Peter Vaughn was in his early fifties but could’ve easily passed for ten years younger, with a thick head of brown hair and a neatly-trimmed beard that made him look like a business-casual version of Wolverine. The only thing that alluded to his past work as a soldier and later a military contractor were his hands—broad and scarred, they reminded Scarlett a lot of Wolfe’s, but with less of a naturally gentle temperament. He wore a dark blue sport coat over a white dress shirt and a pair of chino pants, a copy of the morning’s Boston Herald folded under one arm; he set a drink tray from Starbucks on the kitchen island and turned to face her.
“I could’ve shot you,” Scarlett griped, lowering her weapon. “What the hell are you doing in my condo, anyway? I thought you got the hint yesterday when I didn’t answer your call.”
“We need to talk,” Peter replied, calm as anything. He sipped from one of the Starbucks cups and held out the other one toward Scarlett. “You still take it black, right?”
Scarlett put the gun on the counter and took the cup. The coffee was so hot it was burning her fingers through the cup and the little cardboard sleeve, and she recalled something Wolfe said once about the only thing Dunkin’ and Starbucks having in common was that they heated their coffee using nuclear fission. She wasn’t sure about that, but she did know whatever her father wanted, it would be annoying. “You get five minutes. Talk.”
Peter leaned against the counter. “How’s Wolfe?”
That was not the opener Scarlett had expected. “Since when you do you give a shit about the man you once described as, and I quote, ‘an overdeveloped, underqualified nematode who lost his last two brain cells in an explosion’?”
“I care about Wolfe because he’s the one you’ve decided should watch your back. I don’t agree with that choice, but I figured you both might be feeling some strain from your latest job.”
“He’s fine, we’re fine—now what do you really want?”
Peter shrugged his shoulders. “I thought you might like some backup. Guarding Christopher Sullivan and his family twenty-four seven can’t be pleasant or easy—strategically it must be a nightmare. I could get a few guys from Vaughn Securities up from the New York office in less than two hours.”
Scarlett paused with her cup an inch from her lips, eyes narrowing into slits. “In exchange for what? You always want something.”
“I don’t suppose you need a plus one for Caitlin Sullivan’s wedding?” Peter asked. “I’d love to speak to the new governor about opening a Vaughn Securities office in Boston.”
“Get out,” Scarlett said. When he didn’t move, she slammed the Starbucks cup down on the island, the lid flying off as coffee splashed in a circular arc. “Get out, and don’t bother sending me money for the lock I’m sure you destroyed getting in here—I won’t use it.”
Peter sighed, and it was amazing how such an innocuous sound made Scarlett want to grind her teeth. “Fine, I’ll go.” He tossed the newspaper on the part of the island that wasn’t wet and headed for the front door. “Call me if you change your mind.”
“Like hell,” she grumbled in response, her whole body taut like a bowstring until she heard the door close behind her father. She went to grab some paper towels to clean up the spilled coffee, and on her way to the trash can, the first part of the Boston Herald’s byline caught her eye. “Oh, come on.”
Resigned to seeing another thing that would piss her off, she flipped the paper open with her trigger finger to read the whole thing: COPS STUMPED BY SNIPER AS PRIMARY DRAWS CLOSER: WILL THREAT OF VIOLENCE HURT SULLIVAN’S CHANCE AT NOMINATION?
~***~
Lynette’s was a specialty bakery on Broadway in Somerville, all bright colors and celebration shoved inside a corner storefront next to a Benjamin Moore, at almost exactly the midpoint between the railroad bridge and Powder House Square. Caitlin had informed Sebastian when he arrived with Constantin for the cake tasting that she’d chosen Lynette’s not because they had stellar Yelp reviews (they did) or because they were willing to ship the cake a few hundred miles to the White Mountains for the wedding (they were), but because the owner was a cousin. And in the Sullivan family, you supported your cousins.
Sebastian hadn’t been in many bakeries, nor had he ever seen this much cake in one place before. They were all seated on the same side of a long table, which was filled to the edges with cakes of all different sizes, heights, and colors, some adorned with intricate fondant designs and others covered in frosting. A card in front of each cake indicated the flavor combinations, and a perky woman in an apron—Lynette, he presumed—waited to serve their desired slices on tiny plates. Until a few minutes ago, Sebastian was operating under the (mistaken) impression that a cake tasting was less about actually choosing a cake and more a rite of passage for a soon-to-be married couple. Oh, how wrong he was.
“Why am I here again?” he wondered aloud, only to be elbowed in the ribs by Caitlin. On his other side, Constantin was frowning down at his phone. “Ow! It’s a serious question!”
“You’re here because we needed somebody who was impartial to help us try cakes,” Ryan said, evidently taking pity on Sebastian while Caitlin hmphed and crossed her arms, like she was offended that Sebastian would dare question her motives (he questioned everybody’s motives, that was his thing). “Besides, who says no to free cake?”
Sebastian knew when he’d been outmaneuvered, and ran a hand through his hair to get it out of his face. It was almost time for a trim. “No one sane.”
“I was going to ask Jake to come too,” Caitlin said. She paused the conversation while the various cakes were dished out, all of them getting a small slice of each flavor. “He never texted me back this morning. And I know he’s still recovering from a huge trauma, but since he moved out of our place he’s gotten distant.”
Sebastian—a walking poster boy for how not to deal with traumatic events—took a bite of lemon chiffon and said, “I’m sure he’ll come around. Maybe the change of scenery is doing him good.”
“Maybe,” Caitlin echoed, sounding unconvinced. She chewed thoughtfully on some chocolate cherry cake. “We saw you and Jimmy on TV the other night at the Red Sox game.” When Sebastian looked confused, she nudged him with her foot. “You know, together?”
Sebastian choked a little. “Oh no, Caitlin—Jim and I are only friends.” When Ryan and Constantin both snorted in disbelief, Sebastian rolled his eyes. “I swear, there’s nothing going on between us.” No matter how much I wish there were, he added mentally.
Caitlin looked at him in a way that suggested she knew he was full of shit but was too polite to call him out on it. “Then you’re blind, because Jimmy looks at you with giant dopey heart eyes whenever he thinks you’re not paying attention.”
Sebastian’s phone buzzed with a text message, and he pulled it out of the back pocket of his skinny jeans. As if summoned by some supernatural force, the message was from Wolfe: hey… are we going to the vet gala together? It’s good cover unless you’re busy.
Before Sebastian could chicken out and give Wolfe a half-hearted excuse for why he couldn’t come, Constantin looked up from his own phone long enough to say, “I have something I need to take care of tonight, so if you don’t go to the charity gala tonight you’ll wind up sitting at home alone.”
“Go for it, man,” Ryan encouraged. “What do you have to lose?”
Sebastian chewed on his lower lip, and his thumbs tapped out a response of their own volition: sure, I’ll have Constantin drop me off at the Sullivans. Almost as soon as he sent the text, his phone rang; it wasn’t Wolfe calling, but Diana.
He pushed his chair back and placed a light hand on Caitlin’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back, I need to take this.” He walked outside, the bell over the door tinkling, and leaned against the bakery’s display window as he answered the phone. “Dijana—to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Our father,” Diana said without preamble. One thing Sebastian admired about his pseudo-sister was her intoler
ance for beating around the bush. “He is convinced that someone is trying to copy the Rapture formula. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Sebastian thought back to his encounter with Danh Sang at Ryan’s Diner and the car chase after the baseball game, choosing his words with care. “Not directly. I have heard rumors that the Red Dynasty may have an interest in cutting Anton out of the Rapture business.” He paused. “You should be careful. Sang is aware of more than previously thought—for example, he knows you work with David Wolfe. It is in your best interest that information does not get back to Anton.”
Diana was silent for a moment, and Sebastian knew she didn’t doubt the veracity of his information but compartmentalizing it for later use. “Thank you, mali brat.” Little brother in her native Serbian, something she hadn’t called him since they were children. “I will not forget this.”
~***~
Lacey lived in an apartment on Market Street in Cambridge that was smaller than Jake’s former dorm room at Mass Art. The building was perfectly square and done in flat gray clapboards, everything about it screaming utilitarian; he wondered briefly who owned it, and if it was Danh Sang. He got the answer to that question when Lacey held down the buzzer in the vestibule and said something in clunky Vietnamese to make the door open.
Lacey glanced at Jake, a wry smile tugging at her lips. “Don’t worry—this is where Sang stashes people he doesn’t want getting caught up in police raids. Cops in Dorchester like to show up with battering rams when somebody sneezes. He doesn’t come here much, though.”
“Well that’s a relief, since he hates me,” Jake said, and he wasn’t exaggerating. His testimony was the thing that got Sang sent to jail, and he couldn’t imagine that had endeared him to the mob boss. “What are you doing working for him, anyway? You said on Twitter that once you were done with rehab you were going on tour.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you believe everything you read on the internet, then you must buy all the shit they write about you.” They got in an elevator that smelled like old beer and body odor, and Lacey hit the button for the top floor. “Last conspiracy theory I saw said you were in on all the killings and one of your brothers was the Mass Art Murderer.” Arms crossed, she leaned against the railing at the back of the elevator and snorted derisively. “I mean, how cliché would that be? Sounds like the end of a bad novel.”
A shudder ran through Jake that he couldn’t control, but he hoped Lacey would write it off to the temperature change between the heat outside and the cooled interior of the apartment building. “You made your point, but you also didn’t answer my question. Why are you working for Danh Sang when he almost got you killed?”
“Because I decided I liked getting high more than living in my dad’s fucking shadow, okay?” Lacey snapped, any trace of a cordial demeanor suddenly gone. She shoved her sunglasses up on her head, revealing semi-manic eyes of a junkie. “You have no idea what it was like, trying to do my own thing with his name and his problems hanging over my head like an axe all the time! Maybe it’s not the smartest solution, but I fuck Sang every other week and he gives me all the Rapture I want—and if he gets his way, pretty soon he won’t have to buy it off that gypsy bastard who kidnapped me in the first place.”
Jake didn’t have a response for that, and evidently Lacey didn’t expect one, because she was silent on the walk from the elevator to her apartment, which was the last door at the end of a poorly-lit hallway. She rattled some keys and opened three different locks, the door groaning on its hinges as she went inside, immediately crossing the room to kick the air conditioner into submission. The whole apartment was about the size of a storage unit, save for the bathroom, which was a sliver of moldy grout and bleach stink he could barely make out through a half-closed door.
Lacey went over to a scuffed-up coffee table near a couch that looked like it was older than Jake. The table was one of those that had a top that lifted up and off on metal supports so you could store stuff underneath, and from that compartment Lacey drew out a gallon-sized plastic storage bag that had apparently once been full of silvery Rapture vials. At that moment, it held exactly two.
“I know a place where we can get as much Rapture as we want and I won’t even have to suck Sang’s cock,” Lacey said when Jake sat down on the couch beside her, handing him one of the vials. “There’s a club downtown, but they only let in couples and I’m painfully single.”
“So am I,” Jake replied, cracking open the vial and taking the Rapture like a shot. It slid down his throat as sinuously as mercury and he relaxed back against the couch cushions, dirty as they were. “I’m also gay as hell. Doesn’t mean we couldn’t fake it, though.”
Lacey pointed at him, drinking her own vial and tossing it in the direction of her kitchen sink. She rimmed it, but it went in. “Now there’s an idea.” She grinned, lipstick on her teeth and a wicked gleam in her eyes. “What are you doing tonight?”
~***~
David took the rented Toyota on his way to check out the shell corporation connected to Blakely Manor, and rather than use the highway, he chose to stick to surface streets. That meant the route to Medford took him through Somerville, and before his brain listed out all the reasons why it was a bad idea, he was making all the turns so he could drive by his old house on Putnam Street.
He and Angela bought the three-story new-age Greek revival before Josh was born, back when their respective jobs—trauma nurse and Army major—paid enough that they hadn’t needed a mortgage. It looked almost exactly as David remembered it, the off-white porch columns and mansard roof paired with a new porch swing and red vinyl siding. The front lawn was still tiny like a postage stamp, and Angela must’ve kept up with her green thumb, because the garden near the retaining wall had just about doubled in size.
Nostalgia hit David like a punch to the gut as he rolled slowly by the property, and he meant to drive to the end of the street to parallel park and collect himself… but that wasn’t what happened. Instead, he folded himself out of the Toyota and walked back up the sidewalk to his old house. He climbed the wooden steps to the side door, which still creaked like mad despite that some of the boards had clearly been replaced since he’d been gone.
Steeling himself, David hesitated for only a second before rapping on the screen door with his fist, one, two, three times.
Angela Wolfe opened the door a moment later, a dish towel thrown over her shoulder, her red hair tied back in a loose ponytail. In David’s eyes, she hadn’t aged a day, though in reality they were both different people than they had been all those years ago.
Angela’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates. Her mouth moved silently for a moment, before she managed to breathe out, “David?”
David managed a crooked smile. “Hey, Angie. We need to talk.”
~***~
Chapter Ten
Later in the afternoon, Scarlett arrived at Christopher and Melissa’s house, a dress bag and Wolfe’s covered uniform draped across her arms. She was barely in the door before she told Wolfe about what transpired between her and her old man. On the one hand Wolfe was surprised, because while he knew Peter Vaughn to be a Grade-A Dick, he didn’t think he was brazen enough to break into his own daughter’s condo while she slept. Christopher walked into the master bedroom, where the guys were getting ready; Melissa was holed up in her walk-in closet, and that was where Scarlett would be shortly.
“What’s your dad’s problem in life?” Christopher asked. “Isn’t he that guy who owns the big private security company?”
“Vaughn Securities,” Scarlett confirmed with an eye roll. “Trust me, he never lets you forget it.” She handed Wolfe his stuff and added, “He offered us some goons in exchange for an invite to Caitlin and Ryan’s wedding.”
“That’s… weird,” Wolfe said. “What interest would Peter have in their wedding?”
“Probably not the wedding he’s interested in,” Kevin remarked as he came in the door next, a suit bag slung over his
shoulder. “And speaking of the upcoming nuptials, don’t you think it’s strange that neither of them is having a party? I was really looking forward to drowning Ryan in a vat of tequila during his bachelor party! Isn’t it tradition to have some kind of send-off from singlehood?”
“Hey, sometimes tradition’s overrated,” Wolfe pointed out, as Scarlett wandered into the walk-in closet and shut the door behind her. “I learned that when I kissed Billy O’Rourke when we were in Boy Scouts… which was also why I got kicked out of the Boy Scouts.”
Christopher was lost: “But you’re not gay.”
“No, I’m bisexual,” Wolfe said. When he got a blank look from Christopher, he added, “I like men and women.”
“What? That’s a thing?” Christopher asked, and Wolfe would’ve thought he was kidding except the expression on his face was a mixture of befuddlement and curiosity. “Wait, does that mean you think guys are hot?”
“Sometimes I do, yeah.” Wolfe had to smother a laugh, especially since they were in the process of getting dressed and Christopher decided he needed to cover himself. “I don’t want to sleep with everyone I meet—don’t worry, you’re safe.”
At that moment Sebastian and Constantin arrived, but Wolfe only got a glimpse of Sebastian looking gorgeous in his fully black tuxedo before Constantin tugged Wolfe into the hall to speak with him. “You are aware your ass is on the line tonight, yes?”
Wolfe blinked. “You’re going to cut my ass off?”
“And I will mount it on the wall above my fireplace if Sebastian gets as much as a scratch tonight,” Constantin said, low and serious. His craggy face was lined with annoyance at Wolfe, but there was concern underneath it. “Not only that, but if Anton finds out I was not at this function as your chaperone he will skin all three of us.”
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