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  “His veins...” Stephanie closed her eyes and tried to picture what such a thing would look like.

  It looks like coral.

  “The coral. It has to be him. I saw him there. He shot at me from behind Jason.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Stephanie balled a fist. “Ooh. I’m going to kill Miles Davis.”

  “Please don’t kill him before he leads us to his boss. And anyway, I thought you were a changed woman?”

  Stephanie smiled. “Everyone gets a hall pass once in a while, don’t they? Anything else? I have things to do now. Revenge to plan.”

  “Ask your mother if she knows who the guy in the paraglider was and why the hell they’re after me all of a sudden. It can’t be Miles. He was busy releasing alligators when I was dodging bullets.”

  “Right. Will do. If she blesses me with a phone call.”

  “Thanks. That’s it.”

  “Okay. Hey, Declan?”

  “Hm?”

  “Thanks for letting me know about the lightning tattoo. Now that I know what it is, maybe...” Stephanie fell silent.

  Declan finished her thought for her. “Maybe you won’t have the nightmares anymore.”

  Stephanie’s eyes felt strange. She raised her fingertips to her cheek. Wet. She turned her body away from the crowd of inmates behind her and wiped her face on the back of her hand.

  Stupid.

  “Sure. Right. I guess. I was going to say maybe I’ll be able to remember more. To help you and Charlotte.”

  “Hey, you called Charlotte by her name. She’ll be thrilled.”

  Stephanie laughed. “Don’t get too excited.”

  “Never. Take care, Stephanie.”

  She nodded. “Of course. You know me.”

  She hung up the phone and wandered away from the phone banks. Mariana, who’d been so eager to get to the phone, eyed MuuMuu, who nodded her head to let her know she could make her call without threat of bodily harm.

  Stephanie sat beside MuuMuu and rested her head on the enormous woman’s shoulder. She was tired. She found the matronly shape of the giantess’ cushiony body comforting. MuuMuu patted her knee.

  “You know I don’t swing like that, right?” she said.

  Stephanie chuckled. “Shut up and hold still.”

  MuuMuu laughed, making Stephanie’s head bounce until she had to straighten.

  She leaned her head against the wall behind her and stared across the room at nothing. Some sense of dread gnawed at her guts like a hungry rat.

  Mom wants Declan dead.

  Why? Because Declan inspired her to be a decent human being? She’d told Jamie as much.

  That was a mistake. She could see that now.

  Her mother had been encouraging her more vicious side since they reconnected. She’d found it flattering to have Jamie’s attention, no matter how warped the delivery system. Everyone craves their mother’s attention, don’t they? Part of her reveled in the idea that her mother might be grooming her as a protégé.

  Part of her didn’t.

  Jamie didn’t want Declan undermining her work.

  But was that enough to kill him?

  Well sure. That’s what Jamie did. When Jamie didn’t like something, that something had a habit of disappearing.

  Stephanie sighed.

  I should have warned him. He needed to know. What had kept her from blurting out her suspicions?

  Betraying her mother wasn’t the best way to stay alive. And she couldn’t be sure about the paraglider…

  But I can’t lose Declan. He’s my only connection to the part of myself my mother doesn’t own...

  “I think I’m going to have to make another call.”

  “You want me to make her move?” asked MuuMuu locking her gaze on the Latina. Mariana noticed and turned away, talking hurriedly to whomever she’d called.

  “Nah, give her a second.” Stephanie sat up and eyed her protector. “You know, I never asked you why you were in here.”

  MuuMuu smirked. “Tax evasion.”

  Stephanie’s brow knit. “In this prison? For tax evasion? Shouldn’t you be some place a little more white-collar?”

  MuuMuu shrugged her rounded shoulders. “I evaded them by breaking four of the auditor’s ribs.”

  Stephanie nodded.

  “Ah. That makes more sense.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Seamus opened the door of his bar, The Anne Bonny, and watched his last patrons stumble over his threshold.

  Literally.

  I should probably fix that sill.

  His new bar had been an instant hit with the locals and he didn’t want them to kill themselves on the way out. Or on the way in, but on the way in, they were a little more nimble. He worried less about them then.

  “And ye don’t come back until you learn some manners!” he called after his last two patrons. They roared with laughter.

  It wasn’t hard to make drunk people laugh, which was one of the reasons Seamus loved drunk people so much.

  Seamus watched his customers ping-pong off each other as they made their way down the street, both talking much too loudly about the difference between salami and pepperoni. Chuckling to himself, Seamus was about to shut the door when he noticed a man standing on the sidewalk across the street. The street lamp above him cast long shadows across his face. Seamus couldn’t see him, and yet something felt very familiar about the figure.

  “If it’s a drink yer wantin’, I’m afraid you’ve come a bit late,” called Seamus, letting his Irish accent play thicker than it needed to. He’d been in America long enough he could sound as American as apple pie, but the bar patrons seemed to like being served by a true Irishman. In recent days he’d been falling back into an accent he thought he’d lost.

  The man across the street shifted from one foot to the other, silent, as if trying to decide if he wanted to leave or remain staring.

  “Your accent hasn’t changed,” he said after an uncomfortable silence.

  Seamus straightened and gave his pants a yank over the bulge of his midsection. “Do I know ye, er, you?”

  “I don’t know anymore,” said the man.

  Seamus sniffed. It was too late for games. “We’re closed.”

  “Ye wouldn’t even stay open fer me?”

  The man suddenly had an accent very much like his own.

  That voice.

  Seamus stepped over his threshold, careful to avoid the uneven sill. He let the door close behind him. A name was bouncing around his mouth. He didn’t want to release it, but he opened his lips and spat out as if it had been held prisoner.

  “Cormac?”

  The man beneath the light pulled his hands from his pockets and started across the street.

  What little Seamus could see of the stranger’s features melted into darkness as he left the domain of his lamp post, only to be illuminated again by The Anne Bonny’s own garishly throbbing bar sign. Overhead, a neon pirate wench grinned from dusk to dawn, and her red and yellow glow cast a sickly pallor on the man approaching.

  The man’s features slowly knit into a recognizable shape.

  “No,” said Seamus.

  The man smiled. “Yes.”

  “It isn’t you.”

  Seamus gaped in awe as his long lost brother’s face appeared before him.

  Cormac opened his arms. “It’s good to see you again, Seamus.”

  Seamus threw out his own arms and wrapped them around his brother. He squeezed him tight against him.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  Cormac scoffed. “Nah. You know you can’t kill me.”

  Seamus pushed his brother back to arm’s length, his fingers grabbing the fabric of Cormac’s suit jacket as he shook him.

  “You’re alive.”

  “I am.”

  Seamus looked down at the pavement, shaking his head. He stood like that a moment, one hand on his brother’s shoulder, the other hanging at his side, before he swung
that hanging arm and cracked his brother in the jaw with every ounce of mustard he had in the jar.

  Cormac spun to his right and caught himself on a car parked in front of the bar. The vehicle’s alarm blared, filling the darkened street with hoots and whistles.

  Cormac steadied himself and raised his hand to his battered jaw. “What the hell, Seamus?”

  Seamus was already striding toward him, his vision white with rage.

  “You abandoned your son.”

  Cormac threw up his arms to block another blow and returned with his own, connecting against Seamus’ ribs.

  “Declan had Erin to take care of him,” spat Cormac as Seamus stumbled back.

  Seamus squared up as his brother pushed himself away from the blaring car and did the same, both men raising their fists to square off.

  Seamus popped Cormac in the nose as the car alarm stopped ringing.

  “Erin disappeared not long after you did. The boy was orphaned.”

  Cormac stumbled back and bounced off the lamp post to return with a hard left to Seamus’ skull, only partially blocked.

  “You were here.”

  Seamus shook off the blow.

  “You don’t leave a kid with me,” he screamed, swinging and missing as Cormac dipped under him. “You think it’s an accident I didn’t have any of my own?”

  The sound of a window lifting reached Seamus’ ears as he stumbled forward and caught himself on the car. The alarm started again.

  “You two stop making all that racket!” a man screamed from a second floor apartment across the street.

  Cormac and Seamus both turned to him.

  “Piss off!” they screamed in unison, flashing their middle fingers like a synchronized swimming team with anger management issues.

  The man slammed his window shut and Cormac took advantage of the distraction to tackle his brother against the wailing car.

  Wind knocked from his lungs, Seamus grappled, peppering Cormac’s stomach with a series of rabbit punches.

  “I know Jujitsu. I could knock you unconscious with a tap of my finger,” grunted Cormac as the brothers grappled with each other, rolling along the side of the wailing car.

  “Try it and you’ll spend the rest of your life sleeping with one eye open.”

  The two men twisted and fell to the ground, rolling across the pavement.

  “Ow! You’re on my throat,” croaked Seamus as Cormac rested his forearm on his Adam’s apple.

  “Sorry.” Cormac moved his arm and bounced a glancing blow against Seamus’ left cheekbone.

  “Why are you here?” asked Seamus, taking advantage of Cormac’s shift to smack him in the jaw.

  “Jamie Moriarty. And I’m trying to protect Declan, whether you believe it or not.”

  Seamus stopped struggling and Cormac rolled him over to pull his brother’s arm behind him. Seamus struggled to keep his face from digging against the pavement.

  “What do you mean protect Declan?”

  “His girlfriend’s mixed up in this.”

  “She’s on his side, you eejit. Charlotte’s trying to keep Jamie from killing everyone she knows, including Declan.”

  “I know that now. Blade told me.”

  “Blade?”

  Seamus rolled to his back as a whoop! whoop! cut through the racket of the honking car alarm. Blue lights flashed around Cormac’s head.

  “Stop it!” Roared a voice as the cruiser’s door opened.

  Cormac froze in mid-punch and Seamus lifted his head to look past his brother, who straddled his middle. One of Sheriff Frank’s deputies stood over them, his hand on his gun. Seamus recognized him as the officer who’d broken up a fight outside The Anne Bonny a few nights earlier.

  “That’s enough. Get up,” said the deputy.

  Both the brothers’ tensed muscles went slack and they rolled their eyes in unison.

  “This has got nothing to do with you,” said Seamus from his supine position beneath his brother.

  The deputy arched both eyebrows. “He’s about to pound your face in. You should want me here to break this up.”

  Seamus snorted. “He’s going to do no such thing.”

  “Sure I am.” Cormac turned and slapped his brother’s face on both cheeks, left, then right. Seamus slapped at his hands, doing his best to block the blows while he tried to land his own.

  The deputy stomped his foot on the pavement. “Stop it!”

  Seamus got a slap in of his own before Cormac caught his left wrist and blocked his right as it attempted a second strike.

  “I said stop it.” The officer pulled his gun. He left it pointed at the ground, but his frustrations were made clear.

  Cormac sighed and looked down at his brother.

  “We’ll continue this later.”

  Seamus scoffed. “You bet your sainted Aunt we will, you deadbeat dad.”

  Cormac had started to stand and now paused to stare down angrily at his brother. “I am not a deadbeat dad.”

  Seamus grabbed his brother’s leg and pushed him forward, causing Cormac to rise at an accelerated pace. He stumbled against the wall of the bar.

  He whirled as Seamus scrambled to his feet. “You sonova—”

  The deputy raised his gun. “No! Right now. Both of you, stop.”

  Both on their feet, Cormac’s and Seamus’ hands hung at their sides as they glowered at the officer. The car alarm stopped screaming. All three of them looked to the vehicle and huffed a sigh of relief.

  “About time,” said Seamus.

  “No doubt,” agreed Cormac.

  The deputy slipped his gun back in his holster. “Okay. Good. Now tell me, what’s going on?”

  Seamus huffed. “Oh, I’ll tell you what’s going on—”

  Cormac cut him short. “We’re brothers.”

  The officer nodded. “I have two of my own, so I understand. But you can’t wrestle in public in the middle of the night. You’re disturbing the peace.”

  “Yeah!” screamed the man from his window across the street. “My peace!”

  Seamus pointed at him. “I’ll deal with you later, ya snitch.”

  The deputy raised a hand to the man in the window. “Sir, please go back to bed.”

  The man slammed his window and disappeared inside.

  The officer returned his attention to the brothers. “Do you both have a home to go to?”

  “I’m not homeless,” muttered Seamus.

  Cormac nodded. “Yes.”

  “Both of you go home. Now.”

  Grudgingly, Seamus made his way to his car, parked behind the one whose alarm had gotten them in trouble. Cormac started across the street toward his own.

  Seamus paused as he put his leg in the driver’s side to sit.

  “Do you know where I live, Cormac?” he called.

  Cormac turned, the key in his hand ready to open his door.

  “Sponging off my son?”

  “Yeah, whatever. I’m going to go home to tell him what a shite you are.”

  Cormac turned. “Wait—”

  Cormac started back across the street as Seamus flopped in his seat and turned the ignition. He pulled from his spot just as Cormac grew near, and his brother had to jump out of the way to keep his toes from being run over.

  Seamus hung his hand out the window as he drove away, his middle finger held high.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Still breathing heavily, Cormac waved at the officer who was now driving away, smiling. His tongue probed the corner of his mouth. He could already feel his lip swelling.

  Well. Good to know Seamus hasn’t changed.

  His phone dinged in his pocket and he pulled it out to check, his eyes flicking from the road to the phone and back. Someone at the home office had texted him a story about an alligator chasing a woman.

  A woman named Charlotte Morgan.

  And the toxicology had come back on Jason Walsh. He’d been poisoned by Tetrodotoxin.

  Pufferfish.

  Corma
c grit his teeth and then released when it made his jaw ache.

  Son of a…

  He dialed Miles.

  “What you want this time a night?” asked Miles, who answered after the first ring.

  Cormac checked his watch. It was nearly one a.m.

  “I heard a report about an alligator chasing a particular girl.”

  “Yeah...”

  Miles sounded as if he had half a cheesesteak in his mouth and the sound of his spit smacking made Cormac’s lip curl with disgust.

  “What are you eating?”

  “Canned meat.”

  “Gah.” Cormac pressed his lips together tightly and pushed the picture of Miles eating canned meat out of his head. “Did you hear what I said? I told you to abort mission. Do you not understand me?”

  “I lost my best gator to her. He almost had her ‘fore she skinnied over that fence. Champ couldn’t get his snout through and then the cops came and took him.”

  Cormac lowered his forehead into his hand. “Why do I feel like you’re not hearing me?”

  “I tole you, it’s what I do.”

  “Well, it isn’t what you do anymore. Stop it. She’s not a target. We had that one wrong.”

  “I didn’t have shit wrong. You’re the one givin’ the orders.”

  Cormac grimaced. He’d almost gotten his son’s girlfriend killed by a hillbilly and his circus of reptiles. He already had enough to apologize for—killing Charlotte would destroy any hope of reconciliation with his son. Somehow, he had to make this moron understand it was time to stand down.

  “Do not, under any circumstance, try to kill Charlotte Morgan again.”

  Miles sniffed. “I wish you tole me that ‘fore I lost my best gator.”

  “I did!” Cormac heard his volume rise and took a second to calm down. “Look, I’ve got a final payment coming to you and then I expect you to slip back into the swamp from whence you came.”

  “What?”

  “Piss off.”

  Miles grunted. “What about my gator?”

  “I’ll add extra for the gator.”

  “What about Knuckles?”

  “Who?”

  “My python.”

  “Fine. That too.”

  Cormac heard a metal utensil clatter into what sounded like a sink.