Chapter 4
FOUR
brAN
The guy on his knees in front of me is twice my age and still thinks he can scare me.
To be fair, most people see me and assume I’m no more than the dumb blunt instrument in the room. It’s not a terrible assumption. I am, in fact, the blunt instrument in most rooms.
I’m just not dumb.
We’re in the back of a shuttered bar in South Philly—the kind that still smells like smoke ten years after it went non-smoking. The vintage jukebox in the back is silent, and the neon OFF AIR sign buzzes faintly behind the bar.
The old guy’s nose is already broken. I didn’t do that. He came in with it. But I did add the split lip and the bruised ribs, so we’re both contributing to the general atmosphere.
“Last chance,” I tell him, my voice calm and quiet. I rarely raise it, rarely try to draw attention to myself. “You want to take the deal, or you want to spend the rest of your life eating through a straw? Because those are your options.”
He spits blood on the floor. Misses my boots by an inch. “You don’t get to offer me deals,” he rasps. “You’re just the muscle.”
I smile a little, sigh through my nose. I’ve heard that one before.
“Buddy,” I say, “Kael sent the muscle to talk to you. To offer you the deal. That’s the part you want to focus on.”
He glances past me, eyes darting to the dark doorway that leads deeper into the building, the one with the frosted glass and the gold-leaf G on it.
G for Gallagher.
He doesn’t know if Kael—the new Gallagher, head of the Irish now that his da is dead—is behind it right now. Doesn’t know if we’re alone.
He doesn’t need to know. Fear works better when there are gaps to fill in.
“You skimmed from a man who let you live on his dime for fifteen years,” I say. “You confessed to me three times. On camera.”
He opens his mouth to deny it, then catches himself. Smart. A little late, but smart.
“You think he’ll really let me walk?” he asks. “If I give it back?”
I hesitate, then I shrug. “You’re lucky it’s Kael and not me, but yeah. He’s willing to cut you loose in exchange for returning the funds and never seeing your face again.”
The man looks down at the floor, his shoulders shaking silently. “I fucked up.”
“You sign what needs signing, you don’t talk to cops, you don’t make friends with reporters, and you disappear somewhere without Wi-Fi. We never see your face again. That’s the deal.”
Honestly, I’m not sure why Kael isn’t just killing the man. He’ll be a loose end, NDA or no. But Kael couldn’t bring himself to do it. Something about him having half-raised him.
His shoulders slump. Something in his eyes breaks.
“Where would I go?”
I’ve learned that’s what gets them. Not the broken bones. Not the gun in my waistband. It’s the thought of being nobody somewhere quiet.
I remember long stretches of my own life like that. Anonymous. Unremarkable. An extra in other people’s lives.
“You’ll figure it out,” I say. “Or you won’t. Either way, that’s not my problem.”
He laughs, wet and bitter. “You really don’t care, do you?”
I don’t answer. Caring is not my job description. That’s not what Kael pays me for.
In the corner of the room, the small camera mounted in the upper corner blinks a steady red. It’s been recording since we walked in. Any doubt this guy had about what he admitted is already archived in at least three places.
He sees the camera. Sees my face. Knows what this means.
“All right.” His voice cracks. “All right. I’ll sign.”
“Attaboy.”
I haul him to his feet, steadying him when he wobbles. His legs shake under his body weight. He smells like stale sweat and bad decisions.
Kael’s lawyer is waiting in the next room, papers spread out on the table like a sacrament. I steer our guest toward it, then step back so I’m just a shadow at his shoulder.
Weapon. Not person.
It’s a distinction I learned young and one Kael’s father reinforced for a decade before his son took over as head of the East Coast Irish. I’m good at it. I’m useful. I don’t have to think too hard about whether I like it.
The guy’s hands shake as he signs. By the time he’s done, he looks ten years older.
The lawyer gathers the papers, nods once to me, and disappears through another door without a word. Efficient. Forgettable.
Our guest wipes at his nose, grimacing.
“So that’s it?” he asks. “I walk?”
“For now.” I jerk my chin toward the bar’s back door. “We’re done here.”
He looks like he wants to say something else. Weighs it. Thinks better of it. He shuffles away, one step at a time, like he expects a bullet between his shoulders before he makes the alley.
I don’t move until the door shuts behind him and the lock clicks.
When it does, I exhale slowly, roll my shoulders once, and reach back to turn off the camera.
The red light dies.
The room is suddenly very quiet.
I tell myself that the little twist in my chest is nothing. Just adrenaline fading. Just the way it feels when you go from moving to standing still too fast.
There’s a knock on the inner door behind me.
I don’t have to ask who it is. Nobody knocks on that door except people who already belong on the other side.
“Yeah,” I call.
The door opens. Kael steps through, suit immaculate, expression unreadable. Even down here, in the guts of a South Philly bar, he looks like he’s walking into a board meeting.
“You get what we needed?” he asks.
“Every word,” I say. “On paper and on video. He’ll go quietly.”
“He’d better.” Kael crosses the room, picks up the little SD card from the camera with two fingers, like it’s something fragile and extremely valuable. “I don’t feel like digging any more holes this week.”
I don’t say that I wouldn’t mind. Holes are simple. Dirt doesn’t talk back.
Kael studies me for a second. His gaze flicks over the blood on my knuckles, the scuff on my jacket where the old guy’s chair caught me when I shoved it.
“You’re bleeding,” he says.
“Not mine.”
“Still.” He nods at my hand. “Get that looked at before you get on the road.”
I blink. “The road?”
“Pack a bag, Kelly.” He slips the SD card into his inner pocket. “You’re going to Lucy Falls.”
“What?
“Follow me.” He gestures, and I follow him into the back room.
It’s cold in Kael’s office, even with the heat on. Always is. He likes his environment like he likes his employees—controlled and sharp around the edges.
“Brodie called me twenty minutes ago,” Kael says, tossing a file onto the desk in front of me. “He said the sheriff in Lucy Falls—Jack Brady—called him ten minutes before that.”
“Someone die?” I ask. It’s not flippant. Just practical. Most calls that ripple through that many people have a body at the end of them.
“He found a body at the Falls.” Kael steeples his fingers. “And thirty minutes after that, Henry Thurston paid a visit to my little cousin.”
My shoulders go tight before I can stop them.
Tallulah.
Not Twiggy, not Tally, not Kael’s hacker genius cousin from Lucy Falls. In this room, on Kael’s tongue, she’s always Tallulah. It makes her sound small. Breakable.
I try to keep my face blank. I’m mostly successful at it. I can’t keep the roughness from my voice, though.
“How bad?” I ask.
“He didn’t get in,” Kael says. “He rattled her door, smiled at her through her window, and ran like the rat he is as soon as the sirens got close. Jack had units on scene, but Thurston knows how to hide.”
“So no injuries?”
“No.” His mouth flattens. “Not physical ones. Brodie says she’s fine.”
Just fine isn’t good enough.
I flip the file open. Black and white photos stare back at me. Crime scene shots from the first Lucy Falls mess. Old news reports. A grainy image of Henry himself, taken outside a courthouse in another state before he skipped town and turned into a rumor.
I’ve read this file before.
When Shiloh was being stalked, when threats started appearing all over Lucy Falls, Kael had me go through every scrap of information we had on Thurston. Patterns, preferences, the signature marks he couldn’t quite help leaving behind.
That case ended bloody, but not with Thurston in cuffs. A girl—Madison something—died. Jason Adams, his foster brother and partner, was convicted and imprisoned. He’s on death row now. Shiloh lived. Thurston disappeared.
I remember thinking at the time that it felt…unfinished. Like someone had ripped the last chapter out of a book.
Apparently, he’s writing a sequel.
“Why now?” I ask. “Why come back after all this time?”
“Men like Thurston are moths,” Kael says. “They circle the same light until it burns them down. He fixated on Shiloh, and then another woman very briefly—Harriet somebody. I think that was just to get close to Shiloh. But Tallulah’s the one who helped take his partnership apart.”
The file in front of me has a new page tucked into the back now. A printed copy of a forum thread. Usernames that mean nothing to most people.
I recognize one.
Nightjar.
“She’s been talking about him online,” Kael says. “Under one of her handles. He’s not stupid. He probably watches the same spaces she does.”
Of course he does. Predators go where the prey gathers.
“She did good work last year,” I say slowly. “Better than half the analysts I’ve met.”
“She also paints targets on herself like she’s wearing a fucking bulletproof vest.” Kael leans back, eyes narrowing. “Which is why I need you to go down there and keep an eye on her.”
I shake my head to clear it, unsure if I heard Kael correctly. Because I could’ve sworn he said he was sending me to bumfuck Egypt to watch over his kid cousin, Kevin-Costner-bodyguard-style, and that’s not going to work for me.
I’m a lot of things to Kael and the East Coast Irish, ECI for short. I’m a closer, a heavy, the muscle, and along with Ryan, his right hand.
But I’m not a fucking babysitter.
“You want me to do what, now?”
From the opposite side of the scarred metal desk he sits behind, Kael lances me with a stare. “You heard me just fine.”