Curse the Flame (Mirrorside #8)

Prologue, part I

AIDEN

Johnny Wallace runs.

Of course he does. You know what? After the last year spent working for my boss, I can’t even pretend to be surprised.

The second our eyes meet through the crowd, I know exactly what’s going to happen. His shoulders lock up, his head snaps forward, and he takes off down Fulton Street like the Devil himself is after him instead of one tired veteran in a long black overcoat.

“Goddamn it.”

The curse disappears beneath the rumble of a passing trolley as I shove my hands deeper into my jacket pockets and quickly lengthen my stride.

There’s no point sprinting after him yet so I don’t.

In my experience, men like Johnny don’t think once they start to panic.

They just run until something looks safer than whatever’s chasing them.

Teddy taught me that. Well, no. The second Great War taught me that lesson first, but since I’ve been home this last year, it’s Theodore “Teddy” Thanos—local mob boss who rules this corner of Brooklyn—who’s taken me under his wing, helping me get out of my own head and focus on making the world a better place after all the horrors I saw while I was overseas.

His hired gun, I kill those who deserve it. He gives me a name and a reason to put them down, and tonight’s target is getting away.

Not if I can help it.

I weave through the evening crowd without drawing attention to myself.

A hefty, red-cheeked woman balancing two grocery bags mutters under her breath when my upper arm accidentally clips her shoulder.

I tip my black felt fedora in apology without slowing down.

Johnny glances behind him again just in time to see that I’m still there.

He speeds up, nearly slamming into the copper on the beat that took the corner ahead of him. He calls out a hurried apology as the officer yells at him to watch where he’s going, and I slow my stroll as I wordlessly pass the man by while keeping my target in my sights.

It’s busy tonight. That’s something I notice, something that sets my stomach a-rolling.

That’s not all, though. A year after it ended, Brooklyn is the sort of big city that still hasn’t figured what it wants to be now that the war’s finally over.

Half the haunted men on the sidewalks wear uniforms that don’t fit anymore because they’re finally home, while the other half wear suits they can’t really afford because they’re trying to convince themselves life has gone back to normal.

The women have traded ration books for shopping bags, and every neighborhood bar is packed with soldiers trying to remember who they were before Europe.

Brooklyn keeps moving. That’s what it does. From the hum in the late October air, you’d never know that half the boys who left these streets never came back.

Aodhán Murphy—or Aiden, the name thrust onto me during school when none of my teachers could pronounce the Gaelic name my mam gave to me—almost became one of them.

Instead, I came home to find my sweetheart, Veronica, wearing another man’s wedding ring.

I don’t think about her much anymore—and that’s a lie. I think about her almost every damn day, wishing I could forget her pretty dark hair, her sweet smile, and the guileless way she swore she’d wait for me before the years passed and she didn’t.

It’s not that I still hope she’ll come back to me.

That ship sailed somewhere over the Atlantic.

No, I think about her because every now and then I catch myself wondering what would’ve happened if Germany had surrendered six months sooner.

Maybe I’d have gotten home before she met Frank.

Maybe I’d have walked her home after church instead of writing letters from a muddy foxhole.

Maybe we’d have argued over curtains and baby names instead of becoming strangers with shared memories.

Funny how a whole life can change so drastically thanks to a single envelope.

Dear Aiden...

I still have the letter. Don’t ask me why.

I should’ve thrown it away like I did so much of the past once I returned to Brooklyn and realized I had nowhere to go but a local boarding house.

Maybe because tossing Veronica’s goodbye feels too much like admitting the life I’d planned is gone, or because I want that future they promised us.

With the girls who waited and the white picket fences, not names on a list and a loaded Colt pressed against my palm.

Focus, Aiden. Don’t let him get away…

Johnny darts around a delivery truck and nearly gets himself flattened by a taxi. The driver leans on the horn long enough to wake up half of Brooklyn.

“Watch it, pal!”

Johnny ducks his chin to his chest and continues his flight. He has the desperate edge to his determination that tells me his path isn’t random. He’s heading somewhere, and I’m back on the hunt.

I finally pull my right hand free from my pocket, shifting it under my jacket. I’m careful to keep the Colt tucked beneath my coat where nobody can see it.

Not yet, at least.

Teddy always says there’s no sense frightening a man until it’s useful. I don’t know if he came up with that before or after he became one of the most feared men in Brooklyn. Either way, I’ve learned to listen.

When I got back from the war, there wasn’t much work waiting for a twenty-seven-year-old who knew more about rifles than résumés. The factory didn’t need me. The garage where I worked before enlisting had already hired somebody else. Every place I walked into had the same apologetic smile.

“We’ll let you know.”

Nobody ever did until Teddy did.

He sat me down in his office above this Greek restaurant that smelled like oregano, citrus, and cigar smoke, poured me a drink I couldn’t afford, and told me the country might have forgotten its heroes, but he hadn’t.

“I need men who know how to make difficult decisions,” he’d told me, his lips curving, his eyes hidden behind a pricy pair of black aviators. “Men who know who to shoot a gun without blowing their own goddamn toes off. You in, Murphy?”

I’d heard of him before that first meeting. Whispers in the city said he was known as the “Fulfiller” because, no matter what, he got shit done. And he accomplished that by hiring those willing to do what he required of them for a decent fee.

In my case, it was collections first. Intimidation came next. Then, about two months into his employ, I met him for supper and, when we were done eating, he slid a folder across the tablecloth to me.

“Some people don’t deserve tomorrow,” he murmured.

I remember staring at the file for a long time before I even opened it. It was long enough for him to refill my tumbler of whiskey, long enough for him to flick his fingers, sending his retinue of bodyguards away so that it was just him and me.

“You killed Nazis,” he said as he flung the folder open for me, showing a black-and-white photo on top of a sheet with all the details I needed. “What’s one more monster?”

That made sense to me last December. It still does now.

Most of the time, at least…

Ahead of me, Johnny turns another corner.

I smile to myself, knowing I was right. Part of that’s because I spent last night poring over his file.

John Wallace, known as Johnny, is a twenty-five-year-old photographer from Sheepshead Bay.

He didn’t serve. He was classified 4-F—unfit for service—due to vision problems which, come on, is obvious bullshit given his line of work.

I hate draft dodgers. Especially when I think of all I lost… but you know what I hate even more? Men who take advantage of girls.

That’s Johnny Boy’s crime, according to Teddy. He lures girls, some of ‘em as young as twelve, into his studio to take their picture. He tells them all they’ll be the next June Allyson or Janet Leigh while convincing them to strip down to their skivvies—or worse.

Some men deserve to die, Teddy told me. A man like Johnny Wallace is one of them.

From the moment he took off, I had an idea where he might go. Not his studio near Prospect Park; that would be too obvious. Instead, he heads toward the rundown part of the city where he can try to hide—but where no one will admit they hear his screams.

The abandoned brownstones come into view exactly where I expected they would. Boarded windows. Cracked stone steps. Weeds growing through iron fences and exteriors that haven’t been touched up since the before the first Great War.

Oh, yeah. Nobody’s coming to help him in any of those.

Whether he picks one at random or this is one of the dens where he brought his young victims, it doesn’t matter to me. Patting my Colt, I watch as he anxiously bounds up the porch steps two at a time and disappears through a front door that was partway opened before he reached it.

As he does, I slow to a walk. Way I see it, there’s no reason to rush now. He’s trapped himself with Death stalking after him, and even if he could hide in the shadows, there’s no hiding from Aiden Murphy.

The Colt slides naturally into my palm as I climb the same stairs he galloped up.

Funny how quickly something becomes familiar.

First time I ever held one of these, my hands shook so badly I almost dropped it.

France fixed that. By the time the Germans surrendered, I could strip and reassemble my sidearm blindfolded.

The front door groans as I push it open the rest of the way.

“Johnny…” My voice echoes through the obviously empty house. Thick with my brand of accent—one part the old country, one part pure Brooklyn—I call out again: “Johnny? Where did you go, Johnny?”

No answer except for a pair of frantic footsteps over my head.

He’s still running as though he hasn’t figured out that this is the end for him all because he picked the wrong girl and caught the Fulfiller’s attention—and that’s when I hear the footsteps stop.