Mackie's Men Read online

  She was still arguing the pros and cons of her choice when she came downstairs and handed Darryl her suitcase and gave Liam her old Army duffel bag that was packed to capacity. She walked back to the stairs and picked up her backpack and the cat carrier. GreyC was going with her on this new adventure.

  Thom and Laura waved goodbye from the front door, and for some reason Mackie choked up. She looked at Darryl and Liam in turn and wondered, what have they done to me?

  Chapter Eleven

  They dropped Liam off at his office, and again, Darryl waited until he was safely inside the big glass doors before continuing on their way. They drove for almost half an hour before she asked where they were heading. “I don’t recognize the area, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  Darryl gave her a quick side glance and grinned. “First, I’m taking you to the main house, and after we drop your bags off and change into something more comfortable, I thought we could enjoy the rest of the day entertaining each other.”

  She turned her head to look out of the side glass. He was grinning too much for her to be at ease right now. “What exactly do you mean by that? What kind of entertaining are you planning?”

  He laughed outright and just shook his head. By the time they pulled into the long driveway and stopped the SUV in front of an old farmhouse, she was nervous. Darryl grabbed the duffle and the suitcase when she reached for it, so she was left with the backpack and cat carrier. “You know, I’m not exactly helpless, right? I’m used to carrying my things, and pulling my weight. I appreciate your help, but you don’t have to coddle me.”

  He transferred the suitcase to the same hand that had the duffle slung over the shoulder, and punched in a series of numbers on the keypad, it clicked the lock, but when she tried to turn the handle, it refused to open. He laid his hand straight on the metal panel, and the door swung open.

  “Oh that’s a nice trick there,” Mackie complimented the secondary locking system that only the owner or someone who’s print was programed into the reader could gain access into the house. “I haven’t seen this one on the market, is it one of your designs?”

  He led her through the house and up the steep stairs. “Yes, I’m not the genius that John is, or the slick business ace that Liam is, but I have brains, and I like to tinker a bit here and there.”

  They stopped outside the third door in the hallway and she turned the knob and stepped inside. This room was modern compared to the house in town, and she liked it, but there was no character in the furnishings, and everything in the room appeared to be reproduction pieces of good quality, but 1950’s blonde wood and squared edges. It would do to start.

  Darryl told her to worry about unpacking later. “We have things to do, so bust out a pair of your oldest jeans and a sweatshirt or t-shirt and a sweater that you don’t have sentimental attachments to. Sturdy shoes and you will want long sox on too.” He looked at his watch and frowned. “The sooner we get moving the better, I’ll meet you downstairs in ten.” He dropped her luggage on the bed and left the room before she could question him.

  GreyC was napping in her carrier and there was plenty of food and water in the side cups that were built in inside of the thing, so she would be fine for a while longer. So she left the carrier on the floor by the bed, and opened the duffle. She didn’t have any old clothing, everything she might have possessed had been blown up with her house. She pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and added a zippered hoodie. She had hiking boots, and hoped they would be good enough for what he planned for the day. She pulled her hair up onto a high ponytail and braided it. It wasn’t the prettiest hairdo, but it would keep strands from getting in her line of sight if they were going to the range. She checked her watch and headed out to meet Darryl downstairs.

  He was waiting for her and nodded in appreciation for her outfit. “You look beautiful no matter what you’re wearing, and I’m glad that you have boots, you’ll need them, let’s go.”

  He led them to the hip-roofed barn and still managed to hold the door for her before she could open it for herself. They went through the common area that housed two large tractors and several horse stalls and the hayloft appeared to be half full of fragrant alfalfa. She didn’t ask questions because she was busy scoping the place out for possible future use. They came to a double door near the rear of the barn and again Darryl punched in buttons and his hand slapped the panel. The door opened and he stood back for her to go through first. This polite treatment was driving her crazy, but she smiled a little and walked into a room full of guns and knives, swords, bows and arrows. And she was itching to touch each and every article.

  She grinned and looked at Darryl as he stood just inside the door watching her and her reaction to his playroom. He shut the door behind him and walked over to a display of handguns. He smiled at her and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Hey, little girl, wanna play with me?” He waved his hand across the span of the collection and she almost ran over to his side. “If we play for an hour and you can stand the company, then we venture further afield. Do you have any idea of how difficult it is to find a date that likes to play with my toys? I took a date to a gun range and it turned into a disaster. She whined about the noise and the smell of gunpowder, and to top that off, she almost shot me. It was embarrassing.” He selected a .38 special and raised an eyebrow when she zeroed in on the hammerless version of the same .38 he held.

  “You can choose what ever you want to shoot, I try to change guns each time I come in here so I keep accurate with all of them, it’s also a good excuse to clean them after I use them, so none of them get dusty or rust when it’s damp outside. If you look under the benches you will see bins of litter and silica. It sucks the water out of the air, and I keep fans going all the time for airflow, and it works for now. When I get the new building finished, I won’t have to worry about any of that. The room will be controlled electronically.” He grabbed two boxes of bullets and walked to the blank wall with a single door. “Come on, you’re gonna love this.”

  Mackie was delighted to see that he guessed right, she loved his underground setup. “How did you do this? I love it, but how did you manage to do all of this?”

  The “this” she spoke of was a shooting range complete with doors with cardboard bad guys behind them and a few innocents. She shot a bad guy that was hiding behind a plastic shrub and almost shot a little kid silhouette peeking over a windowsill. They spent over an hour talking and shooting.

  Darryl explained how he designed and made the place his own. “We bought the place for somewhere to unwind and enjoy getting out of the fishbowl of everyday life. There was four silage pits already dug into the ground next to the barn, and I knew the farm would never use them again, so I brought in a contractor and we drew up the designs for an underground range. It was fun trying to find a good concrete man to pour the curved walls and flat floor, but I love it.”

  They were on the way back to the gun room when Mackie stopped in her tracks and stared at his back as he kept walking, until he noticed she wasn’t following him. He retraced his steps and stopped in front of her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  She blurted the first thing that came to her mind. “You’re DE Fields, aren’t you? I feel a little dumb here, but in my defense, I never thought about it until now.” The security gadget company was relatively new on the market, and she’d purchased some of their offerings for the setup of her home in the country.

  He shook his head no, and sighed. “No, my father is DE Fields, I am just Darryl Fielding. I do hold several patents, and some may be sold in the stores, but you can be sure the old man doesn’t know who invented those items, or he wouldn’t carry them.” He began walking and she followed without further conversation.

  Once they reached the gun room, Darryl pulled down a springboard table and took a cleaning kit from the shelf in the wall behind where the board had been hanging on the wall on its hinges. “I’m sorry, I never talk about my old man. Long story short, I came home on leave, foun
d my mother dying in a hospital bed, and my father and her nurse fucking in the spare bedroom. The whore was wearing my mother’s jewelry and her fur coat while his old ass was drilling her cunt.” He shoved the cleaning rod into the barrel of the revolver and continued cleaning while he finished his story.

  “The house was willed to me through my mother’s parents. My mother was gasping for every breath because that cunt hadn’t turned the oxygen on, and they were making a joke of her last minutes on earth. I beat his ass and tossed him out of the house. His whore was screaming and threatening to call the cops, I made her leave my mother’s jewelry on the fucking bed, watched as she grabbed her clothes, and locked the door behind her.” He finished wiping the pistol down with a soft cloth and set it in the designated spot. “DE tried to get back into the house, but if he’d succeeded, I would have killed him. He tried to have me arrested, but by the time the police he’d called showed up, the paramedics were hauling my mother’s body out of the house, and I was not in the mood for his excuses. I let the cops stay while he packed his shit, and left in his fancy little pussy trap sports car.

  “I told the cops what he and his whore were doing when I walked in, I wanted them charged with negligence and anything else that could be used to put them away. The only thing that kept them from being arrested was that my mother was terminally ill with brain cancer that had spread into her bones. She only had a few days left, according to her doctors. He ended up marrying the slut three months after my mother died. She divorced him after three years and the two kids they had are now teenagers, and I hope they’re giving that bastard hell.” He took the pistol from her hands, looked it over, and put it with the others.

  “If he had waited a few weeks, she would have been gone, and I might not have liked him playing around so soon after mom’s death, but I would’ve probably let it pass after a while. The lack of respect he had for the woman he’d been married to for twenty-five years sickened me. He was never much of a father figure, always claiming he had work to do, and we believed him. Now I know that he married my mother for her family’s money. It’s how he financed the first DE Fields store.

  “My mother must have known ten years before her death, because she changed her will. His debt to her for financing his store was forgiven at her death, but that is all he received. It was quite a surprise when the will was read. I got what was left, and the man even tried to swindle me out of my inheritance two years after she passed.”

  Darryl gave her a sad smile. “I’m sorry to unload on you like this, he really is a selfish bastard, and isn’t worth thinking about.”

  Mackie reached out and pulled his hand into hers. “I need a hug, and you need a hug too. We can’t pick our parents or relatives, all you can do is smile and nod your head as you keep walking past. Someday I might unload on you about my history, trust me, it’s not nearly as interesting as yours is.”

  They held each other for a few minutes, Mackie wanted to ease his pain filled memories, but she had no experience in helping anyone with grief. She had never allowed anyone to get close enough for her to care about that much to feel pain when they died. Laura and Thom were the exception, but that connection took place over years, and now, what was she getting herself into? The urge to track down DE Fielding and hurt him was strong, but it was the only thing she could think of that might ease Darryl’s pain. She knew nothing would restore his mother to life, but to know that your own father was such an evil fucker had to hurt. She made the offer just to cheer him up, but if he said “Sure, go ahead and do it,” she knew she would.

  “Would you like me to track him down and castrate him? I could break both of his legs and maybe break his back and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. We could lock him in an efficiency apartment with his favorite nurse and see if they enjoy getting to know one another again.” She pulled her head back from his shoulder to see his face while she tried to get him to smile. Or, I have an even better idea.

  “I have a few inventions of my own, why don’t we open a new company and run him out of business? I have financing, and you know what you are doing businesswise, or get Liam to help you.”

  She grinned, her head filling with the idea, and thinking which of her inventions would be useful to sell to security companies.

  Darryl laughed out loud then he pulled her into his arms for a deep kiss, and his hands wandered during the moments that his mouth was locked onto hers. When they came up for air, he pushed the hair back from her temple. “Thanks, sugar, but you don’t need to do any of that. Although I do want to hear about these inventions of yours. The morning that we met and through the evening, I was green with jealousy over some of your toys. That electric gridding was impressive. Not to mention the bunker, that place is great. Someday you need to tell me about the rest too. My guess is you had some high profile people down there and you acted as a decoy for the bad guys.”

  She shook her head, “You know I can’t talk about my work, all I will say is that you are very observant, and we can leave it at that.”

  He nodded and took her hand again. “Fair enough, so how about we have some real fun now?”

  They left the gun room and went outside to the garage. There were five quad runners that obviously were frequently put into service. Scratches and dents riddled the plastic and metal bodies of the small vehicles. “Here we go, grab a helmet from the wall and pick a weapon, the paintballs are loaded and ready to use, so if you’re not familiar with them be careful.”

  They played in the muddy fields for a couple of hours shooting at targets and running the little quads up and down manmade hills and muddy tracks. She laughed more during their playtime than she could ever remember doing in her life. When Darryl told her that it was time to head back, she was disappointed.

  It didn’t occur to her that she was pouting, her bottom lip was sticking out, and Darryl drove his quad closer. “Hey we can come back another day you know, we come out here at least twice a month to blow off stress and just cut loose. I promise, you’ll have more days like this one. Now, the last one back to the garage has to buy dinner tonight.”

  The race back distracted her, and she was laughing as they pulled the quads into their spot. They had to hurry to get dressed in clean clothing to drive back to the city to collect the other two men, and met downstairs when they were ready.

  Darryl thanked her for keeping him company for the day and she smiled.

  “I should be the one thanking you. I swear I haven’t had so much fun in I don’t know how long. I really enjoyed goofing off with you today.” He reached over the console and took her hand in his for the duration of the drive to pick up John.

  John came out of the building with two people hard on his heels and once he entered the SUV, the other people melted into the crowd of people that were beginning to leave the building for the day.

  Mackie turned to greet him, and almost bumped noses with him as he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, then on her lips. He drew back too soon for her taste, but his words warmed her.

  “Hey, beautiful, and you too, buddy. I needed that kiss. All I’ve been doing all day is daydreaming and mooning around the lab. If I’d had my car, I would have left hours ago. This restriction on my movement is getting old. You need to catch this piece of shit soon, because I’m going to break the chain one of these days. Especially now that we have a woman for me to impress and spend time with.”

  Darryl grinned and came back with, “Yeah, and let’s not forget her cat. He’s at the house too you know.”

  Mackie grinned and raised her eyebrow, “I’ll have you know that GreyC is a lady, and she wouldn’t appreciate the two of you not recognizing her importance. She is a premier mouser, and she keeps my shoulders warm when it’s cold outside. She also likes the last bite of meat on my plate, and does as she damn well pleases the rest of the time.”

  The discussion on cats versus dogs carried them until they reached Klinger International. Darryl texted Liam, and they waited for
him to reply. After five minutes, Darryl texted him again, and the phone vibrated almost immediately.

  “Son of a raggedy assed bitch, Liam says he’s hitching a ride with Mason home tonight, something came up, and he can’t talk right now.” Darryl looked at John, and they both looked at Mackie.

  Whatever they were thinking she wanted to know about it. “Okay, so what’s with the looks? Do we go in and bring him out the hard way?” She pretended to rub her hands together in excitement, and her clowning did gain her two small smiles, but Darryl and John also shook their heads. “Might as well tell me, or we can sit here all evening. Making GreyC stay in her carrier won’t get you points from her, but then you all won’t care if she puts a dead mouse or bat on the pillow next to your head in the middle of the night either, will you?”

  John spoke, “Mackie, Mason, Liam’s grandfather, left for France early this morning. The text was a way to let us know something is wrong.”

  Darryl nodded his head, and added, “Hitchcock must be the leak. Liam capitalized the word Hitching.” He looked at John and shook his head.

  “That guy has to be nuts to try his shit here in the building.” He looked at Mackie and grinned. “I’ve got a plan.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mackie rode the elevator to the top floor and took the first turn on the left. She entered the door with Liam’s name stenciled on it. Her hair was now loose around her shoulders and arms, and she had she her suit jacket in the SUV. Her blouse was unbuttoned to show a nice view of the ample cleavage between her breasts. She used the keycard to open the door that Darryl had given her, and barged into the room without knocking or announcing her presence. She immediately began talking as she entered the room.

  “Liam, we have a date, and I don’t like to be kept waiting, I’m not one of your bimbos and I, oh, you have company.” She stopped talking for a second and continued forward toward the desk where Liam sat, and his father, Drummond, sat in one of the chairs facing the desk while a large man stood off to the side and another stood over Drummond with a pistol pointed at his neck.