Before Frank had time to even break into a cold sweat of panic, Ryan told him that he’d fixed it. That he’d gone to the Feds and offered to turn evidence against McGinty and everyone else. That the Mullaney brothers would get a free ride and full protection as long as he lived up to the bargain and they played it straight.
Right after they socked away their “insurance” money.
Because neither of them fully trusted the Feds to keep them safe.
Yeah, that sweat was sure popping out now. It made the cheap polyester of his costume itch. Frank wasn’t ready to give up his job, his clothes, his apartment, his fights, his life.
On the other hand, jail didn’t sound much better.
His breath rasped out in little clouds. He realized how cold the marble was under his hands. Cold as death.
Jail—or a new life in the middle of nowhere—was definitely a step up from being cold in the ground.
After the tour group went down the slope to the lake, Ryan asked, “You got a date for tonight?”
“No.” He tugged at the cartoonishly wide lapel of his bright green jacket. “No chance I’ll get one dressed like this, either.”
“You should get one. Go to a bar. Hook up. Live it up.”
Was he serious? Their lives were the literal eye of a shitstorm of a hurricane right now. Frank could flirt half-asleep, half-drunk, only be half-interested and still score a girl. But tonight? His head wasn’t in the game. Let alone his dick. “Not really in a pound-all-the-shots kind of mood, bro.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ryan stabbed a finger out toward the glow over the treetops, indicating the bright lights of downtown. “You need to be visible. Hit the usual spots. Make sure at least a half dozen of our guys see you having the time of your life. It’ll keep them from being suspicious after the raid goes down. Can you fake it?”
That was a funny question. That’s all that Frank did every day of his life.
He faked being okay with not being in on all the action. He faked being okay with not getting to choose his own damn college major, not being able to go to grad school. He’d convinced McGinty and the whole crew that he was fine with the choices made for him, the life they’d made and shoehorned him into.
Now he got to start over—and yet again, Frank still didn’t get a say in it.
“Yeah. I can throw back some whiskey tonight, no problem.” Probably the truest thing he’d said all day. The more he thought about it, the more getting shit-faced sounded like the only way to deal with all of this. No way he’d inflict himself and his weird-ass mood on a woman, though. “Want to grab one last deep-dish pepperoni at Lou Malnati’s? Before we make the rounds at the clubs?”
“You bet.”
Frank looked at his watch. The watch McGinty gave him the day he was promoted to vice-president of the construction company. Damn. That promotion had been a way to keep Frank under his thumb all along. A way to keep a convenient patsy close by. Turned out the job he’d worked his ass off for was basically the mob’s version of a bench to be warmed. Just a placeholder in case McGinty needed someone who looked important enough—on paper, anyway—to take all the blame.
He planned to put this watch under the front tire of whatever government SUV drove them out of town. Crushing it, crushing the taint of its memory, would be his last official act in Chicago.
“We’ll only make it if we wrap this up fast enough. Are we close, Ryan? Where are we stashing all this cash, anyway?”
“See that pyramid over there?”
Gray stone rose into a triangle of blocks, a sphinx on one side of the doorway, an angel on the other. Talk about a weird combination. It was cool and creepy and Frank had no idea how they were supposed to get inside of it. “The one with the giant black padlock on the door?”
“It’s modeled after an Egyptian tomb.” Ryan stood, slinging the red velvet sack back over his shoulder. “You remember the thing about all those ancient pyramids?”
“There was always a secret way out.” Okay, maybe tonight would be a little bit fun, after all. Sure, a slice from Malnati’s always scored in the top ten ways to end a night in Chicago. But a crazy-ass adventure with his big brother sounded like an even better way to spend their last hours in their hometown. A story they’d tell over and over and over again through the years.
Crap.
They’d only tell it to each other. Since this all had to stay a secret. From everyone.
For the rest of their lives.
Luckily, Ryan seemed oblivious of how often Frank’s thoughts spiraled into near-panic. Gesturing for him to follow, his brother stalked in between the columns and zigzagged around a perimeter of six-foot-tall bushes. “Or, in our case, a way in. After this Schoenhofen guy died, his son-in-law took over the business. And he owed the mob a shit ton of money. He ran the biggest brewery in Chicago back in the day. Thought he’d gotten so big that he could skip paying protection money.”
That was just stupid no matter what decade he was from. At least that stupidity erased the tiny bit of guilt Frank had been harboring about breaking into a tomb. “Let me guess. They took him out?”
“Drowned him in one of his own copper beer kettles.” Ryan shot him a grin.
Frank couldn’t help but smile back. It was kind of perfect. The Irish mob excelled at making their point in . . . creative ways. “Karma’s a bitch.”
“Whoever took over the business next wised up. He paid up. Fast. As a show of good faith, he offered this tomb as a place for us to hide . . . whatever we might need to keep out of sight. People. Money. Bodies. With Prohibition about to hit, we jumped at it. Settled his account right up. We used it for years. Nowadays a cemetery isn’t so easy to go unnoticed in, so it just sits empty. I checked it out, oh, three years ago when I first learned about it. Nothing but cobwebs inside.”
Suddenly, Frank didn’t want to hear any more Chicago history, no matter how interesting. It just reminded him of the ticking clock hanging over his head. The one where he, Ryan, and Kieran were all leaving Chicago for good. That fact only seemed to clear out of his head for about two minutes, before the weight of it crashed back down again.
Shit.
Ryan was jumping through all these hoops for him. To save him. No way could he let his brother see how freaked out he was. It wouldn’t be fair to lay that on him. Frank caught up in a couple of long steps. “How did I never hear this story?”
“Because you kept your nose clean running the legit biz. You didn’t spend every day hanging out, shooting the breeze with lowlifes like me.”
“Look what good that did me,” Frank mumbled. Great. His clear head had only lasted twenty seconds this time around.
Laying a hand on his arm to stop him, his brother asked, “What are you talking about?”
“Ryan, you’re the fixer for the head of the Chicago mob. You’ve done more than your fair share of bad things.”
The fingers on his arm tightened. “I take care of bad people. There’s a difference. Whatever I do, I guarantee they’ve got it coming to them. It’s justice, Frankie. No different than handing out parking tickets. Our way’s just faster. More successful, too.”
Frank gave a quick thought to the parking tickets filling his glove compartment. Parking in Chicago was impossible on a good day. If by some miracle you found a spot, you kept it. The two-hour limit was a joke. Well, at least he was off the hook for a couple hundred bucks there. Silver lining. Get out of jail and get out of his tickets. Clearly, he owed Ryan a thank-you present. Something between a bottle of Blue Label Johnnie Walker and a boot to the balls.
He shook off Ryan’s grip and turned to face him. He needed to bleed off some of the bitterness suddenly spurting up from his gut. “I toed the line. Ran the front. Paid taxes. Made sure all of your lowlifes had taxes and Medicare taken out of their paychecks. Made a construction company run even though half the people on the payroll never showed up to work. And yet I’m the one Danny McGinty wants to send to jail.”
“You’re
not going to jail,” Ryan said fiercely. “That’s the whole point of this. You will not see the inside of a cell, Frank. I’ve got that in writing from the US Marshals. We turn evidence, we cooperate, we’re free to go.”
It was almost too good to be true. Nobody stood up to the mob and just walked away. “What if something goes wrong?”
Ryan put his head down, scanning the ground. Five graves down from the Schoenhofen pyramid, the earth rose into a low bunker. Tombs with pointed roofs that came up maybe to his waist were built into it. At the first one, Ryan dropped to his knees. He pushed at the cornice of each of the eighth-sized columns. Then he put his fingers around the starburst carved in the middle and twisted. The entire front swung inwards.
“That’s why we stole all this money, isn’t it? Best backup plan in the world. Plus, it gives you your one shot at finally being a bad guy to the core. I call that a win-win.” Shoving his sack in front of him, Ryan hit the deck and shimmied inside.
Frank looked around at the shadows from the pine trees, the full moon overhead, and the stark lines of the tombs. This was a pretty epic way to end things here in Chicago. Belly-crawling into a century-old crypt on Halloween? Come on. Classic Ryan, thinking to hide the mob’s stolen money in their own hiding spot. So he’d have fun with this. No more sulking. No more freaking out. Maybe this new life was the best thing for all of them. They’d never intended to grow up to be criminals, after all.
Starting over would be good. Not just because it kept him out of jail.
And as long as he was with Ryan and Kieran, how bad could it really be?
Chapter 1
Present day
The Gorse Bar
Bandon, Oregon
Flynn Maguire hated a lot of things. As he slowly, carefully drew a pint of Guinness, he counted them. Starting with his brother, Rafe, who had the dumber than dirt idea to throw them all into Witness Protection.
He also hated his new life.
They were on version five of it now, having been planted and then yanked from four other towns and jobs. Their personal marshal, Delaney Evans, had issued the warning—aka threat—that if this one didn’t take, they were out of the program. He’d hate her a little, too, if he didn’t know she was just doing her job. Of all people, Flynn sure as hell knew what that felt like. Seeing as how he’d spent five years running a construction company he didn’t give two shits about. But he’d run it and run it well.
For all the good it did.
Oh, another reason to be pissy had just popped up today. Flynn hated that his new name—which he’d picked and actually liked, unlike the last two—was shared by the latest boy-bander to get thrown in jail for sniffing his paycheck up his nose. Now his name was on everyone’s lips. Exactly what he—and the US Marshals Service—didn’t want.
He hated this quaint fucking seaside village of a town. On principle, anyway. Because it wasn’t Chicago. None of the towns they’d moved to were anything like the Windy City. The food, the people, the action—none of it compared. Flynn hadn’t realized how much he’d miss his hometown. Mostly because he hadn’t had any time to think about it between being told they were leaving, and disappearing.
Top of the list? That had to be how much Flynn hated himself. Or at least this sad sack version of himself he’d turned into since entering WITSEC.
“These should quiet down those thirsty backpackers. Thank you, Flynn,” said a soft voice to his left. He whipped his head around to stare at the waitress as she picked up a tray of longnecks.
The pretty waitress.
The one thing in his life Flynn absolutely did not hate.
She was girl-next-door pretty, with long hair that fell in waves, the same dark brown as a good vanilla porter. Eyebrows that arched her face into a smile even when her lips didn’t play along. Skinnier than his usual type back home. But it worked on her. She was small and fragile-looking. Made a guy want to be careful with her. Kiss her slowly. Thoroughly. Keep kissing her while taking off that blue shirt and finding out if her bra underneath matched . . .
The pretty waitress who drove him crazy. Because Flynn wanted her. He’d wanted her since his first shift here a month ago.
A month was a hell of a long time to want a woman and not make a move on her.
But he was no good. No good for her, no good for any woman. Flynn was a morose son of a bitch who lied 24/7 to everyone but his two brothers. He wouldn’t inflict himself on anyone, let alone someone as sweet as Sierra.
Sierra . . . huh. He didn’t even know her last name. Not that it mattered. Because a name didn’t tell you jack shit.
At least, he hoped his name didn’t tell anyone anything about him.
“Dude. My beer.”
The outrage in Kellan’s voice was enough to make Flynn tear his gaze away from Sierra and notice the foam pouring down the side of the glass. No wonder his little brother sounded pissed.
“Sorry, K.” He flipped off the tap.
“You hear that sound?”
Flynn cocked his head. Since it was Sunday night, there was only the jukebox going instead of a live band, playing whatever bubble-gum crap topped the charts by his aforementioned, coked-up name-twin. Just a handful of the less than two dozen tables were filled. The pool table wasn’t being used in the back room. No darts going on, either. All in all, even for a Sunday night in June, this bar was quiet. Which, to his mind, summed up perfectly this town of three thousand locals. “Hear what?”
“The sound of generations of our Irish ancestors rolling over in their graves.” Kellan grabbed a stack of cocktail napkins and wiped off the glass. “Sure an’ the fairies will punish you with bad dreams for wasting the mother’s milk of our land,” he said in a thick Irish accent.
“There’s no fairies in Oregon.”
Shaking a finger, Kellan gave him a look of disappointment. Something Flynn had gotten used to seeing from both him and Rafe more and more often. “Is there no magic in your heart then, young Maguire?”
“No,” he said shortly. Then Flynn remembered that Kellan had volunteered to leave the house tonight so Rafe and his girlfriend, Mollie, could have some privacy. And he’d sat here keeping Flynn’s sorry ass company all night. So he ratcheted up the corners of his mouth to a smile. Okay, nowhere close to a smile. Something closer to a smile than his usual scowl. “But there’s no bullet lodged in there either, so I guess that’s something.”
“Jesus, Flynn.” Kellan hunched over, then threw a lightning quick glance over each shoulder. “You can’t say stuff like that. You know the rules. No discussing your old, um, work in public.”
The only occupied tables were down by the doorway to the room with the pool table. Flynn could hear Carlos, the Gorse’s manager, groaning over whatever baseball game he was listening to in his office. Sierra was still delivering that tray of drinks. He literally could’ve named every member of McGinty’s crew and nobody would’ve heard a thing. Kellan was just overly paranoid.
Of course, Kellan hadn’t been used to lying his whole life like Flynn and Rafe. They didn’t come out and talk about being in the mob to their dates. But they also mostly hung out with women who knew the score. Whose families were involved, too. To everyone else they encountered—from doctors to bartenders to the kids he’d mentored—they stuck to their cover stories.
It’d been easier for Flynn, since he actually ran the legit business. The one they could launder money through when McGinty needed a fast influx of clean cash. The one that supplied paychecks on the up-and-up so that they all looked like tax-paying, law-abiding citizens, even if most of the organization only worked on Flynn’s construction sites a couple of times a month. He was used to how it felt to say one thing and know there were three more things deliberately being left unsaid. And he’d honed an instinct about when it was safe to reveal more.
Kellan didn’t have the luxury of those years of training. He was still in the paranoid phase, assuming that everyone who crossed paths with the Maguire brothers could see right thr
ough them to their dirty-dealing truths.
Probably because that’s all he saw when he looked at his brothers. They’d pulled Kellan from law school with only a semester to go. He’d worked his ass off to learn everything there was about justice. About being on the side of right and might. Then he’d found out the rest of his family stood on the other side of the line.
“Relax.” Flynn whipped his bar towel at Kellan’s shoulders. “What did we tell you was rule number one?”
“Ever? Don’t touch your shit without asking.”
“Still true. But I meant the number-one rule of this.” He circled his hand to indicate not just the cranberry red walls of the Gorse, but the whole cranberry-crazy town.
“Nobody thinks you’re guilty unless you give them a reason to.” Kellan winced. “That’s abominable grammar, by the way.”
“There’s no grades when it comes to what it takes to stay alive. You either do or you don’t.”
“Great pep talk. Thanks, bro.”
Shit. He really did feel guilty. Kellan was trying. But everything that used to get through to Flynn didn’t work anymore. He didn’t care about his clothes—and he used to buy every piece of workout gear between the covers of GQ. He didn’t care about missing the fight club. He certainly didn’t care about this job bartending that he’d been pushed into.
Instinctively, his gaze searched the room for Sierra, the one thing in this new life that made him feel . . . anything. Even if it was mostly frustration. Blue balls were no fucking fun. Working a whole shift with them? The worst. Just looking at Sierra, though, would smooth over the frayed edges of guilt poking at his stomach. When he didn’t find her, Flynn forced himself to look back at Kellan.
“Sorry, I’m being a dick.” Add that to his list of things he hated. Because deep down, he really hated this fucking attitude that he couldn’t shake. Now, though, it was comfortable. As easy to slip on as a pair of fleece pants.
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