“Are you insane?”
“No.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve lost your goddamn mind. She’s a fucking civilian!”
“I know what she is. Lower your voice. You’re being conspicuous.”
The soccer mom loading her kids into the minivan parked next to us gives me another sidelong glance. She glances at Grayson in the front seat, his hands gripped tightly around the steering wheel, forearm tats showing under his rolled-up sleeves, and tells her pigtailed daughter to hurry up and get inside their car.
She probably thinks we’re pedophiles.
The reality is worse than that.
For the past ten years on the same day at the same time every week, Grayson and I have been meeting somewhere in town in his car. Today, our meeting is in a lot on the third floor of the parking garage near the movie complex.
He always drives an older-model beige Chevy Impala. I always sit in the back, and he sits up front. He never turns to look at me when I enter the car. I never say goodbye when I leave.
Sometimes I have the depressing thought we’ll still be doing the same thing when we’re old men, thirty years from now.
But I doubt I’ll live another two. This life I lead isn’t made for longevity.
Though that’s what I thought over twenty years ago when I first started out, back when the Grayson in my life was a grizzled old handler named Howard who used to tell rambling nonsensical anecdotes about the 1984 Olympics. He died of cirrhosis.
Helluva way to go. I’d take a bullet over that misery any day.
In a lower, more controlled tone, Grayson says, “I never would’ve approved of the idea of picking her up in the first place, but you didn’t tell me.”
“It was Diego’s idea. He didn’t tell you because he knew you wouldn’t have approved. I agreed with that decision.”
“Great. So you’ve gone rogue now, too?”
“Don’t be so bloody dramatic. Your permission isn’t required.”
“But my knowledge is. You have to keep me in the loop, Dec.”
“I don’t have to do anything, Gray. Which you know.”
He stares at me in the rearview mirror, his dark eyes made even darker with fury.
Our tempers are one of the few things we have in common. He’s even more prone to angry outbursts than I am.
The only son of a third-generation beat cop, he always knew he’d go into law enforcement. It’s the family business. But I suspect he wishes he’d followed in his father’s footsteps and joined Boston PD instead of the FBI, so he wouldn’t have to deal with me.
I’m making him old before his time.
“So what’s the plan? You’ll question her, then send her back to Kazimir? And what do you think will happen to her when he finds out she’s been questioned about him? Because I can guarantee you, it won’t be good.”
“I’m not sending her back to anywhere. She’s going to stay with me.”
His silence echoes with disbelief. In the rearview mirror, I see him blinking, trying to decide if he heard me right.
“You’re making this poor girl your slave?”
The word conjures images of Sloane naked and handcuffed on her knees with my hard dick in her mouth. Heat floods my groin. I make a mental note to reproduce that fantasy at home, tonight.
I say mildly, “What a charming opinion you have of me.”
“I know you. My opinion is based on fact.”
“Then it will disappoint you to hear that I’m not making her a slave. I’m just making her mine. Period.”
More blinking. He’s so confused, it’s like I’m speaking Portuguese.
“What’s the angle?”
“There is no angle.”
“There’s always an angle. You don’t have girlfriends. You don’t have a personal life. You only have the job, which is how you’ve always wanted it. Which is why you’re so good at it. You’re unencumbered. Undistracted. Alone.”
“People can change.”
“Is that a fucking joke? Are you joking with me right now?”
I say through gritted teeth, “This is getting tiresome. Listen to the words coming out of my mouth. I’m keeping her. She’s mine. Get it on the books, get the word out, and get everyone on board.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a second. Are you saying you want to make her an asset?”
“Potentially. She’s definitely got what it takes.”
He’s incredulous. “You’re willing to blow your cover for a piece of ass?”
“Call her that again, and you’ll be dead within ten seconds.”
We stare at each other, the mirror reflecting two sets of angry eyes. One blue, one brown, both stubborn as hell.
After a tense moment, he says, “That’s the first time you’ve ever threatened me.”
“And if you disrespect her again, the threat will be followed by a bullet.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ. I’d ask you if her pussy is lined with gold, but I don’t want to get shot.”
I growl, “That was too close for comfort and your last hall pass.”
He puts his hands in the air, surrendering. “Fine. I’ll run it up the flagpole. But you might want to take a minute to consider what she’d want. Because I can guaran-goddamn-tee you if I could go back in time and choose whether or not to take on this job, I wouldn’t.”
“I love you, too.”
He mutters, “Quit busting my balls, man.”
“You have the list?”
Grayson digs in his shirt pocket. He has a fondness for red-and-black-plaid shirts. I think he fancies they make him look like a lumberjack. Though he does have the over-muscled forearms and broad back of someone who swings an axe for a living, I’ll give him that.
Without turning around, he hands a folded piece of paper over his shoulder.
“Try to keep it low profile. I can’t explain too many bodies at once.”
“You know I will.”
He scoffs. “I know you’ll do whatever the fuck you want, is what I know.”
Something in his tone makes me pause to look at him more closely.
He needs a haircut. And a shave. He was never exactly clean-cut before, but now he looks like he’s been sleeping on someone’s couch for a month. And that beard of his has gone beyond lumberjack territory and straight into antisocial mountain man who shoots bears for fun.
“How’s the wife, Gray?”
His shocked gaze flashes to mine in the mirror. “Is this you asking me a personal question?”
“You’re thirty percent more of an asshole than usual. Everything okay at home?”
He scowls. “Why does it have to be a problem at home?”
“Because I’m smarter than you are. What’s happened?”
He looks out the window and exhales a hard breath through his nostrils. “She left me for her fucking tennis coach.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like me to kill him?”
“Jesus. Don’t tempt me.”
“It’s on the table. Think about it.”
“Absolutely not.” He pauses. “Unless I change my mind. Which I won’t.”
“Understood. But when you come to your senses, just text me his name and address, and I’ll take care of it.”
He seems touched. “Thank you, Declan. That’s the nicest and the most fucked-up thing anyone has ever said to me. It almost makes up for when you threatened to kill me for insulting your new girlfriend a few minutes back.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I open the door and get out. Walking toward the elevators, I call Kieran. He picks up on the second ring.
“Howya, boss.”
“Did the delivery come yet?”
“Aye.”
“You brought it up?”
“Aye. She answered the door in one of them skimpy workout thingies. Like a full-body leotard, except with the middle missing. Nearly gave me a bloody heart attack.”
I clench my teeth, aggravated at the thought of Kieran seeing Sloane in yoga wear. Though knowing her, she was probably doing all her ridiculous bending and stretching right in front of the bedroom windows for all of Boston to see.
“How did she seem?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean did she seem happy? Sad? What was her mood?”
I hear the shrug in his voice. “The usual. Wonder Woman meets Lucy Ricardo.”
“Lucy Ricardo?”
“The wacky wife from that old black-and-white sitcom on the telly, I Love Lucy.”
I won’t tell Sloane he said that. She’d take it as a huge compliment and adopt Kieran as her loyal sidekick.
I forgot. She already has.
“I’ll be back in a few hours. Got a few loose ends to clean up before the move.”
“Copy that. Everything’s ready at the new digs. Is it okay if I eat this muffin the wee lass baked me? I thought I’d better check with ye first.”
“She baked you muffins?”
“Aye. For me and Spider. Haven’t a baldy notion what’s in ’em, but they’re awful green and lumpy. Looks like she grabbed a fistful of dirt and rolled it in some grass.”
Had I known she’d go straight into the kitchen and start cooking the shite she eats when I left the bedroom door unlocked this morning, I might have double bolted it instead. “Sounds manky.”
“Looks it, too. But she said it had lots of roughage and would be good for me, so I feel like I should give it a go.”
Roughage. Christ. Smiling, I say, “Aye, you can eat it. Don’t come crying to me when you have to purge your guts into the porcelain throne.”
I hang up, take the elevator down two floors, and get into the Escalade I parked next to the back exit of the garage. I drive across town to the Old North Church, the site where the lanterns hung in the belfry alerted Boston patriots that the British were coming by sea at the start of the American Revolution. I park in the lot and go inside through a small door in the side chapel, then make my way through the nave, passing row after row of empty pews, until I get to the confessional booth.
I open the door and sit down on the narrow bench, closing the door behind me. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been eleventy-seven years since my last confession.”
An exasperated sigh comes through the carved wooden privacy screen to my left. “For feck’s sake, lad. You don’t have to make a mockery of the blessed sacrament.”
Like me, Father O’Toole still has his Irish accent from when he first landed on Boston soil, decades ago. Some things die hard.
“How are you, padre?”
“Don’t give me that padre shite,” he says crossly. “It’s still Father O’Toole to you, boyo, no matter how high and mighty you fancy yourself. And I’m the same as I was the last time you asked. A sinner livin’ on borrowed time.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Some of us more than others. Then there’s you.”
I smile at the dour tone of his voice. “Aye. Then there’s me. Still saying a prayer for my salvation every night?”
He snorts. “That ship sailed years ago, sonny, which we both know. The only O’Donnells I pray for nowadays are your mum and da, God bless their souls.”
He pauses. His voice drops an octave. “The old girl’d be awful proud of you, you know. Even though you’re damned for eternity for all the blood you’ve shed.”
“Just had to add that last bit in, didn’t you?”
“I’m a priest. Guilting sinners goes with the territory.”
“I’ve always wanted to ask. Why should I be damned if the only people I kill are evil? You’d think it could be looked upon as a public service.”
“Ach. Pure ego, that is. God doesn’t need a helping hand dispensing His justice, lad.”
“I disagree.”
“Of course you do. What have you got for me today?”
“A name. I need you to pass it along.”
“To whom?”
“Whomever your contact is in the Russian Orthodox church.”
“Ach. The Russians again. Bloody communists.”
“They’re more capitalists than communists nowadays.”
“What’s the name?”
“Mikhail Antonov.”
His pause is thoughtful. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“He’s the head of the local Bratva.”
Silence. After he wraps his head around what I’m up to, he warns, “That’s a big bite to chew, lad.”
“Aye.”
“It’ll attract a lot of attention.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’ll be expensive.”
“It always is.” I open the door to the confessional. “Thank you, Father.”
“Leave your donation in the usual place, son.”
“I will.”
Buttoning my jacket, I exit the church the same way I entered it: damned. Then I head to the home address of the second name on Grayson’s list. This one’s much more personal than the one I gave Father O’Toole, and I want to take care of it myself.
“An eye for an eye” is a crude concept, but so effective in my line of work.
