Swordfall (The Fall Trilogy, #2) Read online

  SWORDFALL

  Book 2 of the Fall Trilogy

  OLIVETTE DEVAUX

  Mugen Press

  Pittsburgh, PA

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  Mugen Press, Inc.

  Pittsburgh, PA 15209, USA

  www.mugenpress.com

  SWORDFALL

  1st Edition by Dreamspinner Press (pen name Kate Pavelle)

  Copyright © Kate Pavelle 2015

  2nd Edition by Mugen Press (pen name Olivette Devaux)

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imaginations and any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Mugen Press.

  COVER ART: Designed and executed by Miranda Pavelle, the force behind PavelleArt

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  EXCLUSIVE FREE READ!

  OTHER READS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Asbjorn glanced at Sean. They were seated on the cushy, beige sofa in Asbjorn’s mother’s Copenhagen living room. Very Danish, very natural, very cozy – except for the newscast that currently ran on the large flat-screen TV.

  Sean stared at it with wide, anxious eyes. Sean seemed to have blocked out everything around him – the warm wood tones of Danish décor, the neutral colors of the furniture, the red and white embroidery on the wall.

  He could have been on a different planet from the look of him. Asbjorn took in the tension in Sean’s frame as the guttural syllables of his mother tongue felt foreign after the many years of his absence and in the rapid-fire rendition of the talking head on the screen. His other senses stretched in the throes of his effort.

  The sounds of Asbjorn’s family moving in the background broke through the patter of the newscast. The waft of cinnamon in the air overwhelmed him all at once, and the fumes of hot glogg were dizzying with fruit and caraway and alcohol. The sap of his mother’s Christmas tree wove through it all, throwing Asbjorn into a maelstrom of overload. He stood and circled behind the sofa, his hand gripping its back and his knees bent as the ground threatened to sway beneath him like the deck of a ship used to, years ago. He focused on what the reporter had to say.

  “What is it, Asbjorn?” Sean asked from below him. He tilted his head up, blond hair falling back like strands of honey, and his throat stretched out, exposed, and vulnerable as he tried to meet Asbjorn’s eyes.

  Vulnerable.

  The segment ended, yet the deck beneath his feet continued to sway, harkening to his long-gone Navy days.

  “Asbjorn? Did I see ‘Walpole, Massachusetts, USA’ on Danish TV?”

  Sean’s voice brought him back to the here and now, and the ground steadied under Asbjorn’s feet. Yet Sean was still looking up at him, cheeks flushed from alcohol and the winter-pale skin of his throat stretched over his corded muscles and Adam’s apple.

  Vulnerable once again.

  Asbjorn tightened his jaw as a shiver passed through his body like a wave of Baltic air, icy and threatening. He walked around to where Sean shared the sofa with Asbjorn’s sister and sat heavily next to him, making the cushion sag under his weight. He reached for the remote and turned the TV off.

  “Fuck.”

  The expletive broke the sonic void left in the wake of the newscast, and Asbjorn met the concern in Sean’s eyes.

  “The sonovabitch broke out of jail.” Asbjorn choked back his temper and forced his voice to come out in an even tone and pitch, as though he’d been the dispassionate news reporter.

  “Frank Pattel!” Sean’s voice was raspy and incredulous.

  “Yeah. Only a week after you got him busted! They call it the ‘Christmas Jail Break’ at Walpole. Our buddy Frank Pettel was apparently one of several inmates who escaped.”

  “Fuck.” The word slipped past Sean’s inner regulator and his lips, and as they looked at one another, Asbjorn saw color drain from his face.

  Asbjorn felt for Sean with his whole heart. The assault. The weeks of hard work. The terror of being stalked. The meticulous care with which he recorded every telephone call, the action-packed arrest – it must have all come back to him. It was hardly possible for Sean’s hard work – their hard work – to be undone so soon, so fast.

  “Let me get on the Internet and find out what happened.” Asbjorn strode to the home office, where their sofa bed was still pulled out with its covers neatly made.

  “Asbjorn!” Helga Jenssen called after him, her words reverberating through the small house. “You better have a good reason for getting online on Christmas. You’re disrupting Christmas Peace.”

  Asbjorn turned to her, his Danish soft and serious. “It’s not I who disrupts the Christmas Peace, Mom. There was an incident before we left.” He paused, hesitating. Finally he spilled the beans. “A dangerous criminal attacked Sean and he worked hard to put him in jail. The man broke free. I need to find out what happened.”

  “Now?” Asbjorn saw her frown.

  “Now. This might be a matter of life and death.”

  Helga met her son’s piercing blue gaze, nodded, and went upstairs to join her husband in the bedroom. Once there, Asbjorn figured she’d pull out her laptop, activate her Wi-Fi connection, and snoop. Just like always, he knew his mother would try to find every single thing about Sean. He was, after all, the controversial – and male – object of Asbjorn’s affection.

  Asbjorn scanned Boston-area news websites with a deepening frown. Both videos and print news reported the sensational, Hollywood-style “Christmas Jail Break.” Although they provided a lot of local color, they failed to deliver on useful details.

  The infamous organized crime figure, “Mad Dawg” Hatalsky, was arrested along with most of his lieutenants on a multitude of charges, including human trafficking, being the head pimp of New England, money laundering, jury manipulation, and tax evasion. It is reported that Mr. Hatalsky’s Ukrainian-based organization has failed to wrest control of the drug trade from the traditional local purveyors.

  According to our source, who shall remain anonymous, the snitch who gave them up was loosely associated with a Jamaican gang in Mr. Hatalsky’s area of operation, which has traditionally controlled the drug trade up and down the coast of New England. A local construction company owner volunteered that both the local businessmen, who were forced to pay protection money, and Mr. Hatalsky’s competitors “resented the intrusion of some ruthless, ex-KGB Eastern European upstart with no regard for the way business had always been done in these parts, and whose sense of fair play and rules differed so much from their norm.”

  Asbjorn raised his eyebrows. They left MIT for their winter break before all these stories broke, and this big picture was new to him. A gang war was a situation to avoid, except he doubted they would have a choice in the matter. Asbjorn was well aware that every metropolitan area had its share of underworld figures, but he had never thought his
and Sean’s effort to bring one wrongdoer to justice would bring them to their vicinity. He felt his skin tingle in nervous anticipation as he clicked on a related news link.

  The Jamaican snitch was supposed to negotiate a deal with Mad Dawg Hatalsky, leading him into a well-planned trap. The informant agreed to testify in court in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Immunity was his “get out of jail free card” for his promised testimony, along with alleged financial compensation by the Jamaican elements....

  The informant was gunned down in the middle of the street only an hour after the crime lord made his escape from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ correction facility in Walpole. His escape was aided by Frank Pettel, who was allegedly held on an unrelated charge.

  Asbjorn would have laughed at the ridiculous tale, had the story not been so personal. He frowned as he glanced through the doorway at Sean’s motionless form. He knew he’d do anything to spare Sean being stalked again, having to strap on a Kevlar vest again, having to testify again.

  It had just about killed Asbjorn the last time around, when he was unable to substantively help Sean in Frank Pettel’s capture. His Navy experience, his covert ops background, his high karate ranking – all that had been useless as Asbjorn had to sit on the sidelines, with his role having been limited to moral support, bodyguard, and unwanted advice.

  He forced his face into a smooth and neutral expression of innocence. He and Sean had almost broken up in a battle of wills, poised on a knife’s edge where one side signified Sean’s safety, and the other his independence. Asbjorn didn’t relish having to balance on the same blade again.

  SEAN THOUGHT HE HAD done everything right. He’d called the police. He’d cooperated. He’d recorded almost every call, coaxing and recording an oral testimony and confession out of Frank Pettel. He had gone out in the middle of the night to lure the perp into the hands of the police, protected by a Kevlar vest, a can of pepper spray, and his somewhat flimsy courage. He remembered that night, how the shadows of tree branches drew crazed patterns on the glistening snow. He remembered hoping Frank Pettel wouldn’t aim for his head.

  He had had resolve.

  He had done everything right and it had been all for naught.

  Sean’s head spun as probability equations kept popping up in his mind. The odds of a rapist going after their accuser once his jail term was served were only 3 percent. That wasn’t so bad. He could’ve lived with that. But how about a steaming mad, angry convict? A violent man who swore bloody revenge? A guy who busted out of jail by force? The odds of Frank Pettel going after him were, what, 70 percent? One hundred percent?

  Could he live with that?

  Cold fear gripped his gut, the sort of fear that paralyzed thought and stilled breathing.

  He would have to do it all over again, except this time around Frank Pettel would know about his martial arts skills. Sean used to think he was so invincible and cool, floating on a cloud of ki and maintaining his moral ground of nonaggression. His students called him sensei and he taught them what he used to think were self-defense skills. Yet those skills had failed him that night.

  He thought back to his defeat. Door crashing, glass spilling, the attacker’s weight pinning him to his bed.

  Bile rose up his throat. He swallowed the bitter taste and took a sip of glogg, sweet and heady, hoping to chase it all away. Sean had lost the battle, and he had thought the war was won – weeks, months of having been stalked and pursued, luring the sociopath into a web of spun of lies and covert police protection – except the war was far from over. The storm turned toward him again, its howling winds bitter and stronger than ever.

  What had been a trivial game of bait – meeting his attacker under the cover of darkness, hoping beyond hope the cops were there and watching in the solitude of that frozen night – had suddenly become a deadly game of cat and mouse.

  A game he didn’t know how to play.

  A game he’d have to improvise.

  Just like before, people couldn’t guard him day and night. Even though he wanted to, Asbjorn couldn’t keep him under lock and key.

  Sean closed his eyes. An image of a fist exploded in his mind and an echo of the bruising blow made itself known through forceful memory.

  All by himself.

  Sean shivered.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU don’t know how they did it?” Asbjorn glared at his friend, Detective Mark Falwell, through the Skype connection on the screen. The image lurched in uneven movements as the video data made its way across the ocean, then back again. Mark’s blond hair gleamed white on the monitor, reflecting the lighting of his cluttered home office.

  “They don’t tell us the details, Asbjorn. This is their mess now. We caught the guy, the jail was supposed to keep him in, and they fucked it all up. I dunno what to tell ya.” Mark looked over his shoulder. “Hey... they’ll be serving Christmas dinner in five minutes or so. I’ll have to go. But keep me posted. How’s Sean taking it?”

  “Catatonic.”

  “No shit,” Mark said with a nod. “Listen... think about staying in Europe a bit longer, okay? We have the perp’s contact info and now he’s associated himself with the Hatalsky organization. I think we may have more of a handle on tracking him. Their outfit is still functioning. That’s good. It makes them easier to follow.”

  “Good? You say it’s good, and you ask us to stay, man?”

  Mark’s image jerked on the screen as he threw his hands up in the air. “Sorry, dude, but we’re stretched so thin, I don’t know that we could put a protection detail on Sean right now. These cutbacks fucking suck.”

  “Yeah... I’ve also read about the shooting.”

  Asbjorn thought he saw Mark’s jaw work a bit, but it was hard to tell. “It’s just a setback,” Mark proclaimed. “Now we have them on more charges. Now we can pursue them as fugitives. Every bounty hunter in the state is jumping up and down for joy.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s the bounty?” Asbjorn said.

  “There are several – from three states now. I’ll e-mail it to you. Listen, Lisa’s calling. Gotta go. Hey, Merry Christmas, despite all this shit. Say hi to Sean for me, okay?”

  Lisa’s voice echoed in the background and there was no mistaking her irritation.

  Mark grinned. “My girlfriend’s summoning me. Later, dude.”

  The connection went dead. Asbjorn had to regroup his thoughts as he tried to visualize the bossy, knife-throwing Lisa and the acerbic Mark together. He wondered how much longer Mark would last under Lisa’s iron-shod heel. The image made him smile.

  And the bounty. That was something to consider. The money would come in handy. He’d research fugitive apprehension agent requirements tomorrow.

  SEAN FELT A WEIGHT settle next to him and an arm snake around his shoulders, pulling him in.

  “Hey.”

  He blinked. It took a while before he refocused on the room around him and looked at the clock. It was so eerie, to space out like that. He’d been sitting absolutely still for over two hours.

  “Come to bed, Sean.” Asbjorn. The voice was soothing and familiar.

  Sean shook his head. Going to bed meant turning the light off, and turning the light off would invite the old boogeyman to invade his mind again.

  Invade.

  He didn’t want to feel like that – invaded.

  Violated.

  “I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “I’ll fuck you senseless, then.”

  Sean turned to face Asbjorn for the first time in hours, taking his features in again. “I’ll get sore.”

  “I’ll kiss it all better, then.”

  Sean forced a smile, but when Asbjorn’s large warm hands began to knead the stiff muscles of his neck, his worries were washed away by a wave of warmth and lassitude, and he felt his smile soften into something more genuine. He felt safe, slouching against the expanse of Asbjorn’s chest.

  Safe at least for now. He would maintain the illusion of safety while they were h
ere, in Europe, far away from Frank Pettel and his cold threats and dark promises of a replay of a violent sexual assault, followed by a not-so-swift death.

  He dipped his head forward and let Asbjorn’s long fingers sift through his hair from behind. It had soothed him weeks ago, when he felt like he had a target painted between his shoulder blades, and it soothed him now. He was aware that he closed his eyes. He knew he snuggled into the crook under Asbjorn’s arm. He was exactly where he wanted to be. As he inhaled the familiar warm smell of Asbjorn’s skin and his aftershave, he allowed himself to feel safe and free and exhausted. The light glowed through his closed eyelids, exactly the way he liked it, keeping the bad things away.

  The sound of footfalls alerted Sean to the presence of someone behind him. He jerked his head in alarm and tried to sit up.

  “Shh.... It’s just Ole, most likely raiding the kitchen for a snack,” Asbjorn whispered. Asbjorn’s stepbrother rummaged in the kitchen for a short while and then he emerged with a glass of milk and a plate of cookies.

  Sean closed his eyes again. The click of the light switch came – Ole was most likely turning off the light that had still been on in the living room. Sean gritted his teeth as the warm light of the incandescent bulbs left his eyelids. Then he felt Asbjorn prop himself against the arm of the sofa. He relaxed, listening. The words that seemed familiar and almost English on a printed page dissolved into a string of gibberish, floating in the air, impossible to grasp. Yet he strained his ears and his mind anyway, hopeful for a snippet that would inform him of Asbjorn’s doings.

  ASBJORN MEASURED HIS stepbrother with tired eyes. He noted the broadened shoulders, the European restraint. “No, things are not okay,” he answered in a whisper. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  Ole nodded and turned to leave.

  “Hey, Ole.”

  He stopped and spun, as though happy and proud to be even addressed. Acknowledged.