Page 128 of Carnal Wagers

I nodded. I had no shame in the attachment I’d developed for Alice over the last two months.

The SUV pulled to a stop a couple of storefronts away from a quaint Mediterranean-style restaurant with a small, colorful terrace beneath the gray drab of the building above it and the businesses around it. There sat Alice, her smile captivating in a way that stopped my heart, then rebooted it. Two tables away sat Paulie and Big Charlie. She faced a woman with thick rolls of hair atop her head, while the rest of her long hair, which couldn’t quite decide whether it was blonde or ginger, flowed in waves down her back. The two of them bobbed and weaved their heads and hands through what appeared to be a very dynamic conversation. Whatever was being said lit up Alice’s face more than the sun could.

I shot out of the vehicle. Smiles joined on foot, while Arthur parked. Another car door slammed shut, and Liam rushed around to join me.

“If she means this much to you, what happens if LK gets to her?” he hissed as he sidled up beside me.

“You better hope never to find out.”

“Easier said than done.”

Since Alice and her friend Maeve sat on the terrace, we slipped inside the restaurant and took seats against the tinted windows—Arthur and Smiles on one side of the door, Liam and I on the other. It limited the view of the street, but with Paulie and Big Charlie outside with her and the four of us inside, this was a concession I was willing to make, especially with the level of enjoyment radiating off her.

Rich scents of smoky meats mixed with herbs, a hint of citrus, and the freshness of dairy products clung to every corner of the eatery. Sauce stains and a dollop of yogurt dirtied the table. With a hefty amount of paper napkins, we wiped down the sticky and liquid residues, then settled in to monitor the area.

“You know you’re a right selfish bastard when you want to be.”

I flicked my eyes between my woman and my brother and tapped the edge of my folded knife against the table. “What’s this now?”

“Other than abandoning us the last month to tackle visits to Da on our own?”

I huffed. He’d have a hard time making me feel guilty for spending time with Alice over that.

“No one’s forcing you to go.”

“Right, well, all joking aside, how ’bout the fact you’ve got a woman of your own, but you haven’t even asked how Brody’s doing.”

“Why would—” I stopped tapping and slouched back against the thin wooden chair, gobsmacked. “LK’s latest victim?”

Liam nodded. “He’s taking it hard.”

“He liked her?”

“Bosses,” Smiles interrupted. He dropped off the food he ordered us—wrapped gyros tucked into little plastic baskets with fries and extra yogurt sauce, along with sodas—then returned to his table and meal.

“Of course he bleeding did. He and Kara had been talking online for two years, from some game or other. Started dating and seeing each other last week.” Liam pointed a finger at me. “And only because you and Alice have been going on with no issues for a while now.”

“I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t tell either of us. I only found out last night when…” He toyed with a fry. “…when Cranwell told us who the victim was. It was ugly, Killy. He needed you. He needed both of us.”

“Fuck.” I drank down a few gulps of my chilled soda, with one eye always on Alice.

Liam twirled his can around. “He’s not doing well. Saw him this morning, and he’d been lost to his research, going over the case files, the data, image surveillance… This is the worst I’ve ever seen him.”

“What’s he hoping to find that we haven’t already looked over?”

“He wants to know how you did it.”

“Did what?”

“How you kept her alive.” He nudged his head toward Alice’s table as he bit through his gyro. Sauce dribbled down his chin, and he wiped it away. “He ran statistics. The only ones that lasted as long as Alice were…you know…”

Between bites of fries, I rolled my hand for him to get on with it.

“Sarah and Josie and the others.”

Ah, his hesitation made sense but was unnecessary. Josie was Brody’s first love, the woman he dared to enter into a relationship with back when we thought LK was dead. The others meant Liam’s and Da’s string of lovers during that same year and a half when the Love Knot Killer hung up her knife. Then there was Sarah, the woman who became the wife of a man she didn’t understand. It took her death for me to realize she had never been more than a companion with benefits, with whom I shared little, outside of sex and public events. I never discussed the strained nature of Sarah’s and my relationship with my brothers before or after she died. There never was a point to it. To them, she’d been my wife. To me, she’d been a chance at affection that never reached its potential.