by Rhys Ford
“Heh, so did I,” he snorted, examining Miki’s leg. “That looks like it hurts.”
“Less now.” The other man made a face, ripe with disgust. “Going to therapy for it. Kane kind of put the hammer down on that one. Just the leg. Not the brain. Don’t get your hopes up.”
“No, not going to.” Damien held up his hands in mock surrender. “When you want to talk about your shit with someone, it’s on you. I remember that. Not going to push.”
“Good.” Miki tugged at his shirt. “Now strip and tell me what they did to you. ’Cause, dude, you sure as fuck look like you went through a damned Halloween movie.”
“Sure.” The shirt was loose enough on him that Damien began to tug it over his head, careful not to pop the buttons off the front. He had it halfway off when he heard Miki clear his throat.
“Oh, and, um… I’ve got to tell you something.” Miki sounded sheepish, slightly muffled by the veil of fabric over Damien’s head. “It’s about the GTO….”
Chapter 11
I missed you, Sinjun. Even before I really knew you were… there in my memories. I knew I was missing something so big in my life. I’m sorry I forgot you. Even if it was just for a moment. I am so fucking sorry.
Dude, you didn’t forget me. I was just holding onto them until you came back.
Since I’m remembering shit, sorry about the time I shoved that chick’s panties on your head.
That’s okay. While you were passed out once, Dave accidentally peed in your mouth.
I don’t remember that.
You never knew, but hey, since we’re filling up your head with shit, you get to know now.
—Rooftop Session, Packing Up
THE smell was starting to get to Parker.
He’d waded in death. Swam in it. Bathed in it. But the acrid stink of a days-unwashed alcoholic tickled his gag reflex more than refried beans. Even wrapped up in black trash bags and duct taped tight, the smell leaked out, somehow permeating the plastic.
The bitch was heavy, a booze-bloated piece of meat even before he’d shoved his knife down her throat. She’d long since given up on herself. Even the old woman at Mitchell’s rathole had more pride in herself than the slug he’d found passed out in the house’s master suite.
Lugging her with him was a pain in the ass, but he wanted her to teach someone a lesson, and Damien Mitchell definitely needed to be schooled. A lesson Parker would gladly give him once he pinned the son of a bitch down.
After wrestling it into the tiny glass-enclosed lobby, Parker let his burden drop onto the tile floor and punched the UP button. Only to find the damned elevator was key-locked for each floor.
“This is so not worth the money I’m getting for this,” he muttered at the plastic-mummified body.
Slumping the stinky cocoon over, Parker used its weight to block the door open so he could work on the lock. Frustrated, he yanked off the panel and ripped at the wires until the buttons lit up. Sucking at a slice in his hand, he kicked at the trash bag roll until it was fully in the elevator, then pressed a button for the top floor.
He couldn’t believe his luck when he’d spotted the boy on the pier, then cursed in every language he knew when the Irish pub owner appeared out of nowhere to take him away. Parker’d lost them in the thick rush-hour traffic, nearly biting the dust when a metro bus ran a red light when he turned up a street. Hours later and in possession of a new rental car, he’d been back to square one.
The cops lingering around his first kill site were pretty much cleared out, but according to the boy’s neighbor, Mitchell hadn’t returned to the flophouse. Parker knew he’d have to flush the man out somehow, and he couldn’t think of anything better than to make Mitchell run.
“Only way to do that is to shut down the places a rat can hide,” Parker reminded himself. “Time to light up a few holes.”
He’d taken the morning to finish the job his boss sent him on, and walked out of the house just as his contact texted him with the Jeep Cherokee’s registered information. He threw his kill into the sedan’s trunk, punched in the address, and headed over to Sionn Murphy’s place, intent on causing mayhem.
He’d wanted to storm the building, damn everything and everyone around him, but a slow drive through the area turned up empty of red Jeeps, and calling up to the apartment using the lobby intercom only made his index finger hurt.
“Shit, look at this place. Murphy’s got some bucks.” He whistled when the elevator opened on the top floor. He dragged the dead weight out of the lift, stretched, and cracked his back as he looked around. Donning the long clear rain poncho he’d picked up from a street vendor, Parker grinned at his lifeless victim. “Okay, let’s find someplace nice we can put you, so when the fire department gets here, you’ll be all pretty for them.”
SHIELDED from the rain by an overhang, the widow’s walk remained one of the few places a Morgan male could flee and not be disturbed. Sionn would have thought it was an unwritten rule of some kind, but Donal quietly informed him the Morgan women weren’t too fond of heights, and an open wooden deck perched on the three-story house wasn’t their idea of a picnic.
Despite the cold, the walk was a haven from the storm of questions brewing inside the house. When Brigid and Ryan came home, the questioning became a tempest. Sionn bore the brunt of the pounding, with flashes of furious prying hitting Kane with lightning-quick accuracy. Fleeing seemed like a good idea. Fleeing with a bottle of Donal’s Midleton Barry Crockett was inspired genius, especially when Kane’s father pushed the whiskey into Sionn’s hands while whispering for them to head up while there was a lull.
Cowering in one of Connor’s old parkas, Sionn leaned against a dormer and took the now half-empty bottle from his cousin’s hand. The whiskey had lost its burn a few mouthfuls ago, but its sweet honey, smoky taste lingered on his numb tongue, and he welcomed the heat it poured into his belly.
He kind of wished that heat would find the cold lump of his heart, but so far, nothing seemed to thaw out the icy fear that had frosted through him when he realized the man in the middle of the Morgans’ kitchen was Damie’s Sinjun.
“Fecking hell and shite.” Sionn knew he was slurring.
They’d been on the walk for over an hour and had made a good dent in the bottle, or at least he had. Sionn suspected his cousin was doing more brief sipping than swigging, and the consumption of amber fire was nearly all his own doing. He could feel his tongue peeling up against the roof of his mouth, but he took a swig anyway, still hoping the next hit of whiskey would be the one to disconnect his brain. He waited a moment and discovered he could still feel the warmth of Damien’s fingers leaving his, and he rubbed his hand against his jeans, desperate to take away the itch in his skin.
Cocking his head at his cousin, he mumbled, “What are they doing now?”
Another reason to hie off to the walk was Kane’s insistence he could see into the garage apartment from a certain angle, providing the drapes were pulled open. Someone had to lean over the edge of the platform and crane a bit, but it was possible. Sionn’d planned on getting too drunk to trust his motor functions and balance to spy on the pair. Kane, a master at spying on his siblings whether he was drunk or sober, took up the watch.
“They’re getting naked.”
“What the fucking hell?” Sionn clambered over his cousin to get a look, only to be shoved back.
“They’re not screwing. It looks like they’re comparing scars. Get back over,” Kane muttered, sliding back under the overhang to get out of the rain. “Guess that answers my question about you and Damie.”
“What question was that, cuz? If I’m fucking him?” Sionn tried to hold up a finger, but it seemed to blur into multiples. “Once. Just once. This morning, even. After he scared the fucking shit out of me, but it was enough. God, hell and gone, it was fucking enough. I’m gone over.”
“Yeah, I felt that way about Miki.” Kane grasped the neck of the bottle and plucked it from his cousin’s grip. “’Course t
hat was after I was done being pissed off at him. He’s… complicated.”
“So’s Damien. The two of them deserve each other.” Sionn rested his back against the slanted roof behind him. “Shit, I’m going to lose him to this. He doesn’t need me anymore. You’ve got to promise to watch him, K. There’s that asshole gunning for him and….”
“You’re not going anywhere, Sionn Murphy.” The whiskey sloshed back and forth as Kane waved it in the air. “You’ve been his anchor of sorts for, what? More than a month now? You’re just going to have to learn how to share him. Like I’ve got to share Miki.”
“You think it’s that easy? Just sharing? You’ve seen them together. They don’t need anyone else.”
“No. Yes. Maybe,” Kane muttered, shrugging. “They might not need anyone else, but Miki wants me. Loves me, even. Shit, he probably loves my family. At least my dad. My mom scares the fuck out of him, but Dad, that’s his rock. Damie will need that. He’ll need you. Even if you’re a Finnegan, you’re a part of this family. So’s he.”
“I’m a Murphy, damn it.” Complaining about his name did no good. The Morgans placed him firmly in the Finnegan column, a sprawling, boisterous clan even louder than the San Francisco Morgans. He got a headache every time he visited and didn’t know how the others survived with their hearing intact after the summers they all spent together in Ireland.
“Doesn’t count.” The whiskey made another circuit in the air. “But yeah, he’s yours, Sionn. I saw it. Shit, I don’t even know him and I saw it.”
“Why didn’t you tell Miki you guys found his fingerprint?”
“Because it didn’t make sense, and we’d just gotten to talking about what we were going to do,” Kane explained. “Then Damie walked into the kitchen. Then, well, everything went to shit. We’ve got to question him, you know. We’ve talked to everyone else about the woman’s murder. If he’s seen something, we need to know. And Browne never got to grill him about the shooter. I’m guessing the two are related.”
“You think the shooter offed the manager?”
“Yeah, it makes sense, especially if Damie’s been in the wind these past few days. Someone put him up in Montana… someone who had the juice to do it. I’d lay bets something happened and Damie became a problem. The blond might have been hired to put an end to that person’s problem.”
“But why kill the woman? He’s just that fucked in the head?”
“Might be.” Kane shrugged. “I’ve given up trying to figure out the why of assholes’ minds. I just hunt them down and throw them in jail. I leave the why shit to the people who like banging their heads against brick walls. But that leads me to something else. You and Damie should stay with us. If the shooter went after the hostel manager, he’s going to be hitting other people in Damie’s life. You’re a big someone for him. You were there when the shooting happened, and he’s been hiding out with you for the past day and a half. You’ve got a big target on your back there, cuz.”
“The pub.” Sionn swore and tried to get to his feet. “Leigh and the rest of them….”
“Yeah, already thought of that.” Kane hooked his fingers into Sionn’s waistband and tugged him back down. “There’s some undercover guys covering the pub. We’ve got eyes on them. Once I made the connection between you, Damie, and Finnegan’s, I sent a couple of plainclothes down there. The guy’s a killer, and it looks like he really doesn’t give a shit who he hits as long as he gets who he’s after. Since that seems to be Damie, we’re going to have to circle the wagons for right now. I’d feel better knowing you’re around the two of them until this guy gets caught. I need to work the case. You’ve got a license to carry in this state?”
“Aye.” He drew the parka’s collar up, covering his ears. “Gone to the range a few times since I’ve been back, but… I don’t. Carry, I mean.”
“You doing okay with all that?” His cousin eyed him over the bottle as he drank before handing Sionn the whiskey. “The shooting?”
“Better,” Sionn admitted. “Some nightmares. She was a kid, K. Hard to get my brain wrapped around that.”
“You going back? Or are you out of that for good?”
“I’m done.” He sighed, cradling the bottle to his chest. “Too much blood. Too much grief. For a while it felt good, like I was doing right. Now it just feels like I was playing tin soldier.”
“You know what you’re going to do?”
“No. I’m… tired of being on edge, K. Time for something different.” He shrugged, scraping his shoulders on the dormer. “Maybe once this guy is caught and Damie’s set, I’ll figure something out. Right now, it’s too… iffy.”
“You can always join the family business….”
“Oh no, boyo. That’s your family business, not mine. I’ve got the pub and the other properties Gran owned. I’m thinking of maybe a brewery. She always wanted something with our name on it.”
“You were always good for mixing up a brew,” Kane pointed out. “And you like beer.”
“I love beer,” he corrected. “And the batches I’ve made in the past have worked out nice. But that’s a maybe, cousin mine. We’ll see. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do what Quinn did and go to school to be a teacher.”
“He teaches college history.” The whiskey made another pass. “Or comparative something or other. I can’t tell. He starts talking and I get lost.”
“So you don’t think I’ve got the brains for it?” Sionn groused.
“I think all of us combined don’t have the brains for it,” Kane replied. “He’s got a doctorate in old shit. Makes us all look bad. You do it and Mom will be thinking the rest of us should go back to school to cure cancer or something. Want me to check on what they’re doing again?”
“No, I feel like a git.” The parka was doing a good job of keeping his body warm, but his heart stumbled in its own frozen death march. “I know he thinks of Miki as his brother. You should have seen him this morning, talking about what they’ve done and how he loves him. He was fucking freezing his tits off, and all he could think about was how much he remembered. I want that for him, Kane. I want him to have that good life.”
“Well, you’re a part of that, Sionn. Remember that.”
“Remember it? Shite, I can only hope for it.” He spat, staring out at the cloud-shrouded night. “I’m scared I’m falling for the fucking asshole, and I can’t do a damned thing to stop it.”
“That’s a big thing to say, cousin.” Kane whistled softly. “You sure about that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not given this much of a shit about someone before. How do you know?” Sionn eyed his cousin.
“What makes you think it, then?”
“’Cause I worried about him. During that week when he didn’t come around, I couldn’t sleep,” he murmured at the passing clouds. “I’d circle around the pier, looking for someone wearing a black cowboy hat. It was driving me crazy. Leigh about kicked my ass out of the pub and told me she was going to stop answering my calls. I told her to let me know if she saw him. I guess I called too much to check.
“Then when I saw him… playing like he didn’t give a shit about anything in the world but the music, everything felt… right.” He took a breath, shaking out the tightness in his lungs. “I knew someone was trying to hurt him, and I wanted to do everything—anything—to keep him safe. And it didn’t make any sense…. I didn’t even really know him but there was Damien, wrapped up tight inside of me.”
“Oh, I know that feeling. Yeah, it sounds like you got bit,” Kane conceded. “Looks like you’re going for a ride there, Sionn.”
“Any advice?”
“Just love him. Talk to him. Tell him you’re there.” His cousin cocked his head, thinking for a moment. “Hold onto him. He and Miki, they’ve not had an easy time of it. They’ll fight anything that feels like they’re being tied down. I could see that in him. He’s like Mick in that. It’ll take him time to know love. A different kind of love than what he has with Miki. Treat him gent
ly. Reassure him you won’t walk away. Other than that, hold on. Best thing I could tell you is just to hold on.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that. He’s a bit… wild, you know. Like something stray I’ve been feeding.” Sionn nudged Kane with his foot. “How did you know?”
“I wanted to lock him up in the house and make sure he didn’t talk to anyone I didn’t know. Hell, even people I did know.” He shrugged when Sionn stared at him across the platform. “Didn’t say it made sense. Just telling you how I knew. There was a guy dumping dead bodies all over the place, and he was coming after Miki. I knew that in my bones. I think I knew for sure when I felt better he was here… with my parents… than at his own place. And you know I’ve got to be sick in the head crazy if I wanted him around my mother.”
“Aunt B isn’t so bad.” Sionn defended the fiery redhead. “She’s come to rescue my ass more times than I can remember. Especially where Gran was concerned.”
“That’s ’cause she hasn’t had time yet to plan things out. You just wait,” Kane warned him. “She’s eyeing me and Miki up for monkey suits and rings. He’s starting to get wild-eyed whenever she’s around. Dad’s made me promise not to shoot her in the leg so Miki can get a head start when he wants to run.”
“Think she’ll leave them alone in there?” He tried not to think about Damien and Miki, but a niggling suspicion that Brigid would crash their reunion remained. As much as he loved his aunt, he had to agree with Kane. She never was one to let things lie.
“Probably. Dad’ll keep her out of it, but no sense borrowing trouble.” Kane stood and held his hand out to Sionn. “Come on, cuz. Let’s call a cab if we have to and move this party over to Miki’s place. Unless you think we can wait long enough for me to shake off what I’ve had.”
