12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Daiq was sleeping on the pillow but got up and stretched as soon as Liam walked through the door. Little did Liam know Abs was right behind him. “Oh, god!” He squealed, rushing into Liam’s room.
Liam thought he’d scare Daiq, but the cat went right to Abs, allowing the little blond to pick him up and hold him. “Aw, he’s the sweetest thing!”
“I guess if he likes you, that must be a good nod,” Liam said as he sat on his bed and watched Abs walk around the room with the cat.
“Cats are very perceptive. It’s said they sleep with you to keep evil spirits away from their human.”
“Evil spirits, huh? You don’t believe in all that bullshit, do you?”
Abs looked over at Liam, his lips in a slash on his face they’d thinned so badly. “Look at me and ask that again?”
“I didn’t know if that was just an image.”
“It’s both, isn’t it…?” Abs looked over at Liam as he asked, “Does he have a name?”
“Strawberry Daiquiri. Daiq for short.”
“Dak? Like D-A-K?”
That, actually, would have been easier. “D-A-I-Q.”
“Cute,” he said and kissed the cat’s head. “You’re adorable and I’m completely obsessed, but I have a date. I have to get going, but I’ll come visit you lots and lots if…” Abs again looked at Liam. “If that’s okay?”
Honestly, he said, “I’d like it a lot, Abs. And Daiq sure will.”
The beautiful, wide smile on the thin face showed Abs was truly happy about it. “Thanks. And I’m serious. You’re going to love all of us. We’re incredible people.”
For the first time in his life, Liam thought that just might be possible.
After Abs left and he’d pet the cat long enough to get him back to napping, Liam got the phone number that had been burning a hole in his pocket and called it. When the smooth voice answered, “Hello?” Liam thought he’d lose his nerve.
Instead, however, he got his backbone straightened out and said, “Yeah, hey. It’s the bartender,” he said, almost giving away his real name. “Cosmo.”
“I knew before you said it. I don’t give my number out often. How are you?”
The guy was so pretty, so…hot. Cosmo was out of practice dating. “I’m…I’m okay. I mean, I’m good. How are you?”
“Enough small talk?”
Liam’s laughter came out in a huff of relief. “Thanks. I’m not…I haven’t been in the dating scene for a while. I guess I lost my touch.”
“Not at all. You hooked me pretty fast. A bright spot of sincerity, I guess, is what you put out there. So, are you free tonight?”
So fast, everything was happening so fast…
“I, uh, I’d actually love to, except I just got a cat. I don’t want to leave him alone on his first night here. I know that sounds like an excuse.”
“A good excuse. I love cats. Dogs too. I have a dog. God, I sound so lame.”
Liam was falling for the guy, and he barely knew him. No, he didn’t know him at all. He definitely needed to get laid. It had to be his dick pushing him. “Tomorrow for lunch? We can, you know, start off with lunch.”
“Lunch is actually perfect. Where did you think?”
He drew an immediate blank, but then the one place he knew they had both been to was the coffee shop. “That coffee place where we saw each other the second time? At least we both know the way.”
“I love it. I’ll see you there, say, noon?”
“See you at noon.”
Daiq was rubbing on his leg again and he picked the cat up, kissing his forehead. “I got a date. What do you think of that?”
He just purred louder, but Liam assumed he was fine with it.
He went out and found a pet store a couple miles away, taking a rideshare to get there. Once he had the pretty red collar in his pocket, he stopped to get some drinks and snacks for himself, and then, when he got back to the pub, Murphy was waiting for him next to his room with bags in his hand. “You went shopping.”
Liam laughed. “Good guess. You did too?”
“No, this stuff was from my sister, who has a serious shopping addiction. She’ll shop for anyone, anytime, for any reason, and she finally got to shop for a cat.”
Liam’s heart warmed so quickly, he thought his chest had caught fire. “For Daiq?”
“Yeah. No one’s ever brought a pet home, so everyone is excited, and we know he’s new to you, and getting adjusted, but once he is, my kids will be pestering you to play with her. Him.”
“Him, and I’d like that. He’s very affectionate. He loves Abs already.”
“That’s not hard.”
Liam suspected Murphy had offered to bring the bags so he could talk to Liam alone. As far as Liam was concerned, that was fine. He wasn’t backing down from his demands. “Come on in and meet him.”
Murphy nodded and tried not to show the relief he obviously felt at the invitation.
Daiq went right up to Murphy and rubbed along his shin as Murphy laughed. “Well, hello to you too.”
“He’s very friendly. Some stupid kids were trying to hurt him. I’d like to find them and beat the fuck out of them.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. You’d be back in jail.”
Liam nodded slowly. “So, are you worried about me?”
Murphy pulled the desk chair to him and spun it around, sitting with his back in front of him so he could lay his arms across it. “Yeah. I won’t lie. I’m worried you will turn on us, sure, but don’t think you’re special for receiving my worry. I fretted over every single guy here, and that includes the man I eventually fell for. It’s smart to worry over cons turning on each other because it happens all the time.”
Liam nodded along as he spoke, then agreed, “This is true. I, uh, got busted so another guy could get out of trouble. I’m sure that’s one reason I got this far with you.”
“It is, most definitely. You know what it’s like, but the double edge to this sword is, you know he got off by ratting on you. Maybe you’d follow his example.”
“I could, yeah. So, I guess you have to get me going on something that only I could get busted for. I mean, yeah, I could still snitch, but it would be hearsay. I’ve never seen you commit a crime.”
Murphy smiled and pointed a finger at him. “You’re fucking smart, kid. I like guys who are smart. Those men are the ones to think quickly if shit goes sideways.”
“I’m your guy then. I’m smart enough to know that you likely have a lot of friends in low places, and to snitch on you, even if that wasn’t against every belief I have, would be a death sentence.”
After giving him a wink, Murphy said, “Again…smart. So, what you need to do for me tomorrow night is steal two cars.”
“Two? You don’t want much, huh?”
“Call it an on-the-job interview. If you don’t pull it off, then we’ll talk. If you do, then we’ll start planning your part of the next job. Deal?”
“Got it. And what are you going to do with these two cars?”
As Murphy stood, and as he was about to leave, he said, “I’ll give you an address.”
The moment he was gone, Daiq jumped onto the bed next to Liam. “He’s gonna create some kind of obstacle for me. He’s seen too many movies.”
As Daiq purred and crawled up to nuzzle his jaw, Liam laughed at the cat but continued petting him.
“You’re not gonna let me bitch at all? Are you just gonna make me smile all the time?”
A loud and firm meow came from the cat that had Liam blinking in surprise and a little fear.
“Don’t do that. If I think you understand me, it’s gonna scare the piss outta me!”
The coffee place was nearly full when he arrived, but he saw Taran sitting at a booth off toward the big bank of windows in the back. He waved Liam over, and Liam’s stomach did a couple of flips as he walked over to the booth.
“Hi,” he said before he sat.
“Hey. I’m…I’m always early.”
“Probably a good thing,” Liam said as he looked around. “We might not have found a table.”
“My weird promptness is good sometimes.”
There was no smile on his lips, and his eyes looked far off, like he had troubling thoughts plaguing him, prompting Liam to ask, “What’s up?”
“Can we get out of here and go for a drive?”
Meeting the guy only a couple times, he wasn’t exactly thrilled at going for a drive, but there was something in Taran’s demeanor that made him nod and rise from the chair.
Once outside, Taran whispered, “Walk. Maybe we should walk.”
“What’s going on, Taran? You look like you’re ready to freak out.”
Taran grabbed Liam’s arm and pulled him along the sidewalk. “Just walk. I…goddamn it, Liam, I can’t fucking do this, and I’m gonna get fired.”
Liam stopped cold and pulled from Taran. “How the fuck do you know my real name?”
Taran had stopped, but didn’t face him. As others walked by them, Liam didn’t feel like he could move.
Heart thrumming like a thrash metal drummer was inside him, playing a fifty-minute solo, Liam waited, but all he saw was the guy shaking his head. Finally, when the people had stopped, and they were mostly alone in their little part of the world in front of a catering business, Taran finally turned his cerulean blues on him, though Liam could tell it was hard for him to meet Liam’s eyes.
“I’m a cop. An…an agent, actually. FBI. I’m supposed to be undercover, getting to know you so you’ll get into the shit with Murphy, and I can use that to get you to turn state’s evidence on them.”
After his entire body had frozen like he’d been pushed through a hole in the ice, he thawed enough to spin on his heel and begin walking away from Taran. Well, it would not be that easy.
“Wait! Please, Liam, don’t run off!”
Liam stopped, his hands curling into fists as his old temper tried to push through the maturity he’d thought he’d accomplished as he’d aged out of being that stupid kid he once was.
“I need to go. If I stay here, I’m going to hurt you,” he warned through teeth that gritted harshly enough to begin a headache that sprang from his jaw.
“Like you did to Martin Cambridge?”
With his eyelids sliding slowly shut after hearing that name, Liam loosened his hands.
“You’ve grown up from that kid, Liam. You…You’re my first assignment and I’m going to get fired and likely thrown in prison, but I can’t lie to you another minute. I can’t. Can we just go somewhere private and talk? I swear, I will not blackmail you, bust you, anything.”
There was little else to do but follow him. For one thing, he had to know what the feds knew about Murphy and the crew. If they were close to being busted, they may need those passports sooner than later.
Taran’s car was a plain, new model Corolla, dark gray, exactly what a fed would drive. He got into the passenger side and the second Taran opened his mouth, Liam lifted his hand in the air, palm right in the man’s face. “I’m not saying a fucking word in here.”
“I don’t have a mic on me, Liam. I’d take off my shirt to show you, but not here.”
“Oh, right, like feds need to tape a wire to their chest nowadays. Just fucking drive.”
They pulled away from the curb and headed east. Liam’s eyes were firmly pointed away from Taran.
“I get it. I wouldn’t trust me either. I never thought being undercover would be like this. If I had, I’d let myself be stuck in some sad field office where nothing ever happens.”
“Like I said, you’re not getting me to say a fucking word.”
They drove through the streets of the city, but Liam barely saw a thing. His mind was throwing too many pictures at him for him to see past those. Jail again, Abs in prison orange, guys trying constantly to attack him and Mims, all while beating Goldie for trying to protect them.
No music for Hippy, and art would be a memory for Haze. Not to mention, those two little kids growing up without Murphy, maybe without both dads.
“I’ve been watching you, Liam. I saw what you did for that bum.”
“You mean that homeless man?”
“Sorry. Yeah. And the cat too. You don’t deserve more time inside, but neither do Murphy and the others. I’ve read the files on all of them. You all came back from pasts that would have crippled most. I…law shouldn’t be like this. There are a million people in this country worse than you all.”
“Then why?”
“Because you’re thieves!”
Liam finally looked at him after he screamed and watched him driving with fists so tightly holding the wheel, his knuckles were white.
“I’m not anything anymore but a fucking bartender. We’re fucking bartenders.”
“I already said there’s no wire here. This is my personal car. No one in the Bureau knew I was meeting you today.”
The first thing that came to his mind came out of his mouth as well. “You purposely bought a car that looks like a fed is driving it? Good job on the undercover thing.”
Taran’s jaw dropped, but he kept his eyes on the road. “What…?”
Liam laughed a little tightly. “Yeah, you’re really cut out for this.”
It wasn’t like it hadn’t crossed his mind that it could be a tactic the feds used, pretending to be on the criminal’s side, giving up their undercover ruse to get close to their targets. Then a whoosh of laughter came from Taran, and suddenly Liam knew he was telling the truth. How exactly, he knew that was a mystery, though, so he kept his guard in place.
“Good point, yeah. Well, it’s all I ever wanted to be.”
“Out of all the things in the world you could be, and you wanted to be a federal agent? No firefighter or astronaut?”
“My dad was a federal agent. I admired him growing up, though I saw little of him.”
“Past tense?”
“He passed a couple of years before I graduated the academy.”
Liam’s empathy wanted to overtake his better senses. “Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
They drove until the buildings and houses of the city fell away behind them, and Taran was pulling into a closed rest area, skirting around the chained blockade. “You guys make your own fucking rules, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said seriously. “Perks are perks.”
After they parked, Taran exited the car and asked Liam to do the same. He did, and they walked to one of the picnic tables under a dilapidated canopy. As they sat on opposing sides, Liam thought it was àpropos that they were sitting like that, being they were on clearly opposing sides of bigger things.
But the bad part of it was, he would have to stare right into those cerulean blues. They chose the perfect fed for the job as far as looks. He was a cross between Ian Somerhalder and Jared Leto. Two men, coincidently or not, that had always been Liam’s favorite celebrities. Though, how they’d know that he had no idea.
“Liam, I went into this with my eyes wide open, thinking I knew what I was getting into. All my life, I wanted to hunt down the bad guys, and to be perfectly honest, I still do. What I didn’t know, what completely eluded me, was the fact that there was a lot of gray. None of this is black and white, good and bad, right and wrong.”
“Welcome to the real world,” he said sarcastically, but honestly. “I knew that as a kid.”
“I know about your past, Liam. I had to study everything about you, to come up with things we had in common. I have an entire file just of the things that I’m supposed to say that I like or hate to make you think we have a ton in common, but then, as I was making all this up, my partner told me to pull what is true first. That makes me a lot more likely to be sincere. Cons know liars, because they’re all liars.”
If that was supposed to get a reaction from Liam, it hadn’t worked. He simply continued to stare at the guy, blinking nice and slow, waiting for more confession.
“Um…I found there was more we had in common than not, but one thing was completely different. Our families, and I have to tell you, reading about yours, it was the first time I felt like you had every right to turn into a con.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Again, if he was looking for reactions, Liam would refuse to give them.
“You’re…you’re the gray area that I didn’t expect, Liam. Seeing you helping that bum…sorry, that homeless guy, then the fucking cat, it confirmed everything I’d been feeling about you up to that point. I cannot bust you. There’s no way, and as far as the others go? They’re not bad people either.”
“They’re actually some pretty good people. You want bad people to bust, there are plenty out there.”
That was when the tension left Taran’s face, and he smiled. “I know. A lot of them hate Murphy and his band of bandits.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re new, so maybe they don’t want to scare you off, Liam, but there are other gangs that do similar things to what Murphy’s crew does. Theft is a moneymaker, no one is disputing that, and the amounts of money that your friends take in, well, it’s made many people jealous. Murphy’s taken meetings with gang leaders, organized crime leaders, big shots, okay? They’ve all asked him to share the wealth, and what I mean by that is the talent he’s got.”
Liam had heard nothing about it, but it made sense. Not only did it make sense the other gangs would want guys like Mims and Hippy, especially, but that they’d not told Liam about it. Cops were one thing, but other criminals were much more dangerous.
“Okay. And?”
“Murphy always turns them down. Always. He’s lent none of the crew out, and if I understand this correctly, your crew isn’t allowed to do jobs for others, even if they wanted to.”
Carefully choosing his words, Liam said, “If it were true that they did these things you say, why the hell would they want to work for anyone else? If you all are trying to recruit me to snitch for you, going so far as to make one of the agents my, what? Boyfriend? Isn’t it pretty clear what Murphy’s allegedly done is working?”
“And having you on board just makes them more successful, and that isn’t me blowing smoke up your ass. Liam, I don’t want to bust you or the rest of them, but I am warning you to be careful of what jobs you take.”
“Assuming I believe a word you said, or if there were jobs to take, why?”
“Because not only are we after you, but so is the Blue Badge Cartel or BBC, they call themselves.”
It was like he was speaking another language. “Who?”
“Ask Murphy about them. Tell Murphy about me. In our research, in our deep dives to get the goods on you all, we’ve found a group that is a thousand times worse. My partner and my handler both wanted me in with you all not to bust you. They have much bigger fish to fry, and let me tell you, they’re fish that are swimming upstream to get at the people at Murphy’s Pub.”