A Game of Skills

By T.C. Blue

A lot of things happen within the confines of a grey-ops organisation whose services are offered to the highest bidder. Sometimes even love, though that may well be easier said than done.

The last thing Simon is expecting when his latest Game goes thoroughly wrong is to be rescued by a man he doesn't know and an oddly intelligent child, but that's exactly what happens. He's pulled from the proverbial fire by the strange duo. That would have been fine if he hadn't developed some unexpected and unwelcome attraction to the man, Morgan.

Morgan's been running for years, trying to keep his best friend, Ellie's, child from the clutches of what he's sure is a group Rico wants no part of. Helping Simon is barely tolerable. Developing feelings for the secretive man is less so.

Between Simon's organisation, the Farmingdale Gentleman's Club, and whoever's after Rico, Morgan's pretty sure that he and Rico are screwed. When things come to a head, he has to make some hard choices, which might or might not involve Simon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pride Publishing
• Release date: Aug 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9780857152572

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A Total-E-Bound Publication

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A Game of Skills

ISBN #978-0-85715-257-2

©Copyright T.C. Blue 2010

Cover Art by Natalie Winters ©Copyright August 2010

Edited by Michele Paulin

Total-E-Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2010 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

Warning: This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has been rated Total-e-burning.

The Farmingdale Gentleman's Club

A GAME OF SKILLS

T.C. Blue

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Dumpster: Dempster Brothers, Inc.

Toyota: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha Ta Toyota Motor Corporation

Muzak: Muzak, LLC

McDonalds: McDonald's Corporation

Scrabble: Hasbro, Inc.

Chuck E. Cheese: CEC Entertainment Concepts, LP

VW: Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft

Buick: General Motors Corporation

The Princess Diaries: Walt Disney Pictures, based on novels by Meg Cabot

Love Boat: Aaron Spelling Productions, Inc.

Jell-O: Kraft Foods Holdings, Inc.

Augmentin: SmithKline Beecham Corporation

Hummer: General Motors Corporation

The Godfather: Paramount Pictures Corporation

Pepé Le Pew: Times Warner Entertainment Company

Masterpiece Theatre: WGBH Educational Foundation

Velcro: Velcro Industries B.V. Limited Liability Company

Chapter One

It was the small tinge of wildness in the blond’s eyes that had Morgan Day pausing—wildness at rest, because the young man wasn’t at all agitated. He wasn’t doing anything but standing there, tray in hand while he stared at Morgan. Then Morgan saw a small ripple of recognition swim over those near-black eyes and only years of hiding in plain sight allowed him to keep his response to a purely internal shit.

He forced his own gaze to pass over the young man. Forced himself to pat his pockets as if he’d slowed merely to confirm that he had everything he needed. His steps were measured and sure as he moved on, eyes straight ahead as his mind muttered left, right, left, right, feet following the careful cadence from long years of practice. He held to it until he rounded the corner, at which point, he…ran.

Blocks passed in an eternity that seemed to stretch on and on, but he didn’t dare move any faster. He could hurt someone by accident, moving at full speed, but more importantly, running full-tilt into some strolling person just wandering about as people were prone to do on warm and sunny Saturday afternoons might hurt him. Might slow him down enough that he wouldn’t make it in time.

The deli slipped past then a block farther, the laundry. He slowed there to look through the glass storefront then slid back into his fast jog. Plenty of people, but not the ones that mattered. Then the little grocery where they did all their shopping and three doors down, the local pawn shop.

Morgan ducked inside, one hand digging deep into his pants’ pocket as he tried to remember exactly how much cash he had with him.

Not enough. He knew that for a fact as he exited the store, one side of his jacket weighed down by his purchases. Not nearly enough, which meant he would have to take a chance later, but he’d work it out. He would. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

Two more blocks that he ran by memory, knowing what lay between the pawn shop and the dingy little second storey walk-up they were calling home for the moment.

Ellie! he called out, even as he fumbled with his keys, the urgency singing through his veins, screeching a nails-on-chalkboard soprano that hurt so much nothing would help other than having it stop. Ellie! Rico! We gotta move!

The door swung too far, knob slamming into the wall behind it from his hard shove.

Morgan! Ellie shrieked, the sound loud and strident and almost as bad as the urgent need to get the hell away, to get out. There goes our deposit, damn it!

"Christ! Fuck the deposit, Ellie, we need to fucking go!"

He was already shoving a few extra things into the big duffel bag he would shoulder like he always did, and Rico was doing the same, though slower and with a smaller bag. But Ellie? God damn it, Ellie was just standing there as if they had all the time in the world. As if she’d really believed they’d be staying this time. In Brooklyn. For long enough to get the deposit back on the one room shit-box when their so-called lease expired.

Damn it, Ellie, Morgan growled, ignoring her crossed arms and narrowed green glare. Get your shit! We’re already on borrowed time! His own bag full enough that he could barely clip the top closed, he tossed it at the door and started in on her backpack. Her entirely empty camping backpack. Jesus fucking Christ! Which part of ‘always be ready’ do you not understand? Or are you just tired of breathing?

It wasn’t until he came out of the bathroom a few minutes later to throw what Ellie called her ‘girly supplies’ into her bag that she seemed to realise he was serious, and damn it, Morgan would make her pay for making him touch them. Later. Once they were gone and safe. Once Rico was safe.

You’re serious, Ellie nearly whispered, her usually gold-toned face suddenly white and stark. Good. It meant she was remembering. Meant she was finally catching up with just how screwed they would all be if she didn’t get her ass in gear.

I’m always serious, Morgan grunted, checking the straps on Rico’s backpack, which was necessarily much smaller than Ellie’s, but no less important to them all. Here, he said, giving Rico a smile as he pulled the snub-nosed revolver from his jacket and handed it over. You remember how to use this, don’t you, Rico? Brace yourself against a wall or something big and sturdy—

Point, aim low and shoot. Duh. Well, at least Rico was on board, which was more than Morgan could say for Ellie because she was still just standing there, bone-pale and shaking.

Damn it, Ellie, get your fucking bag on and let’s go! He could be wrong. It was possible. Maybe the guy at that café hadn’t really recognised him, but Morgan couldn’t take that chance, couldn’t afford to even hope. Not with Ellie and Rico’s lives depending on him to trust his instincts. Or do you want the kid in their hands?

If he’d cared any less for Rico, he would have gone easier on Ellie, but while his and Ellie’s lives were at stake in one way, Rico’s was endangered in an entirely different manner. Morgan would die himself if it meant keeping Rico from whatever the people after them had planned, even without knowing exactly what that was.

It couldn’t be good; that much Morgan was sure of. Any group that would resort to illegal means to ‘acquire’ a child once the legal avenues had been exhausted couldn’t possibly want that same kid for philanthropic reasons.

Okay, Ellie finally answered, pack on her back and strapped solidly around her waist. Let’s do this. She was breathing fast and hard, but she looked steady, finally. Ready.

Thank God, if he even existed. If he did, Morgan figured he’d forgive the uncertainty. After all, God would have to know exactly what the three of them had been through in the last two years. It was enough to shake anyone’s faith, especially someone who’d never been a true believer.

You and Rico will need to hide once we get to the bodega, Morgan said, giving Ellie a quick nod when he saw the nine millimetre held down beside her leg. She was thinking again. Good. I have to collect that package then we’re out of here.

For fuck’s sake, Morgan, you couldn’t have taken care of that first?

Morgan nodded, short and sharp, as he hit his zone and emotion drained away. I could have. I thought it was more important to get the two of you out of here before our ‘visitors’ crashed the party. Now shut the fuck up and follow my lead. You too, Rico. We’re nowhere near out of the woods yet.

Or even out of Brooklyn, Rico piped in, and Morgan would have to remember that later. Would have to tell Rico that being precocious was all well and good, but being a smug little pain in the ass was another thing entirely. Later.

Definitely later. They had to get the fuck out of Dodge first and hope their next life ended up being less easily compromised. It wouldn’t be easy, damn it. The people after Rico had wider-reaching arms than Morgan had thought. The three of them, meaning himself, Ellie and the kid, had barely escaped six times in the last two years, and only one of those had been without shots fired and some wounds that would have been much more dangerous without Ellie’s four years in the ER before their current…situation.

Okay, Morgan murmured as he crouched beside the open doorway, on my mark. One finger up as silence echoed from the hallway. A second finger, as Morgan frowned at the quality of that silence. Then a third finger, even as he rolled into the hall, stained carpet scratching his hands.

Ellie was right behind him, dragging his duffel and using it as a shield; he knew that much. Rico would follow before slipping behind her, staying low and drawing a bead on anyone who could be caught in the sights of the revolver. Anyone who might get a shot off at them.

Six seconds, because Morgan counted, and it was almost enough to make him think he’d imagined the fragile, crystalline nature of the utter quiet, but then he saw just the smallest shift in the shadows of the stairs and waved Ellie and Rico towards the apartment at the end of the hall.

Always have an escape route. Always have a plan. Sergeant Day had drilled that into him very well over the years. At the time, he’d hated the old man, but if his father had still been alive, Morgan knew he would have been thanking him in every way possible. Some lessons were worth the pain involved in learning them.

Go, he mouthed, glancing back at Ellie. He had less than a second to see her start moving before the shit-storm hit.

Fucking bullets, fucking silencers. Like keeping the sharp, angry reports of gunfire quiet somehow made it okay. Made it simple and easy and less fucking brutal than it was.

Morgan didn’t worry about the niceties. He just let fly, returning fire as he scooted backwards, trying to reach old Mrs. Guitierez’s apartment without getting shot in anything important.

The stairwell was narrow, which was part of the reason he’d chosen the obscenely overpriced shit-box apartment he’d been sharing with Ellie and Rico, and while Mrs. Guitierez’s place didn’t open onto a fire escape, it did have a window that not only opened, but did so just ten feet above the dumpster out back. It wasn’t much, but it would work.

Morgan kept moving back along the dirty carpeting, shoes digging in for traction as he fired methodical shots towards the stairs. He would have loved to bombard whoever was firing at them with a rain of bullets, but one clip only held so many rounds. He didn’t think they’d let him call a timeout to reload.

Another sharp puff of plaster and the little gasp of drywall violently penetrated, beside his head this time, told him to move faster, so he did. He had to, no matter how tired he was of this shit. Ellie and Rico were counting on him. They’d never make it if he died. Hell, even if he got wounded badly enough.

The thought alone had Morgan’s mouth tightening even more as he fired again then moved a few feet. Fired, moved along the carpet. Fired and rolled through the open door of Mrs. Guitierez’s apartment. He scrambled, getting the door closed and throwing the locks, even while he blessed the old lady’s greed for the fact that she was willing to leave her apartment unlocked during the day, just in case. It was why he paid her five hundred dollars every month, though Morgan doubted she declared the cash on her taxes.

He had moments to move to the left in the small living room and turn the old, heavy sofa on its side. Another moment or three to dart over and look through the bedroom door.

Go, he ordered when he saw Ellie and Rico still there, just standing by the window, though they’d opened it and, at least, removed the screen.

He was still cold inside, still sunk in the icy realm of action and reaction, where feelings got a man killed just as quickly as a second ticking by.

Forget the bodega and get to the transport. If I’m not there in twenty minutes, you need to leave. Rico, there’s a map in the car. You’ll need to navigate for Ellie if I don’t make it. Watch your six, guys. Now, go. Remember, calm and cool.

He didn’t pay any attention to Ellie’s arguing. He didn’t have that kind of time. Instead, he popped the near-empty clip from his gun and slammed a new one home as he heard Rico ordering Ellie, "Come on, Mom! We gotta go!"

And Rico, he added quietly as he heard careful feet moving along the carpeted hallway, loud to his ears for all that he might be imagining it. No tricks unless you guys are really trapped, got it? Especially where someone might see. Love you, kiddo. You and your Mom. Because he did. Even while divorced from his feelings, that much was still there. Ellie. Rico. They were more important than his own life. No question. They were his life. Now, go. I’ll see you soon.

The sound of the doorjamb splintering covered whatever noise Ellie and Rico might have made dropping into the dumpster, and then there was nothing but the sput-sput-sput of silenced weapons and the booming, shuddering explosions of Morgan’s own gun firing repeatedly.

There were also comparatively quiet cries and the sounds of bodies hitting the floor, but they went unheard, unnoticed as neighbours and passersby turned the other way and went about their business as though ignoring violence would somehow make them invisible to it and therefore immune. Cities were like that all over.

* * * * *

The stone was one Ellie would have liked, Morgan told himself as he and Rico stood, hand in hand, listening to the silence that wasn’t truly quiet. There were birds chirping, small animals here and there, crickets and other insects making their presence known with the vague rustles and small sounds of their various natures.

A deer nibbled at some sort of foliage at the edge of the cemetery, far enough away that the animal was still relaxed, though Morgan could tell it watched them, and that was a relief. People still hunted regularly in that part of Mississippi; anything human trying to sneak in from that direction would set the beast off. It wasn’t the best alarm system, but it beat none at all.

They’d been coming here once every couple of of months for the last two years, he and Rico. Paying their respects, he supposed, though Rico was still young enough, at almost ten, to think Ellie was still there, somehow. To believe that she listened as that small, light voice said Miss you, Mom. Love you. Wish you were here.

Well, Morgan wished Ellie were there, too. Or more precisely, he wished she were with them. Alive and well, no matter how damned annoying she’d always been. He wished she hadn’t died and left him to try to raise Rico all on his own while there were still people out there wanting to grab the kid for whatever purpose.

It probably had something to do with Rico’s…unusual abilities. The ones that had first shown themselves even while Ellie had been in labour with the kid. In fact, Morgan was sure of it. Any child that literally glowed in the nursery only hours after being birthed in the back of a car, then healed its mother’s torn…girl-parts the first time it suckled? Yeah. That would definitely be of interest. To pretty much everyone. Unfortunately, the wrong sort of people had heard. Even with Rico not doing anything out of the ordinary for years after, someone had heard and decided Rico should be theirs.

It would have been easy to blame Rico for Ellie’s death and all the craziness and running that had led up to it, but Morgan couldn’t quite do that. Couldn’t bring himself to blame an infant for being unable to control what were apparently natural impulses.

He also couldn’t deny that Rico had scared him, at first, and not just in the usual ‘the baby’s so tiny, what if I break it’ sort of way that most fathers experienced. He wasn’t actually Rico’s father, but he and Ellie…they’d had a pact. Love and support and best friends to the end. From the moment they’d met, it had felt like they’d found the missing part of their souls. Or it had to Morgan. So they’d sworn eternal friendship and love, that day in kindergarten. The amazing part, to Morgan, was that even at five years old, they’d not only meant it, but it had held true.

Morgan sighed and shook his head as he pulled himself from his thoughts to stare at the stone. Lisabeta Morgan it read, and My greatest work is not yet finished. Ellie would have liked that, Morgan knew. Would have liked the nod to Rico. He’d had to change Ellie’s date of birth, as well as her name, just in case whoever was after Rico was watching for death records, which they likely were, but Ellie would have appreciated being two and a half years younger.

He’d had to do an assortment of things that still made him queasy in order to have Ellie buried in this tiny graveyard outside of the equally tiny town of Plantain, Mississippi. Disguising the bullet holes in her cooling body, making it look like a car accident, had been…

Morgan swallowed hard, keeping the bile down from sheer practice.

Still, it was worth it. Worth it to give Ellie a proper resting place. Worth it to give Rico a real grave to visit. Worth it to make sure someone other than him and Rico remembered Ellie, even if it was only as ‘the stranger’s wife’—the stranger who’d stayed less than a month before moving on when the lack of memories in Plantain, Mississippi had made him want to take his child to a place where remembrances could be shared. Or so he’d told the locals, and so they’d believed.

You ready to go, little monster? Morgan asked, looking down into eyes the exact same green as Ellie’s. Hell, Rico had her reddish blond hair, too, though it became a little less blond every month, the red asserting itself more and more. It must have come from Rico’s father, or at least, Morgan thought so.

Yeah, Rico answered quietly, giving him a slow nod. We need to get out of here. And we can’t go home. They’re waiting.

That was a fairly recent development, Rico knowing things ahead of time or even things in the present that Morgan couldn’t explain. He thought it might have to do with hormones or something, now that Rico was nearing puberty. Even so, he didn’t doubt the information. He hadn’t since Rico had announced that school wasn’t safe one morning and had been so insistent about it that Morgan had bundled Rico up against the Maine winter and piled them both into the car. He’d driven past the school and seen eight red SUVs outside, along with the kids lined up and shivering during the ‘fire drill’ that allowed each and every child to be seen by the alleged Fire Marshall and his hand-picked men.

They’d run after a quick stop back at the house for cash and clothes. They’d changed their names again, thanks to a former army buddy of Morgan’s. And