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“Plus,” Haightman adds. “We already ran it by our lieutenant and yours. Yours said it’s cool with him so long as we get your approval.”
“We just wanna help,” Taylor presses. “Lucas and Danny were our friends. If this mess was reversed, we’d let you in on our squad.”
“And you think you can do the job without your emotions getting in the way?” I back up toward the door. I’m done with today and ready to go home to my wife. “You’re not gonna become dead weight on my investigation?”
“We’ll help,” Haightman insists. “We swear.”
“Fine.” I turn and grab the handle. “Be here early tomorrow. I’ll run it by my partner, but having someone on our squad who knew our vics can only be a good thing.” I step out of the multi-story building as the time ticks close to six, only to forget Haightman and Taylor when I essentially walk straight into my oldest brother. He leans against a light pole, one arm folded across his torso, while he uses his other hand to stroke the beard he keeps short and well-maintained.
Instantly, my eyes go left, then right. “Tim?” The Malone heir to the mafia throne that heshouldhave accepted… waits outside the cop shop like doing so is a smart move. I narrow my eyes and continue forward until we’re shoulder to shoulder and moving along the sidewalk toward my apartment.
Always moving. Always watching. Like sharks.
“What are you doing here?”
“Had a crime I needed to confess to.” He glances across and flashes a smirk. “Kidding. I would never confess.”
“So you just happen to be here… waiting outside the police station, at the same time I’m walking out?”
He shrugs, dropping his hand and dipping both into his pockets. Hewears jeans that sit loose around thick thighs, and a red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. It’s his look three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year. “I had time and a need to catch some fresh air. I was walking by and knew you’d be out any moment, so I waited.”
“Mmhm. And it has nothing to do with the current case I’m running? A statement hasn’t been released yet, Timothy. So why do I feel like you know things you shouldn’t?”
He smiles a smile exactly the same as the Timothy who came before him, his beard moving with the action and his eyes glittering with a kindness our father never possessed. “I always know things happening on my street.” He peers over our shoulders and checks our surroundings. “Good to see you’re still breathing.”
“Happy days. Minka called you?”
He grins, bringing his focus back around to watch the way we’re going. “She’s sitting in my bar as we speak. She might’ve mentioned something about wanting to kill you if the cop killer didn’t do it first. Naturally, I enquired as to what the fuck she was talking about.”
“Naturally,” I rumble. “She’s heading to New York tomorrow.”
He drops his smile and lowers his head, surveying the street around us. A survival instinct beaten into us three decades ago. Yet, to anyone watching from the outside, you’d think he was looking at his feet. “I heard about that, too. I haven’t talked to Felix yet. Have you?”
“I haven’t had time.” I draw a deep breath, filling my lungs until my chest expands, then I release it again and scan the sidewalks. Not that I’m expecting a fucker with a long-barreled rifle to step out and introduce himself. But I promised to be careful… “I’ve been meaning to call and let him know we were coming. But now plans have changed. Add in that Minka’s staying in Manhattan, and you know that conversation is gonna be exhausting.”
“And you’re cool with your wife staying at the Malone Mansion without you? After all these years and all that history?”
“I just said she’s not?—”
“It’s one thing if you were with her too, but it wasn’t so long ago that sending her there, with or without you, meant she’d be bedded by a Malone, bred against her will, and murdered as soon as her son was born. You’ve forgotten so easily?”
“First of all,” anger rockets through my veins as I grab his shirt, yanking him to a stop and pulling him around to look into my eyes, “she’s not going to the house. She has a suite in the city and a plan not to leave it. Butsecond, our father isn’t there anymore. He’s dead and rotted into the fucking ground, right where he deserves to be. Felix is in charge now, and Micah has his back. They’re decent. They’re annoying,” I admit, “Felix, more so. But they’re not our father and they’re not gonna hurt the people we love. So don’t say shit that no longer applies.”
“There’s nothing you could say that would convince me to put Emeri inside that house.” He shrugs my hand off and straightens his shirt. Then he starts walking again, forcing me to follow or fall behind. “She’s light and fun and color and beautiful chaos. She doesn’t belong inside that house, no matter who sleeps in the main bedroom these days. The fact you’ve taken Mayet there, more than once, says you’ve forgotten what life was like for us before we left.”
“I haven’t forgotten! But the fucker who hurt us is dead. Felix might annoy the ever-loving shit out of us every single time he speaks, but I can’t recall a single moment he wasn’t protective of us.”
“Well… except that time he got you shot.”
I choke out a laugh, slicing through the anger boiling in my blood and simmering my temper a little. “I would say that wasn’t his fault, since he wasn’t the one who shot me. But he was the reason we were in that warehouse that day, and the prick who shot me was there because of him. So…”
“Kinda like how it wasn’t his fault I broke my leg when I was seven…” He peers across. “But it was Felix who threw a stick in my path and was the reason I crashed my bike.”
“And like how it wasn’t his fault I destroyed Dad’s car when I was twelve… but it was Felix who snuck the keys and dared me to drive it.”
“Or how it wasn’t Felix’s fault Micah lost his virginity to a woman who charges for her time, when he was the one who ‘set them up’ and told Micah she was genuinely into him.”
My chest and shoulders bounce with laughter; for memories I’d repressed sixteen years ago, events that I’d completely forgotten existed. “He’s such an asshole.” And since I have a minute, as Tim and I step off the curb at the end of the block and up again on the other side of the street, I take out my phone and unlock the screen to find his name. “Did anyone ever tell Micah about her?”
