Quick Fix (11 page)

I stood, shifting Molly to my hip and picking up the ice-cream carton. “How could they not find out? Wouldn’t the empty cell tip them off?”

“The cell isn’t empty.” The fury reignited in Thomas’s eyes.

Oh. “Uh, who?” Somebody had to be filling in for Billy, somebody with adaptor capabilities. And whoever it was, Thomas wasn’t pleased.

He looked from James to me. “Our brother.”

I sucked in a breath. “Not
Brian
.” Geez. No wonder Thomas was pissed. Brian was a lot like Billy in his propensity for getting himself into scrapes, but not nearly as successful at getting out of them.

“We have another brother I’m not aware of?” Thomas said.

I made a face at him. “But how could he? Don’t they monitor those cells?”

“Billy convinced a rookie coming on shift that he hadn’t had his phone call yet. He called Bri, and ever so cleverly conveyed to him that he needed to see me, his lawyer. So Bri showed up as me—and see if I don’t break
his
neck for using me without permission—and made the switch with Billy while they were conferring privately. Then Billy left as me—I’ll break
his
neck, too,
twice,
for thinking up this scheme and dragging Bri into it. So Bri is sitting pretty in jail as Billy, waiting for me to bail him out tomorrow. Serve him right if I left him to rot.”

“You can’t do that—Bri could never handle himself in prison.” This from James, ever the voice of reason.

“Gee, ya think?” More sarcasm from Thomas. He seldom resorted to it so blatantly; when he did, it tended to hit you in the face, like slamming into a glass door you hadn’t known was there.

Not one to throw fuel on the fire, James cocked his head to one side but didn’t comment. Brian in jail was a scary thought. Billy
knew
Brian couldn’t wrap his head around violence—what in the hell was he thinking to leave him in that place, alone and unprotected?

“Isn’t it at least possible Billy has a good reason for doing it?” I asked, though I personally couldn’t think of one. What was wrong with me? I ought to be throwing Billy under the bus. I’d never had any trouble getting angry at him before. If this is what hormones did for you, screw it. I wanted mine back under control.

Thomas looked at me with shuttered eyes. “Oh, I’m sure he does. At least in
his
mind.”

“Never mind that for now. The question is, what can we do for Brian? Is there any way to get him out of jail tonight?” James said.

“Don’t you think I would have already if—” Thomas stopped dead and looked at me, the shark returning to his eyes.

“What?” I said, wary.

“What was the judge’s name?”

“Huh?”

“The judge Billy told you was letting him go—who was it?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say her name.”

He looked pleased. “Her? Well, that narrows it down. Okay, what’d he have on her?”

“What do you mean?” I stalled, not wanting to admit what I knew. No point in getting Thomas even angrier. My compulsion to protect Billy was confusing the hell out of me, but it was there.

Unfortunately, Thomas had plenty of experience reading my face. “Blackmail, Ciel. I’m going on the assumption that Billy wasn’t entirely lying when he told you the judge released him. Maybe he was going to try blackmail next if he couldn’t get Brian to fill in for him. Come on, what did he have up his sleeve?”

No point in arguing it. “The judge apparently doesn’t want Billy dating her daughter in the future.”

Thomas expelled a blast of air through his nose. “Figures. At least it gives me a pretty good idea which judge. Distasteful as it is, I think it might work.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll try my best, but I probably won’t be able to get him out before morning.”

“You’re going to blackmail the judge? But, Thomas, you can’t do that. Couldn’t she have you disbarred or something?”

“Oh, it won’t be me blackmailing her. If Billy can borrow my aura without asking, I don’t suppose he’d have any objection to me returning the favor.”

Chapter 11

No way was I going to let Brian stay in jail overnight. The odds of Thomas getting him released before morning weren’t nearly good enough for my peace of mind, so I’d just have to take matters into my own hands. Whatever reason Billy had for getting my gentle, peace-loving brother mixed up in this, it had better be damn good.

When James was busy with Molly again, I borrowed the suit he kept at the lab for when he had to entertain university bigwigs to keep those grants flowing, and headed over to the precinct where “Billy” was still being held. The jacket was snug across the shoulders for Thomas’s aura, and definitely not up to his usual impeccable standards, but it would have to do.

The young, uniformed woman at the desk remembered Thomas, and gave me a worshipful smile. “Hey there, Mr. Halligan. You back already?”

I shrugged. “Forgot to get a certain critical piece of information from my client. Do you suppose we could get the private room again? You know, privileged … stuff.”

She seemed hesitant. I smiled big, making Thomas’s teeth a half-shade brighter than they really were. Her eyes widened, the pupils getting larger. “Well, usually … um, sure. Sure. I’ll set it up. Just be sure to stop by the desk on your way out, okay? I get off work soon.…”

*   *   *

Brian, with a big, goofy grin on Billy’s aura, was handcuffed to the table when I got to the room. I waited until the door was shut behind us and then said, “What the hell, Bri?”

His eyes—those beautiful, dark blue Doyle eyes, not Brian’s soft brown ones—looked perplexed. “Dude, you were just here. We’ve already been over this.”

“Yeah, well I’m back. And this time we’re switching places, just like you did with Billy.”

“But why, man? I can wait until you bail me out. No sweat.”

I pulled myself up to big-brotherly proportions. “Because I said so. Come on, no time to discuss. Let’s go.”

He shrugged philosophically, kicked off his shoes, shifted to a very tiny aura, and slipped out of his cuffs, both hand and ankle.

“Nice,” I said, remembering how I’d pulled the same trick in Sweden when my last job went awry.

“I know, right? Billy gave me this aura. Said it was a handy one to have.”

Yeah, trust Billy.

We finished the switcheroo, with me mostly keeping my eyes shut. I swear, if I never risked seeing another one of my brothers naked again, it would be too soon.

I made my way into the cuffs the same way Brian had—by borrowing the handy aura Billy had given him.

“So, who’s going to bail you out tomorrow if you’re in here?” Brian said, now thinking like a lawyer.

“Uh … don’t worry about it. I have it covered.”

*   *   *

The holding cell wasn’t bad, as holding cells go, I supposed. There was only one other guy in there with me, and I was pretty sure I could take him if I had to, since I had access to Billy’s strength. I’d feel even better if I also had access to his martial arts training. Unfortunately, some things don’t convey with auras.

The guy looked Italian, maybe Greek, with buzzed black fuzz all over his head (and half his forehead). He probably shaved his scalp regularly so his skull-and-crossbones tattoo would show.

He smiled, big and evil, when he saw me glancing at him, proudly displaying a gold-capped front tooth. “We gonna play now?” he said, his voice rough, like someone had whisked an eggbeater in his throat. “You promised we’d play when you got back.”

Crap.
What had I done?

I clenched my fists, taking what comfort I could from the size of Billy’s hands. Well, better me than Brian. At least I had no compunction about hurting other people when the need arose.

*   *   *

We were on our fifth hand of Five Card Draw when another officer came for me. “Looks like your lucky night, Doyle. Your lawyer’s back again, this time with an order from the judge. You’re free to go—for now.”

Huh. Thomas must have come through after all.

“Just a sec,” I said, and laid down my cards faceup—two queens and three tens. “Ha! Beat that!”

Bruno displayed his gold tooth again, looking more evil than ever before. He spread his cards on the mattress between us. Three aces and a pair of kings. “Read ’em and weep.”

Yeah, Bruno had turned out to be a pretty good guy. Which is why, I supposed, Billy hadn’t worried too much about leaving Brian here for a while.

And there it was again—that compulsion to make excuses for Billy.

I sighed and followed the officer out to face the music with Thomas. All in all, I thought I’d rather stay the night with Bruno.

*   *   *

It wasn’t pretty. As soon as we were in the limo, Thomas laid into me worse than he ever had before, called me every kind of idiot there was,
yelled
at me—directly at
me,
which I couldn’t remember him ever doing before, at least not this badly. Sure, I’d been around his temper before, but I was usually a spectator.

And then he washed his hands of me, threatening to evict me from my condo and my office because it was obvious I wasn’t mentally competent enough to live by myself or run my own business. He further threatened to tell Mom and Dad what I’d done and let them deal with me for a change.

After that, I kind of lost track of what he was saying. I think my ears went numb.

Brian was on the other side of me. His medium-brown hair was long on top, close-cut on the sides and back, and his facial hair was kind of sketch, but it worked for him. He looked bored, like he’d heard it all before.

Which, of course, he had, when Thomas caught “himself” walking away from the police station earlier. I could only imagine how that went over.

Once Thomas had yelled himself out, he took a deep breath and hugged me tight, muttering, “I’m going to
kill
Billy.”

After a moment or two of blessed silence, I ventured to ask if the window between us and the front seat was soundproof.

“Of course. But it wouldn’t matter if it weren’t—the driver works for me.”

Brian said, “If I’d known it was Ciel, I never would have switched places. I just wanted to say that, since you didn’t give me a chance earlier.”

Thomas shook his head, disgusted but calm. “Like that would have been any better.”

“I would’ve been fine until morning,” Brian said.

We were heading for Brian’s bachelor pad. He shared a Williamsburg (the indie-rock/hipster culture was very important to Brian) apartment with three of his musician friends, one of whom was his current love interest. Maybe. She was the previous week, anyway. With Brian that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He wasn’t a player, like Billy. He was just a hopeless romantic who happened to have a very short attention span. He honestly thought he loved every girl he fell for, right up until he fell for the next one.

“Really,” he continued, trying futilely to erase the skepticism from Thomas’s face. “My cell mate was a nice guy—he was innocent. There was some kind of mistake, same as there was with Billy.”

Not exactly the best comparison to make where Thomas was concerned. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said, but there was more resignation than anger in his voice. We were all used to Brian’s optimistic view of human nature. He wasn’t stupid, not in the low IQ sense of the word, anyway. Mom swears he tested close to genius level in those routine assessments given to all kids in school, second only to James out of the four of us. If that was truly the case, all I can say is he hides it well.

At least I could vouch for Bruno, and I did, being sure to add my opinion that Billy never would have asked Brian to trade places if he hadn’t known Bruno was a safe guy. That earned me a similarly resigned look from Thomas. He had way too much experience with the legal system to trust an amateur’s view of it.

“Not that I mind getting out,” Brian continued. “I have a gig later, and I hate to leave the guys in the lurch. Hey, where’s James?”

“He’s babysitting Molly,” I said. Thank goodness Auntie Mo still thought her youngest was with us back in D.C., so that was one less worry for now.

“Keeping her out of Mo’s hair, huh? That’s nice of him.”

Thomas caught my eye and gave a tiny shake of his head. Okay, so we weren’t going to explain about Molly yet.

“Something like that,” I said, and proceeded to change the subject. “So, how’s Jenny?”

Blank stare from Brian.

Geez. I was pretty sure that was the name of the latest. “Your girlfriend? Sandy blond hair, long legs, plays guitar, lives with you?”

He shrugged. “Oh. She moved out. But Suze is great—you’re going to love her. Cute as a button. Mad organizational skills. We hired her to build us a database for our music and keep the books for us. The band needed somebody to take care of the business end of things.”

Thomas looked a little put out. He had a tendency to want to watch out for all of us himself. “I could’ve done that for you, no sweat, no charge.”

Brian flashed a smile that reminded me too much of Billy. “Yeah, but you aren’t as hot as she is. And she’s not charging us, either.”

Jesus. Men. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Jenny didn’t care much for Suze’s ‘skills,’ and decided to leave.”

“Kind of. I think it was mostly that Jenny didn’t like sharing a kitchen with another woman.”

“So Suze has already moved in? How convenient for you,” I said.

“We’re not charging her rent. We have a barter arrangement.”

“Are you sleeping with her?” Thomas asked bluntly.

Brian shrugged. “Well, yeah. She asked me to. Why wouldn’t I?” My brother. Just another happy-go-fucky kind of guy.

“Were you this disgusting when we were growing up?” I said.

“Hey, I did not sleep with her until after Jenny moved out.”

“Huh. Big of you.” My sarcasm was lost on him.

“Yeah, I thought so. It’s not like I didn’t have the opportunity.”

“Brian, it’s not right to treat women like disposable commodities.” I spoke as if to a dim-witted child. That rolled right off him, too.

“Jenny’s the one who left. Besides, you never really liked her anyway, so what do you care?”