“Okay, okay.” The Harriken lifted his hand placatingly. “His name was Leeroy.”
“You don’t get it. I want you to apologize to Leeroy using his name.”
“But he’s dead.”
“And you’re gonna join him soon.”
The gangster managed to sit up, though one hand still rested on his stomach. A grimace seemed surgically attached to his face at this point. “But...you’re really here because you want to know where she is, right?”
Brownstone crouched by the man. “I told you why I’m here. Because the Harriken murdered my dog.”
“I told them not to do it. I told them we should leave you alone. I’d heard of you before.”
“That’s an interesting story, but even if I believed it, I don’t fucking care.” Brownstone scratched at an eyebrow. “You were telling me how the Harriken would grow stronger, get their vengeance on me and come after everyone I love. Don’t you remember that?” He shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly ages ago. I know I hit you pretty hard. Your memory may be a little fuzzy. And I seem to remember a speech implying my dog wasn’t that important.” He stood again. “Makes me question your honesty, fuckface.”
The spectacle transfixed Shay. Whether Brownstone was offering a casual discussion of barbecue or threatening to kill the Harriken over his dog, the feral menace never left his deep, growling voice. The man’s appetite for vengeance hadn’t been sated, despite killing almost everyone else in the house. The purity of the brutality was as fascinating as it was unsettling. To call him a killing machine would be insufficient.
A force of nature, maybe.
“I apologize to Leeroy,” the Harriken man said, now able to get his words out more steadily. “It was stupid of us to do what we did.”
Brownstone snorted. “Stupid?”
The Harriken prostrated himself. “It was wrong. We disrespected you. We disrespected Leeroy.” The man kept his forehead pressed against the floor. “But we know you want her, too. We know that’s why you’ve interfered with us.”
Shay furrowed her brow. Brownstone hadn’t mentioned much about his previous work during their job together, though now that she thought about it, it made sense that the Harriken must have had some decent reason to come after him.
Her first thoughts went to possible Harriken bounties, but the groveling gangster’s words said something more complicated. She doubted Brownstone was involved in any sort of Harriken scheme. The bounty hunter didn’t strike her as the type who would play too many sides against each other.
Shay didn’t doubt his intelligence. It was more that she doubted his patience.
“Interfered with you?” Brownstone repeated. “It’s more like when I go somewhere, you assholes show up and cause trouble for me.” He let out a weary sigh. “And that first time, I was just trying to pay a favor back for someone who helped me find my dog. You see how that works? You help me with my dog, I help you. You kill my dog, I kill you. Fucking simple, right?”
The man on the ground swallowed, but didn’t respond.
“Your first two guys could have turned around and left. Or you guys could have never come to my house. Or killed my dog.” Brownstone shrugged. “If you’d refrained from doing that I wouldn’t have gotten in your face. I wouldn’t have had to kill any of you, just like I didn’t kill those first two assholes. Fuck, I don’t give a shit about bounties on small fry like you. It’s not worth my time. Right now, I’m just trying to decide if I need two guys running around telling people why they shouldn’t go after me, or only one. ‘Cause I got one guy already upstairs still alive.”
Shay nodded to herself. She’d been wrong about why Brownstone wanted the man alive, but she’d been smart not to kill him.
The gangster raised his head, his mouth pressed into a thin line. It was a hard thing to stare death right in the face. The man was used to being on the other end of this kind of exchange.
Some might call it karma in action.
Brownstone didn’t really care that much about bounty money. His skills meant he could have easily made a lot of cash if he were willing to help the right kind of corrupt people. An enforcer who could tear apart a house filled with armed men would be a useful weapon for plenty of organized crime groups, let alone terrorist groups, rogue nations, and God knew what sort of weirdos from Oriceran. In the chaos of the current world, it was smart to collect all the weapons you could.
Killing some blood-magic Warlocks in a narrow tunnel was one thing, but the assault on the Harriken headquarters proved that Brownstone wasn’t remotely allergic to violence and didn’t need self-defense as an excuse to kill.
Money couldn’t be a big motivation for him, but then... The pieces didn’t fit together, and Shay felt like she was missing something.
Shay resisted a sigh. She didn’t want to alert Brownstone to her presence.
She’d seen enough. The bounty hunter obviously didn’t need her help, and he could finish up with the remaining Harriken man without her spying on him. She stepped around the corner and crept back up the stairs, the sound of the conversation fading into the distance.
Shay leaned against her Spider with her arms crossed. She’d thought about leaving but wanted Brownstone to know she’d at least bothered to show up. Even if she didn’t play well with others that didn’t mean Shay didn’t understand the importance of building trust.
Brownstone emerged from the house and glanced down at the Harriken Shay had knocked out earlier before looking at her. She gave him a quick, casual wave and waited for him to walk over to her.
“You’re about the last person I expected to see here,” Brownstone told her when he reached her. Weariness infused his voice, not unexpected after annihilating an entire house full of hardened killers.
Shay shrugged. “I wanted to talk to you, so I stopped by your house.”
“And?”
“I got suspicious and
