Plain Sight

Chapter 11

Maybe I was wrong about the existence of a higher power who gives even the slightest fuck about his creations. Maybe that sort of deity does exist, because here I am at the Phoenix Enterprises headquarters, sitting at my desk like a normal fucking businessman who had a run-in with something solid—a sidewalk, I tripped and fell, it wasn’t a frat boy’s fist—and my assistant, Kirk is hovering at the side of my desk, talking through some business items and waiting for me to dispense wisdom to him or whatever.

In this normality—yay for me—I have just received a blessing from a higher power.

In the form of an email.

Attached to the email are two scanned images. The first image is a photo of a paper check.

And what do you know? There’s Malcolm Walsh’s name. There’s Malcolm Walsh’s address.

The check is from two months ago. This year.

I fucking found him. Or I’m about to find him, because this is as close as I’ve come.

It’s the second image that turns me into a believer. It’s a photo of Malcolm Walsh’s expired driver’s license. There’s his fucking picture. His name is actually Malcolm Walsh.

“Amen.”

“What?” Kirk says. He’s writing something on his tablet with a stylus. Kirk is a decent guy. He likes spreadsheets and order, which is perfect, because I like to blurt out whatever it is I’ve just decided and let someone else handle it. We make an excellent Community Development team. That’s me, VP of Community Development, investing in community properties and turning massive profits and saving historical buildings from the clutches of time. And that’s Kirk, the guy who keeps track of every word that comes out of my mouth and turns it into a spreadsheet. We make such an excellent team that my real job can easily be squished into a fraction of the workday, and I can be ready to receive this news.

It’s especially satisfying because it’s a record I got from the frat-boy house the other night, spirited away on a jump drive and sent off to a company based in South America to un-encrypt and send back to me. So it was worth getting punched in the face and chased out of the house.

“I was agreeing with you,” I lie.

“You don’t know what I was saying.”

I’ve changed my mind. Kirk is an asshole.

But when I look him in the eye, he looks back at me from behind his glasses with zero judgment. My man was only stating the facts. I think it’s the cut on my face and my still-swollen lip that’s making him feel bold, and I can’t say I mind, as long as he’s not trying to be a dick.

The cut on my cheek stings. My still-swollen lip throbs. They’re on double-duty, keeping me awake and relatively focused on giving the impression that they don’t hurt, which in turn makes me even better at my job.

“Touché,” I tell Kirk. “Run it by me again.”

He runs our to-do list by me again.

“Yep. I still agree.” I click through a series of emails he’s drawn my attention too, numbers sliding around in my head. “Yes on the first property. No on the second. Third needs a grant and more infrastructure. I want to be involved in that one.”

“Do you?” Kirk asks. He reminds me of Dev Madden, except Kirk is a brown-eyed, bespectacled redhead and Dev is blond with blue eyes and a smile that belongs in magazines. Dev Madden got out of grad school when Mason started Phoenix, unless he was lying about that to throw me off the scent of his personal life. Kirk got out of grad school last year, I think. Or the year before. Recently. “Or do you want me to be involved on this one until they’re ready for you to be involved?”

“That’s the ticket. What’s next?”

“Lunch with your brothers.” Kirk looks carefully down at his tablet

“Lunch with my brothers and Dev and you, Kirkland. Come with us. Dine with the bosses. See how the sausage is made.”

“I make the sausage,” he says absently, but his face is red.

I fucking found Malcolm Walsh. I’m going after him tonight.

All I have to do now is kill time.

Washing Lily’shair in the shower isn’t killing time. It’s…breathing time. Or slowing it down, like syrup. She’s so fucking bright like this, all shining red hair and pink cheeks and the gorgeous curves of her body.

I run my fingers through the slip of her hair and toy with one nipple, then the other, then slide the pad of my finger under the curve of her breasts.

“You’re softer here,” I tell her. It’s true. The shape of her is subtly different. It’s too early for her to be showing, but my cock jumps from imagining her with a round belly. Fuck. Fuck. That’s my baby inside her. Doing this to her. Changing her. My baby. That makes me outrageously hard. And hot. So, so hot.

I don’t deserve to see her like that.

No—not tonight. I can’t think about that tonight. I find her nipples with the pad of my thumb.

Lily shivers against me, smiling with her eyes shut. “I’m sensitive there.”

“Oh,” I whisper. “So I shouldn’t bite them?”

“Maybe if you bit them, like, really carefully.”

“Like this?” I bend down and drag my teeth over her shoulder, then over her chest, and Lily arches for me so I can take her nipple gently between my teeth.

“Mmm.” I get my tongue into the action. “Mmm.”

I work the last of the conditioner out of her hair with one hand and put the other to her waist, bringing it slowly down to the slick, sweet flesh between her legs. Lily tips her head up, practically demanding to be kissed, and yes. I’ll do that. Time melts when my mouth is on hers. Time doesn’t matter at all.

She gasps when I push two fingers into her heat and find her clit with my thumb. Lily’s an angel, and angels deserve orgasms, so I give her two of them like that until she’s all melty like time, her eyes around my neck like we’re middle-school slow dancing in the shower and one of her feet propped on the shower shelf. Lily rocks herself into me, my cock sliding over her cunt, until I take myself in hand.

“I’m so tired,” she says, but she watches my fist move between us. “Are you going to come all over me?”

“Want me to?”

“No, don’t. You can’t.” That breathy little plea is probably going to be on my death certificate. “It’s bad enough that you kidnapped me—you—you can’t?—”

I curl the fingers into her hair and tip her face up, staring down into her eyes. “I have to. A pretty thing like you? I have to mark your skin. You have to take it, angel.”

Her pupils get darker. “But then?—”

“Then what? You might find out you like it? I might make you taste it?”

Lily’s mouth drops open, and I bring my hand around to swipe my thumb over her bottom lip.

“Why is this game so hot?” she whispers.

“I think—” I’ve been hard for her all day. Pumped full of blood and adrenaline all day. I’m not going to last, stroking myself like this. “It’s the wedding rings. Ah.”

I come all over Lily’s stomach, then circle my fingers through the mess while I return to earth. Lily touches my shoulders and my neck and my face. She prods lightly, lightly, below the cut on my cheek.

“Does this still hurt?” she asks. “Should we put some ice on it?”

“Probably.”

Her eyes move over my face. “I wanted to ask you something.”

I press my hips between her legs. She’s so wet. So soft. Maybe we live in the shower now. Maybe we never get out.

“Shoot.”

“Would you be mad if I went to law school?”

That’s…not what I expected her to say. My brain is still made from orgasm chemicals. “No? I went to law school.”

“Elise said it would be hypocritical if you stopped me.”

“Stopped you?” I make sure my hands are thoroughly rinsed, then put my fingers back in her hair. Jesus, she’s gorgeous. “I wouldn’t stop you. I just thought you didn’t want to go.”

“I didn’t.” Lily pouts. “But then Charlotte and Elise and I were talking about it, and whether I wanted to keep dancing?—”

“You have to keep dancing. I want to see you dance.”

“Gabriel said I should teach you how to dance.”

“You should. Teach me how to dance. Start now.”

“It’s wet,” Lily laughs. “It’s not safe to do dance lessons in the shower. When we can go to a studio?—”

“We can go right now. Just let me find some clothes.”

“Later.” Lily puts her hands on my chest, grinning, water droplets sparkling on her face. “It’s, like, ten. Too late to start dance projects. But of course I’ll teach you. I think you’d like it,” she adds, thoughtful. “I think you’d be good at it.”

“I’m always moving anyway. I’m sure I have some natural ability.”

Lily looks at me, her eyes even bigger. Greener. “You’re happy.”

“Of course I’m happy. I have you.”

There’s just a flicker of disbelief in all that green. Lily’s face turns serious.

“We were talking about dancing, and law school, and Charlotte said it didn’t have to be Columbia. It didn’t have to be stressful. I’ve never looked into a non-stressful law school before. I don’t know if they exist. But if it did, and I wanted to go, you’d be okay with that?”

I’ll be okay with anything after tonight, because Malcolm Walsh will be gone, and Lily’s grandfather is a coward. He won’t get his hands dirty. We can deal with him when it’s convenient.

“Of course, angel. You can fly wherever you want.”

Lily yawns. “Fly me to bed, then.”

Lily’s soundasleep when I leave the penthouse just before midnight and make my way north.

The address for Malcolm Walsh is in Wakefield, in the Bronx.

The street, unlike Mason’s place, is not asleep when I get there. People come in and out of bars on the ground floors of the buildings. A yellow cab pulls up to the curb and lets out five guys in jeans and T-shirts.

I am so fucking alive right now. So fucking aware of the summer wind and the baked smell of the concrete and the little gusts of alcohol and garbage from a nearby dumpster.

I’m so alive with the knife in a cool sheath on my belt.

I’m so alive with how I’m about to become a murderer.

My stomach turns over at the thought of killing someone—person, animal—but I grit my teeth and ignore the hell out of it.

My parents died fifteen years ago. It’s easy enough to make the leap from a kidnapping and almost-murder to a real murder. My parents were on Malcolm Walsh’s resume. How fucked up is that?

Jamie, sweetheart, you need to rest.

“I’m wide awake, Mom.”

A guy brushing past me on the sidewalk gives me a look. I give him a friendly wave.

Jamie. You don’t need to do this for me.

“It’s not just for you.” I am…less concerned than I should be that these conversations are happening so often. It’s not like the night by the beach. Or maybe it is like the night on the beach, and I’m too far gone to feel the difference. Either way, I have bigger problems, like finding and killing Malcom Walsh.

His building is like the others around it. Bricks. Crumbling window casings. Window shades pulled down to different heights. I want to charge in and knock on doors like some superhero cop, but I don’t.

I’m going to be responsible.

I’m going to watch first, then make my move.

A bar and a diner huddle on the ground floor. Both of them have plenty of people inside, coming and going.

Holy fuck. God does exist. Because there’s Malcolm Walsh, posted up at the bar. I didn’t even have to go inside. I recognize him from his old license photo. The bastard hasn’t tried to disguise himself.

Should I…pray?

I don’t get the chance. Walsh pushes some money across the bar and leaves, checking in all directions as he exits. He doesn’t see me. I hold my breath, because if he goes into his apartment, I’ll have to?—

Nope.

He’s on the move.

I follow him to the next block, where he ducks into another bar. Bar-hopping? Is this murderous prick bar-hopping? I guess if he’s drunk, it’ll be easier to kill him.

Jamie. Don’t.

“Mom. It’ll be fine.”

You will not be fine.

“I’ll be so much better after this.”

Let’s sit and talk about it.

“You can talk to me anytime. But I can’t stop. I need to keep my eyes on the prize. I need to be ready in case he goes out through the back.”

Praise be to God. Walsh doesn’t go out the back. He comes out the front door a few minutes later with a second person. Skinny. Dark shirt. A kid?

A man.

They turn one corner, then another, and then we’re on a darker, narrower, quieter street with a scraggly line of grass that could be an attempt at some community greenery. The wind is like a physical touch. My skin is that sensitive. My heartbeat is so loud in my ears that it takes me by surprise when Malcolm and the kid—the man—stop.

Oh. They’re arguing.

Talking?

Arguing.

There’s just enough light to make out the second man’s light hair, and his younger features. Fuck! Amen! That has to be the Good Samaritan. I can’t see the color of his eyes from here, but that’s him.

“—need you to do,” Walsh is saying. He’s backed the Good Samaritan into the wall next to somebody’s stoop. The Good Samaritan’s got an inch on Walsh, maybe two, but he’s skinnier. That could be another gift from God. If he’s skinny, it won’t be as hard to stab him.

My mouth floods with a bitter taste. I want to spit it out, but that would blow my cover, which is limited to a dark shadow and a shallow alcove.

I’m not going to throw up.

I feel kind of like it.

No. I’m not.

The Good Samaritan shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. I can’t hear the first thing he says, but I catch, clear as day:

“—late, Dad.”

Everything goes silent.

Dad?

The Good Samaritan is Walsh’s son?

“—simple,” Walsh is saying. “There’s no reason to add complications. You know that.”

“Dad, please,” the Good Samaritan says. He’s not begging, but he does sound like the playing field is not level.

Walsh says something that sounds like a curse and yanks his phone out of his pocket. He rubs gingerly at the back of his head with his other hand.

“Yeah?” He’s not happy about this call. “Fine. There’s a conversation we need to finish.”

He puts his hand on the Good Samaritan’s neck—it’s not a friendly grip—and pulls him in the opposite direction, down the street.

I follow, my thoughts racing through a sludge of disappointment and the most inconvenient revelation ever. The street dims, then brightens. This is my opportunity. To kill Malcolm Walsh. To drop-kick him off the face of the planet. But next to him, the Good Samaritan shifts into Gabriel, walking down the street alone, a patch of blood growing on his T-shirt. Then he’s Mason, his face as white as the papers he had to sign. I swear, the fire was still reflected in his eyes. He’s me, trying to breathe—it hurt, it hurt, it hurt—when my parents were dead and look, there was the proof, right there in the photos, the wedding band, right there. See?

Walsh isn’t like my parents. Unless this argument was a one-off. Unless Dad, please never comes up in their normal lives. What the fuck is Walsh’s normal life? Killing people and being a prick to his son?

He has a son.

Can I kill him in front of his son?

I have to.

Jamie.

But then they’re stepping out onto the sidewalk at the next block. I move faster. If it’s empty, I can still?—

There are people. Guys on the corner. A woman on the phone across the street. Witnesses. None of them look like they’re going to clear the street. Walsh and his Good Samaritan son are already retreating into the distance.

If I chase them, they’ll see me.

Everyone on this street will see me.

If I chase them with a knife, then?—

Fuck.

Fuck.

“What was that?”Lily asks, her voice sleep-thick.

“Just my pants.” My jeans, thudding to the floor along with the knife. I don’t know how I got here. I’ve been looking at crime scene photos and listening to Mason scream and counting the minutes until Gabriel gets home. It’s pure instinct that gets me into the bed and over Lily.

“Where have you been?” she asks, between kisses.

“Nowhere.” I kiss her harder. The room seems more real by the second, but so does my disappointment. I needed to kill Malcolm Walsh, and I didn’t. I’m crushed. I’m relieved. I don’t know what to think. “I just need?—”

Lily arches underneath me, wriggling out of her pajamas, and then she’s naked and warm and letting me kiss her into the pillows.

“Am I kidnapped?” she asks, the next time she comes up for air. Before I can answer: “I am. I am. You caught me, Jameson.”

I kiss her until she’s a writhing, moaning mess, soft and yielding underneath me, and I’m all jagged edges. It’s criminal that I should get to fuck her. To be her husband. That’s a crime, and I need it.

I need to be lost in her.

Lily moans when I turn her over and lean across to find the lube in my bedside table. I trace a path down her spine until I’m at the crease of her ass, then go lower, bending to lick her mouth.

“Can you take this?” I work the tip of my thumb over her hole. “Will you?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t have a choice,” she says, her tone deliberate and her eyes hot in the city glow coming through my window. “Make me.”

My cock is just as fucked up as I am, because it twitches at the idea of having her like this—making her—her letting me—and I’m already leaking.

I stay close and kiss her cheeks while I work my thumb inside her ass, then pull it out slow and come back with more lube and two fingers. Lily spreads her thighs and keeps her eyes on mine, panting, lovely, as she weathers the stretch.

I’m not a bastard. I take as much time as I can with her.

“Relax,” I whisper into her ear. “Otherwise I’ll hurt you. And I would never hurt you.”

“I know,” she whispers back.

“I didn’t mean to say that part out loud.”

“I know,” she says again, and clenches on my fingers.

Lily slides a hand underneath her until her fingertips brush my wrist, and then she moves it back, making little sounds into the pillow.

“That’s so fucking hot, angel.”

She opens her eyes and makes that sound again. Tilts her hips. Basically begs me for three fingers. What am I to do? Say no?

Three fingers takes more work, but Lily’s good at it. She’s gasping into the pillows by the time I pull my hand away from her.

This is the most normal I’ve felt since I lost Walsh.

Since I didn’t kill him.

I don’t feel like my brain is about to tear out of my body. My ribcage is still flattened, but I can breathe well enough to push a pillow under Lily’s hips and cover her with my body and line myself up.

“Oh, don’t,” she says softly. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to,” I tell her, and lean down to kiss her temple.

It takes me back to the cabin, with Lily in that windowsill, begging me to fuck her ass. She’s doing it silently now. Rolling her hips back onto me. Gasping. Taking it so well.

“You’re my best girl,” I managed.

“You’re—mine,” she says. “My husband. Move, Jameson. Move. Move. Now.”

I lose it, then.

I don’t hurt her. I would never. But I fuck her like I’m her husband. Like we promised to stay together until the end of time. Lily wraps her arms around a pillow and takes me and takes me and takes me until I get my hand around to her front and bring her to an orgasm that ripples through all her muscles and almost blinds me, it’s so strong.

And then I’m in deep, spilling into her, feeling the smallest layer of devastation lift off me.

Lily’s an angel on the pillows as I clean her up, then clean myself up, then put the bed back together. She opens her eyes when I lie down next to her and lifts a hand to trace her fingertips over my face.

Jamie, my mom says.

No, I answer.

Lily frowns. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Hmm.” She studies me like I bet she studied her homework. A shiver starts at my shoulder blades and goes down to my wrists. Lily can see everything, can’t she? No. Not everything. Almost everything, but not everything, because then I would be fucked. “Did something happen tonight?”

I fucked up. I failed. That’s what happened tonight. I couldn’t make the world safer for her. And for the baby. I even had a knife.

In a life of crime, you can’t expect for everything to go according to plan, but fuck. I thought this would, at least. A higher power was on board at one point.

“No.” It’s true, isn’t it? “Nothing happened.”

“Are you going to stay in bed with me for a while?”

“Yeah.” I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. “How was your day? Did you and Sunshine get to eat cake?”

“We all ate so much cake.” Lily laughs. I’m so obsessed with her. Laughing in bed with me after I just railed her ass. After I just showed up in the middle of the night, railed her ass, and then told her a half-truth. “It made me want croutons. The chef made such good salads. What did you have for lunch?”

“Uh.” Food. With Kirk. Mason and Gabriel were there. I smiled the whole time. I felt so fucking great, because I had Malcom Walsh’s address and a foolproof plan.

“It must not have been good,” Lily murmurs.

“No, it was—” God. What did I eat for lunch? I remember a lot of lunches. Vegetarian sushi from this place in the student union. A patty that was supposed to be a reproduction of chicken in the high school cafeteria. But those are from a long time ago. I’m not in school anymore, and when I was, Mason didn’t have time to go out to lunch with Gabriel and I wearing business clothes. And Kirk wasn’t there. Kirk was too young to have a job back then. I remember Gabriel’s outfit—he wore green today, and it brought out his eyes—and Mason’s—he was wearing a white shirt and dark pants, very normal for him—and Kirk in his glasses, trying extremely hard to be chill about being at lunch with all of us and Dev, who would not tell me anything I didn’t already know. He’s so cagey. And I was asking him questions at an outdoor table under an awning, and in front of me was… “Ravioli. It was butternut squash ravioli. It was really good.”

“I think you should get some sleep,” Lily suggests.

“Mmm.”

I close my eyes.

She settles her hand on my chest. After a few minutes, her breathing evens out.

I don’t sleep.

I stay awake, thinking.

I couldn’t get to Walsh. His Good Samaritan son threw a wrench in my plans. A family-sized wrench. That psychopath would have a family. Probably just to make it harder for people with empathy to kill him.

Family bounces around in my head.

I couldn’t get to Walsh, but does Walsh care? Would he be dangerous to Lily if he wasn’t getting a fat paycheck for it? Is the only pressure on him now that he didn’t finish the job?

If that’s it, the judge is probably breathing down his neck.

That changes things.

I thought we could wait on the judge, but what if the judge is the mega-asshole who needs to be taken out? What if the world can fix itself without him in it? What if we could—I don’t know—bribe Walsh to disappear if the judge wasn’t in the picture?

I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong.

I was wrong.

It’s time to finish things with the judge. He was here fifteen years ago, too, fucking us over and sentencing Mason to months of agony and sentencing the rest of us to?—

To me. To a lifetime of dealing with the most fucked-up version of me.

I get up. Slow. Silent. Get my jeans. Pull on a fresh shirt. It’s hot, but I’m too raw to have my skin exposed, so I go with something lightweight and cotton with long sleeves. The last thing I need is in Lily’s purse. It’s right there, on the top—her old house key.

“Jameson?”

I’m almost at the door. “Shh, angel. Go back to sleep.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have a quick errand. I’ll be right back.”

I leave the door and go to kiss her temple. Lily’s eyelashes flutter, but she doesn’t open her eyes. She sounds so tired. I bet this conversation will seem like a dream to her.

“You’re not going far, are you?”

“Less than an hour each way. There’s not much traffic. The Brooklyn Bridge will probably be the worst of it.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right back.”