“Not so much.” Rafe winced. “He’s about to be a deputy sheriff.”
“Ha! No shit? That’ll keep me laughing all the way back to Chi-town.” Davey headed for the parking lot.
Not a one of the Maguires moved or a said a word. They all stared at each other, frozen, until a car door slammed, an engine revved, and the car peeled out of the lot.
Rafe broke first, running to Kellan and grabbing his shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Better than okay. Amazing how great it felt to not have a gun pointed at him. Like finding out you won the lottery while getting a blow job.
Flynn slapped him on the back, and then left his hand there. “Jesus, you were amazing. You didn’t blink. You didn’t freak out.”
“Well, I’m about to be a deputy. Gotta be calm under pressure.”
“I’m sorry, so fucking sorry you went through that.”
Before he got bitter, Kellan figured he’d better assuage his curiosity about his brothers’ complete lack of saving him. “Did you guys have a plan? You know, to jump him and get the gun away at any point?”
With a hard squeeze of his shoulder, Rafe finally let go. “A plan? Yeah. But not to jump Davey.”
“We needed to hear him out. Get his whole plan.” Flynn’s eyes widened. “You thought . . . you thought he was going to shoot you?”
Only every single second. Kellan paced in a tight circle, needing to move. Residual adrenaline burst through him like a horse through a starting gate. “It seemed like a distinct possibility.”
“We never would’ve let that happen,” Rafe said, low and rough.
Right on top of him, Flynn said, “Davey wouldn’t have done it, either. He knew we’d be on him the moment he touched the trigger. But holding that gun on you made him feel like he had the upper hand.”
“He did,” Kellan bit out.
He believed them. Saw the logic to their strategy, even. But he still wasn’t thrilled with how long he’d been held at gunpoint.
“Nah. You were always safe, K. We’d never let anything happen to you.”
Kellan pulled out his phone. “I’ll call Delaney.”
Rafe grabbed it from him. “No, you won’t.”
“Are you kidding? The mob knows we’re here. That’s the number one reason for an extraction.”
Flynn shook his head. “The mob doesn’t know we’re here. Davey O’Brien does. If we’re reading him right, he’s the only one who knows.”
If?
There was a whole lot riding on those two little letters. Kellan wasn’t sure that he had the faith that his brothers did.
Maybe because he’d grown up believing that you couldn’t—and shouldn’t—trust the bad guys. “What if you’re not reading him right?”
“We’ve got six weeks to find out.” Rafe stiff-armed Kellan’s biceps to force him to stop pacing. “Look, there’s almost no chance he’d tell anyone else. Davey doesn’t want to split the money. Now we’ve got time to figure out what to do. Do you want to leave Bandon?”
If they left, he’d never get the chance to be a deputy. That career would always be off-limits to Kellan in a new life, just like lawyering. He’d miss Lucien, the beach, the new and awesome proximity to Delaney. His brothers might have to leave their women. Or Mollie and Sierra would have to leave their lives here that they adored so much.
God, he didn’t want to keep this a secret from Delaney. Didn’t want to lie to her. But she’d have zero choice about yanking them out of here if she knew. She’d have to follow the rules.
Guess he’d have to break them in order to get more time with her.
“No. I don’t want to leave,” he said firmly. “But I don’t want to stick my head in the sand either.”
“We’ll make a plan,” Flynn promised.
Rafe clapped him on the shoulder. “Hell, we’re taking down McGinty and the entire Chicago mob. Finding a way to deal with Davey’ll be a piece of cake, compared to that.”
Kellan just hoped the plan they came up with would be half as strong as his brother’s ego.
Chapter Seventeen
Delaney holstered her gun, then she pulled off her goggles and electronic earmuffs. Next to her, Kellan did the same as Mateo ripped off their target sheets. The sheriff let out a long, low whistle.
“Damn, you’re good.”
“Which one of us?” Kellan asked, one dark eyebrow arched. She loved seeing his competitive spirit. It was sexy and fun . . . and nothing that she’d ever felt at a shooting range before.
“Both of you.” Mateo lifted one sheet a little higher. “Delaney got all fancy, adding a kill shot to the forehead—”
“That’s execution, mobster style. Trying to stay topical.”
“You’re adorable,” Kellan whispered.
“But Kellan did great. Seven solid shots, straight to the heart. Three right on top of each other. You’re a natural.”
“Video games. Lots of hours on Grand Theft Auto gave me a leg up.”
He joked, but Delaney knew he’d put in countless hours at this range in the forest. Kellan swore he needed to be ready to protect and serve by the Cranberry Festival. She saw through that, though. It was obvious he was pushing himself to be able to protect his brothers, should anyone come nosing around Bandon.
It was touching. Endearing. She wondered if Rafe and Flynn knew how hard he’d been working to ensure that they’d all be safe.
“You’re going to do us proud when you head up to the academy.” Mateo stuck out his hand. “Thanks for sending this one my way, Delaney. You could’ve kept him for yourself and the marshals.”
Biting back a laugh, she shook. “Ah, the Marshals Service doesn’t hire protectees as employees.”
“How do you know?” Kellan asked with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Maybe there’s a marshal in Eugene who’s on his third new life.”
“Very funny.”
“He’s got a point. I like your out-of-the-box thinking, Maguire.” Mateo clapped him on the shoulder before walking to his car. “See you at the station on Monday?”
“I can’t wait.”
Delaney bent over to retrieve their spent cartridges. It was great to have this semiprivate range just outside of Bandon, but it didn’t have the amenities she was used to at an official governmental range. No attendant. Even worse, no bathrooms. When she straightened, Kellan was grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s up with you?”
“It hit me how . . . normal this feels. Spending a Saturday afternoon hanging out with my boss and my woman. Excited to show up for work on Monday. Looking forward to tonight with you. It feels like real life.”
“As opposed to?” She dropped the shells into a coffee can. Finally, a way that old-fashioned coffee was more versatile than a Keurig.
“I’d been treading water, going nowhere since you plucked me off that street in Chicago. Now I finally have a purpose. A plan.” He put his hands on her waist and beamed down at her. “A future.”
Uh-oh. Because Delaney loved him, she loved seeing Kellan so happy. But also because she loved him, she’d have to step out of the role of girlfriend and use her marshal’s badge to burst that bubble of happiness.
“Remember, we don’t have a future,” she warned. It hurt to say. In a perfect world, Delaney could wish on a star and make everything work out. But the sun was still out.
She’d accepted the ticking clock on their dating. Accepted that he was giving her a love she’d never dreamed of experiencing. The only “forever” they could share was the memory of this summer. “There’s only a really, truly fantastic right now.”
It got harder and harder every time Delaney reminded him of that. Seeing Kellan embrace the reality of his new career, though, made it even more imperative for him to acknowledge the looming end of their relationship.
“Don’t be so defeatist.” He nuzzled at her neck, pushing aside her hair to trail kisses down to the collar of her navy-and-white-striped dress. She’d taken off the holster-
hiding jacket before they started.
God, Kellan was as stubborn as she was. And yes, it was romantic and sweet and melted her heart that he believed he’d figure out a solution to the impossible.
Grabbing his chin, Delaney tugged his head up to look into those arctic light blue eyes. “If anyone found out, you’d have to leave the program.”
“Nobody knows.” But his gaze flicked to the side. Just for a second.
It was enough.
Oh. My. God. That tell could only mean one thing. He’d told his freaking brothers about them. “Kellan. No. You didn’t.”
“Didn’t lock the door? Not yet. But I can lock it and have you down to your bra before you can say please.”
“Don’t. Don’t dissemble. We’ve always been honest with each other, even when we keep lying to the rest of the world. You told your brothers, didn’t you?”
To his credit, he owned up without pausing or flinching. Although he did let go of her waist and take two large steps back. “Yes. I did.”
There weren’t many times in her life when Delaney wished she’d lived in another century. This one had antibiotics and air-conditioning. Almost nothing else compared to the goodness of that. But right now? She wished it was the eighteenth century, so it would be perfectly acceptable to twitch at her skirts, fan herself furiously . . . and then let dramatic tears slip down her cheeks as she pounded at Kellan’s chest.
“Kellan. How could you?”
He tunneled a hand through his hair. With a face set in harsh lines, he asked, “The more pertinent question is, how could I have lied to them for so long?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Enough.
Loyalty was one thing. Admirable, definitely. But Delaney didn’t believe Rafe and Flynn deserved as much loyalty as Kellan was willing to give them. Especially when he’d bitched about this very thing for months. “They both lied to you for literally years!”
“Tit for tat? That’s really your response?”
Not her finest retort. And embarrassment at her poor choice immediately put her on the defensive, when she had every right to be on offense.
Delaney fisted her hands on her hips. “At least I’m having a conversation. Whereas you went off and did this without so much as telling me before or after the fact. On a need-to-know basis, this is information I damned well needed to know!”
“They promised to keep it a secret.”
It hurt that he was missing the point. “It wasn’t your secret to share. It was ours. Jointly.”
Kellan just stared at her. It was so quiet that the buzz from the fluorescent lights overhead might as well have been a hornet’s nest. Then he banged through the door into the square of grass that acted as a parking lot, taking in a gulp of air that worked his Adam’s apple up and down.
Still not looking at her, he ground out, “The rift between me and my brothers went deeper than the San Andreas Fault. Everything looked solid on the surface, sure. This whole new life, though, left some enormous chasms underneath. The only solution was the vow they made to not lie anymore.”
Agreed. But it was Rafe and Flynn who made that vow, who needed to atone and damn well grovel to Kellan. He didn’t need to do anything. “They made that. To you. Because they repeatedly lied on a daily basis about the very basics of their life.”
He whipped around. “My love for you is a basic. As integral as breathing and eating and sleeping. I had to tell them about it, Laney.”
Delaney hadn’t wanted to make him choose between herself and his brothers. But it looked like he had, nonetheless.
That choice had broken them. It meant Delaney couldn’t trust him. Not with their secret. Not with her heart. It didn’t even matter that Rafe and Flynn certainly wouldn’t risk their exposure and tell anyone.
It didn’t matter that her parents had been the worst role models ever for a healthy relationship. She still knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that love couldn’t exist without trust.
Which meant she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this, they, were over.
Her mother had—foolishly—trusted her father, blindly, despite how many times he shattered that trust. Trusted that he wouldn’t keep cheating on her, wouldn’t do drugs again, wouldn’t keep doing bad things that sent him to jail. And she never learned. Her mom never drew a line in the sand to protect herself. It had ultimately gotten her killed by the man it turned out she couldn’t trust at all.
Delaney refused to repeat that pattern. She was smarter than that.
She wouldn’t give Kellan any more chances to hurt her, to betray her trust.
She couldn’t.
Heaving in a breath, Delaney said, “You didn’t have the right, Kellan. Not to expose me like that.”
“I did it to put things right with Rafe and Flynn. Not to put you at risk.”
“But you did.” And that choice he made would be the cause of everything that happened next. That choice shoehorned Delaney into exactly one course of action. “If you get thrown out of the program, you’ll still have Rafe and Flynn. I could lose my job, Kellan. That would mean starting from scratch, without a reference. Without any connection to law enforcement, which is all I know. I don’t have a family. My career is all I have.”
“No. That’s not true. You have me.” He reached for her again, but she slipped sideways, out of his grasp.
They’d never be this close again, this connected again. It hurt already and Delaney hadn’t even told him. Hadn’t made the break that would never, could never, be repaired.
Sadly, she semi-whispered, “I don’t. I can’t.”
Kellan Maguire was no dummy. His brain must’ve whizzed ahead to the final words she couldn’t bear yet to speak out loud. His eyes widened. Words hammered out of him in fast desperation. “You can’t keep lying, just like I couldn’t. So we’ll stop sneaking around. No more cars or hotels. We need to stop the secrecy.”
“We need to stop all of it. That’s the only way.”
“No, Laney! You’re not a quitter. And you don’t run scared. So don’t give up on us just because I screwed up.”
“I’m not doing this to punish you. We have to end things to keep both of us safe. You used to make me feel safe, Kellan. But not anymore. That trust is gone.” It took seconds to reach through the doorway and grab her purse and jacket off the wall hook. “Our breaking up was inevitable. Better to do it sooner rather than later.”
“Laney. I love you.”
Which was exactly why this hurt so much. “I love you, too.” Delaney got in her car and peeled out of the lot without another word. Five miles down the road, she pulled over and sobbed. She’d never loved anyone the way she loved Kellan.
She’d also never felt this depth of pain, of betrayal before.
Well, her time with Kellan had been about trying new experiences.
This one sucked.
Kellan banged the wooden spoon inside the giant stock pot. The noise was a little satisfying—a signifier of how badly he wanted to take a metal bat and bang it around all the walls of their house.
While swearing.
He wanted to beat things and break things very, very loudly.
While swearing. Because he couldn’t figure out a better way to let out all the rawness, all the burning pain bleeding out from the spot where Delaney had ripped his heart four days ago.
Luckily, he was plenty mad at the Chicago mob—one mobster in particular—so he could focus on anger rather than heartbreak.
“It’s been six days since O’Brien showed up and fucked with us. Got a plan yet, Wonder Twins?”
Flynn looked up from where he was scribbling in a notebook at the wooden table. “That’s hurtful. You could’ve referenced any super hero. But you skip over Batman and the Flash and go with the Junior SuperFriends?”
“Yeah, and which one of us is supposed to be the girl Wonder Twin?” Rafe kicked off his second work boot at the front door. “Jesus, Kellan, that’s a double layer of insulting. I had a bitch of a struggle with a dirty
carburetor today. Then you attack me the moment I come home?”
“I’m tired of waiting.” Tired of missing Delaney, was more like it. But it wasn’t fair to take that out on his brothers, so he gave another vicious stir to the pot. More than a couple of popcorn kernels flew out to land on the counter. “I’m tired of not knowing what happens next. You two said you’d keep me in the loop.”
“You are in. This is the loop—just waiting.” Rafe disappeared down the hall with his boots.
Kellan thought about dropping it. Following their lead, not butting in. Yeah, that might’ve happened a year ago when he looked up to his brothers with something akin to hero worship. But now he knew just how fallible they were. He could contribute, maybe keep them from missing something, or come up with a better solution.
Plus, he was in a shit mood and itching for a fight.
He followed Rafe around the corner. “That’s your plan? Wait for the next shitty thing to happen?”
“Not exactly.” Rafe was already changing into shorts and an official Cranberry Festival tee that Floyd had passed out at the last meeting. “But waiting a week has proven that Davey’s keeping his word. We’ve done the rotating watch every night, so nobody could catch us by surprise again. If he’d told anyone he found us, there would’ve been an attempt by now.”
“But you said you trusted Davey? That he was low level enough to not try to pick up the reins and reassemble McGinty’s crew by telling them he’d found you? That all he wanted was the money?” He’d made Rafe and Flynn go over their laundry list of reasons to believe a criminal who had everything to gain by revealing their location. Repeatedly.
“Trust—but verify.”
“You know, that’s a Russian proverb. Don’t tell me you’re moving on to the Russian mob next?”
“Nah.” Rafe pushed past him to rejoin Flynn in the living room. He flopped down on the dark green sofa. “I saw it in that Bond flick that came out in July.”
Got it Bad Page 22
