9. Ronan
Chapter 9
Ronan
A jangling like that of clattering plates jolted Ronan out of a fitful sleep. His head cracked against something hard, teeth jamming together. Blinding light everywhere— everywhere .
Ronan kept his eyes screwed shut, hand on his throbbing head, cursing under his breath.
The sound came again, slicing through his brain like a knife.
He moaned and finally forced his eyes open, squinting.
The motel was even uglier in the dawn, the dirty pea-green doors looking more like piss than paint when the sun hit them. The single streetlamp that did little to protect against unsavory characters at night was a rusted mess, one strong gust of wind from keeling over. He’d stayed to make sure she was safe last night, that no killer was lying in wait… but he’d gotten far more than he’d bargained for.
Ronan snatched the cell from the console before it could ring again, fumbling it to his ear. “I’m on my way.”
“Where the hell are you? I’m outside your house, you dick.”
“What, are you stalking me now?”
“I’m not stalking you ,” Paddy said, emphasis on the you.
But the question was clear: Who are you stalking, Ronan? Are you watching some unsuspecting woman right now?
But Jenny certainly hadn’t seemed to mind him watching. Quite the contrary.
His lip twitched into a grin at the thought—his dick twitched, too. That had been a lovely, sexy surprise, and it had felt so right to watch her touch herself, his cock so hard it felt like a strong breeze might make him come. And he’d never been a two-pump chump.
But in the light of day, her actions seemed more unsettling, if not suspicious. He’d been propositioned by other women after they’d committed crimes. Once, a man had grabbed his dick, offered him the blow job of his life if he’d just look the other way—pretend not the see the cocaine he had stashed in his backseat.
Ronan’s eyes locked on the window—on Jennifer’s room. No shifting curtains, no movement from inside. But what had he expected? Another deliciously dirty show, her nipples puckering at the touch of her fingers, head thrown back as she?—
“Ronan?” Paddy’s voice pulled him from his reverie.
He cleared his throat and pushed the thoughts aside, but his dick was still hard, aching against his zipper. “I’m just getting coffee. I’ll bring you one.”
“Bring me a lap dance, too.”
“Fuck off, Paddy.”
Ronan shoved the key into the ignition and glanced around the motel as the engine growled to life. All was still. With a final look at Jenny’s window, he cut the wheel and drove through the lot and onto the main road.
He’d barely gone three miles when the cell jangled again. Ronan jerked it to his ear without glancing at it. “Paddy, you nosy bastard, I’ll be there in five?—”
“I don’t know who Patty is, but I hope she’s hot. Sounds kinda like a schoolmarm, but I guess if she’s polishing your knob right…” A sniff.
Ronan blinked. Not his partner. Charles.
“We need to talk,” his brother barked.
“I read that you’re getting married,” Ronan replied instead or responding to Charles’s dickish tone.
At least his own dick had gone soft since he’d left the motel. Since he’d distanced himself from her .
Charles quieted. “Misprint.”
“Ah. Lots of those going around.” There were always rumors when you had this much money. Charles was usually the one spreading them, trying to fuck the O’Connor children out of their stake in O’Connor Media. “Fine. I’ll return your wedding present. Spoiler, it was a do-it-yourself divorce kit and?—”
“I’m worried about you, Ronan.”
“That makes one of us.” A lie—there was always a good reason to worry about Ronan Duffy, whiskey lover, crime fighter, frequenter of establishments of debauchery. Stalker.
“I’m serious. You missed the gala last night.”
“I wouldn’t say that I missed it.”
A pause. “Ronan, it’s important for us to keep up a united front with the company. Even if you don’t care what happens to O’Connor Media, I’d hope you’d at least care about me and Caroline. Where were you that was so important?”
“Home.”
“Liar.”
“You got your guys following me?”
“ Our guys—and no. You always duck them. But they’re just security anyway, trying to keep your reckless ass safe.”
Ronan sighed. “It’s not about my ass, Charlie. My voting shares keep us in the game. But cops don’t need bodyguards. It fucks with our credibility.”
“Anything you do reflects on us, Ronan, and?—”
“You’re not calling to check on me because of some bullshit gala. You’re calling because you know I asked the medical examiner about our father.”
This time, the pause was longer. Their father’s death was no accident—everyone knew it. They just couldn’t prove it.
“You need to let it go, Ronan. The M.E. deemed his death natural causes. Stop trying to prove something that isn’t true.”
“That’s just it, Charlie… I think it is true. You were there the night he died—I know you were. It’s kinda funny that no one else does.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Charles snapped. “Asking questions just makes people suspicious. I didn’t kill anyone. And if you say that shit to the wrong person, we lose every single cent—every voting share, gone in an instant. Which is probably what you want, you masochistic fuck.”
If he was a masochist, their father was a sadist of the highest order. His father’s will had pitted the Duffy clan and the O’Connors against one another. Every child who married and had children of their own got additional voting shares. But if their father’s death was a homicide, every share on the side of the killer’s family vanished into thin air. If Ronan outright accused Charles, if the shareholders believed it… it could be worth billions.
Was Ronan worth more dead than alive? Probably. But Charles wouldn’t kill him, even if he had— possibly —killed their father.
“I just want the truth,” Ronan said. “That’s all. If you tell me, I don’t have to dig.” A dangerous thing to say on the phone under normal circumstances, but Charles’s cell scrambled transmissions to prevent anyone from eavesdropping.
Ronan hit the turn signal and hooked a right into the precinct lot. He didn’t know for sure what he’d do with the truth… but he needed to know. Maybe he just wanted to ask whoever had done it how his father looked as the life drained from his face. Maybe he wanted to shake their hand, hug his brother for doing what Ronan never had the guts to do—for finally saving their mom.
Maybe he wanted justice. But damn if he knew what justice meant when it came to his father.
“If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead,” Charles said. “How’s that for truth?”
“What a coincidence. He is dead.”
“I meant he’d have been dead a lot earlier.”
“That’s not better.” Ronan slammed the car into park. “Gotta go, Charlie.”
“Wait—”
He kicked the door open. “I’ll catch you at the next gala.” Then he hit End and shoved the cell into his pocket as he hustled up the walk and into the precinct.
Paddy looked up as Ronan approached their back-to-back desks. Paddy raised his hands in mock surprise. “Where’s my coffee?”
“What?”
“The coffee you were supposed to be getting?”
“I… forgot.”
“Mm-hmm.” Paddy pursed his lips. “I’m sure you did.”
Ronan peeled off his suit jacket and slung it over the back of his seat. “Fine. My brother called. Threw me off my game.”
Paddy’s gaze softened. Paddy didn’t know he suspected his brother of something so deviant as homicide, but his partner knew what an asshole his father had been. And Paddy also knew about his mother—Rosalie Duffy was in the system, so she’d popped up on Ronan’s background check. It wouldn’t shock him if everyone here knew that his mother was a whore.
Correction: used to be a whore. When it suited his father’s business interests. When they’d met, she’d barely been fifteen.
Paddy tossed a file onto Ronan’s desktop as Ronan slumped into the chair.
“Flatfoots found the murder weapon three streets over—covered in blood, no prints, tossed in a trash can,” Paddy said. “There wasn’t enough time for either Waylon Pierce or the bartender to hide that blade.”
Ronan flipped open the file folder and scanned the text. “We know those two didn’t do it. Not enough blood on them, plus what you just said about the knife.”
Jenny did have blood on her hands… but no one else knew that.
You’re letting her slide, withholding evidence, but can’t leave your own brother alone? The worst Charlie did was slay a dragon.
“Yeah, your girl isn’t going to jail today,” Paddy drawled. “As much as I’m sure you’d like to handcuff her.”
“She’s not my?—”
“Whatever.” Paddy kicked his chair around the desk until it was beside Ronan’s. He tapped the file. “Her lipstick was on our vic’s mouth. You saw it as well as I did. At first, I thought Mercer was a customer—got a dance, a kiss, maybe followed her to the back where something went bad between him and the killer. Then the killer cut and ran. But?—”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ronan finished. “I checked the street-side cameras—Mercer didn’t walk in the front door. Either someone let him in the back, or he knew it’d be unlocked.”
Ronan had checked the electronic video feeds the night before while sitting vigil in front of that motel, his dick so hard it made his entire abdomen ache. He’d run Mercer through his laptop software, too—advanced tech that tended to find things their police database didn’t. But he hadn’t found any connections between Mercer and the club itself, though he had verified that the man’s mother claimed residence a few blocks over.
“And another dead end,” Paddy went on. “Mercer wasn’t an informant. I’d heard whispers, but I couldn’t find any cop who actually worked with him. Which makes sense because he grew up an Air Force brat and still moved nearly every year like clockwork.”
Like clockwork… or like he was running.
“So we’re back to square one. We know he entered the club from the back, kissed a girl, and got himself stabbed. And the only person back there besides the two we ruled out was the girl in Waylon’s office.”
Paddy cocked an eyebrow.
“That pervert was fiddling with his zipper when I arrived on scene. I didn’t see anyone, though—I don’t think the bartender did either.”
But there had been tension between them. Whether Jenny had seen something incriminating or not, Waylon seemed to believe she had.
But Waylon wouldn’t protect Jenny. He also wouldn’t protect whoever was blowing him in his office if they’d hurt Mercer, not when the penalty was accessory to murder. So what exactly was Waylon hiding? Ronan could guess. But he definitely wanted to be wrong.
“Do you think Jennifer Crandall was fucking?—”
“No.” His hackles rose at the thought of Waylon’s greasy hands on her perfect body. “There wasn’t time for that.”
Paddy’s eyes widened. “Because you somehow intuited how long she’d been back there when you ran in from the alley?”
Ronan leaned in and whispered, “You know I was in the club. I don’t know why she said what she did?—”
“Because she likes you. Or wants to seduce you so you’ll help her.” The look in his eyes said, is it working? It looks like it’s working.
But Ronan went on, “Either way, she’d barely gone through that swinging door when I heard her scream. She didn’t have time to mess around in Waylon’s office. I think Mercer was back there before she entered the room.”
“Like he was waiting for her?” Paddy’s eyes narrowed. “Sounds threatening.”
“I’m not sure he went there to threaten her. He kissed her, remember? Maybe he had a crush, figured he’d take a chance. But no matter why he entered the building, someone took that opportunity to stab him while his back was turned.” Ronan snapped the file closed. “We need to learn more about Jason Mercer.”
He was setting the victim up as the villain. Ronan believed he was. A gut feeling, but he didn’t think he was wrong—his gut was almost never wrong. And his conversation with Charles had sparked something in his head.
If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead.
If someone had wanted to kill Jenny, they would have—Waylon, too. That would’ve been less risky than leaving them alive to scream for help. And the motive wasn’t robbery—nothing had been taken.
The suspect had waited for Jenny to step away, stabbed Mercer between the ribs before he could fight back, then stuck him a few extra times for good measure—or perhaps to make sure he was dead. All of it had taken less than a minute. Fast, clean, efficient.
Jason Mercer had been assassinated.
And they had no idea why.