Sloe Ride (9 page)

“I was actually going to be hunting ye down later, but here ye were, right on my way home.” His father chewed through the bite in the air, spitting it back out hot and worried. “Want to be telling me anything about the other night? Say, perhaps why ye nearly got killed and didn’t tell me or yer mum?”

“Da, I’m fine.” He switched to Gaelic, mindful of the people walking by. The sidewalk suddenly appeared to be teeming with people, many throwing curious glances at the mountain of a cop standing ready to dress Quinn down. “Can we do this later? I’ve got to finish this up and then take Graham home. We were just at this… thing and—”

“We cannot be doing this later, Quinn.” Donal’s paternal concern battled the raging thread in his voice. Long inured to the duality of his father’s gut instincts and parenting, Quinn waited Donal out, wondering which side would win out—the protective anger or the comforting coddle. “
Now
.”

“Da, I don’t want to talk about what—” He waved toward the building, the borrowed car’s fobs clicking together. “Wait, on your way home? This isn’t near home.”

“I went down to Southern to talk to an old friend, and then one of the lieutenants comes up to ask me about how ye were doing. As if I knew someone tried to fold ye in an accordion.” Donal cut him off quickly. “When were ye thinking of telling me about that, son? Instead, I have to hear about it from another cop? Oh, and because ye’d left yer phone in what remains of that deathtrap ye drive.”

“Shit, that’s my school phone. I forgot all about it. No wonder people kept saying they couldn’t reach me.” He felt at his pockets. “I had it charging. Does he still have it? I don’t know if it even works—”

“Forget the fucking phone,
breac
. I’ve got it with me in the car,” his father growled, looming over him despite their similar heights. “Are ye fine? Or did ye hit that already cracked head of yers, and ah’ll be needing to take you down to the hospital to sew yer brains to the inside of yer skull so they stay there?”

“Oh.” He’d forgotten about the car. “
That
.”

“
That
.” Donal poked at Quinn’s chest, a light tap over his heart. “Instead, ye show up late at the coffee shop with an apology, as if you’d slept in or summat, then slink around yer brothers before chatting up Rafe, as if ye hadn’t kissed Death’s ass on the way over there.”

“I’m sorry.” Quinn kept his shoulders down, not wanting to add to the apology with a quick shrug. It was a surefire way to incite his mother, and his father wasn’t one for the gesture when contriteness was required. “I wasn’t thinking. It wasn’t… important?”

Yeah, that last word was a bad choice, judging by the storm kicked up in his father’s already thunderous gaze, and Quinn bared his teeth in a hearty smile. Instead of the rain and hellfire he’d been expecting, Donal sighed and drew him into a tight embrace.

“I worry fer ye,
breac
.”

His father smelled good, a blend of coffee, cinnamon, and dad.

“Yer always off with yer head in the clouds for all of yer smarts. I worry more fer ye in yer tweed jackets and chalkboards than I do fer yer brothers going through doors with bullets coming at them.”

“I’m
fine
, Da.” He hugged his father back, then pulled loose. “Really, I’m good. It was just something stupid, and I was focused on getting there to support Forest. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Donal parroted back, clapping Quinn’s shoulders, then stepping back. “Take yer friend on. Then ye call me when ye get home. I want to know yer safe.”

Quinn started to nod, then stopped short. “Are you going to be asking Kane to call you when he gets home? Maybe Connor too?”

“That’s different—”

“How?” He shoved his way into his father’s line of sight, forcing Donal to face him. “How is that different, Da?”

“Because no one tried to kill Con or Kane with a truck the other day, and now ye’re standing here fixing a slashed tire. I’ll come by and dust it for prints, see if anything pulls off of it. One thing could be nothing, but twice ill in a week means there’s a pattern, or at least the start of one.” Donal’s knuckles swept a soft caress over Quinn’s cheek, a familiar gesture from Quinn’s childhood. “So, ye call me when ye get home. Or I’ll be knowing the reason you haven’t.”

T
RAFFIC
THROUGH
the city was tight, too tight for Quinn’s liking. A delivery truck pulled up next to him at a stoplight about a block away from his Bay Street home, and he couldn’t repress the crawling shudder in his spine. He took the corner a bit faster than he’d have liked, skidding the borrowed Audi across the wet street.

“Yeah, kill yourself and watch Da go through the roof.” He steadied the car out, slowing down as he reached his street. “Finally, home.”

It was a hell of a commute to and from the university, then the theater. Anywhere across the bridge usually meant an hour or more during the best of days, but Quinn wouldn’t have traded his row-house-style home for anything. The street was a private nook of old buildings and tucked-in courtyards. Built tightly against each other, a nest of townhomes wrapped around the outside of a communal courtyard, and he’d fallen in love with its quirky three-storied structure, the garden patio built on top of his garage, and its rooftop terrace. Perched on a crest, the terrace gave him a clear view over long stretches of warehouses, down to the piers, and across to Alcatraz.

On a clear day, the sound of a nearby school carried children’s voices across the way, and at night, the heavy fog rolling off the water bounced up the sounds of the pier—a jangle of nightclubs, ship bells, and muddled-together music.

There was also the bonus of living someplace with little to no guest parking—a necessity when needing to circumvent a descending horde of Morgans.

The place had been a bit of hard work, not as intense as Connor’s old Victorian but close enough for Quinn to gain a hatred of smelling varnish. Unlike Connor, his forays into renovation began and ended at stripping floors and repainting rooms once a team of contractors broke down walls and rewired everything. Six months after purchasing the place, he’d moved in and settled in for a long life.

“Shit, garage remote’s still in the kitchen where you left it, you daft ass. Screw it. Car can sit in the drive for a bit.” Leaving the replacement Audi in front of his garage, he headed around the corner to the cluster of mailboxes he shared with the other row houses.

And was faced with a very familiar dilemma, knowing he’d met the woman standing in front of the mailboxes, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name.

She smiled when he drew near, holding up a stack of envelopes for him to see. There were a jumble of names on them, including his own, and none of it a helpful clue to the identity of the woman who’d just moved into the place with her white Maltese named Max. She was tall, her green eyes even with his own, and her short dark hair fluttered across her cheekbones when she kicked up a slight wind fanning the envelopes.

“I didn’t know you were a doctor,” she sang out to him. “What kind?”

“Kind of doctor?” He blinked, trying to remember if he’d introduced himself to her that way. It wasn’t something he did, not usually. Not ever. He hated the pretentiousness of it, hanging sheepskins on his shoulder as if he were some conquering hero returning from a long journey filled with Cyclops, Minotaur, and sirens. “Um, the usual kind—okay, not like the body kind, but… I did a dual first field, British and East Asia…. Japan, not China. But what—?”

“I’ve got your mail. Well, I think I’ve got everyone’s mail.”

Her smile was blinding, sucking in all of the ambient light coming through the trees and throwing it back into his face.

“Seems like the mailman decided he’d had enough of our crap and shoved all of the mail into my box. I was going to pick out the good ones and toss the junk mail, but I think that’s a federal offense or something. Makes you wonder what he’d do if he had to actually walk the street and deliver it to our houses.”

“Er… what?” Her name still eluded him, but if Quinn remembered correctly, Max’d needed to get booster shot, and he wondered if he should ask her about it. “I’m sorry. What’s a federal offense?”

“Tossing out someone’s mail. Is it really a federal offense? I mean, do you really want to read—” She studied a catalogue cover. “—the
Fantasy Swords of Ireland and Beyond
?”

“Um, yes. Please.” He took the booklet out of her fingers, then tucked it under his arm. “And I think it is—a federal offense. They’ve found over 2500 pounds of mail—well, a postman didn’t deliver. I believe the paper said it was a federal offense.”

“So’s dumping everyone’s mail into my lock box and walking away, but what can you do, you know? Want to help me sort through this stuff?” She rattled a packet of fabric softener samples. “I can make it worth your while. Nice smelly clothes! Free with every ten pieces of crap sorted.”

“I’m good on the clothes.” Quinn edged back when she flapped them again. “But I’ll help. Thing is, what do we do with them afterwards?”

It took them a good ten minutes of crouching over a plastic bin to get everything squared away. For some reason, the piles kept intermingling, and no matter what Quinn did to keep them straight, his mail migrated over to the unsorted pile. After a rousing argument on why sword magazines were not junk mail, Quinn dusted himself off, then stood up.

“Thanks for helping.” She beamed up at him, her eyes bright from their laughing. “Although I feel kind of dirty knowing Mr. Kwan subscribes to women’s underwear magazines.”

“No judging. For all we know, he finds them very comfortable.” Quinn nodded solemnly.

“Oh, trust me, coming from a woman, anything you find inside of that kind of magazine goes from zero to itch a minute after you put it on.” Cocking her head, she glanced behind her toward the street. “Want to go door to door with—”

Quinn never got to answer. A second later, the sky was lit on fire, and the heat of it rushed over them. An echoing boom sent them both to their knees, a shock wave of sound and force strong enough to scatter the envelopes she had in her hand. Smoke and flames shot up into the air, its source hidden by a copse of trees on the corner.

Splinters flew into them, stinging his face and arms. Quinn grabbed at the woman—Raia, his brain’d finally kicked in—and pulled her under him, sheltering her from the debris being ripped up by the explosion, then rained down upon their heads.

He buried his face between her shoulder blades, protecting his eyes from the shrill storm of wood and metal flying into him. Quinn felt Raia’s screams reverberate through her slender body as he covered her back and head, the sound of her terror lost in the booming echoes around them. Quinn’s hearing shut down, overwhelmed by the deep, rolling bass. Then the world shifted, sharper edged and piercing through the numbness, until he was drowning in the woman’s terrified screams.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Quinn reassured her, stroking at her short hair as he dared to look up. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”

“Max!”

Raia struggled to get out from under him, but Quinn held her down.

“I have to get Max!”

“Hold on. Wait and see if it’s over,” he murmured, fishing out his phone. All Quinn could hear was the crackling of flames, and he eased off of Raia to help her to her feet. “Call 911 and tell them there was an explosion. I need you to stay calm. You’re not going to help Max if you’re panicking. Let me go see what happened, and if Max is in danger, we’ll get him out, okay?”

He didn’t wait for Raia to answer him. Instead Quinn took the corner at a hard run, only to skid to a stop a hundred feet later. From what he could see, the houses were still standing firm, although many, including his own, now sported broken windows and torn-off siding. The landscaping beside his driveway was in flames, so brightly engulfed he wondered if he’d hear the voice of God speaking from it.

Car alarms screamed violently, and Quinn saw more than a few people stumble out of their damaged houses to find out what had torn apart their neighborhood. He couldn’t remember which house was Raia’s, but he knew one thing for certain. He was going to have a hard time explaining to the Audi dealership about how their sedan ended up as a smoldering crater in the middle of his driveway.

“Well, shite.” He stared at the flaming chunk of metal he’d driven just half an hour ago, exhausted just looking at the mess he’d somehow brought to the neighborhood. “I fucking hate it when Da’s right.”

Warehouse Garage.

Kane, joining Miki in the garage: Hey, the GTO is here. It’s all ready to go then?

Miki: Yeah, that’s what the auto guys said. They just unloaded the flatbed and left it here. Made me sign a few papers, tossed me the keys, and headed out.

K: So, you want to take it for a short road trip? Maybe across the Bay?

M: Nope.

K: Why not?

M: Haven’t checked the trunk. Could be a dead body in there.

K: Why would there be a dead body in the trunk, Mick?