Chapter 35
IT’S THE ONES YOU LEAST EXPECT
RONAN
Iwish I could say this was the first time I’d ever been arrested.
Honestly, I wish I could even say it was the first time I’d been booked by the Las Vegas Police.
It was, however, the first time I’d ever had to trust someone else completely to do the right thing to get me out of the wrong one. Especially when that person had come so close to seeing me do something even worse.
My first call and only call after being taken to the local Seattle precinct was to Liam.
“Get Mac,” I’d told him. “He’ll know what to do.”
That was the last I’d heard from anyone after being taken immediately to Paine Airfield, where I was accompanied by a Federal Air Marshal until I was delivered into the hands of the Vegas Metro immediately after stepping off the plane.
My wrists still ached from the handcuffs. It would be a long time before I asked Laney to play with those again. If I ever got the chance.
The thought stung. Hard.
And so, I’d sat in my cell, staring at my hands, contemplating my soul while I waited to see if my gamble had paid off.
It was nearly forty-eight hours before a police officer named Wallace called my name.
“Black. You’re being released.”
I looked up, grungy in the suit I’d now been wearing for almost three days straight, and grinned. “Well, that’s too bad. We’ll never know if you can actually kick my ass in chess, Wally.”
Wallace rolled his eyes as he unlocked the door to the cell, but he had to laugh.
No, there had never actually been a chess game.
Not in a jail where I had shared a cell with two pimps, three dealers, a few wise guys (all named Paul), and five different waiters who were nabbed for unlicensed sex work.
But one of my superpowers was finding the one thing I had in common with any man of the law and capitalizing on it.
Wally and I both happened to enjoy a good game of chess.
I followed him out to the reception desk, where I found Liam waiting while Mac signed his own release paperwork. The big man had been transported to Vegas himself soon after I had, though not, I hoped, before he had given directions to the people who needed them.
“Good news?” I asked as I signed the documents in front of me and accepted the clear plastic bag containing the few belongings I had with me when I was booked.
Liam shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Depends on how you see things.”
Mac grunted.
I gave them both a side eye, but didn’t ask for more information. Not here.
“See ya, Wally,” I told the guard. Then, followed Liam and Mac out into the blazing Nevada sunshine. “So, what happened? Did you pull it off?”
“If he did, he didn’t tell me.” Mac looked around the parking lot with open suspicion, like he was expecting another couple of undercover cops to jump out from behind a cactus and cart us back inside.
“Well, I—” Liam started.
“Liam didn’t. But I did.”
We both whirled to where Shea, of all people, was stepping out of a big black Mercedes.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mac’s expression was a thundercloud, and just like that, his tree trunk body had transformed into a very tightly wound spring.
Shea ignored him as she skipped toward me and threw her arms around my shoulders. “You’re good? Everyone good? No offense, big brother, but you kind of smell.”
“I’ve been in a cell with ten other men for the last two days.
I could use a drink, a smoke, and a shower, not necessarily in that order.
” I was unsure how to deal with this sudden display of sisterly affection.
Shea and I got along all right, sure, but she wasn’t usually the “big brother” type.
“Look, not that I’m unhappy you’re here or anything, but—”
“I am,” Mac cut in. “Very unhappy you’re here.”
Shea rolled her eyes, then tossed her dark red hair over one shoulder. “Honestly. You’d think gratitude would be more in order for springing you from the joint, you big grump.” She turned to me. “Liam called me when Mac was arrested, too.”
“You called her?” Even I was surprised by that one. My money would have been on Brendan. Maybe even Liza. But not Shea.
Liam shrugged. “It seemed like she should know. And we needed everyone’s help.”
“I was already in the neighborhood,” Shea added. “After you split for Seattle, Daddy threw one of his tantrums, and I wasn’t interested in sticking around for that. So I headed back to California, which meant I was just a hop, skip, and an hour’s flight to Vegas after you got pinched.”
I snorted. “Did you join the cast of Goodfellas 2 in LA too?”
For that, I received an answer in the form of a raspberry. “No. But I did find help from someone who would probably fit in.”
She gestured back to the Mercedes, where Ares fucking Antoni was now standing as he adjusted a pair of aviator lenses over his crooked nose.
“Black,” he greeted me.
Fuck. “Antoni.” I glanced at Liam.
He arched one brow, as if to say, who did you expect us to call?
Double fuck.
“Well, the airport is right there,” Mac said. “You’ve done your part. Time to go back to La La Land where you belong.”
For some reason, that really seemed to piss Shea off. “I’m sorry, did you forget I already have a daddy? And in case you forgot, Brady, I don’t take orders from him either.”
“Oh, believe me, I know,” Mac snapped right back. “I’ve spent the last six years rescuing you from stupid and stupider situations, but honestly, Shea, this takes the fuckin’ cake!”
Antoni, Liam, and I traded bemused glances. We’d all had enough interaction with Mac to know that he never lost his cool. Apparently a night in jail plus Shea pushing his buttons was the secret to cracking Brady MacNamara’s cool.
“You know what, it is just like you to get angry at someone for rescuing your ungrateful ass, you big, stupid gorilla—”
“Hey!” I stepped between them. “Can we save it for the ring? Or someplace that isn’t crawling with cops?”
“I second that.” Antoni looked warily at the building. I had a feeling he’d spent a few nights there himself. “I can give you a ride to the Minoan. I assume that’s where you’re going.”
I sighed. God, it was hot. Only eight in the morning, and this city could already bake a loaf of fucking bread.
But I also wasn’t sure getting in a car with Ares Antoni was the best idea. Especially when another part of me wanted to walk across the street to the airport and get on the next flight back to Seattle to see my wife. For one, I needed to make sure she was still alive.
“I’ve got a car,” Liam helpfully stepped out.
But Ares didn’t leave.
“I’m guessing you had something to do with this?” I asked him, gesturing to me and Mac.
Antoni shrugged. “Your sister asked, so we stepped up. We found him in Juarez, Mexico, drinking too much cheap tequila and moaning about his daughter.”
So, he’d made it out of the canyon. The memory of my last moments with Richards came back to me like blunt force trauma.
It should have been simple. A quick push.
An easy trip down. He would stumble backwards into the darkness where plenty of bodies preceded him.
We were in a part of the desert no one ever went—at the far end of an old prospecting road that had been left to coyotes and Gila monsters.
The desert would turn his body to ashes before anyone would ever think to find him, just like it had to others who had met similar fates.
Then I made the mistake of looking into Billy Richard’s eyes, the color of an aquamarine lake, glazed with fear and sadness. And I didn’t see him anymore. I saw her.
Two eyes, sea glass green. A laugh like a giggle and a coo.
What in the actual fuck? Was I imagining things? Richards’s daughter, maybe, or else a woman I’d never met? Or maybe my last cigarette had somehow been laced with something a lot more potent than nicotine.
Either way, it felt like someone else was waiting for me on the other side of this abyss. The promise of a different life, a different way of being. And for the first time, I couldn’t force myself to ignore it.
“Goddamn it.”
“What?” Richards stumbled again as I yanked him back from the edge, then shoved him to the ground. “What are you doing?”
“Saving your fuckin’ life,” I muttered as I chucked a wad of cash at his feet, then wound around a beavertail cactus.
“Please!” Billy shouted just before I reached the Rover. “Please, you can’t just leave me here!”
He was right, of course. It was a death sentence either way. Throwing him off that cliff would have been a kindness, considering the sun would probably get him the next morning without shelter or water.
“You’re just going to leave him?” Mac asked, even as he started the truck. “That’s kind.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not that,” I said, ignoring the shouts of Richards behind us and the reflection of the man waving his arms in the rearview mirror. “Now go.”
Kindness was never my job. Fixing was. Even if this time, I was willing to let the desert make the final call.
I grimaced. I could imagine it all too clearly, along with the guilt I’d felt whenever I wondered if Billy Richards was dead or alive.
Now I had my answer. “But he still came back with you?”
That was the bigger surprise. If he had chosen to flee to Mexico instead of going home to his daughter, maybe I should have shoved him off that cliff, anyway. Although right now I’d be in real trouble.
“We didn’t give him much of a choice,” Ares said. “Although he wasn’t too happy when the FBI showed up at the station.”
“I don’t imagine he was.”
Ares’s expression darkened. “Neither, apparently, was Bas Huntington. A little bird told me he’s the one who tipped off the Vegas Metro.”
Liam and I shared another glance. Well, fuck. That threw a wrench in things, although it wasn’t totally unsurprising to hear that Huntington was actively trying to sabotage me. I had a feeling he had it out for the whole family after what had happened to his son.