Chapter 4
B ehind the bar at Rita C’s, Philly stared at the door as he dried a glass.
All day he’d debated calling Laura and checking in on her.
But he didn’t know what kind of strings Callie could pull or whether one of those strings could be tapping his phone.
Despite being nearly certain her investigation wasn’t official, he didn’t want to take the chance. There was too much at risk.
“You good?” Monk asked as he brought in a box filled with bottles to restock the back bar.
Monday nights tended to be quiet, but three bike clubs from France on a tour of the American West filled the bar alongside a few regulars.
Philly didn’t mind the unexpected crowd.
Revenue would be up for the night, and they were polite.
The group of fifty or so riders reminded him of the Falcons in some ways—just a bunch of friends who shared a love of riding.
“Yeah, I’m good. I’ll restock when I finish drying these glasses.” He nodded to the other end of the bar. “I think that group wants more drinks.”
Monk glanced behind him. “I’ll get it, but I wasn’t talking about whether you’re good behind the bar.”
“I know,” Philly said with a grin. Ever since Callie walked back into his life two months ago, his brothers had not exactly tiptoed around him but eyed him with cautious curiosity.
And concern. He appreciated their circumspection—he’d be all up in brothers’ business if the roles were reversed—but being treated like a delicate flower every time Callie showed up in town was getting old.
He could fix the problem by enlightening them, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
Reliving that part of his past wasn’t on his to-do list today or any day in the next fifty years.
Not to mention, if he did tell them the details of what went down between him and the still-beautiful Callie Parks almost twenty years ago, his brothers would never let her set foot in the club again.
And having an FBI agent as an ally—even one as tenuous as Callie—came in handy.
He didn’t want to burn that bridge. If he needed any evidence as to why, all he had to do was point to how she’d helped Stone and Juliana as well as Viper and Lina.
Besides, they’d been kids when the shit hit the fan. And kids did and said stupid things all the time. The fact that he hadn’t gotten over that night was his problem.
“If you dry that glass any more, your wrists are going to be too sore for your other late-night activities.”
Philly’s gaze dropped to the bar. Ava Warwick perched on a stool on the other side, grinning at him. She tossed in an eyebrow waggle in case he hadn’t picked up on her entendre.
“Come on now, Ava, your imagination is better than that,” he retorted with a grin.
Several of the Warwicks frequented Rita’s, but Ava was his favorite, excluding Charley and Joey.
Not a Warwick by birth—she’d married Mitch Warwick a couple years back—the glamorous Black woman never hid in the shadows of her husband’s family.
Opiniated, flashy, freaky intelligent, and with a wicked sense of humor, what wasn’t to love?
“The Krakens let you out tonight?” he asked, referring to Mitch and their son.
She rolled her eyes, then arched into a stretch, setting her hand on her lower back.
“That’s not a baby bump anymore,” he said, nodding to her belly as he picked up another glass.
She glared at him. “When you carry a thirty-seven-pound watermelon around on your front side for months, then, and only then, may you comment on my belly. Until then, shut it.”
He chuckled. She had a point.
“Mitch and Elijah are assembling the twins’ cribs in the nursery tonight. I had to get out of there,” she said.
“Too much chaos?” he asked, pouring her a tall glass of sparkling water. He added a slice of lime and a drop or two of habanero bitters, then handed it over.
“I wouldn’t have married Mitch if I couldn’t handle chaos.
The problem is he keeps swearing at all the directions.
Then Elijah repeats him—and I mean, he’s repeating things no toddler should ever say.
But it sounds so ridiculously adorable that I start laughing, and I don’t want to encourage it.
For his sake—and the sake of all his cousins—I had to get out of there. ”
Philly snorted a laugh. Cody, Mitch’s younger brother, would think it hilarious if his twin girls picked up the words from Elijah, but the rest of the Warwick clan wouldn’t be nearly as amused.
Monk wandered back over, glanced at the box still filled with bottles, sighed, and started unpacking them.
“So, Agent Parks is back in town,” Ava said after taking a sip of her drink.
Philly felt Monk’s glance, but his brother didn’t say anything.
“Word travels fast,” Philly replied, picking up another glass to dry.
Ava shrugged. “Not really. Not about this, anyway. She’s staying at the lodge.
I stopped by last night to run a check on the security system and saw her having dinner at the bar.
” Ava worked with Leo on the cybersecurity team at HICC—a private security company with its West Coast headquarters south of town.
Their bread-and-butter projects tended to be things like hunting terrorists and stopping drug cartels, but they helped family and friends, too.
“What’d she want?” Ava asked, cutting to the chase.
Philly paused. He’d spent most of the day dealing with the emotional aftermath of seeing Callie again, but that question had popped into his head more than once. She hadn’t given him any details about her investigation or what she thought Laura might know.
Glancing at Monk, he raised an eyebrow in question. Laura Nolan was all their concern. Monk held his gaze, then gave a tiny shrug, leaving it up to him how much he wanted to share.
“You two are as subtle as a train wreck,” Ava muttered before taking another sip of her drink.
“I’ll go take that drink order,” Monk said, tipping his head to a group gathered at the end of the bar. Philly nodded and shifted as his brother passed behind him.
“I don’t know,” he said, answering Ava’s question. “Whatever she told me, it’s not the whole story.”
Ava tapped one of her long fingernails—painted black and orange with a tiny white ghost on it—against her glass. “It rarely is with the FBI. Cagey fuckers,” she muttered. “As if I couldn’t uncover their entire life story in less than an hour if I wanted.”
The scary thing about Ava’s statement is that Philly didn’t think she was kidding. She couldn’t do it legally, but everyone on the HICC cyber team had skills best left not talked about.
“Talk to me,” she said, refocusing on him and leaning forward. Well, as much as she could with her pregnant belly. The one he wasn’t going to mention ever again.
“She came to me for information on a woman named Laura Nolan,” he started.
“Who is?”
“The wife of Rian Nolan. She disappeared a few years back, but Callie only seemed interested in her for the information she might have on the Nolan family, not in the fact that she’s a missing person.”
Ava knew about the Falcons’ side project and how they helped people in abusive relationships escape. Smart woman that she was, she dropped the topic of Laura and focused on the bigger picture. “Tell me about the Nolans.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Aiden Nolan is the father. There are two sons, Rian, the oldest, and Joseph, a couple of years younger. They own a bunch of clothing brands—wealthier than most, but not billionaire-wealthy.”
“Any particular reason she’d be interested in them?”
He hesitated. “That’s what I’d like to know. There’s a chance the family is into things they shouldn’t be. But what brought them to Callie’s attention?”
Ava’s eyes narrowed in thought. “And what brought her to you ?”
“She had a CCTV picture of me and Laura taken a few months after she disappeared.”
“What was the good agent doing reviewing footage from a few years ago?”
He set the last glass down, leaned against the bar, and shook his head. “And not even interesting footage at that. It was taken from a mini-mart near San Diego.”
“Any chance the Nolans are tied to the mini-mart?”
He shrugged. “I doubt it. Not unless they’ve branched out beyond clothing and textiles.”
Ava took a sip of her drink, then nodded.
“Okay, we have two key questions. The first is why Agent Parks is interested in the mini-mart, and the second is why she is interested in the Nolan family.” She paused.
“I wonder which came first. Is she interested in the Nolans because of something she learned about the mini-mart? Or is she interested in the mini-mart because of something she learned about the Nolans?”
“The only thing I can say with any certainty is that Laura’s disappearance isn’t the ‘case’ she’s looking into.”
“You say that as if there isn’t a real case.”
“There’s something official. But I don’t think it’s Callie’s. It may not even be active.”
Ava took the last sip of her drink, then swirled her glass, the ice clinking gently against the sides. “So it’s possible Callie is either looking into something she’s been told not to or unofficially reopening an investigation the agency considers closed.”
He nodded.
“Intriguing. And not at all like the straight-and-narrow woman I’ve been led to believe she is,” she said. “Which makes the situation all the more interesting.”
A woman approached the bar a couple stools to Ava’s right, and Philly stepped to the side to take her order. After setting three beers on the bar top and running her card, he returned to Ava.
“I’ll look into it tomorrow. Or maybe the next day,” she corrected with a grimace. “I have a few things to do in the morning, then we have a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon.”
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Everything is fine. They take extra precautions with twins,” she replied.
He couldn’t imagine being a parent, let alone a parent of three.
He’d settled into his life as a single guy and liked it 95 percent of the time.
After his tumultuous childhood, then his years in the military, he appreciated the steady friendship of his family-by-choice, his days filled with mundane but purposeful tasks, and his quiet, safe home.
When Mantis, then Stone, and now Viper found partners, he wondered if he’d feel a twinge of something—jealousy or longing or even curiosity.
He’d poked and prodded his feelings on the matter before confidently concluding that the only emotion he felt regarding the couples was happiness.
His family was growing, and his new “sisters” were awesome people.
“How much longer?” he asked.
“Too fucking long,” she replied, sliding off the stool. Then, setting a hand on her stomach, she added, “Not that I want them to come too early, but a little early would make me a much happier woman.”
“Sex and spicy food,” he replied, shaking off the cash she handed him for her drink.
“What?”
“That’s what they say can help bring on labor—sex and spicy food.”
Her head tipped, her long braids falling over her shoulder. “Don’t tell me how you know that.”
He grinned. “Use your imagination; it will be more fun.”
She snorted, then grabbed her purse. “Thanks for the drink and the adult conversation. I’ll be in touch with what I find.”
He nodded and watched her leave, smiling inside at her confidence—Ava was not a woman to question whether she’d find something, because she’d always find something.
“Now, back to my question,” Monk said.
Philly scanned the bar, checking to see if anyone was waiting to place an order.
“Everyone’s all set for now,” Monk said. “How are you?”
“You’re killing my jam,” Philly replied, leaning against the back bar so he could keep an eye on the room.
“The conversation with Ava diverted your attention—served a purpose, too. But you’re going to have to deal with it sometime,” Monk replied.
“And here, in the middle of Rita’s with fifty French bikers in the bar, is when I should do that?”
Monk shrugged. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
Philly huffed a laugh. “No, never is as good a time as any.”
“That shit festers.”
“I’m aware.”
“It always finds a way of coming out.”
“Not this,” he said, even as a tiny voice inside his head mocked his hubris.
He expected Monk to laugh. When he didn’t, Philly turned and looked at his brother. His stomach twisted at the expression on Monk’s face—part disappointment, part…not pity, but maybe empathy or concern.
Philly sighed and caved enough to appease him. “I’ll deal with it when I can. I’m not there yet, though.”
Monk studied him, then nodded. “When you are, we’ll all be here.”
As much as he wanted to never revisit that part of his life, that wasn’t reality.
If the past two months had taught him anything, it was that forgetting about that one day so many years ago wasn’t possible.
He’d managed to shove it into a deep, dark corner for years, but it had never left him.
The second Callie Parks stepped into the room, it reared its ugly head and came roaring into the light.
“Scipio should be here in ten minutes. You got this?” he asked. Monk nodded. Philly exhaled. “Great, ’cause I need another run.”