Bad for Her

by Christi Barth

  “The government? You’re . . . what? A spy?”

  God, what he’d give to be able to nod and cop to being the American James Bond right now. “I’m in the Witness Security Program. WITSEC. Under the umbrella of the U.S. Marshals Service.”

  “You’re in witness protection?”

  “Yes.”

  Her arms sort of morphed from just being crossed to hugging herself. Not a good sign. “Did you witness something bad? Or did you do something bad?”

  That was a . . . decent way of easing into it. “Both.”

  “Did you kill someone?”

  Wow. That question was the equivalent of burning rubber and peeling out at eighty miles per hour. So much for easing into it. “No. No! Shit, that’s what Kellan asked, too. I’m no killer, Mollie.”

  “I don’t know what to ask next.” She walked in a slow, tight circle. “I . . . Is Kellan really your brother?”

  “Whether he likes it or not. For the past six months, he hasn’t liked me much at all.” But if this whole WITSEC thing worked out, he’d have the rest of their lives to convince Kellan to drop the attitude. That was worth it.

  “Flynn, too?”

  “Yes. To really being my brother and, coincidentally, also being pissed at me. Flynn’s the reason why we’re here.”

  Her eyes shifted down and to the side. “Did Flynn kill someone?”

  “Shit.” Rafe slid to the ground, back braced against the mossy log. He bent his knees. Spread his legs wide. “C’mere.” This whole thing would go a lot better if he didn’t look at her. If he couldn’t see the twitches around her mouth, or the rounding of her eyes, or each and every little tell that screamed at him how freaked out Mollie was right now.

  She sat, her sweet ass tucked up against him. Rafe wanted to hug her tight. But he didn’t want to have her think he was trying to hold her in place. So he deliberately just rested his palms on her thighs. That was all for him. He needed the connection, the touch. In case he lost it forever.

  “My dad was in the Irish mob in Chicago. It wasn’t a secret. We didn’t talk about it at the dinner table, but I knew. I knew from the day I went into the basement to look for a baseball and saw my dad with six of his friends. They all had guns either in their hands, or shoved in their waistbands. One guy held a bat. It wasn’t pine colored, like the bats I used at school. This one had red streaks down it.”

  Mollie jerked against him. “You were a child?”

  “I was seven.” Easy to pinpoint his age because Kellan had still been a baby in his crib. “They all noticed me. One of them fished a fifty out of his pocket, handed it over, and told me to be a good boy and keep my piehole shut.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went back upstairs and asked my mom if we could have pie for dessert. The next day, my dad asked me to help him out. Carry a note in to the bakery for him, and wait for them to give me a box of donuts. What I eventually found out was that the monthly payoff to the mob was stacked under a half-dozen chocolate glazed. And a kid like me doing the handoff took all the risk out of it.”

  Mollie’s hands slid back until they covered Rafe’s. “Your father turned you into a criminal.”

  “No.” Dad didn’t stop it, but Rafe wouldn’t let his father take the blame. That all, one hundred fucking percent, lay at the feet of exactly one person. The blame for getting him into the mob, and the blame for what eventually sent him running out of it. “Danny McGinty did that. He was the boss. It was his idea to use me. Dad wouldn’t say no to him. Never did. McGinty reeled me in, little by little. More after Mom died. Being in his organization gave me a place to go, people to be with, a way to let off steam and work off my grief. I was twelve. Until last year, I thought her death was a random accident. Then I found out a bullet took her down that was intended for someone else. She got in the way of a turf war on her way to pick us up from school. She died because of Danny McGinty.”

  Rafe’s head felt light and spinny, like he’d just gotten off of a roller coaster. Sure, he’d planned to tell Mollie everything. Just not in one big long breath. He hadn’t even told the FBI and the Marshals about his mom. Guess he’d been waiting to get that off his chest for a while.

  “That’s . . . that’s absolutely horrible, Rafe.” Mollie twisted a little to lay her cheek against his chest. The side without the stitches. Because she was careful and caring like that.

  “That’s the tip of the iceberg. See, I thought McGinty saved me.” Rafe remembered the rush of gratitude he’d gotten for years whenever he was with McGinty. When he didn’t know any better. When he woke up every morning thinking that the sun rose and set on his hero. “He gave me responsibility. Money. Turned me into a man. When Dad died, when I was too fucking young to be in charge of my brothers, let alone keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, McGinty stepped up. Made me a full member. Eventually made me his right-hand man. Gave Flynn a job, and even paid his way through college.”

  “You didn’t have a choice.”

  “Not really.” He’d done a lot of thinking about that, over the past six months. If he’d taken the easy way. If he’d knowingly broken the law, hurt people, again and again in the name of his fucking hero, because it was easy. Easier than working three minimum wage jobs and not having health insurance. Easier than stealing shoes for his brothers to wear to school.

  Maybe it was. But Rafe didn’t regret it. It allowed him to give Flynn, and much more so Kellan, a decent life. That was worth everything in his book.

  Mollie’s hands squeezed tighter. “That’s unconscionable. He used children.”

  “McGinty uses everyone. Man, woman, child, you name it. It’s how he works. He used my dad until the day he caught a bullet, too. And I’m pretty fucking sure that McGinty’s the one who pulled the trigger that day. Something else I didn’t find out until it was almost too late.”

  That turned Mollie all the way around to face him. It was getting harder to see in the twilight haze beneath the thick tree canopy. But it wasn’t at all hard to see the horror in Mollie’s wide eyes, wetness gathered at the corners. “The man who was a father figure to you killed your actual father?”

  It wasn’t any less of a punch to the gut, no matter how many times Rafe went over it and over it in his head. “I didn’t know it at the time, trust me. Right before I left, I went through McGinty’s desk. To take anything that could be evidence. I found my father’s watch. And the St. Christopher’s medallion that Danny gave him when I was born.”

  “Those both sound like common—”

  A swift shake of his head cut her off. “They were both inscribed. Danny liked you to remember where the expensive presents came from. Definitely my father’s. Which was weird, because I was told that Dad died in a shoot-out with another mob crew. McGinty and his bodyguard barely escaped the hail of bullets. When they went back to get Dad’s body later, it was gone. Pretty convenient story to cover up killing someone off, isn’t it?”

  Mollie squeezed her eyes shut, then swiped the moisture away underneath them. “Is that why you left?”

  It’d been enough to send him running when he put the pieces together, that was for damn sure. He remembered the jolt as his stomach turned to lead. As everything he thought he knew and cared about turned out to be false.

  If Rafe hadn’t already put in motion the plan to join WITSEC? At that moment, sitting in McGinty’s green leather desk chair, he’d been genuinely torn between hunting him down and putting a bullet between his eyes . . . and shooting Danny in the kneecaps and balls before putting a bullet between his eyes.

  No, Rafe hadn’t ever killed anyone. But, as he held his father’s watch in his hand, Rafe had been primed and ready to break that rule.

  The watch he hadn’t touched since the day his father died fourteen years ago.

  He pulled in a long breath of the fresh, pine-scented air. It helped wash away the bitterness of that day. It would never leave him, but Rafe woke up less often, angry and burning with vengeance, here i
n Bandon.

  “No. I’d already made the decision to quit the mob and testify against McGinty because of Flynn. I did it to keep Flynn out of jail.”

  Mollie resumed her previous position, back to his front. Hell, maybe she didn’t want to look at him after all he’d just dumped on her. In a steady voice, as if ordering a soda, she asked, “What did he do?”

  “Nothing.” Since she hadn’t cut and run yet, Rafe allowed himself to loosely hug her. He needed it. And if she was as shockingly sympathetic as it seemed so far? Maybe she needed it, too. “Well, that’s not entirely true. Flynn was in the mob. He headed up the legit construction business that allowed us to have health insurance and launder money and look like regular citizens who worked and paid taxes. But when one operation went south, McGinty picked Flynn to take the fall. Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. Hadn’t been a part of it, at all.”

  “Then how—”

  It was harder to get this part out. Harder because Rafe’s teeth automatically gritted shut. Hell, every inch of his body clenched and cramped, resisting the urge to get up and kick the shit out of a tree trunk, just to let out some of his anger.

  But he wouldn’t scare Mollie like that. Rafe just hoped he made it through the trial without jumping out of the witness stand and pounding in McGinty’s face.

  “Danny—the guy who took me under his wing, gave me everything I had, from a job to a purpose to a house—asked me to plant evidence. In my own house, against my own brother. ‘For the good of the organization.’ He promised that the lawyers would make sure that Flynn got off easy. That he’d only be inside for a handful of years. Promised a big bonus when he got out as thanks for his loyalty.”

  “He wanted you to put away your own brother?” Her voice was slow. Halting. “I’m sorry. I feel like I’m repeating a lot, or asking stupid questions. But this is all so different. Different from my life, different from anything I know. Even different from the movies. And yet so much more real.”

  God. Mollie sounded . . . off. Like he’d spun her world upside down without giving her an anchor. That was the last thing he wanted to do.

  It was getting cooler in the forest as the sun dropped, and Rafe rubbed her upper arms for warmth. But he wanted to soothe her, too. Reassure her that the reality she knew was the one that mattered.

  Not his fucked-up version.

  “That’s saying something.” Rafe tugged on her earlobe with his teeth. “Coming from someone who literally deals in life and death every day.”

  “Most days, here in Bandon, it’s more vaccines, stitches, and broken bones. But I get your drift.” She batted him away, but finished by stroking his jaw. “Okay. I’m going to suspend freaking out and just listen. Like you asked.”

  “Each time Mom came home from the hospital with a baby, the first thing she did was put it in my arms. Tell me that he was my responsibility. I took it seriously. That jacked up a whole lot once she died. And once Dad was gone? Keeping Kellan and Flynn safe, healthy, and happy was my entire focus. I never once thought about trying to work out a way to go to college. Staying with Danny meant they were taken care of—simple as that.”

  “Your relationship with them is admirable.”

  God, if only. Rafe swore under his breath. Kicked at the leaves and twigs under his foot just to hear the harsh scrape of it against the ground. “Our relationship turned to shit since I yanked them out of their lives. Because it’s my fault. I’m the one who decided to turn state’s evidence. I’m the one who made the deal with the government. Contingent on putting not just me, but all three of us, in protective custody.”

  There was silence.

  Or what passed for it in the middle of a forest. Rafe still noticed every damn rustle and hoot and squawk and scratch. Maybe he should put Kellan into research mode. Both because it’d make the brainiac happy, and because they should probably know if there were bears or cougars or whatever out here.

  “It sounds like it was the only way to keep Flynn out of jail. And, I’m assuming, to protect Kellan from whatever ugly reprisal your former boss would have carried out.”

  “Reprisal. Yeah. That’s an understatement.” It wasn’t often he let himself think about what might’ve happened if he and Flynn had left Kellan back in Chicago. Alone. To finish off law school and live a normal life.

  But the few times he did think about it? It was with one hundred percent god damned certainty that McGinty would’ve plugged holes in Kellan the moment he found out the other Maguire brothers took off.

  Or worse.

  “You did the right thing, Rafe.” Abruptly, Mollie stood. Brushed off her ass and stared daggers at him. “You did the right thing. For you. I get that. I absolutely get that. I get what a hard decision it must’ve been. How brave and strong you are to have done that for your brother. To give everything up just to keep them safe. It makes me respect you so much more, makes me ache for what you’ve been through. It literally fills me with awe. And it also makes me want to push you off of Weber’s Pier right into the ocean.”

  “I don’t understand.” Not at all. How was it she sounded so sincere and so pissed at the same time?

  “First, tell me this—what was all that I heard through the door about millions of dollars?”

  Oh, yeah. That probably didn’t fit into Mollie’s reality, either. But they didn’t take it for shits and giggles. Or for a Ferrari. They took it for survival. “It’s our insurance. We took it from McGinty in case things didn’t work out with WITSEC.”

  In sharp, furious motions, Mollie pulled out her hair tie and smoothed everything he’d mussed up during sex. Then she yanked it back into a ponytail so tight he didn’t think her forehead could move.

  Until she frowned. At him. “This talk about retrieving the money. Does that mean you’re leaving Bandon? Leaving me?”

  Shit. The whole reason he copped to the truth was to give them a chance at a future. “God, Mollie, that’s the last thing I want.” How did they get here so quickly? Now Rafe was scrambling. Because telling the story of his life was easier than figuring out what was supposed to happen next.

  “Which one?”

  “Both of them.” He got up. A little slower, because his chest had started to throb. Rafe took her hands. “I don’t want to lose you. That’s why I’m telling you all this. Because I won’t lie to you. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

  She didn’t look convinced. Not by a long shot. “You say it’s the last thing you want. But you don’t come out and promise that you won’t leave.”

  His super smart doc had picked up on that, huh? “It’s not entirely in my control. And like I said, I won’t lie to you. We might have to leave. To keep you safe. To keep everyone in Bandon safe. I won’t put anyone else at risk for our sake.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

  That hurt more than the stab to his chest. Yeah, he got that Mollie was mad. Blindsided. So she got to lash out. As long as she followed it up with an explanation of exactly what she was pissed about so he could apologize right. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m so mad at you, Rafe. Because there’s no guarantee you won’t be found. The way you describe him, Danny McGinty is sure to be scouring the country for you. To get you. To stop you from testifying. That means that you brought a significant potential for danger to my town. To my home.”

  There wasn’t a good answer to that. He hadn’t chosen Bandon. Hell, he’d never heard of it before last month. It wasn’t a strategic escape spot. It was nothing more than chance they’d ended up here.

  Damn it, of all the bad things he’d seen and done, coming to Bandon was the only thing that wasn’t his fault. That was what pissed her off the most? Not that she’d slept with an ex-mobster. Not that he was bad for her. But the threat of danger to the town had her up in arms? How the hell did he diffuse that?

  Grabbing at the only straw he had in his arsenal, Rafe said, “The marshals say they’ve never lost anyone who f
ollows all the rules.”

  “Do you?” She threw her arms wide, exasperation flowing off of her. “Do you and your brothers—men who’ve operated with little regard for at least some rules their whole adult lives—do you three follow all the rules?”

  God. He scrubbed a hand across his mouth. Mollie definitely had his number. Especially since he was violating rule number one right now. As earnestly as he could manage, Rafe said, “We try.”

  “You know how much this town, these people mean to me. Yet every day you get up and stay here, knowing that you’re literally the personification of danger.”

  “No danger.” Not if everything worked according to plan. “Just three brothers trying to make a life. A new life. I swear to God, we don’t want trouble to find us. And we sure as hell don’t plan to start any. Please, Mollie.” Rafe stopped, because he wasn’t sure what he was asking from her.

  She’d already given so much more than he expected—or deserved—with her sympathy and understanding. Could he really ask for forgiveness for the one thing that wasn’t his fault? Coming here was entirely out of his control.

  If she asked him to leave, would he uproot his brothers again? Convince the marshals to move them one more time?

  “I need time to think, Rafe.”

  “I need your word that you won’t reveal us.”

  Her face just . . . crumpled. Her whole body sagged inward. “Are you kidding me?”

  “What?”

  “That hurts. That piece of steel you took to the chest today? That pain’s nothing compared to what you just did to my heart. For God’s sake, don’t you know you can trust me?”

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out as Mollie turned, with tears streaming down her cheeks, and jogged away from him.

  His knees bent, without him even realizing it, until Rafe was back on the ground. Being blindsided did that to a guy. Trusting people hadn’t gone so well for him in the past. What it had gotten Rafe was a one-way ticket away from his home, his friends, and the only life he knew. He didn’t jump right to assuming every stinking level of trust. Probably never would again. Trust was pretty damn far in his rearview mirror.