Sweet Sinful Nights(36)

Brent clapped him on the back. "Excellent. I knew eventually you'd be good for something."

"Or maybe I won't be so generous," Clay said as they neared a bustling coffee shop, spilling over with Sunday afternoon foot traffic.

"Nah. I have faith in your generosity. And I have faith in caffeine, which I need right now. Red-eye and all," Brent said, pointing to the shop. "My treat."

Clay shook his head, and crossed one finger over another, as if he were warding off evil spirits in the cafe. "Not that one. That shop has bad luck written all over it. That's where Julia practically had my head when she found out I'd done something she wished she knew about sooner."

"I've told you, man," Brent said, because he was privy to the details of what had nearly split up the two of them before their happy ending, back when Julia had been in trouble with the mob, saddled with debt owed by an ex. "You need to be upfront with women. Just in general. Look at me. I'm a goddamn open book."

Clay stopped in his tracks, scratching his head. "Wait. I'm sorry. Did I hear that right? You're trying to give me relationship advice?" he asked, rubbing his thumb against his wedding band.

"Whatever, man. All I'm saying is women want you to lay it all out for them. Be open. You know that. Secrets are almost what ripped you and Julia apart."

His brother nodded seriously as they resumed their hunt for coffee. "That they did, man. That they did. And I learned my lesson."

"You ever hear from that guy? Charlie? The one she was forced to play poker for?"

"He called me once," Clay said as they reached the corner and stopped to wait for a walk sign. A cab blew past them on the street, and a pack of Sunday afternoon runners whipped by on the cobbled sidewalk.

"What did he want?"

"Tried to get me to come work for him. Said he needed a good lawyer."

Brent scoffed. "I bet he does. Mob bosses always need someone to bend the rules for them. What'd you say?"

Clay's mouth twitched in a smile and he spoke in a wry tone. "I told him that my client list was full. But I appreciated the offer. Always be a gentleman with men like him. You never know when they're going to reappear, and you need to make sure you haven't pissed them off."

"And you didn't piss him off, I trust?"

Clay adopted a who me look. "I never piss anyone off. But you? You're another story. If memory serves, you were pretty skilled in pissing off Shannon back in the day. You learned your lesson on that front? You're treating her well now?"

Brent flashed back to last night and Shannon's cries of ecstasy. To the past week, and how her eyes lit up with happiness over their lunches. To the sadness he saw in them, too, when she shared all her fears. All of it. Everything. He desperately wanted to be the man to make her happy. To give her hope.

"Like a queen," he said. "Like a queen."

"Excellent. That's the only way to treat a woman."





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Shannon crossed her arms and watched her brother mow down targets with clockwork precision. Huge earphones covered Ryan's head, muffling out sound as he fired with one hand. A sure shot. She knew how to fire, too, though she rarely did. She owned a sub-compact Glock 42 that Ryan had bought her when she moved back to Vegas.                       
       
           


///
       

"It's your housewarming present," he'd remarked when he took her to the gun store.

"You afraid the Royal Sinners are coming for me?" she asked, joking but not joking.

He'd squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. "They're not coming for you. But you never know who is." He'd filled out the paperwork, plunked down his credit card, then handed her the weapon and said, "Welcome home."

Then he'd taught her how to handle a gun.

Sometimes she joined him at Reiss, sharing his intensity of focus, his cold concentration. Other times, she wished she'd never learned to shoot, never imagined that she might need to. Even if you were skilled in how to shoot, a gun couldn't always save you. In fact, it probably wouldn't save you. If her father had carried a gun, he'd still be dead. He'd been shot in the back, and never saw it coming.

Guns were useless when someone put a price tag on your head.

Ryan took aim at another black and white cardboard cutout. Shannon counted off in her head with each bullet.

One target. Two targets. Three targets. Now, four. Now, five. Absently, she crossed her fingers, hoping for a perfect six. Random, but that was the number she picked.

He landed the last one. Straight down the middle. He lowered his arm, his revolver solidly in his right palm. After he tugged off the earphones and goggles, he turned around, and flashed her a bright smile. He blew on the end of the gun, and winked.

Show off, she mouthed, watching him from just outside.

He waved her into his lane, gesturing for her to join him. "You hit half of what I did, I'll buy you lunch," he said.

She rolled her eyes, but accepted the challenge. He positioned the earphones over her head, placed the goggles on her eyes, and set the Smith & Wesson in her palm. She planted her feet wide, peered down the lane, and raised both hands, keeping the weapon steady, solid against her flesh. She peered at the target at the end of the range, a black and white sketch of a body with a bulls-eye on his chest.

She tried not to think of Stefano ending her father's life. But that trick never worked. She always pictured that man, that street thug, that fucking scum who took a job from her mother.

That killer.

If she didn't see Stefano at the end of the barrel she'd imagine her mom. She couldn't go there. She couldn't live in that land of hate for the woman who'd raised her, taken care of her, kissed her goodnight. If she pictured her mom, she'd be just the same as her.

Her hate was reserved for the triggerman. For the man who had shed her father's blood. Her jaw tightened, and she watched the reel. Each unlived moment played before her eyes. Her father would never know where she'd gone to college, what she did for a living, if she was happy, if she was in love. He'd never walk her down the aisle, and he'd never tuck his grandchildren into bed or take them to the park.

He'd never enjoy a day of fishing as a retired man-his dream.

He'd never celebrate his fiftieth birthday. He was eternally thirty-six, and always would be.

He'd never grow old.

They took that all away from him.

From her.

From her grandparents.

From her brothers.

Her teeth were clenched, her lips were a tightrope, and her hands belonged to a surgeon. Steady, practiced, perfect.

She fired three shots to the heart.

Adrenaline surged through her, lighting up her bloodstream with wild energy. She could lift a car, fight a man twice her size, or run down any enemy. Her chest rose and fell; her fingertips tingled. Then those endorphins were chased with a dose of red-hot anger, with the madness that comes from the black hole of loss.

She pressed her fingertip to the trigger, wanting, wishing, eager. Itching to fire again.

Before the anger consumed her, she lowered the gun. She handed it to Ryan. "I'm not hungry."

Minutes later, they sat in his car in the parking lot. The engine was off. The radio was on. The National, Ryan's favorite band, crooned about missing the one you love. Such a moody song. Fitting, too.

"What's the story?" she asked, cutting to the chase. "Is Stefano facing more charges?"

Ryan shot her a quizzical look. "No. Or not that I know of."

She rolled her hands, as if to jog his memory. "You told me your friend in the DA's office said he visited Stefano in prison about other crimes or something."

"Right, but even so, that won't change his sentence."

"I know that," she said, but then she realized-Ryan hadn't called her to discuss the latest news about the shooter. "So this," she said gesturing from him to her, "isn't about Stefano?"                       
       
           


///
       

"No," he said, forming an O with his mouth. "Not at all. It's about someone else. I talked to Mom."

* * *

His sister's jaw dropped. Ryan hadn't intended to shock her, but the evidence was on her face.

"She called you?" she whispered, as if she couldn't quite wrap her mind around the concept of the phone, and how people used it to stay in touch.

He nodded and scanned the parking lot through the window to make sure they were alone. No one was wandering around. He turned up the music a little more, just in case. Ryan had always believed it was best to have these kinds of conversations in person, with plenty of background noise. He'd learned to keep certain aspects of his life completely untraceable. "She called me collect the other night. She told me her lawyer came to see her."

Her eyes widened. "The same one who represented her at trial?"

He shook his head. "Nope. That guy is long gone. He went into private practice. But, the guy who came to see her is also a public defender. She said she contacted him and he went to Hawthorne."

She cleared her throat and swallowed, then spoke in a clipped, controlled voice. "What does she have to talk to a lawyer about? Is she trying again to get them to re-open the case? Is she rehashing the details over and over like the last time we saw her? The evidence against her? The phone records showing she repeatedly called Jerry Stefano for two months before the murder?" Shannon said, smacking the side of one hand against the other for emphasis. "The lies she told about those calls were ludicrous. The prosecution saw right through them. She couldn't even come up with a decent reason for all the calls."