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Unclenching my jaw and fists, I nodded and lowered myself into the front seat of McMahon’s cruiser.
“You just need to take me as far as the shipyard so I can grab my clothes and car.”
“You’re a goddamn pain in the ass, you know that?”
I smirked. “Weren’t you just complaining about the number of pairs of SPD sweats I go through? If I pick up my clothes, I can leave these. One less to add to my collection.”
McMahon grumbled something unintelligible, and since I had nothing to do with the good detective behind the wheel, I rested my head against the headrest and closed my eyes as he started the car.
For one single blissful second, there was silence. Then McMahon’s phone rang.
“McMahon.”
He flipped the phone off Bluetooth, and I closed my eyes again while he spoke until my five seconds of shut-eye was once again interrupted.
“Well, fuck.” McMahon hit the steering wheel hard and let loose a string of creative expletives the likes of which I’d never heard—and seeing as I had a brother who was a former navy SEAL, that was saying something—before tossing his phone with more force than necessary back into the cupholder. “Fuck.”
“You wanna talk about it?” I didn’t really want to listen, but Donny McMahon was one of the closest things I had to a friend outside of my three brothers—wasn’t that realization a kick in the balls—and I was technically a captive audience.
“Work shi— Wait…” He turned toward me for a split second, barely long enough for me to catch the cagey smile that tilted his lips. “Weren’t you telling me not too long ago that you were sick of the bounty-hunting life?”
Immediately suspicious, I didn’t respond right away. I was tired. At thirty-eight, on mornings like these, I felt closer to sixty than forty. But if McMahon was bringing it up, he’d want something potentially worse, at least for my reputation, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to make that trade. “Maybe.”
“I’ve got a situation.”
“I’m listening.”
“I can’t tell you everything, but I’ve got a kid that needs twenty-four-hour surveillance. The department won’t assign a protective detail. He pissed off the wrong people, and I know they’re going to come for him.”
“What kind of people?”
“Organized-crime types. Can’t name names. Not right now.” He sighed. “And maybe we don’t know exactly who, okay?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s tricky. Kid’s a hacker. He was working on a case, but he tripped some wire or something, and the bad guys know he’s onto them. Only thing is, we don’t know which bad guys. Could be the mob, a cartel, any number of assholes from the criminal underworld. All we know is the kid got a message with pictures of him in his apartment, which we thought was a secure location, with crosshairs on the back of his head and the wordsWe know who you’re working foracross the picture.”
“Okay, and you want me to do what? I’m not a computer guy. If you need another hacker, you should be talking to my brother Julius, but I doubt you can afford him. Last I heard, he wasn’t working for less than half a million a job.”
“No, nothing like that. What I need is for you to keep an eye on the kid.”
“I’m not a babysitter.”
“It would just be for a little while until some resources open up.”
“No.”
“Nero.” McMahon cleared his throat, then swallowed hard. “Please.” It almost sounded like he’d had to pry thepleasefrom his throat with a crowbar, but the fact he was being that polite about it meant this was a bigger deal than he was letting on. “I don’t want the kid to get hurt, and with your… skills, you could keep him safe.”
I didn’t say anything, and McMahon took it as his cue to push a little harder.
“Meet the kid, then take him to that big-ass house of yours?—”
“It’s my grandmother’s house.”
McMahon waved my protest away. “Between you and your brothers, there are enough of you to keep one little hacker safe until I can come up with a better plan.”
“What’s in it for me?” I asked. “Hard to pick up skips when I’m babysitting.”
