by Rhys Ford
“Parker, just answer me! What the hell do you mean you missed him?” The man on the other end of Parker’s cell phone snapped, letting loose a string of profanities hot enough to rile Parker’s nerves. “How damned hard is it to kill one crazy man? Why didn’t you get him at Skywood? He should be rotting someplace on the side of that mountain.”
“I told you. Mitchell bolted. Lost him in the forest for a bit, but then some asshole in a truck almost ran him over. Mitchell must have given him a sob story because he got a ride off the mountain. That’s how I lost him. If I hadn’t had to stop and get rid of the handler for you, he wouldn’t be a problem now.” Parker swung his body around until he got a clear view of the law enforcement going in and out of the pub’s glass doors. “As for today, I couldn’t get a good shot at him. Another guy stepped in and grabbed Mitchell. They were down before I could get a clear hit. That other guy might be a problem.”
“Why is your problem mine all of a sudden?” The man shouted over the phone. “Do you think I give a shit about that?”
“No, sir,” Parker murmured, looking over his shoulder as another EMT team arrived on the scene. The whole situation was becoming ridiculous. From what he could see, he hadn’t even clipped his damned target. “It isn’t your concern. I’ll be taking care of him along with Mitchell, just like I did your guy at Skywood.”
“The handler needed to die, anyway. I wasn’t going to shell out half a million dollars for him to drag the boy out to a fucking garden.” The gruff-voiced man grunted. “What’s your ETA on taking care of the boy?”
“I don’t know. Soon.”
“Did you at least take care of those damned actors before you headed out there?”
“The ‘mom’ and ‘dad’? Yeah. Tragic house fire. No survivors at either place.” Parker’s fingers were beginning to itch, and his mouth dried. He’d lost his damned cigarettes someplace, and he needed to stay calm, especially when dealing with his employer. He’d have to pick some up before he hunted Mitchell down. “I got any papers out that referenced their hire.”
“Assholes. Kept calling me to talk about how my fucking nephew was doing.” The scorn in the man’s voice carried strong over the crackling phone line. “I could have given a shit about how he was doing. The only reason I hired them was to back up the story the doctors spun him.”
“So why take Mitchell out now? Shit, why even go through any of this? He was already dead.” Parker risked a question, wondering if he even cared about the answer. His employer was a steaming vent of a man. Knowing the asshole on the other side of the phone would send in someone to kill him just for spite was the only thing that kept him from walking away from the job.
“Because he’s worth a shitload of money, and I need it. Merchandising alone is going through the roof, but that fucking singer won’t release the commercial rights to their songs. That’s someone else you might have to take care of while you’re out there,” the man groused. “And I wanted this done at Skywood because he’s starting to remember things—solid stuff someone else could back up if they wanted to. With his fucking marbles in place, he’s better off dead. Look, just find the boy and take care of him. If you can’t do him in the next twenty-four hours, call me back. We’re going to have to start taking care of other shit there to drive him out into the open.”
Parker had half a mind to tell the man to shove it. One day, probably soon, he was going to find himself on the wrong end of a bullet. His employer’s pension plan was a simple one. Outgrow your usefulness and someone like Parker would be knocking on your door. He knew what to expect. After all, it was how his predecessor retired, and Parker’d been the one to deliver the man’s pink slip.
No, doing the kid would be his last job for the man. The money from Mitchell’s kill would go a long way to helping Parker disappear. He’d already looked into setting up a gator farm in the Everglades, and if someone came looking for him to tie up his boss’s loose ends, he’d have a ready supply of hungry carnivores to take care of any nasty business that came his way.
He closed the phone, ambled over to a sidewalk coffee kiosk, and caught the attention of the tiny, pretty Filipina barista working the cart. Smiling as widely as the crocs he hoped to own one day, Parker leaned on the counter and murmured. “So, what do I have to do to get a coffee around here?”
Chapter 4
The stars are crying
It’s like the world knows you’re gone.
Slipping away and sliding on,
The shadows hold your voice
I keep hearing you on the wind
Either come back to my side
Or leave me the hell alone
—In Blue Notebook Margins, Page 82
DEE looked like he was going to bolt. Sionn could see it from across the pier walk even through the still-thick fog. Watching the lean guitarist intently, he didn’t hear what the inspector said to him until Browne poked him in the ribs with his pen.
“Sorry, what?” He jerked his attention back to the older man. Dee was proving to be a distraction. It was bad enough he found himself staring at the man through the pub’s windows whenever he covered a shift. Now he was drifting off while his uncle’s former partner grilled him about the shooting. “’Scuse me, Brownie. My brain’s a bit gone, you know.”
“What’s his story? That musician of yours.” Browne was an old hand at SFPD, a grizzled but sharp investigator whose hound-dog eyes missed nothing around him. Scratching his cheek with the same pen he used to get Sionn’s attention, he took a moment to stare at Dee. “Says his name’s Dee Thompson and that you’ve been letting him play in front of Finnegan’s for almost a month now.”
“That’s about right,” Sionn murmured. First time he’d heard Dee even had a last name, but then that hadn’t been something he’d picked out. Sionn knew the important things, like how Dee drank his coffee and liked a lot of salt on his fries. But things like last names and why he was frightened to white, Sionn intended to shake that out of Dee once Browne was done with him. “People seem to like his playing. Brings in a bit of business.”
The inspector sucked at his teeth for a moment, then drawled, “What happened to the no buskers in front of the pub rule your gran had.”
“Gran’s dead,” Sionn said flatly, pulling his gaze from Dee and back to the burly inspector. “Things change… sir.”
Sionn slid the word in right before Browne’s nostrils flared. He might have had five inches and a few pounds of muscle on the man, but Browne stood pretty tall in his past. Besides, pissing him off would get back to his aunt, and that was the last person he wanted on his ass.
Browne looked like he wanted to say something more. In all honesty, Sionn was amazed he didn’t get a slap across the back of his head for what he’d said to the man. There’d been many a time when he’d been sitting in church with his cousins and the hand of God came by way of the inspector’s light slaps for them to quit talking and pay attention.
“Not too big I can’t yank on those jug ears of yours, Murphy boy.” Browne tapped his notebook against Sionn’s chin, a wide grin softening his warning. “How much do you know about Thompson?”
“Dee?” Sionn gritted his teeth. “He’s a good man. Quiet sometimes but mostly, ornery. Bit of a fighter. Stood up for the girls one day when some drunk was being a dick. Tossed him out onto his butt and told him not to come back.”
No, he didn’t know a lot about the man, but Sionn certainly wanted to.
His body burned with the memory of the man under him as he covered Dee to protect him. When Sionn lifted his head in the brief silence broken by a police siren and Leigh’s shouting, he’d been very much aware of how well Dee fit into the curve of his crotch and the fullness of the man’s ass against his hips. He’d felt the too-thin spareness of Dee’s torso, taut muscles stretched tight over bones with little between them and his pale skin. There’d been a flash of color peeking out from under the man’s shirt, bright and vibrant over his bony spine, and Sionn’s hands itched
to slide under the fabric to explore the ink hidden there.
And maybe even slide Dee’s slightly too-big jeans from his hips and suckle at his cock until the guitarist was left gasping and begging for more.
Sionn sighed, slightly disgusted with himself. The man had issues, admitted it looked like someone was gunning for him—literally—and all he could think about was how hot and pliable Dee had been underneath him.
Well, as pliable as a slinky-bodied, smart-mouthed guitarist got.
His brain was cooked. Sionn was pretty sure of it. His gran’s pub had been shot up, and all he could think about was a street entertainer who’d brought his shit to Sionn’s front porch. Sionn rubbed at his face, suddenly wishing he’d drunk more of Leigh’s toxic coffee.
Sionn scanned the pier, searching through the cloud of blue uniforms interspersed with a thin smattering of tourists. A large, rough-faced blond man in a suit was chatting up a pretty barista at the coffee cart, and a few yards down, the fill-your-own bath salts stall was setting up for the day, the ancient hippie woman who’d worked there since Sionn was a teen puttering about the sealed bins, seemingly in no hurry to bring in business. Leigh was talking to a handsome junior inspector Sionn belatedly realized was his younger cousin. Turning his back to her, he stood firm against Browne’s smirk.
“You can’t hide from the family forever, you know,” the inspector teased. “They’ll root you out like terriers.”
“Yeah, I know.” He made a face. There would be too much to explain to his aunt and her brood. His thigh was fine, with a bit of residual scarring that sometimes put a hitch in his step, but if he knew her at all, she’d have him up on the couch with his pants down around his ankles so she could see for herself. “I just need some time. To work up to their prying and shite.”
The fog had lifted a bit, but the press of rain remained, sheets of water lurking offshore and moving in quickly. Browne nodded at one of the cops pulling away from the pier, his cruiser’s lights flashing once to push traffic to the side. A water drop hit the inspector’s notebook, smearing a blue ink scribble on the page.
“Shit, can’t read my own writing as it is,” the older man swore. “Tell you what, stick around while I go talk to your boy and….” Browne looked past Sionn, his mustache twitching around his frown. “What the fucking hell?”
Browne’s frown flattened out, and Sionn winced immediately. The man was displeased, and if he’d been any younger, Sionn would have expected to be grabbed by the ear and duck-marched outside to get a talking to. Past thirty, and within seconds, he reverted to being a freckle-faced teen caught whispering in the back pews at St. Patrick’s.
“Where’s your boy gone, Murphy?” Browne growled angrily, scanning the pier.
Dee was nowhere to be seen. The old amp was lying sideways, its front screen a victim of the shooting, but Sionn couldn’t spot the man’s electric guitar or the flat case he used to cart it around. Other than the damaged amp, all signs of the man Sionn lusted for had been erased.
“Damn it, I think he spooked,” Sionn ground out. “Fucking hell and damn.”
THE electric guitar was heavy. No heavier than others he’d carried, but running with it was a bitch. Damie’d hit more people than he avoided. The flat case was wide and long, unwieldy most of the time, but going full tilt through a herd of businessmen was whacking the heads of mums off with a golf club.
“Slow it down, Damie,” he cautioned himself. Cops were going to spot someone running before they noticed anything else. Forcing himself to a slow saunter, he wove through the stream of people pouring out at the BART stop. Keeping his head down, Damie glanced around, his spine stiffening with fear every time he spotted a flash of bright blond hair bobbing up behind him. With his guts turned to jelly, he mounted the train car, slid down into a seat, and pulled the case up over his lap.
“Fuck.” He let loose a few more curses, muttering under his breath fiercely enough the woman sitting a seat away looked at him nervously before getting up to move off. Left alone in the back of the car, Damien waited for his heart to stop trying to pound through his ribs.
What little he remembered of the night he’d fled Skywood was fragmented at best, but he clearly recalled the gargoyle frame of Jerome’s killer and his nearly sunburst-bright shock of hair. Even in the dead of a winter night, it had shone yellow in the smoke-filtered moonlight. When he’d turned and aimed the gun at Damien, the man looked more Grim Reaper than human, his skin almost translucent over jutting bone.
Cocky as shit, that same man had been standing by a coffee cart across from the pub as the cops milled about, taking interviews and tromping through Damien’s fragile safety. When the blond lifted his paper cup in Damien’s direction, he knew the man was the same one who’d tried to kill him in Montana.
And now he’d brought the killer to Sionn’s place, practically guilty of placing an apple on the gray-eyed Irishman’s head in a sick game of William Tell.
The ache along his chest scar bloomed to a full spasm, and he tried rubbing at it through his shirt, wishing he could risk going to a doctor to have the throb checked out. When his heartbeat began to skip back at the pub, Damien began to wonder if he shouldn’t have let the blond man just shoot him through the head back at Skywood.
He was no closer to finding Miki, and his options were getting limited. There wasn’t anyone he could really trust, and the fragile threads of his memory were knitting in an altogether fucked-up home life and screwed-up family. Leaning his head back against the seat, Damien reached up, pulled his hat off, and rested it on his lap. Working his hands through his hair, his fingers skimmed over the patchwork of scars hidden under the strands. They thrummed as much as his chest did, running hot with the pound of blood in his veins.
And Sionn. The asshole had shot at Sionn. As much as he hated to, he might have to give up Sionn, and that hurt more than anything else.
“Hey, don’t I know you?”
Those words chilled Damien’s bones, and he risked opening his eyes a slice, only enough to take a look at the dark-haired young man sliding onto the bench next to him.
The guy looked like practically every other college student, complete with beat-up backpack, a Han Shot First T-shirt, and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses Damien was pretty certain were used for birth control back in the fifties. Unlike Damien’s own too-lazy-to-shave bristled jaw, the man’s beard was clipped to a nearly mechanical precision, each hair measuring the exact same length across his chin. He was packaged tighter than a gourmet cupcake, a daub of sparkle spread over a cloying, pedestrian sweetness.
Damien’s head began a different type of throb when he realized the bouncy young man was someone he’d have taken to a back room at a club and fucked back when he’d been playing with the band. He was too much to take in, an eager brush of hands and smile Damien didn’t want to deal with.
Especially since he’d probably just fucked up any chance he might have had with Sionn by running.
Thinking on it, Sionn wasn’t really an option either. His life was fucked up, turned inside out by too many what-ifs and maybes. There was still a small part of his brain murmuring doubts about his identity. He wanted to fling off the hat, tie back his hair, swagger onto a talk show, and quit hiding.
Except you might not be real, his mind whispered. What then? What happens when you find out you’re lying to yourself and Damien Mitchell really is dead? Who are you going to be then?
There had to be an easier way to handle the mess in his head than what he’d been doing. What he really should have done was stay back at the pub and ask one of the cops to run his prints for him. So fucking what if he ended up back at the Munsters’ loony bin. At least he’d have answers. Frowning, Damien strained through the memories he’d dug out of the fog in his brain, trying to remember if he’d ever been arrested. Hoping he’d at least trashed one local hotel room to have been printed, he shook his head at the young man.
“Nope.” Damien reached for his cowboy hat, but the m
an’s hand was quicker, and his fingers closed over Damie’s wrist. Looking down, he moved to pry off the man’s grasp, but he tightened his grip. “Dude, you’ve got about three seconds before I start breaking your hand.”
“No, I know you.” The young man leaned forward, close enough for Damien to smell the peppermint gum he’d been chewing. “Don’t you play in front of Finnegan’s? The pub down by one of the piers?”
“Yeah, sometimes.” Damien pulled himself free, rubbing at the red marks left by the man’s fingers.
He’d snagged his hat and almost had it on his head when the man piped up loud enough for the entire car to hear. “I knew I recognized you. I remember because the first time I saw you I thought, holy shit, Damien Mitchell is fucking alive.”
“FUCKING son of a bitch.” Sionn slammed down the shot glass he’d just drained.
His evening was ending as it started, Rafe Andrade at his side, but instead of coffee, they’d polished off a good bit of some of Finnegan’s best whiskey. The Connemara probably wasn’t something he should have yanked off the bar’s top shelf, but Sionn wanted something strong to brace himself with. Its vanilla-cream, peaty taste seemed to hit the spot. Then after a few, he no longer was sure he had any spots left.
Just a numbness growing inside of him that had nothing to do with one of Ireland’s amber imports.
“Here, pass that shit over.” Rafe snagged the bottle, taking it out of Sionn’s reach. “You’re getting drunk over some twink who ran off on you. That isn’t worth a sixty-dollar bottle of whiskey. Laura! You wanna bring your boss over some Old Crow or something?”
“He’s not my boss, Andrade. Leigh is,” a blonde woman at the bar called back to him. “He just owns the business. You all can come up and get your own shit.”
“Your employees are shitty to customers,” Rafe grumbled at his friend.
