Chapter 28
Mac O’Brady stood in Sloan Dvorak’s kitchen and helped himself to coffee, the light of a cloudy winter’s day coming through the window.
Sloan sat at the big barn-wood table with David Regan, Joanne, and Razorback.
Mac had arrived at the house nearly an hour before and had yet to get a good read on the situation.
Not the passport shit with McKenzie. That was simple enough. But there was some relationship crap going down at that table, and he couldn’t make hide nor hair of it. Near as he could figure, somebody was fucking somebody else, but something was seriously fucked up.
“I suggest we set a trap,” he said. “If she wants the passport badly enough, she’ll take the bait. We can grab her and put an end to this game of cat and mouse.”
Regan straightened in his seat. “I’ll do it. Confront her, tell her I’m alive, but I just want her gone. I can offer to bring the passport to her.”
Sloan shook his head. “She tried to have you killed. She’s going to smell a rat a mile away. You could just as easily turn her in to the police, and she’s going to suspect it.”
“Then what do you suggest?” David asked. His voice held a petulant tone Mac didn’t like, and he hoped Sloan would beat out that dickhead to get himself the girl.
Dvorak deserved something good in his life. A woman to share it with was the best you could hope for.
He thought of his own missing wife and the DNA results he’d received the other day.
He’d become convinced a serial killer at Riker’s Island might have murdered his Ellie, because she’d last been heard from when she was living in the same area at the same time as the killings, and she fit the killer’s type.
He had gone to great personal and emotional expense to find the location of the graves, but while his wife wasn’t among the victims, her first cousin was.
He didn’t have a name, but DNA didn’t lie.
Ellie had lost someone close to her at the hand of that man, and he needed to head back down south to find more information, just as soon as he helped Dvorak take care of this mess.
He gestured to Joanne with his chin. “She should do it.”
“Absolutely not.” Sloan stood up and headed for Mac, walking behind him for coffee. “It’s dangerous. We have no idea what this woman is capable of or who she’ll have gunning for her side. Her husband was connected to the Mafia, for God’s sake.”
Mac blew on the hot coffee. “Ain’t nobody else here can do it.”
“I’ll do it,” said Sloan.
“You just gonna drive up to that warehouse in that Porsche and yell, ‘Passports! Passports for sale! Fifty cents a pass!” He chuckled at his own joke, a line from a children’s book his girls used to like.
Sloan put a hand on his hip and gave Mac the stink eye. “She’s desperate. She needs that passport to get the money. Without it, she’s sunk. The grim reaper could dangle it off the end of a stick like a carrot, and she’d still try to reach it.”
“Then I can do it,” David said again.
“No,” Sloan barked.
Mac shook his head. “Why not? The man has a connection to McKenzie. Whether she suspects something or not, you just said yourself she’d square dance with the devil if it meant getting that passport.”
Sloan held up a hand. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Then you send in Joanne.” Mac shrugged.
“That’s an unacceptable risk.” Sloan ran his hand through his hair.
“We’ll be there in spades,” said Mac, truly not understanding and thinking this had something to do with the fucking mess at that table. “We’ll pull out all the stops. Nobody’s going to get past us and hurt her.”
Sloan’s phone vibrated on the table. “It’s my mother. We need to let the kids come back here soon.” He eyed Regan, the look an indecipherable mix of anger and trust.
Mac was seriously fucking confused. “The kids know you’re alive?” he asked Regan.
“Nope. And I don’t want them to know until this is all over.”
The phone continued to vibrate. “Then where do you suggest we put them?” Sloan asked. “You talking and breathing at my table might be a giveaway.”
“So hold them off for a while,” said Regan. “Send them to Chuck E. Cheese, I don’t care. I’ll call McKenzie and have her meet me at the warehouse.” He pulled out his phone.
Sloan yanked it from his hand. “No.”
Joanne let out an exasperated sigh. “Why not? Why can’t he go? It’s him or me, and frankly he has a history with McKenzie. We might be better off.”
Mac sipped his coffee, watching the scene play out in front of him. It was time for more details. “Dvorak, I need to talk to you privately.” Sloan led the way to a room with bookcases, a fireplace, and a desk. “What the fuck is going on in there, man? Let Regan be the bait.”
“I can’t. This woman and her associates could pack a lot of firepower. He could be killed.”
“Not likely with us on the ground, but what do you care? He made his bed. Why can’t he lie in it?”
“Because Joanne’s still in love with him, that’s why. He’s the father of her children.”
“Ahh.” He propped his hip on the desk while Sloan paced. “And you don’t want to kill off your best girl’s husband, is that it?”
“Something like that.”
Mac sipped from his mug. “This coffee tastes like shit.”
“I’ll go. Hell, David can make the call and lure her there, but I can be the bait.”
“I thought you wanted Jo for yourself.”
“That’s not how this is going to go.”
“Because…?”
“I told you. She’s in love with him.”
“My radar must be way off, ’cause it seemed to me like she’s been sleeping with you.”
Sloan shot him a warning look. Mac grinned. “I should get prizes for figuring this stuff out. Giant stuffed animals and shit.”
“It doesn’t matter. She and I aren’t meant to be. She thought she lost him once already. I don’t want to be the reason she loses him for real.”
“What if she’d prefer a one-armed, arrogant little beefcake like you?”
“She doesn’t.”
“You never won a lot of stuffed animals at the fair, did you?”
“What the fuck does that mean, Mac? You’re talking in goddamn riddles.”
“She loves you, dumb ass.”
“Maybe once. Not anymore.”
“Jesus Christ. I can’t deal with this shit.
You’ve got a skull thicker than a rock.” He headed for the door, turning back to point at his friend.
“Regan’s going in. These are my men. This is my choice.
And if you think that woman’s still in love with that skinny-dick little prick, you’ve got another think coming. ”