by Nora Roberts
“I quit.” Malachi rolled his shoulders. “Some time ago. I’m regretting that right about now. Well then, let’s have first things first.”
“That would be Rebecca.”
Malachi acknowledged this with a nod. “So it would. She shouldn’t be here in the first place, but since she is, she can’t be staying with you.”
“Shouldn’t. Can’t.” Jack turned his back on the view and leaned on the safety wall. “If you’ve used those words with her very often, I bet you’ve gotten some interesting scars.”
“True enough. She’s a perverse creature, our Becca.”
“And she’s smart. I like her brain. I like her face,” Jack added, eyes direct on Malachi’s. “I like the whole package. That’s a problem for you, her being your sister.” He took a pull from the bottle of Harp. “I’ve got one of my own, so I get that. Mine went off and married some guy despite the fact that, in my opinion, she had no business even knowing what sex meant. She’s got two kids now, but mostly, I like thinking she found them under a berry bush. Probably in the same patch where my mother found us.”
Amused, Malachi dipped a hand in his pocket. “You grow berries in that flat of yours?”
“Let’s put it this way. She’s taking the spare room. Her choice. It stays her choice, either way. I gave your mother my word I’d take care of her. I don’t break my word. Not to someone I respect anyway.”
Malachi was more than a little surprised to find himself relaxed. More yet to realize he believed Jack was as good as his word.
Maybe, just maybe, they’d forge that unit.
“I suppose this saves me from a bloody battle with Rebecca. But the fact remains, she’s an impulsive, head-strong girl who—”
“I’m in love with her.”
Malachi’s eyes widened, his thoughts scattered. “Jesus Christ, man, that’s fast work, isn’t it?”
“It only took one look, and she knows it. That gives her the advantage.” He paused. “She’d use an advantage when it comes to hand.”
“She would,” Malachi agreed, not without sympathy. “If need be.”
“What she doesn’t know, and what I haven’t figured out, is what I’m going to do about it. I’m not a fatalist. I think people drive the train.”
“So do I.” He thought of Felix Greenfield, of Henry Wyley, and a sunny afternoon in May. “But we don’t always choose the tracks.”
“Whatever the tracks, we’ve got our hand on the switch. If that wasn’t the way it worked, I’d believe that those statues, the circle they’ve made, have something to do with what happened to me when I looked at Rebecca. Since I don’t, I’ll just say I’m in love with your sister. So you can stop worrying that I’ll let anything or anyone hurt her. Including myself. That do it for you?”
“I’m just going to sit down here a minute.” He did so, drank contemplatively, then set the bottle on the little iron table by his chair. He bounced his palms off his knees while he studied Jack. “Our father’s gone, and I’m the oldest, so it falls to me to ask you . . .” He trailed off, dragged his hands through his hair. “You know, I’m just not ready for it. Let’s have part two of this particular discussion at some later date.”
Jack tipped back his beer again. “Works for me.”
“You’re a cool one, you are. Better for her that you are. So let’s move on to another area. The Fates.”
“You’ve been in charge.”
Malachi leaned back, cocked a brow. “This is a family affair for us, Jack.”
“Never said different, but you’re in charge. When push comes to shove, the others look to you for the answer. That goes for Tia, too. Probably Cleo, though she’s the wild card.”
“She’s had a rough go, but she’s steady enough. You have a problem with what you see as the pecking order here?”
“I might have, except I get the impression you know how to delegate, and how to let everyone play to their strengths. I know what mine are. I don’t mind taking orders, Sullivan, if I agree with them. And I won’t mind telling you to fuck off if I don’t. Bottom line, I owe you. Felix Greenfield,” he continued. “And I want the Fates. I’ll work with you so we all end up with what we want.
“Next on the bill,” he added. “It’s a little too loose for my liking to keep Cleo’s Fate in Tia’s refrigerator. My apartment’s got the best security money can buy. I want to keep it in my safe there, along with mine.”
Picking up his beer, Malachi passed the bottle from hand to hand as he thought it through. Trust, he thought. Without it, they’d never solidify. “I won’t argue with the practicality of that, but to say you’d then have two of three in your hands. What’s to stop you from going after the other on your own, or even negotiating with Anita? No offense.”
“None taken. Going after the other alone would be tricky, logistically. Not impossible, but tricky. Moreover, Rebecca wouldn’t like it one damn bit, and that matters. And finally, I don’t double-cross people I like. I especially like the doc.” His grin was fast and wolfish.
“As do I.”
“Yeah, that comes through clear. As for dealing with Anita, I don’t negotiate with sociopaths. And that’s just what she is. She gets the chance, she’d take any one of us out, cold blood, then go have her weekly manicure.”
Malachi settled back again, drank again. “Agreed. So, we won’t give her that opportunity. We’ve all got some pondering to do.”
“Why don’t we take twenty-four hours? Then we can give Tia a break and meet at my place tomorrow.”
“All right.” Malachi got to his feet, held out a hand. “Welcome aboard.”
“YOU AND MAL were involved in your private and manly discussion for some time.” Rebecca angled in the seat of the tanklike SUV Jack had driven uptown. “What was it about?”
“This. That. The other.”
“You can start with this, move along to that.”
“It comes to mind that if we’d wanted you in on the discussion, we’d have asked you up on the roof.”
“I’m as much a part of this as anyone.”
“Nobody says different.” He turned off Fifth, headed east to Lexington, watching his rearview mirror as a matter of course.
“And as such, I’ve a perfect right to know what the two of you had your heads together about. This is a team, Jack, not a group made up of roosters and hens.”
“It has nothing to do with the way you button your shirt, Irish, so cool the feminist jets.”
“That’s insulting.”
He headed south awhile, then jogged east again. No tail, he decided, and no surveillance on Tia’s building that he could spot. That could change, but for now, it was handy.
He let Rebecca stew while he wound his way back home. He circled the building, keyed in the code for the garage he’d had built to his personal specs. The reinforced steel door rose, and he guided the SUV inside.
He had his Boxster stored inside as well, along with his Harley and his surveillance van. A man, he thought, had to have some toys. Storing them in a public garage had never been an option for him, and not simply because the yearly rate would have outstretched the cost of sending a kid through Harvard Law, but because he wanted them close. And under his own system.
He climbed out, reset the locks and alarms on the door, on the SUV, then uncoded the elevator. “You coming up?” he asked Rebecca. “Or do you want to sulk in the garage?”
“I’m not sulking.” She sailed by him, crossed her arms over her chest. “But it would be a natural enough response to being treated like a child.”
“Treating you like a child’s the one thing I don’t have in mind. Okay, take a pick. You want the rundown of this, that, or the other?”
She tipped her head up, wishing she wasn’t amused. “I’ll take this.”
“This would be your brother expressing his concern that you’re staying here with me.”
“Well, it’s none of his flaming business, is it? And a nerve he has, too, when it’s plain he’s cozied
himself up with Tia. And I hope you told him so.”
“No.” Jack pulled open the elevator door so she could stomp into the apartment. “I told him I was in love with you.”
She stopped dead, spun around. “What? What?”
“Which seemed to ease his mind more than it eases yours. I’ve got some things to do. Be back in a few hours.”
“Back?” As if to catch her balance, she threw her arms out. “You can’t just leave after you’ve said such a thing to me.”
“I didn’t say it to you. I said it to your brother. Stretch out, Irish. You look beat.” And with this, he closed the door, locked her in and left her stammering curses at him.
He didn’t go far. It was only one flight down to the base he kept in the building. He worked from there when it was convenient, or when he was simply restless in his apartment upstairs and wanted a distraction.
Right now he wanted both the convenience and the distraction.
It was a comfortable space. He’d never seen the purpose in spartan work areas when there was a choice. There were deep chairs, good lighting to make up for the lack of windows, the antique rugs he favored and a fully equipped kitchen.
He went there first, started coffee and, while it brewed, accessed the messages that had come through on his various lines. He booted up one of the computers ranged over a long L-shaped counter, called up his e-mail and listened to the electronic voice read it out while he fixed the first cup of coffee.
He answered what couldn’t wait, put aside what could, then shifted to the personal messages. The e-mail from his father made him grin.
The aliens, having performed hideous medical experiments—of an embarrassingly sexual nature—on us, have returned your mother and me to Earth. You can hear all about it on Larry King. Now that I have your attention, maybe you could spare five minutes to get in touch. Your mother sends her love. I don’t. I like your sister better. Always did. Guess who.
With a laugh, Jack sat down at the keyboard. “Okay, okay.”
Sorry to hear about the alien experience. Typically, they insert tracking devices in their abductees. You may want to chew on tinfoil while having any personal conversations, as this is known to jam their frequencies. Just FYI. Recently back in NY. Am keeping gorgeous Irish redhead prisoner in my apartment. Possibility of exotic sexual favors from same may keep me busy for the next couple weeks. Love back to Mom. None to you. I’m not even sure you are my father. You guess who.
Knowing his father would crack himself up reading the post, Jack hit send. Then got down to work.
He ran a modified check on Cleo, enough in his estimation to placate Anita. On a separate computer he started a background check on her for himself.
He’d already come to the same conclusion as Tia, as Malachi. The six of them were going to have to work together as a single entity. He had no problem with team-work, but he wanted to know all there was to know about the team.
While the data scrolled, he rolled over to the monitors and, telling himself it was best all around if he kept an eye on Rebecca, engaged the cameras he had installed in his own apartment.
She was in his office, at his computer, and she looked steamed. Curious, he turned on audio.
“Bugger you, Jack, if you think I can’t get by your bloody passwords and blocks.”
“If you can, Irish,” he replied, “I’m going to be very impressed.”
He watched her awhile, noting the rapid streak of her fingers over the keyboard, the curl of her lip as she met another obstacle.
Most women, in his experience, when left to their own devices in a man’s space would poke in drawers, closets, examine the contents of the medicine cabinet or the kitchen cupboards. But she’d gone straight for the information highway.
It did his heart good.
He muted the audio, then busied himself writing a report on Cleo that would convince Anita he was doing her a favor, and offer her nothing helpful.
“That’ll set you on the boil,” he thought aloud.
He rolled away again to let it simmer before he read it over one last time and picked up the phone.
“Detectives Bureau. Detective Robbins.”
“The man with the badge.”
“The man with fraudulent ID.”
“Not me, pal. You must be thinking of someone else. How’s the crime-fighting world?”
“Same old. How’s it going in Paranoia-ville?”
“No complaints. Wondered if you wanted to take that twenty I owe you and go double or nothing on the Angels and O’s tonight.”
“Are you intimating that I, a public servant, gamble?”
“I’ll take the O’s.”
“You’re on, sucker. Now that the pleasantries are over, what’re you after?”
“Now you’ve hurt my feelings. But since you ask, I got some descriptions to run by you. Muscle, probably freelance, certainly local. Thought maybe you could run them through the system for me, see if anything pops.”
“Maybe. You got names?”
“No, but I’m working on it. Bachelor Number One. White male, forty to forty-five, brown hair, thinning, no eye color, pale complexion, prominent nose. About five-ten, a hundred and seventy.”
“Lot of guys fit that, including my brother-in-law. Worthless fuck.”
“My information is he likes to use his fists and isn’t long on brains.”
“Yeah, that’s my brother-in-law. Want me to haul his ass in and kick him around?”
“Up to you. Your brother-in-law take any recent trips to Eastern Europe?”
“He doesn’t move his white, dimpled butt out of his recliner to go to the corner deli. You looking for a world traveler, Burdett?”
“I’m looking for an asshole who’s recently back from a little trip to the Czech Republic.”
“That’s a coincidence. We’ve got a corpse on ice, fits your general description. Had a passport in the pocket of his fancy suit. Had two stamps on it. One Praha. That’s, my erudite friends tell me, Prague, Czech Republic. The other was New York, about ten days old.”
Bull’s-eye, Jack thought, and swiveled back to a keyboard. “Can you spare the name?”
“Don’t see why not. Carl Dubrowsky, Bronx boy. Got a pretty yellow sheet on him—mostly assault—and a skate on a Man One. What do you want with our dead guy, Jack?”
Jack plugged in the name and started a search of his own. “Tell me how he got dead.”
“It was probably the four holes a twenty-five-caliber put into him. He turned up stiff in an empty warehouse in Jersey. Let’s have a little quid pro quo here.”
“I’ve got nothing right now, but I’ll hand it to you when I do.” He switched computers, readied to start a second search. “Got an address on that warehouse?”
“Jesus, why don’t I just fax you the file?”
“Would ya?”
At Bob’s rude response, Jack grinned and noted down the address.
When he’d finished on the phone, he typed up meticulous notes on all the data he’d generated. He was getting to his feet, coffee on his mind, when he glanced at the monitors.
The maniacal gleam in Rebecca’s eyes had him moving closer, switching the audio back on.
“Not so smart, are you?” she was muttering. “Not so bloody clever.”
“You are,” he commented, surprised and, yes, impressed, that she’d gotten past his security. Admittedly he didn’t keep anything confidential on that unit, and the blocks were moderate. But they were there, and it had taken a hacker with considerable skill to cut past them so quickly.
“Just as I thought,” he said to her image. “We’re made for each other.”
He got another cup of coffee and went back to work while she raided his hard drive.
Twenty minutes later, he’d done all he felt he needed to do for the moment. And so, he noted as he looked toward the monitors again, had she.
