.”

  “Of course you did. That’s a fair chunk of money, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, you’re not kidding. For those of us who are looking to get the hell away right now, it’s escape money, with a chance to relocate somewhere else.”

  “If you’ve been associated with Mr. Kartal all this time,” Blair noted, “obviously you have some decent money of your own set aside. There must be.”

  “Well, some people moved their money ahead of time just in case, but others didn’t, and assets of those known accomplices have been frozen. Unfortunately I’m one of those.”

  “So,” Blair added, “the government knows about you, and, therefore, maybe they’ll pay us to get you back.”

  The gunman stiffened at that and glared at her.

  She shrugged. “I mean, the kid’s got to have his future paid for, and, while all you guys are busy trying to kidnap him, who the hell is helping him out?”

  “He’s got lots of money.”

  “Not necessarily,” Brody pointed out. “It depends on who’ll end up owning some of that property. If it was gained by stolen funds, you know the kid won’t have a whole lot left in the end.”

  At that, the prisoner nodded. “That’s quite possible. If the government ever figures it all out and gets a hold of what he took from everybody, they’ll see that a lot of those funds belong to the people.”

  “Great,” Blair muttered. “It won’t be fun telling him that.” When Brody looked at her with a cocked eyebrow, she explained, “He’ll want to give it back to the people.”

  Brody chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m liking this kid more and more already.”

  “He’s a good kid, and he’ll certainly need enough to get through life, but he won’t want to keep anything that could have come through his father’s ill-gotten gains, particularly if the people were hurt by it.”

  At that, the prisoner looked at her in surprise and then smirked. “Do you really think any of his stuff came through hard work? He got it all through blackmail, through murder, through jobs of the worst kind,” the gunman shared. “He’s been so successful up until now, and not one of us thought anything of it. We all headed down this pathway, knowing that he would be the next president.”

  “Until somebody turned you in.”

  “Well, until somebody turned him in,” the gunman clarified. “Still, I find myself wanting to find that bastard and take him out myself.”

  “For yourself or out of loyalty to your leader?” she asked curiously.

  He shrugged. “Both. It could have been a good gig for me too.”

  She couldn’t even imagine what life would be like if these guys had taken over the country. “Well, the bottom line right now,” she said, looking over at Brody, “is that we need to find out who posted the bounty. We need to get that revoked, and the kid needs to be stashed somewhere safe, until he’s old enough to make decisions on his own—if he even gets an option to make a decision.”

  “That’s the problem,” Legend noted. “Right now we’re doing paperwork. He can make a decision after the fact, once he’s had a chance to go over everything. It’s not all stolen money. Some of it came from Larry’s mother. Unfortunately I suspect that he married her just to get her money, and frankly I’ve always wondered if he didn’t have something to do with her death because, aside from the money, she was nothing but a pain in the ass to him.”

  “That’s exactly how it happened,” the prisoner confirmed, with a laugh. “He had no time for women, unless they had a purpose.”

  “He didn’t have the time for anybody, unless they had a purpose,” Legend corrected.

  At that, their captive looked at him closely. “You’re Legend, aren’t you? His son, his disappointing son.”

  “Yeah, disappointing because I wouldn’t stand by his side while he tried to steal the country from the people.”

  The gunman shrugged. “There have been coups since time began,” he muttered, “so I don’t know why you have to be so fussy about it right now.”

  “I’m not,” he countered, with half a smile. “I just don’t believe in playing games based on power and greed, especially when it involves other people’s lives.”

  The prisoner laughed. “I could tell you who I think the traitor is, but I’ll want something for it.”

  “Yeah, what do you want?” Blair asked, looking over at him.

  He shrugged. “I need to get out of here for one, freedom for another, and money to survive of course.”

  She nodded absentmindedly. “Of course that’s all you want”—she gave a fake laugh—“as if we have nothing better to do.”

  “You’ve got the kid’s fortune to control,” he noted. “That’s huge in itself.”

  “Is it though?” she asked, looking over at Legend. “Seems like an awful lot of people want to control it—and him.” Legend just nodded. Blair faced the prisoner but went silent.

  “Better decide fast. Not much time to think about it,” the prisoner warned. He opened his mouth and started to laugh. “Besides …”

  Splat.

  *

  Legend raced out of the house, disappearing into the shadows. He knew instinctively that Brody would go out the other direction, leaving the two women with the body of their prisoner, who no doubt was dead. Whoever had fired the shot had blown off half his head. At the same time, if he were somehow still alive, not much of anything could be done for him. Clary would have to hold down the fort inside, while Legend and Brody worked the perimeter.

  What Legend wanted was the damn shooter. If there were some fifteen more people still out here, it would be a nightmare that would have no end because half of those could go undercover for a time—years even—sinking into the shadows, only to pop up at any point in the future, when they thought the circumstances were better. Legend was not prepared to live with that, and it was definitely something his younger brother should not have to tolerate.

  Moving as silently as possible, while still at full speed, Legend raced to the road on the other side, where the cabin property stopped. There he came to a halt and tuned up his hearing. He heard a vehicle revving up ever-so-slightly, as if somebody was impatiently waiting for someone to return. Noting that, Legend quickly turned in that direction and snuck around, until he came up behind the vehicle itself. Without any warning, he reached for the driver’s door, opened it, and dragged the driver out onto the ground.

  The guy cried out and curled up into a ball, his hands over his head. “I didn’t do anything,” he shrieked.

  “Really?” Legend asked, his voice lethal. “I don’t think I believe you.”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t. I was just supposed to wait for a guy to return. He just wanted a lift back into town.”

  “When was this?”

  “Not very long ago, maybe half an hour?”

  At that, Legend swore, realizing that this guy had been left as a decoy. “Would you recognize him? Did he leave you anything to identify him?”

  “No, nothing. He had a hat on, and his collar was pulled up, as if he was really cold. He kept saying he’d be back in a few minutes, to just stay here and wait. Then I heard a gunshot, and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You’ll shut down this vehicle, and you’ll come in and talk to the rest of us because he shot a prisoner we already had in our custody.”

  At that, the driver looked up at him, quivering. “A prisoner?”

  Legend realized just how that sounded. “Yeah, a prisoner. As in the asshole shooter and his victim were both trying to attack a young boy in the cabin.”

  “What?” the driver asked in astonishment.

  “First off, I want an ID on this guy.”

  “I don’t have anything, nothing at all.” At that, he started to cry. “Oh my God, am I in trouble for this?”

  “I guess it depends on what you’re doing here,” Legend noted, stepping back and realizing that the guy really was just a decoy, and the asshole shooter was probably long gone. As Legend heard something and turned around, Brody slid out of the shadows. Legend called him over and explained what happened.

  Brody looked at the driver in disgust. “What did he pay you?”

  “One hundred bucks,” he replied. “I’m trying to save money to go to college, so a hundred bucks is a lot.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” Brody replied, “but now that hundred bucks just let a killer go free.”

  “But I didn’t know,” he cried out.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Brody said. He turned and looked around in the shadows. “I don’t feel like he’s here.”

  “No, but, if he isn’t here, where the hell is he?” Legend asked. Then he looked over at the driver. “Is there any other way to get in or out of here?”

  He nodded. “I mean, once you get to the highway, another one intersects it pretty quickly. He could easily have flagged down a ride, saying he was broken down or something,” the driver muttered. “Honestly he asked me to stay though, so why would he do that?”

  “Because it distracted us,” Brody stated in disgust, “and we took the bait. Damn it.”

  Legend, just as grim, nodded. “Yeah, I hear you, and I agree. I don’t feel like this guy’s still around.” He looked back at the driver. “But you’re not going anywhere until we get a description.”

  “Six feet tall,” he babbled. “Had a black jacket on, with the collar turned up, and he was younger maybe …” Then he hesitated. “Well, I mean, way older than me, so like you guys’ age.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “He told me that he was checking to see if his girlfriend was meeting her lover here, and he just wanted to make sure. Honestly, when I heard the gunshot, I was afraid that he’d killed her.”

  “Well, he shot somebody. That’s for sure. Did you see a weapon on him?”

  The driver shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t have picked him up if he’d had one in plain sight. I don’t need that kind of headache.”

  “You don’t need any of this,” Legend declared, “but this is what happens when somebody wants to pay you one hundred bucks for a ride.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not even that much by the time I pay for the gas.”

  “Where did you pick him up?”

  “I was just coming out of classes. The college is about what? Maybe ten miles from here? He approached me and said that he needed a lift and that he was pretty upset.”

  “Did he look upset?”

  The driver stopped and pondered that. “No, not really, he looked mad.”

  “Right, so chances are he was coming here, prepared for trouble,” Brody replied.

  “He brought a weapon,” Legend noted, “and the only people doing that are the ones who are planning on trouble.”

  At that, Brody nodded. “Well, this guy still needs to talk to the authorities because we need this to end.”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” Legend agreed, “but, in the meantime, we need to find out who the hell’s behind all this shit.”

  “He did talk on the phone,” the college guy offered suddenly.

  At that, both men zeroed in on him. “What did he say?”

  “He talked about a kid and how it better be for real. Otherwise somebody would pay.”

  “Did he give you a name?”

  “He did, yeah. Hang on. Let me think.” He considered it for a minute. “I think it was Richard.”