Specter's Gamble - 16. Chapter 16

It was 10:50, and Werner absent-mindedly licked his lips. He’s been sitting in his car for the last hour. He was so eager to get Rayhe on his knees finally, that he left his house a hell of a lot earlier than he planned. As a result, he ended up arriving to the house behind the old Plaza at 9:45. Therefore, he was sitting in his car for the last hour, trying to keep his imagination from running wild. He didn’t want to take care of himself again; he wanted Rayhe to do it for him. That and he was somewhat worried that he might not be able to perform if he managed to come for the third time. It’s been a while (a very long while) since Werner got more than one release in one day, and he didn’t want to strain himself too much. He would hate it if his body wouldn’t cooperate with him at a crucial moment. That would be very bad indeed.

Finally, he heard a sound of an engine. He immediately knew that it was Rayhe. Who else would be driving here this late? Werner pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car, his large form giving him troubles as usual, rubbing unpleasantly against the steering wheel. Maybe one of those days, he will start thinking seriously about losing some weight.

He was absolutely right – the engine he heard belonged to Rayhe’s vehicle. Werner couldn’t help but smile when he saw that damn brat (well, he wasn’t a brat anymore, to be honest. He was what... Thirty?) get out of his car, a grave expression on his face. You have no idea what’s coming, Werner thought, pun partially intended. Even Werner himself wasn’t quite aware of everything that he was going to do to Rayhe-Junior tonight. Sometimes, he let himself go, let his imagination and his wild side to take over. When that happened, nobody (not even Werner himself) knew what was going to happen next. Werner firmly told himself to make sure that Rayhe survived tonight – there was an accident or two in his past...

Werner winced when he remembered one time when he let himself go wild while he was pounding into Sam who was fifteen back then. He was squeezing the kid’s throat (one of the things he liked to do; it made him feel almost high) and then he realized that Sam wasn’t moving (or whining for that matter. Oh God, that whining pissed Werner off every time! All the ‘Please, stop!’ and ‘It hurts too much!’ were driving him up the wall), and when he listened more closely, he noticed that Sam wasn’t breathing either. Werner remembered panic that flooded him. He was running for the office, and the mysterious death of his only son (whose throat would be covered with bruises that would match Werner’s fingerprints to a t) would not look good at all.

He managed to resuscitate the kid, and after that happened, he made sure that he was in complete control of himself every time he was with Sam.

Werner watched Rayhe walk towards him slowly, as if he was forcing himself to do so, which was probably the case. He stopped a couple of feet away from Werner, his posture beyond tense.

“Werner,” he said finally.

“Gabriel,” LeVoughn-Senior smiled widely. “Where is Specter?”

“I had to make sure you came alone,” Rayhe said.

“Are you satisfied?” Werner asked mildly.

“Yes,” Rayhe said in a strained voice, and Werner almost laughed. Not yet, he thought, but soon. Well, it depends on... Oh, it depends on so many things...

“Specter is inside,” Rayhe was saying meanwhile, and Werner blinked. “I used the back door,” Gabriel said when he noticed Werner’s expression. “I left him there a couple of hours ago; had to make sure that the perimeter was clean...”

Perimeter, Werner thought. He spent too much time with that kill-for-hire; he is even using his vocabulary. Suddenly, Werner wondered if those two fucked yet. Then he shrugged to himself. It didn't matter.

“Shall we...?” he asked politely, and Rayhe cringed.

“Yes,” he said stiffly and went towards the house. Werner followed him, his excitement growing with each second. He was seriously concerned about even making it inside the house; he felt like he was about to force Rayhe down on his knees right here, outside. He managed to get himself under control.

Werner made it all the way to the house. Rayhe unlocked the door and walked inside. Werner followed him, and was about to say, ‘Okay, this is private enough’ and have his way with that brat, when someone said:

“Psst!” right above his ear.

Werner turned around, dumbfounded, and then he saw some guy whose face he didn’t recognize; some guy whose green eyes were flickering in a strange way that immediately made Werner uneasy. He thought, “Oh, son of a bitch! This is a trap...!” when the said guy sank a needle into his upper arm, and that was the end of the day that started so well for Werner LeVoughn, because two seconds after the injection, he was unconscious. He didn’t even realize that his huge frame went down on the floor like an oversized sack of potatoes.

****

Desmond needed all help he could get to be able to move LeVoughn-Senior into the living room. “And I thought Rayhe was heavy,” he thought while Gabriel and he dragged the unconscious body into the room. “This one weighs more than a decent size whale!”

Finally, the relocation was complete, and LeVoughn-Senior was securely attached to a huge armchair. Desmond straightened up and looked at Gabriel, who stood less than two feet away from him, his arms propped on his sides.

“Now what?” Rayhe asked, and Desmond was somewhat amused to hear his voice lack any worry whatsoever.

“Now...” Desmond said and glanced at a still unconscious LeVoughn-Senior.

“Did you give him the same drug that I’ve been injected with?” Gabriel interrupted him suddenly, and now his voice sounded darker than before.

“No,” Desmond said shortly. “I don’t need his senses heightened; it’s unnecessary. I just needed to knock him out in order to get him into this chair. With his size...” he glanced at LeVoughn-Senior again. “...it would be quite a nuisance,” he finished.

“What do you want me to do?” Gabriel asked, and Desmond looked at him intently.

“I want you to leave,” he said quietly, and Rayhe blinked.

“Why?” he frowned. Desmond closed his eyes for a second.

“Because if you stay...”

“...you won’t be able to look at me the same way ever again.”

“...there is a chance that someone might sneak up on us,” he finished. “You never know,” he added when he saw Rayhe’s doubtful eyes.

Gabriel nodded slowly.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll leave. I’ll be outside if you need me.”

Desmond nodded somewhat stiffly and watched Rayhe walk out and close the door. Then he turned towards LeVoughn-Senior and noticed that the man’s eyelids started to flutter. Good, Desmond thought indifferently. He is coming about. It was two or three minutes later, when Werner finally opened his eyes. He glanced around and jerked wildly, trying to set himself free. He couldn’t move a muscle, it seemed. Desmond certainly knew how to tie someone down and completely incapacitate them.

“Who... Who the hell are you?!” LeVoughn-Senior asked sharply, staring at Desmond with badly hidden fear.

“I am the last thing you are going to see before you die,” Desmond said quietly.

LeVoughn saw a blade in Desmond’s hand, and his eyes widened so much that under different circumstances it would be hilarious.

“Wh... What are you doing...?” he stuttered.

Desmond paused for a second.

“I am doing the world a favor,” he said finally, and then the good day was officially over for Werner LeVoughn.

****

Gabriel was leaning on his car, smoking slowly. He knew that being 'sneaked up on' wasn’t the real reason Desmond wanted him to leave. Right before the assassin said it, there was this tense look in his eyes; the one that said, ‘If you stay, then you will see a monster every time you look at me.’ It wasn’t true, Gabriel thought. He knew what Specter could do, and he knew what Specter was capable of -- Gabriel did a very thorough research on him before finally knocking him out in that alley. He hated himself for succumbing to that idea finally. LeVoughn-Senior told him that he found out “... from a trustful source” that someone had placed a hit on Sam, and that the same someone had hired Specter to do it.

“If Specter gets anywhere near him...” Rayhe remembered LeVoughn-Senior saying to him in a teary voice. “...my boy is as good as dead!”

Gabriel cringed at the words ‘my boy.’ He remembered how many times he saw bruises all over Sam’s arms, ankles, and throat. Mostly, it would be throat. He tried asking the boy what the hell happened, but Sam would tense up immediately after Gabriel asked anything. It would always be something like, ‘I fell,’ or ‘I scratched myself too hard,’ or ‘I got into a fight at school.’ Finally, Gabriel gave up and stopped asking him anything. Then, after Gabriel’s father passed away, LeVoughn-Senior decided to run for the office. Gabriel was surprised – he never thought that someone like Werner LeVoughn would be interested in politics.

To Gabriel's utter amusement, LeVoughn-Senior managed to squeeze his enormous form into one of the office’s chairs, and Gabriel hadn’t heard from him or Sam ever since. Then, a couple of months or so ago, Gabriel received a phone call from a teared up Werner. At first, Gabriel flatly refused. He couldn’t help himself; every time he thought of LeVoughn-Senior, he’d remember the man’s leering eyes that kept running all over Gabriel’s body when he was younger and when LeVoughn-Senior still worked as an accountant for his father. He remembered finding the man completely and utterly repulsive; he still felt the same way when Werner called him that one day.

So he refused, only to receive yet another call from Werner the next day. LeVoughn-Senior sounded downright terrified. Finally, Gabriel gritted his teeth and said that fine, he’d get Specter out of the way until the end of the month, until Werner figured out how to keep Sam safe. LeVoughn-Senior swore on his mother’s grave that he’d figure something out, that he’d send Sam to the farthest continent he could think of, just to make sure he survived.

Gabriel remembered himself thinking that maybe some people did change, in spite of the belief that said otherwise. Werner sounded like he really cared about Sam that time; he sounded like a hysterical father; he sounded like someone who couldn’t bear even a thought of losing someone dear to them.

“Well,” Rayhe thought darkly while dragging on his cigarette. “Turns out that good old Werner had never changed after all... He is just a surprisingly good actor, that’s it.”

Then he received yet another phone call from LeVoughn-Senior. That one happened after Gabriel had Specter chained to a pipe in his house. “You know,” LeVoughn-Senior said, his voice nowhere near the teared-up-father Gabriel succumbed to a little while ago. “I am rather naive... I mean, there is a chance that I just might let it slip off my tongue when I am talking to Julian... The fact that you were the one who placed a hit on Salamander-Senior... Things won’t go well for you then...” He was trying to persuade Gabriel into taking out Specter for good. In other words, killing him.

That was when Gabriel lost it and told LeVoughn-Senior to shove his threats up his ass. It wasn’t like he never killed before, and it wasn’t like he was squeamish about blood -- that wasn’t it, no. He wasn’t going to kill Specter because the assassin was the one who became his tool of revenge for Sheila. He would never kill a man who avenged Sheila. That and there was also the fact that he would feel funny every time he looked at Specter; every time he would imagine what his skin would smell like; every time he thought that his mouth was made for kissing, not killing.

When it finally happened between the two of them, Gabriel thought that his fantasies weren't even close to the reality. The reality was so much better. He still couldn’t believe that Specter (“Desmond... Desmond... Desmond... Oh God, Desmond...!”) would give so much of himself to Rayhe; that he would get lost in his own little world as much as Gabriel himself would; he didn’t expect Specter to react the way he did...

So tonight, after Desmond told (asked) him to get out, Gabriel thought that there was no force in the entire bloody world that would make him see Desmond as a monster. He left nevertheless, because he knew it would be important to Desmond.

He finished his smoke, wondering if he needed yet another one (it’s been almost an hour-and-a-half since he went outside), when he heard Desmond’s voice calling him.