by JB Lynn
“The Garcia job?”
“No. I went to see my father yesterday.”
He looked surprised. Every cop in town knew who Archie Lee was, but not every cop knew that when my father called from prison I screened his calls. “He upset you?”
“No. I asked him if he knew anything about Abilene, Katie’s aunt. He said she had a lot of money and power and some lifelong vendetta against Dirk, Katie’s dad.”
He took a bite of his sandwich, circling his finger, indicating I should keep rolling with my story.
“I went to visit a lawyer yesterday who specializes in custody cases. She wasn’t very encouraging. She said that if Abilene Plude could prove she could provide better for Katie’s care, the court might award her custody.”
“And you can’t prove where you get most of your income from,” he said, meaning the money Delveccio paid me for being his go-to killer chick.
“Not to mention my dad is in prison and my mom resides in a mental ward. The only advice she really had was that I move back in with my aunts to show I have a stable family and support system to bring Katie back home to.”
“And you don’t want to do that?”
“In the worst way.” I looked over at Doomsday, her stub of a tail quivering joyfully as she stalked a caterpillar creeping along the top of a headstone. “If I do, I’ll have to get rid of the dog.” I turned to face him. “Maybe you can take her?”
His eyes flicked from my face to the dog and back to me. “I can’t, Mags.”
“Okay,” I said quickly, trying to mask my disappointment.
“It wouldn’t be fair to her,” Patrick tried to explain. “My hours are crazy. My life is crazy.”
“I understand.” I unwrapped my packet of food, revealing an egg and cheese sandwich on a roll, and took a big bite, hoping to end the conversation.
Patrick sighed. “I feel like I’m always letting you down.”
I froze mid-chew. That was how I always felt when it came to everyone in my life.
“I screwed up with Gary the Gun, refused to kill Katie’s aunt for you, and now I’m not agreeing to give your dog a home.” He speared his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
Having finished chewing and swallowing I said, “Everything worked out with Gary, I get why you won’t kill Abilene, and you’re probably right about Doomsday.”
That he didn’t believe me was written all over his face.
Reaching out, I patted his arm. “Really. It’s okay.”
He looked down at where I was touching him. “You’re a complication I hadn’t anticipated, Mags.” His voice had a husky note and when he looked back into my eyes, something I couldn’t quite identify flickered in their depths.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t mean to be.”
Covering my hand where it lay against his arm with his own, he slipped his fingers around my wrist, stroking the tender skin underneath in a strangely intimate caress.
My pulse sped up beneath his touch and my breath hitched as he leaned closer.
“Bacon! Bacon!” Doomsday jumped between us, dislodging our physical contact.
I stepped back, unsure whether I was relieved or disappointed by the interruption. I knew getting any more involved with Patrick Mulligan was a bad idea, but there were times when the attraction I felt for him drowned out any semblance of common sense I had.
“Bacon!” Doomsday barked.
“I think she’s hungry,” I said.
The police detective/hitman nodded and tossed her another piece of meat. She swallowed it whole and licked his hand to express her gratitude.
“Thanks for breakfast.” I took another bite of the egg sandwich.
“Someone’s got to feed you,” he muttered. “I’ve got something else for you.” He climbed into the Jeep and rummaged in the glove compartment.
The dog looked at me hopefully so I chucked a chunk of my sandwich in her direction. She gobbled it up with a wolfish grin.
“Here you go.” Patrick reemerged with a necklace dangling from his fingers.
I didn’t think we’d progressed to the stage where he’d buy me jewelry. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get there and I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression and lead him on. “That’s very nice, but I can’t accept.”
Ignoring me, he held up the necklace and said, “Turn around.”
Even though my better judgment told me not to, I did what he asked.
He stepped behind me, reached over my head, and lowered the large, silver, cylindrical pendant so that it rested in the valley between my breasts. I flinched as the cool metal came in contact with my bare skin. I’d had no idea when I’d thrown on the V-neck T-shirt that morning that it would become the sexiest item of clothing I owned, but suddenly I felt like a temptress, with Patrick standing behind me, peering down my shirt.
And it wasn’t anything like when Harry stares down my shirt. When Harry does it, I want to throw up. Whereas with Patrick, I wanted to throw myself at him.
But I didn’t.
I just stood there, frozen, holding my breath, waiting to see what he’d do next.
“Lift your hair,” Patrick said softly.
Reaching back with one hand, I held my hair away from the back of my neck. I could feel him fiddling with the clasp and then he dropped the chain against my neck.
“There you go.” His breath tickled the back of neck.
I shivered uncontrollably, as my insides turned to molten mush.
Taking my raised wrist, he gently lowered the hand holding up my hair, to my side, causing me to rock back and lean on his chest. My eyes fluttered closed as he steadied my hip with his free hand.
We stood like that for a long moment, neither willing to take the next step, but neither wanting to pull away.
Being so close to him without actually doing anything was a delicious kind of torture. Every nerve in me was on high alert, waiting, but I couldn’t gather the courage to act on the desires screaming through my body.
Finally he cleared his throat. “Make sure you don’t take that off.”
“Why not?”
“It contains the poison you’re going to use to kill Jose Garcia.”
Talk about a mood killer. My eyes snapped open and I stepped away from him as I reached up to finger the pendant.
“You wouldn’t want anyone to accidentally get into it.” He waved in the general direction of the dog.
“Poison?” I asked.
Reaching out, he plucked the cylinder from my fingers, the backs of his knuckles brushing against my sternum. A current of pleasure shot from the contact through my entire body, almost causing my knees to buckle.
Seemingly unaware of the effect he was having on me, Patrick explained. “It’s colorless and tasteless. A drop or two, poured into his drink or something he’s going to eat, and he’ll die within a minute or two of ingestion.”
“Poison?” I asked again. I’d shot a man to death and broken the neck of another with a leg of lamb; poison seemed . . . less violent than what Garcia deserved after all the heartache he’d caused.
“It’s the safest way. There’s no way you can risk trying to get a gun in and out of a place like this. Nobody should look twice at the necklace, but if they do, you can always tell them it’s Holy Water.”
“Holy Water?”
“Are you okay?”
My hormones were in overdrive and I was stressed to the max. “Sure. I just wasn’t expecting the poison angle.”
“Rule Number One: Don’t Get Caught.”
I nodded, even though I personally thought Rule Number One should be: Don’t Fall for Your Murder Mentor.
Rule Number Two should be: Always Listen to Your Gut.
Chapter Twelve
I KNEW I should have listened to my gut and figured out a way to get out of the bridal shower. I was tired and stressed out beyond belief, but God had insisted if I wanted to be a good friend to Alice, I should dutifully show up. When I got to the VFW Hall where th
e impromptu party was being held, I got an instant headache. Zeke had taken Armani’s advice and bought every single white wedding decoration sold in the state. Which wouldn’t have been too bad if he hadn’t draped every table in the place with the most hideous salmon-colored tablecloths.
Even that probably wouldn’t have given me a headache if I hadn’t heard the witches cackling in the midst of the virginal fishiness.
They hadn’t seen me, and I actually backed up two steps to make my escape, but then a hand snaked around my waist from behind and lips were pressed against my ear. “Na-ah, I’ve been stuck here with them for an hour, you’re not getting away that easily,” Zeke whispered in my ear.
Pulling away from him, I spun around and glared at his smug expression. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I just forgot something in my car.”
“You always were a terrible liar, Maggie.” He reached out and stroked a finger down my suddenly burning cheek.
I swatted his finger away.
He grinned, winked at me, and then had the audacity to boom, “There you are, Maggie!”
“Jerk,” I growled under my breath as his overly loud greeting had its desired effect and my aunts descended upon me like flies to a picnic.
I heard him chuckling as he walked away.
“You’re here!” Aunt Loretta trilled, smothering me with air kisses.
“You’re early.” Aunt Leslie made it sound like I’d never been on time to anything in my life.
I clamped my jaw shut to keep from countering with You’re not high.
“We’re making a flock of doves,” Loretta said excitedly. “Come help.”
I allowed them to lead me to a table in the center of the room. Aunt Susan sat there, surrounded by dozens of puffy, paper doves. She looked about as thrilled as I felt.
“Zeke has done a marvelous job,” Loretta said, sitting down in a chair and opening yet another package of paper birds.
“Of course he has,” I muttered, wondering where he’d managed to escape to.
“Alice is lucky to have him,” Leslie said. “Especially since you’re no one’s idea of Maid of Honor of the Year.”
I wasn’t sure why she’d decided that I was one to be her personal punching bag, but I wasn’t about to take any more shots without swinging back. “I liked you better when you were drugged out of your mind,” I snapped.
“Margaret.” Loretta gasped, appalled.
Leslie burst into tears and ran off.
“Look what you’ve done.” Loretta tottered off after her twin, the rat-tat-tat of her stilettos echoing in the hall.
I frowned at Aunt Susan, daring her to say anything to me.
She extended a dove and a sad smile. “Your mother had paper doves at her shower. Not as many as this, but a lot of them. Of course they didn’t come prepackaged then. The twins and I had to cut them all by hand.”
Her melancholy reminiscing deflated my righteous anger. I sank into the chair beside her.
“The twins were so excited. They’d fallen for Archie’s charms and thought that your mother was going to live some fairy-tale life.”
“But you didn’t.” I didn’t even bother to make it a question.
Susan put down the dove she was working on so that she could pat my hand, which lay limply in my lap. “Would it surprise you to know that I don’t think your father is a bad man, Margaret?”
“It’d shock the shit out of me.”
She winced. “Language.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t think Archie’s a bad man. I think he has terrible judgment and that he makes horrible choices, but I don’t think he’s mean or malicious.”
“You don’t? I always thought you hated him.”
She shook her head slowly. “No. I thought he was the wrong person for Mary and a not-so-great father to you girls, but he could have been worse. He genuinely loves your mother and he never hurt or harmed you kids.”
“That’s debatable,” I muttered.
She looked over at where Zeke stood on the other side of the room setting up a ladder. “Your father never beat you, Margaret,” she said pointedly.
I nodded slowly. That was true.
“And you were never the victim of the kinds of things Alice endured. What your father did to that man . . .” She paused, remembering how Dad had beaten Alice’s perverted stepfather to within an inch of his life. “ . . . that was a good thing. Not a smart thing. Maybe not the right thing in the eyes of the law, but a good thing. That’s who your father is, someone driven by desires and passions the rest of us can’t understand. He does things that are at best questionable and at worst simply wrong, but he does them for the right reasons.”
I swallowed hard, realizing that the same description could be applied to me.
“But I look at all these stupid paper doves and all I can think of is how they didn’t bring your mother peace and happiness. They were the beginning of her downfall.”
I flinched as she ripped the head off a bird to illustrate her point. I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better so we sat there, each of us lost in our own thoughts for a couple of minutes, watching as Zeke hung salmon-colored streamers.
“Is your dress really that color?” Susan finally asked.
“I dunno. I thought it was pink, but Zeke insisted it’s salmon.”
“Has he seen it?”
“No, but I get the impression he’s hanging on every word Alice says. No doubt she told him it’s salmon. Leslie’s right. Alice is lucky to have him.” I sighed, feeling like I was failing my friend. “I guess I should go apologize to her.”
“You could,” Aunt Susan said, “but personally I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“You don’t?” That was the second shocking thing she’d said.
“She’s been a real bitch to you.”
“Language, Aunt Susan!” I teased.
She smiled. “Sometimes you remind me so much of your mother.”
“Because I’m a bitch?”
“Because of your warped sense of humor.” Her smile faded. “Leslie’s not going to stay clean, you know.”
“We can hope she will.”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t. When she falls off the wagon, she’s going to blame you. That’s why she’s giving you such a hard time now. She’s constructing this story in her head about how you’ve wronged her, how you’ve upset her, how you’ve pushed her over the edge.”
She spoke with such conviction and authority that I believed her.
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve talked about it with my therapist.”
Third shock!
“You see a therapist?”
“How do you think I stay relatively sane in this crazy family? It might not be a bad idea for you to do the same.”
“I think I’m beyond help,” I murmured, knowing that she had no idea what crazy things I’d done and what I was planning on doing.
“Everyone needs help, Margaret. The trick is recognizing those who genuinely want to help you and being grateful for it.”
“A little help over here?” Zeke shouted from across the room, startling both Susan and me.
She chuckled. “And sometimes you need to know when others need help. Go. I’ll finish these.”
Jumping up, I hurried over to where Zeke was trying to untangle the strings of a wedding bell mobile.
“Here.” He thrust it at me. “This thing is driving me crazy.”
Looking at the tangled mess, I suggested, “We could put it straight into the trash.”
“Or . . .” he said testily, “you could at least say thank you to the man who spent way too much time and money in a party supply store.” Before I could respond, he pointed at a rented helium tank leaning in the corner. “Or you could tell me you know how to use that thing.”
“I do.”
“That’s the bride’s line,” he teased, his snit fit evaporating into thin air.
“And I am grateful,” I to
ld him. “For all of this . . . even the doves.”
“What’s wrong with the doves?”
“Long story. Let’s leave the bells for later. With any luck Aunt Leslie will come back. When I was a kid she was the one who could always get my shoelaces unknotted and my kite string untangled.”
“You really know how to do the balloon thing?”
“It’s not rocket science. Aunt Loretta’s been married so many times, under so many balloon arches, that I could practically do this in my sleep.”
“I hate balloon arches. They make me break out in hives.”
“Are you allergic to latex?”
“No. I’m allergic to sudden, loud noises. I hate popping balloons.”
I nodded sympathetically. “I have a friend who feels the same way. So why did you get them?”
“Alice mentioned something about loving rooms filled with balloons. I figured that was a subtle hint.”
“You got them despite the fact you hate them?”
He frowned. “Why do you have such a low opinion of me? Why would you think I wouldn’t do everything in my power to make my friend happy?”
“I don’t.” I snatched up a pack of balloons, ripped one open, and positioned it at the valve of the tank. “I just figured you could have used balloon-free decorations.”
“Like what?”
I filled the balloon, taking care not to overfill it. I didn’t want it to pop and spook Zeke after all he’d done. “Flowers?”
“They do flowers at these things?”
I nodded.
“Armani didn’t tell me that. You didn’t tell me that. Nobody told me that.”
“But they do balloons too,” I soothed quickly, knotting the balloon and grabbing a piece of ribbon to tie on. “Everyone probably figured you’d been to a bunch of these before. That’s why we didn’t think to mention it.”
“To a shower? Why would you think I’ve been to a bridal shower?”
Releasing the balloon, I watched it float up to the ceiling and dance along the tiles. “Because you’re gay.”
Rocking back on his heels, Zeke stared at me, eyes bulging, mouth hanging open, looking thoroughly appalled.
“I’m sorry,” I said reaching out to pat his arm. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” I waved my hand to encompass the room. “You’ve done an amazing job.”
