by Susan Sey
Putting herself through culinary school, starting a little catering business, then transforming Brightwater’s from a casino that happened to also serve dinner into a destination restaurant for foodies all over the country—an admirable resume for anybody, let alone a woman who’d grown up in one of the country’s most fabled criminal families.
Patrick, however, was another story.
It had been three years since she’d last seen him, since he’d fulfilled their contract to the letter and disappeared. Three years of servitude as Liz’s personal weasel in exchange for Mara’s clean slate, then poof. Into the wind like the shadow she knew he was.
Maybe he was straight now, but he hadn’t changed otherwise. He was still all razor-sharp intellect, startling beauty and dizzying charm. He still set her nerves on edge in a way she’d have sworn she outgrew years ago. And he was still about as easy to read as hieroglyphics.
Liz punched through the kitchen doors into the steaming, shouting heart of Mara’s restaurant. The grill shot an enormous flame toward the range hood, and Liz’s hand twitched toward the weapon concealed under her suit jacket. She shook her head impatiently and relaxed her stiff muscles. Jesus, she was tight.
She glared at Patrick over her shoulder. His fault. She didn’t normally find thieves—allegedly ex-thieves—disturbing, but there was nothing normal about this man or what he stirred up in her.
But this wasn’t about her. This was about him. And while she didn’t doubt the power of love or family, she did doubt that either could command the likes of Patrick O’Connor. Which begged the question, what could command him?
Only a few answers came to mind, none of them any more reassuring than the last. Because while Patrick himself had been strictly nonviolent as a criminal, the same couldn’t be said of his colleagues. And if the same sense of familial responsibility that had prompted him to trade his own freedom for his sister’s was still at work, Liz had to wonder what—or who—he was protecting Mara from this time.
She plowed through the chaos of Mara’s kitchen to the open door of her tiny office. A vast desk filled the space, making Mara look even more fairy-sized than she actually was. With a pile of crumpled receipts at one elbow, a mug of coffee at the other and a pencil clamped between her teeth, Mara punched buttons on an adding machine and muttered curses at the ensuing spill of paper. Liz cleared a pile of kitchen catalogues off one of a pair of folding chairs across from the desk and plunked herself down. She glared hard at the meticulous part running dead center down the top of Mara’s bent head.
Mara’s tapping and cursing continued without pause, so Liz said, “I brought you something.”
“Is it an incarcerated counterfeiter?” Mara asked around the pencil.
“No.”
“Then go away. I don’t need presents. I need—”
But what she needed was lost when Patrick appeared in the doorway with his usual sense of timing and style. No, Liz thought, watching Mara jump to her feet with a little cry. Appear was the wrong word. Patrick didn’t appear; he made an entrance. Debutantes could take lessons from this guy, and Liz ought to know. Her grandmother had paraded her around the debut circuit like a prize heifer until she could hit her mark like Miss America.
Which was saying something considering that she hadn’t known Miss America even existed until she was well into her teens. Hell, she hadn’t even seen a TV until she’d turned eleven.
She crossed her legs and watched Mara fling herself at her brother. It amazed her, as always, to think that these two people had been fished from the same gene pool. Maybe they had matching heads of thick, spilled-ink hair, but that was where anything remotely approaching a family resemblance ended.
Where Patrick was long and lean and wore three-thousand-dollar suits the way other people wore skin, Mara was small and curvy and, at least in Liz’s experience, wore nothing but jeans, T-shirts and huge, stained aprons. And where Mara buzzed with a constant, irresistible energy, Patrick walked around in an impenetrable bubble of mannered, moneyed calm. Such a waste, Liz thought now. All that jaw-dropping male beauty, lavished on a guy people were afraid to touch.
At least most people. Mara, she noticed with interest, squeezed her brother with a delighted relish that had Liz’s brows heading for her hairline. She waited for him to reclaim his personal space with the sort of pithy, faintly condescending remark he was famous for, but he just patted Mara’s back with oddly helpless hands until she was finished with him.
“I can’t believe you actually came!” Mara said, drawing back to beam at him.
“I can hardly believe it myself,” he said, frowning down at the wrinkle Mara’s embrace had left on the sleeve of his undoubtedly expensive shirt.
Mara rolled her eyes. “Your shirt’s fine, Sheila. Have a seat.”
Patrick glanced at the chair next to Liz. She could almost hear him consulting an imaginary dry cleaner. “I think I’ll stand,” he said.
“Don’t be a crybaby,” Mara said. “Look, Liz managed to sit down without incident.”
Patrick cast an expert eye over Liz’s black jacket and pants. “Liz buys her suits at Target,” he said. “She has far less at stake.” He sent Liz a charming smile. She didn’t smile back. She was too busy battling down a ridiculous wave of feminine embarrassment. She was FBI, for God’s sake. She was dressed for the job, not a freaking cocktail party. What did he think she was going to wear? Armani?
Mara snorted. “You’ve been spending too much time in California,” she told Patrick. “It’s not a healthy environment, you know. All those pampered celebrities and their designer noses. You’re going native.”
Patrick lifted a lazy brow. “I’m well compensated for the risk. Though I doubt that continued exposure to the celebrity element will somehow tempt me into plastic surgery. As it turns out, I have a very good nose.”
Liz sighed. “Does anybody mind if we skip the chitchat and get to the point? I have other cases, you know.”
Patrick waved an expansive hand. “By all means,” he said. “Fire away, Agent Brynn.”
Liz turned a pointed look on Mara, who had the grace to look faintly sheepish. “You have something you want to run by me, Mara?” she asked. “A plan of some sort? Involving your brother?”
“Yes, Mara. Do tell,” Patrick said. “I confess, I’m curious. The last time the three of us had anything to discuss, it was which of us was going to jail.”
Mara glared at him. “Are you going to hold that over me for the rest of my life?”
Patrick gave her a pleasant smile. “Yes.”
“It’s not like I asked you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of my freedom, Mr. Christ Complex,” Mara said. “It’s entirely possible that I’d have managed the situation on my own, you know.”
Patrick inclined his head. “If you say so.”
She gave him a narrow look. “Did you come back here to help me, or are you just here to be condescending and arrogant?”
“Do I have to choose?”
Mara opened her mouth but Liz jumped in before she could peel another chunk off her brother’s hide. Not that he looked at all disturbed at the prospect.
“Okay, so Patrick informed me of your concern regarding the counterfeiting case,” she said in her best Joe Friday monotone. Because when life went haywire—and today certainly seemed to qualify—Liz liked to fall back on procedure. It was, in her opinion, what procedure was there for in the first place. So people didn’t have to rely on their own flawed and subjective judgment to figure out the right thing to do. They could memorize it ahead of time.
Mara stopped glaring at her brother long enough to say, “Yes. This is about the damn counterfeiter.”
“You sent your brother an SOS because you have some joker running a few fake bills through your restaurant?” she asked.
“And the casino,” Mara added, frowning darkly. “Mostly the casino, really.”
“And this pertains to me how?” Patrick asked. “For God’s sake, Mara. Casinos e
xpect to get taken on a certain percentage of their cash business. It’s just how things are done.”
Mara’s frown deepened. “Not on my watch it isn’t.”
Liz had seen that look before. Determined. Stubborn. Mara had a plan and she was digging in. Patrick seemed to recognize the futility of arguing because he sighed and shook his head. “Where’s your husband, Mara?”
Mara plunked down into the ancient chair behind her desk and scrubbed weary hands over her face. “South Carolina. He’s been overseeing renovations on a suite of cottages we picked up last summer, and until he gets home, I’m in charge. And I’ll be damned if some asshole counterfeiter’s going to skim off the profits while I am. The FBI’s spinning its wheels on this—no offense, Liz—and sitting around wringing my hands just isn’t a viable option for me.”
Patrick sighed again. “No, I know. Inaction has never been your problem. You have a plan, don’t you?”
“Bet your ass.”
Chapter 2
“WHAT DID you tell me about our guy that last time you were here, Liz?” Mara asked, rolling her hands in the air as if trying to pluck out the words. “His psychological profile, or whatever?”
No capacity for true stillness, Patrick thought as he watched his sister. It was a typically female problem, and it was exactly why so very few women became elite gamblers or thieves. He wondered if Mara even noticed her hands in motion.
“Our profiler tells us that we’re most likely looking at a white male, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five,” Liz said, and Patrick turned his attention to her, unwillingly fascinated.
Every rule had its exception, and in this case, it was Liz. She was absolutely, utterly still. If there was anything on her mind but FBI business, it was securely locked away or else vaporized by the force of her training. Her voice was cool, her eyes steady as she spoke.
“Highly intelligent, highly egocentric, driven by a need for excellence and acknowledgment. As with all criminals, there’s an element of the sociopath—a conviction that rules are for others, that his exceptional brainpower exempts him from the moral boundaries confining lesser mortals.” She didn’t look at Patrick, didn’t acknowledge him in any way, but he knew she was speaking to him, about him.
“Sounds like Dad, doesn’t it?” he asked Mara, letting a fond smile play around the edges of his mouth.
Liz spared him a cool glance. “Sounds like a lot of common criminals.”
Patrick showed his teeth in what passed for a smile. “Nothing common about Seamus O’Connor.”
Mara sighed. “Believe me, if Dad were still alive, I’d be taking a hard look at him. Be almost a relief.”
Liz blinked at that, but Patrick inclined his head in complete understanding. “Better the devil you know,” he murmured, watching Liz’s brows arch in rare surprise. Devils went to jail in her world, and he doubted she’d ever been grateful for tangling with one that was familiar and predictable.
Mara blew out a breath. “But in the absence of anything that simple, I think the prudent thing to do here is to focus on our felon’s Achilles’ heel.”
Liz sharpened that laser-beam focus of hers on Mara. “And that would be . . . ?”
Mara smiled. “The ego. Don’t forget, I grew up surrounded by criminal-minded men in the eighteen to thirty-five age range, all with exceptional brain power—”
“Thank you,” Patrick murmured.
“—and enormous egos,” Mara finished, with a sweet smile for him. “If this guy is anything like you or Dad, all it’ll take to bring him out of hiding is a little challenge to the ego.”
Liz tipped her head, considering this. “And you think our suspect is going to jump up and reveal himself because you brought a retired jewel thief and ex-poker king to town?”
“Patrick’s been a busy boy since he was in Grief Creek last,” Mara said patiently. “His history helps, but it’s his current career that’s going to bring our boy out of the woodwork.”
Patrick thought he knew what Mara wanted but decided to let her spell it out. He’d never been one to lay down his cards without knowing for certain what the other guy held. Besides, Mara wasn’t exactly the close-to-the-vest type. If she, too, suspected that Patrick’s past and present were on a collision course—and that she and her family could easily end up as collateral damage—he wouldn’t have to wait much longer to find out.
“I’m just a writer now, Mara,” he said, spreading his hands. “Trashy little crime novels, the occasional script. Some ghost writing. I do fairly well at it, but I’m with Liz on this one. I fail to see how I would be of any interest to your counterfeiter.”
Mara smiled back at him. “You sell yourself short, Patrick. You’re famous. That gorgeous face of yours is all over the media every time you put out a new book. Everybody’s desperate to know how much of all that crime drama is fact and how much is fiction. Everybody wants to know what you made up and what you actually did.”
Patrick leaned back against the door frame. “Everything I pulled has been fully confessed and duly recorded by the FBI years ago. I’m sure Liz has the whole thing in her archives somewhere. My writing is all fiction, Mara. You know that. You both do.”
Liz continued with the stone-faced cop routine, but Mara nodded.
“Of course I do,” Mara said impatiently. “I was there when you were pulling it all, wasn’t I?”
Most of it, anyway, Patrick thought, but he nodded in return and Mara went on.
“But the rest of the world wonders, you know? You’ve got a new book out, don’t you?”
Patrick narrowed his eyes at her. “Released last Tuesday. As you well know.”
“There’s always a nice little spike of publicity when you release a book.” Mara leaned back in her chair, satisfied. “All you have to do is spend a few days here in Grief Creek, do the club scene. Be high-profile, be decadent, be Hollywood.” She smirked at him. “Be yourself, in other words.”
Liz gazed at him, a speculative light growing in those shrewd blue eyes of hers. “He’ll ask a few questions about counterfeiting,” she said to Mara, picking up the thread of her thought. “Tell people it’s research for his next script. Maybe imply that he’s in the market for a script consultant, a real expert in the art of forgery.”
Mara grinned companionably at Liz and nodded. “No flies on you, honey. Yeah, he’d be looking for a real, live counterfeiter. Might even need the guy on location when the movie goes into production.”
Liz tapped a finger to her lips and squinted into the middle distance. Patrick could practically see her reducing the idea to individual components in her brain, weighing, labeling, measuring. It was a process with which he was extremely and unfortunately familiar.
“It’s a decent angle,” she said finally to Mara. “If our profile is accurate, the suspect will be highly unlikely to resist the opportunity for attention and adulation on that scale. It’s not ideal”—she cut her eyes at Patrick at that—“but I can work with it.”
Patrick folded his arms and sank deeper into his slouch against the doorjamb. It didn’t hurt, he told himself. Why should it? Liz stomached all kinds of ugly things in the pursuit of justice. Why should it hurt to be counted among them?
“What makes either of you think I’d care to work for the FBI again?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question.
He’d paid for his sins over the years, of course. Liz had seen to that. But he’d never made the mistake of thinking he’d balanced the scales. Good thing, too, because it looked like fate was serving him up another big old plateful of comeuppance. A comeuppance that would require nothing less than subjecting himself to Liz’s authority—and the strange temptation she presented—one last time.
Fate, he decided, was a stone-cold bitch.
His question hung there until the silence vibrated like a struck piano wire. Then Mara broke it.
“Nothing makes me think you want this,” she said, her voice low and quiet. She came to him, put a hand on his sleeve
. “This is a favor, one I have no right to ask. God knows you don’t owe me. Not me, and certainly not the FBI. But I’m asking anyway. You’re my brother, and I need your help. I want you to stay.”
Patrick shifted his gaze to hers and she didn’t blink.
“Even if you don’t do this, I want you to stay,” she said. “Give me a week. Just your time, if nothing else. I’ve missed you.”
Oh, hell, he thought, swamped by an uncomfortable surge of love and reluctance. He was going to have to do this thing.
He’d always been so careful with Mara, so meticulous about treating her with a casual mix of indulgence and obligation. Nobody who wanted to hurt him could possibly know she was the one thing in this world he loved.
Except one guy. The guy who’d born witness, up close and personal, to Patrick’s one and only display of public affection. The guy who, on the night Mara’s inept thievery had landed her ass in jail thereby forcing Patrick to prioritize his loyalties, had been screwed over without remorse. Because when it came down to choosing between his mentor or his sister, his partner or his family, Patrick hadn’t hesitated. He’d chosen Mara and left Jorge Villanueva holding the proverbial bag.
But it had been, what, six years since Villanueva had posed any immediate threat? The guy had disappeared into sunny Central America within minutes of Patrick’s betrayal and, for all Patrick knew, was waiting out the statute of limitations in some warlord’s mansion with a bottle of rum in one hand and a pretty senorita in the other. Patrick kept him on radar more as an exercise in vigilance than out of any real concern.
All of which changed when multiple sources—and yes, Patrick still had a few—placed Villanueva back on U.S. soil these past few months. A fact which took on new urgency when those sightings had drifted closer and closer to Grief Creek. Mara’s call for help had been just the excuse he’d needed to drop in for a brotherly visit without arousing suspicion. Sticking close to Mara while tracking down his old mentor’s ghost wasn’t the problem.
