"He probably mostly uses his cell," Liv said.
"Or maybe he just doesn't have any friends," Sean said. "Maybe he has nobody to talk to. Must be hard to maintain relationships when you go around faking your own death. Puts a real crimp in your social life. Goddamn fucking lying bastard."
"That is enough!" she yelled. "You are indulging yourself, and I am tired of this tantrum! Get your head back in the game!"
Sean let the trapped air escape from his lungs, in a long, thin wheeze. "It's not a game."
She took his hand again, tugged it. "I know that, baby," she said quietly. "I know it better than anyone. Come on. Let's keep looking."
"Alarm's tripped, at the Larsen place," Wanatabe said.
Tom whipped his head around. "What?"
"You heard me." The guy's voice was sullen. After three days, his balls were still aching. Fucking sissy baby. Tom was losing his patience.
He stomped over. "You got a visual?"
"They've just moved out of range," Wanatabe said. "Looks like Larsen and some chick. But not the Parrish chick. A different one."
"Larsen?" That jolted him. "That's not possible."
Wanatabe shrugged. "Looks like Larsen."
"Let me see." He leaned over while Wanatabe selected the footage, ran it back, and set it to play.
They watched Larsen poke his head in the open door and look around for a long moment, those weird, pale green eyes glittering with concentration. Holy shit. Tom's jaw dropped. How...?
The guy looked behind himself, murmured, and crept through the door, pulling a woman behind him. Not the Parrish woman, as Ken had said. This one was shorter, chubbier. Long, curly dark hair. Pretty, vividly colored, curvy. Pregnant, he noticed suddenly. He could see the swell under her sweater. Larsen clutched her hand, keeping her close--
No. Not Larsen. This guy's hair was longer. The man turned, three hundred and sixty degrees, to look at the apartment, lips pursing in a silent whistle. The right side of his face was smooth. Unscarred.
Fucking shit, this was the twin! Sean McCloud. The one they'd read about in the files. The one who slit Dr. O's throat.
Rage gripped him. A desire to tear out the guy's throat. Intellectually, Tom knew it was the conditioning Dr. O had instilled in his elite cadre of star pupils. But knowing didn't lessen the urge.
McCloud was lucky it wasn't public knowledge who'd slaughtered Dr. O. If it had been, every member of Club O would have been after him, to rip him into bloody pieces. Wipe out his entire gene pool.
He eyed the bulge under the sweater of that pretty woman. Yeah, actually. His gene pool would be a fine place to start.
"Contact the rest of the team. Tell them to rendezvous outside Larsen's place immediately," he said. "We'll meet them as soon as we can get there. We're taking that son of a bitch. Alive. He is mine, got it? The woman, too. Don't kill them. Use the dart guns, or the Tasers."
He lifted his com device, since duty dictated that he keep the crazy bitch in the loop, and punched in Ava's code. "Come in, Ava. We have a situation at Larsen's place."
No reply. Fury burned in his belly. He hated dealing with self-indulgent civilian pussies with no concept of teamwork, order, or discipline. Fucking him up, slowing him down. Drove him nuts.
"Ava! Come in, goddamnit!" he roared.
Nothing. He tried the guards he'd posted above Ava's snakepit lab. "Janowizc? Hackman? Come in! Come in!"
Nothing. What the fuck? He had to waste precious time to compensate for incompetence. He was going to personally crush Janowizc's and Hackman's balls for dicking around on the job. "Go ahead," he snarled to Wanatabe. "I'll meet you there. Have to go check on Marr's bitch. Block them into Larsen's place. And do...not...hurt...them!"
Wanatabe got to it with gratifying speed. Tom left the big trailer that they'd been bunking in, and jogged, panting, through the warehouse complex til he got to the one that concealed Ava's lab.
He peered into the guardroom. His jaw sagged with dismay. Aw, fucking shit. Both guys unconscious, bleeding, and tied to the radiator, useless bags of shit that they were. He left them, and ran toward the room where Larsen had been shackled. It would be just like that crazy bitch, to go have fun with the guy, gloating and taunting.
Sure enough. The room was empty. The chair where they had fastened him was empty too. The shackles lay open. Larsen was gone.
What the fuck? That arrogant bitch wasn't supposed to touch him. No one knew how Kev McCloud had gotten away from Dr. O and Gordon. No one knew how Sean McCloud had beaten the crown and managed to kill Dr. O. Until they knew, the plan was to proceed with extreme caution, and a loaded gun to the guy's head at each baby step.
He keyed open Ava's lab. A nasty stink and a cold draft came from one door. Fridge was open. He closed it, shoved the other doors open.
The mess told its silent story. The bench, plasticuffs hooked to the top bar. Chunks of plastic cuffs lying around on the floor. An empty wheelchair on its side. Syringes on the floor. Ava had muscled that guy in here all by herself, and crowned him. And McCloud had taken her.
Good fucking riddance.
Tom pulled out his cell. The call to Des had just connected when he heard the muffled thudding sound, choked whimpering.
Oh, man. No way. This was too sweet.
He cut off the call, followed the sound to the supply room. He flipped on the light, clambered over the boxes, peeked down into the suffocating crack of space where Ava was wedged.
She was arched backward, red faced, choking for air. Her purple face, broken blood vessels, wild eyes, and tangled hair made her look like the ugly hag that she actually was.
He started to laugh. Time was tight, but he held up his cell phone and snapped a picture. "Sorry, but I just had to immortalize this," he told her. "You look like ten kinds of shit, sweetheart."
She mewled, thumped with her feet.
Tom shook his head. "You let him go, you dumb cunt. Now I have to go find him. You can wait until Des comes to get you. I don't have time for this tedious shit. Sit tight, babe. Think good thoughts."
He pried himself out of the tumbled boxes, still laughing, and flipped the light off before letting the door of the utility room slam shut.
Sean and Liv took their time wandering through Kev's apartment. Everything Sean's eyes fell upon made his guts clench up with weird recognition. They studied the kitchen, the desk, the studio, the artwork, the bookcases, the living space. They stopped short on their appraisal as they approached the dining area, assailed by a horrible smell.
"What's this?" Liv said. "Yikes. That's vile."
"My brother has become a slob?" Sean postulated. "That's weird. Kev was always superclean. Even worse than Davy. I was the only one in the whole family who ever approached slob status."
They stared at the mess on the table. Someone had laid out a romantic feast, complete with candles, and left the remains to ferment.
"No one's been in here in..." He sniffed. "Four days. Or three. There was fish in that meal. Fish is the secret incredient that gives unwashed dishes that special olfactory oomph, you know?"
"Spoken like a true ex-bachelor," Liv said primly. "I wouldn't know, myself. I do my dishes as I use them. On the spot."
"Yeah, yeah. I know. You're perfect, and all that." Sean held up one of the candle holders, sniffing it. "Scented candles? Pink? Jesus, has he gone over to the other side? What the fuck is that about?"
"It's about her," Liv said quietly. "It's about Edie Parrish."
He gaped at her. "Nah. Really? You think?"
"Didn't you see the way she draws him? Did you see those graphic novels? How over-the-top romantic they are? She worships him."
Sean picked up another candle, this one a deep crimson. "Well, hell. Looks like he worships her back. So they were too overwhelmed with passion to come down and do their dishes. For three whole days?"
Liv looked thoughtful. "We're talking a McCloud guy plus true love, remember. Three whole days in bed is doable. I can visuali
ze it."
Sean squinted at her. "Don't visualize it with anybody but me."
She started to reply, eyes sparkling. He clapped his hand over her mouth. "Get your head back in the game," he whispered, and gave her a kiss. He pulled her across the expanse of floor, and up the spiral staircase. The bathroom was on the loft. Not opulent, but nice. After their remodel, Sean could price the materials with his eye. Ching ching.
They opened the door to the bedroom. It too was large and simple. Wooden venetian blinds over the windows, swaying in a draft.
Then they saw the mandala painting on the ceiling.
Sean was helpless to reel his jaw back up into place. His throat was tightening, like screws were turning. His hands had gone numb. He put the beer down on the dresser with a trembling hand.
The mandala was identical in every detail to the painting on the ceiling of their bedroom, the one Kev had done the year after Dad died, except magnified to the tenth power. It seemed to expand out to infinity, far beyond the confines of the room.
The twelve-year-old Kev had lost himself in that painting for weeks, putting all his unspoken grief into it. None of them had talked about how they felt after Dad died. None of them knew how. It wasn't done in Eamon McCloud's house. They swallowed it down, clenched their teeth and their bellies against the sickening ache, pretended that everything was normal. When the bottom had fallen out of the world.
Kev's mandala brought it back. Those strange, silent meals in the first months. Davy looking tough and tightlipped at the head of the table instead of Dad. Eating Davy and Con's cooking. Burned meat, squirrel stew. Flat, unyeasted bread, crunchy undercooked rice. Dirt in the vegetables. Not much else. In a holding pattern of uncertainty, afraid to take a breath, make a move. No fucking clue how they would survive without Dad. What they were supposed to do, alone and broke.
Then Davy had shouldered the duty of the firstborn. He'd found a job on a construction crew. As soon as Con had followed suit and was earning money too, Davy had joined the army and gotten shipped out to Iraq. The world in constant flux. All those unexpressed feelings were tied up in the swirling shifts and shadings in that painting.
As a twelve-year-old, Sean had lost himself staring up at Kev's painting, as he lay on his bed. He had let the image swirl him up into its vortex and carry him away, washing his mind blessedly clean, so that he could breathe. Even sleep, sometimes. Kev's special gift.
Kev had not forgotten them, Sean realized abruptly. His brothers were there, in Kev's head. They loomed large. He couldn't cancel them out. And looking at that ceiling, it didn't seem as if he wanted to.
"It was a message, you know," Liv said.
"Huh?" He tried to fish her words out of his short term memory, but the task was too much for his boggled mind. "What?"
"The kite," she said. "It was a message to you. He's been calling out to you for years." She let out a shaky breath. "And you finally heard him." Her voice choked off. She pressed her hand over her mouth.
They stood staring. Then Liv gasped, let out a delighted laugh.
"What?" he demanded. "What is it?"
"The bed! Look at that!"
He looked at the rumpled bed. The duvet and sheet were turned down, and...horror exploded inside him. "Jesus, is that blood?"
"No, you silly!" Liv sat on the bed, scooped some of the withered dark spots up into her hand, and sniffed them tenderly before letting them flutter back down. "Rose petals. Oh, God. How romantic."
Sean let out a sharp sigh. "Jesus Christ. You scared me."
She sniffed the petals clinging to her hand. "I'm so glad. He can't be too bad off. Not if there are rose petals on his sheets."
"Yeah, right. He's getting laid, at least," Sean said grumpily.
"Don't be crass," she said. "Rose petals are not about getting laid. They're a tribute to a woman's hunger for tenderness. Sensitivity. Wordless understanding. You know. Those things that girls like."
"What's this, Liv?" he demanded. "Are you telling me I'm not tender or sensitive? That I don't feed your womanly hungers enough?"
Her sexy, rosy mouth quivered as she fought hard not to smile. "I'm just happy, for Kev and his lady friend. That he get's it. That's all."
"Oh. I see. You mean, it wasn't enough, the time that I got the paintbrush and the chocolate and caramel swirl sauce and did that great Postimpressionistic artwork all over your--"
"Absolutely not the same thing," she said crisply. "That was extremely enjoyable, and you get points for using sugar and chocolate, but there is no comparison."
"And the time I spent eight hundred bucks on sexy lingerie for--"
"Do not even mention sexy lingerie to a woman well into her third trimester," Liv warned. "It will break her heart."
Sean bit back a snarl of frustration. "When I get my hands on my brother, I'm going to have hard words with him. About making trouble between me and my wife. Creating unrealistic expectations. Rose petals? My ass, Liv. It's a fucking circus trick. That's all!"
"Is it? Well, you go ahead. Have those words with him," she suggested. "Maybe you'll even learn something. Wonders never cease."
He crossed his arms over his chest. "Soon as we get back to the hotel room, we're going to have a long talk about your womanly needs, babe. And just exactly what it is that you think you need to ful-fill them."
Her eyes glowed with sensual promise. "I think that sounds like an excellent idea."
The air combusted. He was so turned on, he wanted to use Kev's bed then and there, to show Liv just how deep his commitment to fulfilling her womanly needs went. That was to say, to the hilt. All night long. And forever, while he was at it.
But through the fog of lust, another thought pricked him. How smoothly she'd wrangled him through this encounter with his brother's home and life. Not letting him hit the ceiling. Soothing, lecturing, scolding, teasing. And when all else failed, she just seduced him.
He was such a goddamn puppy. Sit, wag, roll over and beg. Eating out of her hand. Or better yet, eating chocolate caramel off parts of her that were even more sensitive. Any time. Any damn time.
But now was not that time. He looked away from the sultry glow in her eyes, the flushed lips, her absolutely lickable, suckable tits, and cleared his throat with a harsh cough. "So. Let's be methodical."
"Oh, yes. Please, let's," she murmured.
"Stop it, Liv," he warned. "Let me concentrate. The elements fit together. The doors were forced. Pink scented candles, rose petals on the bed, so sex happened. The dishes were left undone for days. And there was no apparent sign of violence. Nor has anyone reported a break-in. So they haven't been back. Like the Parrish chick's place."
"So?" Liv said. "Conclusion?"
"So they come here, and Kev's prepared a big romantic meal, with candles, etc. They chow down. Then, they go up to the bedroom, and do whatever it is that they do with their magic fucking flower petals."
Liv cleared her throat, stifling a giggle.
"But while they're up in the bedroom, they hear someone coming," he said. "Kev has to protect her, so instead of going down and getting into it..." He walked over to the window, the one whose blinds were blowing inward, and peered out. "They crawl out on the fire escape, step across onto the scaffolding, and flee out of that building."
"Leaving the dishes to fester," Liv said. "Very good. I like it."
"But where are they now?" Sean mused. "And who is after them?"
A gust of icy wind swept through the blinds. He shivered with a strange foreboding. Suddenly he had yet another reason to add to the long list of compelling reasons to get out of Kev's place and back to the cozy bed in their hotel room. "Let's go," he said. "This place is not safe."
Liv followed him, with no back talk. She'd caught the same spooky vibe. He slunk out the bedroom door, pulling Liv behind him.
The vibe was building up into something approaching panic. A sense of having miscalculated, fucked up. Missed something important.
Of course, at that mo
ment, the cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Thank God he'd turned off the ringtone. He yanked the thing out.
It was Davy. Movement down below caught his eye. The front door, silently swinging inward.
He yanked Liv to the floor beneath him, clamped his hand over her mouth. Company, he mouthed, jerking his gaze toward the door.
Two men, peeking in the door. Big guns. They moved in, tippety tapping like ninja cat shadows, and here he was, like an asshole, all alone with his wife, with the precious little space shrimp paddling around inside her, and one dinky fucking six-shot emergency revolver.
He eyed the bedroom door behind them. The room with the escape route. Too far. That much movement to the end of the loft would catch the eyes of those men, even slithering. Liv was wearing a bright red sweater coat. He was wearing drab gray and jeans, but she looked like a peony in full bloom up there, against the red brick walls. A pregnant peony. God help them.
He shoved Liv toward the bathroom door, hanging blessedly open from his previous inspection of Kev's choice of bathroom fixtures. She slithered in on her side, face pale, mouth clamped, teeth digging into her lower lip. Not a peep out of his Amazon queen.
He followed, feet first, crawling backward over the slate-colored bathroom tiles. He tapped in a message to Davy.
kev's apt. 46 NW Lenox with liv. company. help.
Sent, he shoved the phone in his pocket. His brother's apartment was so fucking huge, he'd need a rifle to take those guys from here. And now they were trapped. Far-fucking-out. He might have known.
Kev was a McCloud, after all. This crazy shit was inevitable.
Kev parked on the far side of the building next door to his own. His sixth sense was screaming, so he figured his chances of getting in and out without tripping an alarm were slim. Then again, they would have watched for his return until this morning, but after they'd taken him, there was no reason for them not to turn their eyes away.
Fade to Midnight Page 43
