Edge Of Midnight (The Mccloud Series Book 4)

by Shannon McKenna

  Connor, Davy, and Seth had all had freaky wild adventures that had convinced them that beacons were a great idea for the whole family.

  Most of the time, he agreed. Maybe if Kev had carried one on his person, Sean might have found him in time to stop him from—

  No. Don’t go there, he told himself. Just don’t.

  Impotent fury welled up inside him. He hurled the thing over a chain-link fence. It exploded against asphalt with a tinkling smash.

  “That was stupid and wasteful,” was Davy’s dour observation.

  Sean kept on walking. His brothers, Miles, and Seth kept pace behind him. Like dogs hanging onto a bone. The only way to get rid of them would be to beat them into unconsciousness, but each of the three older men was more or less a match for him. Even Miles wasn’t half bad these days, with all the training he’d been putting in at the dojo. The four of them together…nah. Pain sucked. He’d pass.

  “He was our brother too,” Davy said quietly.

  Sean sucked in a sharp breath. “I had no intention of inflicting my tantrum on anyone. Still don’t. I love you guys, but kindly fuck off.”

  There was a brief pause. “Nope,” Connor said simply.

  “Don’t bother asking again,” Davy said.

  There was a brief pause. “Uh, ditto,” Seth added belatedly.

  Sean sagged down onto a low stone wall that bordered a flower bed, and rested his hot face against his hands. “Where am I?”

  “Auburn,” Davy replied. “We followed you around last night.”

  “I’ll get the truck,” Seth said. “You guys keep an eye on him.”

  Sean grunted his disgust. Like they expected him to start twitching and frothing.

  “Whose house did you just come out of?” Connor asked.

  He shrugged. “Couple of girls,” he mumbled. “A blonde, a brunette. Nice bodies. Met them at the Hole, I think.”

  “You filthy slut.” Davy’s voice had a superior note, which bugged the shit out of Sean.

  “Don’t judge me,” he growled. “You’ve got the love of your life in your bed every night. So do Connor and Seth. So fuck you all, OK? The rest of us assholes have to get through the night somehow.”

  “Poor lovelorn baby,” Davy said. Miles made a choked, snorting sound. Connor covered his mouth and looked away. The Avalanche pulled up. Davy and Connor seized his elbows.

  Sean wrenched out of their grip and got to his feet unassisted. “May I ask what is the point of busting my balls today?”

  “You may ask, if you like, but we don’t need a point,” Davy replied. “We bust your balls out of sheer habit. Mouthy little punk.”

  Hardly little. He was as tall as either of his brothers, and bulkier than Connor, but he didn’t have the energy to argue. He heaved himself into the back of the Avalanche. Connor got in on one side, Miles on the other, squishing him into immobility. Seth put the vehicle in gear.

  “You free to take on some work?” he asked. “You don’t look busy.”

  Sean stifled a groan. He sometimes did freelance bodyguarding for SafeGuard, Inc., the security company that Seth and Davy had recently founded. Usually they called him when they had explosives to deal with.

  Today, the idea bored him into a state approaching rigor mortis.

  “What, a bodyguarding gig nobody else wants? I’m not in the mood to ego-fluff some executive asshole, or carry shopping bags for some fat cat’s trophy wife. Take me off your list. Permanently.”

  “It’s not a bodyguarding gig,” Connor said. “And it’s not for SafeGuard. It’s for me. I’m working on a weird case. Real flesh-creeper. The Cave called me in to consult. Thought you might be interested.”

  And Connor’s consulting gigs for various law enforcement agencies were always fascinating, in a gruesome sort of way.

  He caved almost instantly. “What’s so creepy about it?”

  “We’ve got a predator who likes math and science geeks.”

  “Huh.” Sean blinked. “Wow. Weird.”

  “Yeah. Six cases in four months. College age, males and females both. They turn up dead, ostensibly an OD outside dance clubs, but nobody remembers seeing them inside. All gifted in math, computers, engineering. All with the same unexplained cerebral damage. None of them have family. Someone’s picking them out real carefully.”

  Sean considered it. “Evidence of sexual violence?”

  “In the girls there’s evidence of recent sexual activity, but this prick’s careful not to leave any DNA. He doesn’t like to fuck the boys, evidently. I’ve already got Miles on it. I could use your help, too.”

  Sean had his private misgivings about “the Cave,” the covert FBI task force that his brother used to belong to. Mostly because they’d practically gotten Connor slaughtered, on more than one occasion.

  “What makes you think I could help?” he growled.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Con said. “You’re useful, when you’re not bouncing off the walls. And you could, ah, use a distraction.”

  “Ah,” Sean said slowly. “So this is, like, a mercy fuck.”

  “Shut up,” Connor snapped. “You’re bugging me.”

  “It’s mutual,” Sean said. “Don’t project your own twisted coping mechanisms onto me, Con. The Superman cape drags on the ground when I wear it. I’ll find my own distractions. A hot three-way with a couple cute babes is more my speed. Shallow butterfly that I am.”

  “I’ve known you since you were born,” Connor said wearily. “Don’t even try.” He passed a brutally scarred hand over his face, a souvenir of one of those near-death experiences. Sean got an unwelcome flash of just how bad his brother felt. He blocked it. Didn’t want to know.

  He shook himself. “I appreciate the thought, but I’m not hurting for money. I’ve got my own projects to keep me busy. Consulting for law enforcement agencies feels too much like real work to me.”

  “It is real work, you lazy slob,” Connor lectured him. “You come into focus when you’ve got real work. That’s what you should be doing, not this frivolous bullshit…what’s your latest craze again? Consulting for goddamn fight films? Give me a fucking break.”

  Sean had gotten very sick of this deep-rooted disagreement long ago. “It’s lucrative frivolous bullshit,” he growled. “I’m busy, I’m off the streets, I’m not in trouble with the law, and I’m not hitting you guys up for money. What the fuck more do you want from me?”

  “Not from you. For you.” Davy swiveled his head, fixed his brother with a laser beam gaze. “This isn’t about money. It’s about you concentrating on something other than your own miserable self.”

  Sean flung his head back against the seat and sealed the light out with his hand. Here was the blood price he had to pay for a ride home.

  Experience had taught him that to put up a fight at this point in the lecture was useless. They’d just keep at him with their meat mallets until he was quivering, bloody pulp. Not that they had far to go.

  Best to keep them talking til he got a chance to cut and run.

  “You’re going down the drain, and we’re sick of sitting around with our thumbs up our asses, watching it happen,” Davy went on.

  Going down the drain. Goose bumps prickled up Sean’s back.

  “Funny you should say that,” he said. “It gives me the shivers. Kev said the exact same words to me last night.”

  Connor sucked in a sharp breath. “I hate it when you do that.”

  His tone jolted Sean out of his reverie. “Huh? What have I done?”

  “Talked about Kev as if he were alive,” Davy said heavily. “Please, please don’t do that. It makes us really nervous.”

  There was a long, unhappy silence. Sean took a deep breath.

  “Listen, guys. I know Kev is dead.” He kept his voice steely calm. “I’m not hearing little voices. I don’t think anybody’s out to get me. I have no intentions of driving off a cliff. Everybody relax. OK?”

  “So you had one of those dreams last night?” Connor dem
anded.

  Sean winced. He’d confessed the Kev dreams to Connor some years back, and he’d regretted it bitterly. Connor had gotten freaked out, had dragged Davy into it, yada yada. Very bad scene.

  But the dreams had been driving him bugfuck. Always Kev, insisting he wasn’t crazy, that he hadn’t really killed himself. That Liv was still in danger. And that Sean was a no-balls, dick-brained chump if he fell for this lame ass cover-up. Study my sketchbook, he exhorted. The proof is right there. Open your eyes. Dumb ass.

  But they had studied that sketchbook, goddamnit. They’d picked it apart, analyzed it from every direction. They’d come up with fuck-all.

  Because there was nothing to come up with. Kev had been sick, like Dad. The bad guys, the cover-up, the danger for Liv—all paranoid delusions. That was the painful conclusion that Con and Davy had finally come to. The note in Kev’s sketchbook looked way too much like Dad’s mad ravings during his last years. Sean didn’t remember Dad’s paranoia as clearly as his older brothers did, but he did remember it.

  Still, it had taken him longer to accept their verdict. Maybe he never really had accepted it. His brothers worried that he was as nutso paranoid as his twin. Maybe he was. Who knew? Didn’t matter.

  He couldn’t make the dreams stop. He couldn’t make himself believe something by sheer brute force. It was impossible to swallow, that his twin had offed himself, never asking for help. At least not til he sent Liv running with the sketchbook. And by then, it had been too late.

  “I have dreams about Kev, now and then,” he said quietly. “It’s no big deal anymore. I’m used to them. Don’t worry about it.”

  The five of them maintained a heavy silence for the time it took to get to Sean’s condo. Images rolled around behind his closed eyes; writhing bodies, flashing lights, naked girls passed out in bed. Con’s predator, lurking like a troll under a bridge, eating geeks for breakfast.

  And then the real kicker. The one he never got away from.

  Liv staring at him, gray eyes huge with shock and hurt. Fifteen years ago today. The day that all the truly bad shit came down.

  She’d come to the lock-up, rattled from her encounter with Kev. Tearful, because her folks were trying to bully her onto a plane for Boston. He’d been chilling in the drunk tank while Bart and Amelia Endicott tried to figure out how to keep him away from their daughter.

  They needn’t have bothered. Fate had done their work for them.

  The policeman hadn’t let her take Kev’s sketchbook in, but she’d torn Kev’s note out and stuck it in her bra. It was written in one of Dad’s codes. He could read those codes as easily as he read English.

  Midnight Project is trying to kill me. They saw Liv. Will kill her if they find her. Make her leave town today or she’s meat. Do the hard thing. Proof on the tapes in EFPV. HC behind count birds B63.

  He’d believed every goddamn word, at least the ones he’d understood. Why shouldn’t he have? Christ, he’d grown up in Eamon McCloud’s household. The man had believed enemies were stalking him every minute of his life. Up to the bitter end. Sean had never known a time that they weren’t on alert for Dad’s baddies. And besides, Kev had never led him wrong. Kev had never lied in his life. Kev was brilliant, brave, steady as a rock. Sean’s anchor.

  Do the hard thing. It was a catchphrase of their father’s. A man did what had to be done, even if it hurt. Liv was in danger. She had to leave. If he told her this, she would resist, argue, and if she got killed, it would be his fault. For being soft. For not doing the hard thing.

  So he’d done it. It was as simple as pulling the trigger of a gun.

  He stuck the note in his pocket. Made his eyes go flat and cold.

  “Baby? You know what? It’s not going to work out between us,” he said. “Just leave, OK? Go to Boston. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  She’d been bewildered. He’d repeated himself, stone cold. Yep, she heard him right. Nope, he didn’t want her anymore. Bye.

  She floundered, confused. “But—I thought you wanted—”

  “To nail you? Yeah. I had three hundred bucks riding on it. I like to keep things casual, though. You’re way too intense. You’ll have to get some college boy to pop your cherry, ’cause it ain’t me, babe.”

  She stared at him, slack-jawed. “Three hundred…?”

  “The construction crew. We had a pool going. I’ve been giving them a blow by blow. So to speak.” He laughed, a short, ugly sound. “But things are going too fucking slow. I’m bored with it.”

  “B-b-bored?” she whispered.

  He leaned forward, eyes boring into hers. “I. Do. Not. Love. You. Get it? I do not want a spoiled princess, cramping my style. Daddy and Mommy want to send you back East? Good. Get lost. Go.”

  He waited. She was frozen solid. He took a deep breath, gathered his energy, flung the words at her like a grenade. “Fuck, Liv. Go!”

  It had worked. She’d gone. She’d left for Boston, that very night.

  He’d paid the price ever since. He knew just how those surgeons felt. The poor bastards you read about in magazines, the ones who fucked up and cut out the wrong eye, or lung, or kidney. Oops.

  Seth pulled up at the curb outside Sean’s condo, pulled out his cell phone, and dangled it in front of Sean’s face. “Here.”

  Seth waved it away. “Forget it. I don’t want—”

  “Take it,” Seth snarled. “Or else I’ll hit you with it.”

  Sean sighed, shoved it into his pocket.

  “Short string gets to babysit this bozo til midnight.” Davy held out his huge fist. Four pieces of string dangled from it.

  “Aw, shit,” Sean protested. “I don’t need—”

  “Shut up,” Davy said harshly. He pulled out a string—long. Con grabbed his. Long. Seth and Miles drew.

  Miles grunted in resignation. He had the short string.

  “Congratulations. You got your work cut out for you,” Seth said.

  “This is humiliating,” Sean complained.

  “Tough. If you don’t like it, stop doing this to us every year.”

  Sean shut his eyes. The weight of his eyelids made his eyeballs throb. Red bloomed like a bloodstain in his head. Black bloomed from the center and took its place. Red again. Then black. The drumbeat of his stubborn heart. And behind it, Kev’s pickup. Endlessly falling.

  Miles shoved open the door and slid out. Sean followed him.

  “Hey. Erin had a sonogram yesterday,” Connor said abruptly.

  “Oh, yeah?” he inquired politely. “Everything’s fine, I trust?”

  “Yeah, everything’s great. It’s a boy,” Con said.

  “Ah. Uh…good. Congratulations.” He felt like he should say something more profound, but his mind was as blank as the white sky.

  “We’re going to name him Kevin,” Con added.

  Something squeezed like a vise around his larynx, horribly tight.

  Con laid his hand on Sean’s shoulder. “It helps, you know?” his brother said, his voice intense. “Trying to make a difference. And if it all comes together and you get there in time to save somebody, oh, man. It’s the best damn thing in the world. It makes up for so much.”

  “Yeah? And then? What happens after? When the thrill is gone?”

  Connor hesitated. “You get out there and do it again.”

  Sean nodded. “Right,” he muttered. “It never lasts, does it?”

  “No,” Connor admitted. “But then again. What does?”

  Sean contemplated that. “Sounds pointless and exhausting.”

  His brother did not contradict him. He just turned away, his face stony. Sean let the door swing shut. The Chevy sped away.

  Chapter 2

  Sean and Miles stared at each other. Miles’s mouth was settled into a flat, stubborn line. “Don’t even start,” he said. “It’s useless.”

  Sean groaned inwardly. Not that he didn’t love the guy to pieces. Miles was a great kid. A good friend. Crazy useful when it came to the gearhead
techie computer details that bored Sean out of his skull. In the last couple years since he’d taken on the role of McCloud mascot, he’d proved his worth many times over. But Sean wasn’t up to being anybody’s mentor, love counselor, cheerleader, or fashion guru today.

  “Buddy? You know I love you, right? But I don’t want company,” he said wearily. “So get lost. Disappear. See ya.”

  “Nope.” Miles’s face was implacable.

  Sean realized that clenching his teeth so hard was making his head throb harder. He made an effort to relax his jaw. “OK. Let me phrase this differently,” he said. “Disappear, or I’ll rearrange your face.”

  Miles looked unimpressed. “If I leave you alone and you get into trouble tonight, Davy, Con, and Seth will rip my head off and plant it on a stake. There’s only one of you. There’s three of them. Forget it.”

  Sean started up the stairs to his condo. Each step was a hammer blow to his skull. “I won’t get in trouble. I don’t have the energy.”

  “I’m not going to get in your face, either.” Miles followed him up the stairs. “Just pretend I don’t exist. I’m used to it. Look at my track record with the women. I’m, like, the Invisible Man.”

  Sean shot Miles a critical glance as he unlocked his door. “Do not say stuff like that if you want to get lucky with women,” he lectured, out of habit. “Don’t even think it. It’s the kiss of death.”

  “Yeah.” Miles rolled his eyes. “By the way. I need a favor.”

  Sean slapped the door open. “It’s not a good day to ask favors.”

  “You owe me,” Miles reminded, following him in. “Big-time.”

  Sean spun around, planted his feet, and gave Miles a death look that knocked him back two paces. “What the fuck do you want, Miles?”

  Miles gulped. “I want you to drive me up to Endicott Falls.”

  Sean started to laugh at the irony of it. He breathed the shaking feeling down before it made him hurl all over his own kitchen. “Dream on, buddy. I hate that town, especially today, and it hates me worse.”

  “I taught your Thursday kickboxing classes for the entire past month when you were in L.A.,” Miles reminded him. “I spent three days fixing your computer when that virus crashed it. Free of charge.”