Consumed

by J. R. Ward

  He smiled because he felt like he had to and chose the sofa. “Yeah.”

  The doctor sat down, and he noted she was in another variation of what she’d had on at their previous meeting, although this time, there was some purple thrown in with the brown.

  “So I was surprised to hear from you.” She smiled gently. “But glad you called.”

  “Thanks for fitting me in.”

  “Of course.”

  He looked around, noting all the Purposely Calming details. Or maybe that was really her; maybe it wasn’t all a calculation, but rather the expression of a compassionate soul at peace in the world and with her work.

  “I guess I should explain why I’m here,” he said.

  “You can start, there. Sure.”

  Clearing his throat, he rubbed his thighs. “I, ah, I’m in love.”

  “Really! That’s wonderful.”

  As he smiled, he ducked his eyes and blushed. Like an idiot. Like a schoolboy. Like someone confessing to his mother he was going out with a girl.

  “She’s amazing.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “She’s a firefighter, too. Or was. Until she . . . well, it’s Anne. You know, Anne Ashburn.”

  “Really.” Dr. McAuliffe smiled some more. “That sounds like a beautiful relationship.”

  “I want it to be. She means so much to me, and I would do anything to protect her and make her happy.” Abruptly, he focused directly on the doctor. “And that’s why I’m here. I don’t want to be what fucks it up. ’Scuse my French.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “I thought maybe you and me could talk about things that are up here.” He tapped himself on the head. “Things that I can’t unsee, things I can’t undo, things I wish were different.”

  Like Moose.

  Like Emilio, who was back at work and looking like road kill.

  Like Sol, who they shouldn’t have lost.

  “I think that’s a really good idea, Danny. Where do you want to start?”

  He thought about the old lady on that bed in that burning apartment. The axe going into the back of Moose’s head. Anne and her hand. Emilio in the hospital bed. Sol screaming, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” right before he was crushed by debris.

  He thought of himself regaining consciousness at the bottom of the collapsed warehouse wall, his mask cracked, his body crushed, his breathing bad.

  And then he thought of John Thomas.

  “I want to talk about my twin brother.”

  “Okay. Tell me about him. Tell me all about him.”

  Danny had to blink his eyes as they started to burn. But then he smiled. “Oh, Jesus, he was an annoying little shit when we were growing up. He used to wait for me to fall asleep at night and then . . .”

  chapter

  55

  It seemed right that rain started to fall as Danny entered the cemetery. There was no gatehouse or visitor check-in because this was the budget burial place, not the fancy old one on the other side of the tracks with the monogrammed crypts and the statues of angels and saints. Hitting the brakes on his truck, he checked the Kleenex box he’d scribbled the directions on and then went left.

  He’d been at Anne’s when he’d gotten the call back, and the gray-and-yellow tissue box had been the first writeable surface he’d grabbed.

  As he wound around the clusters of the dead, there were all kinds of Irish Catholic names and Celtic cross markers, and he deliberately took the long way to the section he was looking for. John Thomas was buried in the northeast corner, along with their parents, and although he was turning over a new leaf with Dr. McAuliffe, he wasn’t ready to head over there quite yet. He did think he’d bring Anne someday, though.

  Seemed right to introduce her to the family. His parents had died way before she’d come into his life, and John Thomas, per departmental policy, had not only been stationed at another firehouse, he’d died the year before she’d joined the service. So he hadn’t really known her.

  They all would have loved her. Who wouldn’t?

  Rounding another corner, he eased off on the gas. Across a mowed lawn of browning grass, beneath a canopy of red and gold leaves, two groundskeepers were pulling a casket out of an unmarked van.

  For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  Moose. God . . . what happened to you, Moose?

  Danny’s truck rolled onward, carried by a subtle slope in the lane that amplified the engine’s idle. When he hit the brakes by the new gravesite, both of the men looked over at him.

  He lifted his hand and got no response. The groundsmen just muscled the coffin over to a hole that obviously had been dug by the mini-dozer sitting off to the side, the union worker who’d operated it taking a break and smoking.

  Danny reached for his own cigarettes and lit one. He’d sworn that he would stop, but the only thing going through his mind at the moment was, Not today, motherfucker.

  Getting out, he approached the groundsmen. “Excuse me, but is—”

  “You here for Robert Miller?” the one in front asked as the van drove off.

  “Yes. Moose is—yeah, I’m here for him.”

  “You family?”

  “I don’t know.” Used to be, he thought. Kinda. “Do I have to be?”

  “We don’t care,” the other guy said.

  They both grunted as they placed the casket on a mechanized platform that was going to lower it into the grave. As they straightened, they looked like brothers, both stocky and balding, Igors without the humps or the Mad Scientist bosses. Their dark green work uniforms were by the same maker that the firefighters used, their baseball caps bearing the bended-bough logo of the cemetery above the brim.

  “You want a minute before we put him down in there?” the one on the left said.

  They were identical twins, Danny thought as he looked back and forth at their weathered faces. Just like him and John Thomas.

  “Yeah. If you don’t mind.”

  “We gotta go dig another two holes anyway. Take your time.”

  One motioned to the Toro operator and the other started off on foot, and as the pair went away, he wondered if their names matched, too. Jim and Tim. Bob and Rodge. Fred and Ted.

  Daniel Michael and John Thomas were an Irish rhyme, his mother had always said. Whatever that meant.

  Danny took a drag and exhaled over his shoulder even though there was no one around to offend with secondhand smoke.

  The coffin was simple, not one of those carved mahogany ones with brass rails and tufted satin interiors, and as sprinkles of rain dappled its black lid, they left glossy prints that were perfectly round. He wondered what Moose was wearing in there. Who had chosen the clothes. Whether the axe blade’s damage had been repaired before the embalming had been done.

  The hypothetical answers he considered and discarded were like the speculation about the twin groundskeepers, a way to give his brain a break from the reality that someone he had been close to for years, who he had thought of as a brother, who he had worked alongside . . . had been someone he hadn’t really known.

  He thought about Anne and her father. Just the other night she had talked about what had happened after Tom, Sr., had died, about the secret that had come out afterward. She had told him all about her frustration with her mother, her anger at her father. The disillusionment and disgust and betrayal.

  A hero she had once put her faith into hadn’t proven to be merely human, but a bad man.

  She would understand exactly how he was feeling about Moose, and also how he was re-coloring previously positive memories with a dark filter.

  Moose had been the genial loser who’d struggled to keep up with the big dogs, a good guy with a heart of gold who never quite made it, but always managed to smile in the midst of his failures.

  A Ralph Kramden, first of the frat house, and then later at the apartment and the stationhouse.

  The idea Moose could light fires that hurt people and accept money from crooks . . . and tr
y to kill someone, kill Anne, for fuck’s sake, meant that everything that had seemed true about him had to have been a lie. Because the man Danny had known and lived with would never have hurt anyone, much less one of their own.

  He’d loved Anne.

  Or . . . at least he’d seemed to act like it.

  “Fuck,” Danny said into the cool fall breeze.

  The low growl of a motorcycle brought his head around and he frowned. The black Harley he knew well, but he had not expected to see it or its owner out and about for another three months.

  As Mick Roth, his old roommate, killed the bike’s engine and dismounted, the guy removed his helmet and put it on the seat. His dark hair had been recently cut and a tan dimmed the colorful tats that wrapped around his throat. Blue jeans had holes in them. Leather jacket was beat to shit.

  Eyes were alert, but had black circles under them. “Surprised?”

  “Yeah. But glad.”

  Mick strode over the cropped grass, sidestepping the gravestones. “So what’s up, Dannyboy?”

  The two embraced, and Danny held on hard. “What are you doing out of rehab? I thought you were supposed to be in Alabama another ninety days.”

  “Arizona.”

  “Sorry.” They stepped back. “Did you walk out on the program?”

  “Not exactly. I told them I’d come back after I saw you and made sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Party line, huh.” Mick looked around. “What the fuck are we doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” As a blacked-out truck came over the rise, Danny shook his head. “And then there were three.”

  Jack parked his Ford behind the Harley and got out. He was in SWAT clothes, the black T-shirt with the crest on the pec and the camo pants accessorized by a couple of forties and a hunting knife holstered around his waist.

  “You found it okay,” he said to Mick.

  “Yeah.” They clapped palms. “Thanks, man.”

  And then the three of them just stood around the coffin, staring at the closed lid that had gathered enough rain so that the water dripped off its sides, tears that should have been shed, but could not fall in any other fashion. In the silence, a bird chirping in a golden-leaved tree was louder than it should have been. So was the beat of Danny’s heart.

  God, he could still remember meeting Moose during pledge week. The guy had been determined to out-drink anyone who challenged him, as if he’d recognized that consumption was his sole recommending feature for the fraternities. Jack, on the other hand, had been recruited for his game with the females. Danny, they’d wanted as a bouncer. And as for Mick?

  The frats had been scared of what he might do if they turned him down.

  “Someone should say something,” Jack muttered.

  “Yeah.” Danny took a deep breath. “Shit.”

  “That about covers it,” Mick said dryly.

  Danny put his hand into the pocket of his pants and took out his Marlboros. After offering and lighting one for both of the other roommates, he put the mostly full pack and his Bic on the top of the coffin and then he hit the gear switch so that the casket lowered into the earth.

  Each of them cast a handful of dirt into the grave.

  As it turned out, the cigarette he finished smoking was the last one he ever had.

  And he called Anne as soon as he was back in his truck and alone.

  “Hello?” she answered. “Excited for tonight? I know I am.”

  He had to hit his wipers as he left the cemetery. “Yes,” he said roughly. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I am now.” Danny released a long slow exhale. “I just needed to hear your voice. Listen . . . I’m going to wanna talk about Moose.”

  There wasn’t even a second of pause, and her voice was strong and steady. “Anytime. You can talk to me about anything at any time.”

  Just one more reason to love you, he thought as he drove on through the downpour.

  chapter

  56

  At eight o’clock on the dot, Anne parallel-parked her Subaru on the busy street and sat back in the driver’s seat. After a minute, she pulled the visor down and checked her face. As a set of headlights flared, she got a good look at herself.

  With lipstick on.

  Like, proper lipstick. Not a coat of gloss, but real, live L’Oréal stuff that had been applied after she’d used a lip liner.

  Putting the visor back into place, she felt silly. But it was too late to change, and besides, the one thing she could guarantee about Danny Maguire was that he’d like her in whatever she was wearing. Well, actually, he preferred her naked—but considering they were in public, he would take whatever clothes she’d slapped on as they came.

  She opened her door a crack, and then waited for two cars to go by before standing up on the high heels she’d bought at lunch along with the dress she had on.

  Across the street, Danny was waiting by the door of the venerable establishment they had agreed to meet at for their date.

  As he saw her, his smile, open and easy, faded quick.

  And his eyes widened so much, the whites became the size of dinner plates.

  Clearing her throat, Anne shut her door and locked her car—and then with each stupid-ass step she took, she made herself promise she would never, ever try to be a girl again. Obviously, her mother’s advice, well intended though it had been, had missed the mark.

  Stepping up onto the sidewalk, she shook her head. “Sorry. This was a dumb idea.”

  Danny’s eyes went down to the stilettos, up the stockings, over the knees to the fairly short skirt and then to the cape that she had swung around herself like she was Lauren frickin’ Bacall.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God . . .” he stuttered.

  “I can go change—”

  “No! No, don’t change! You’re . . . the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Anne blinked. Once. Twice.

  Stop being a girl, she told herself. Be a woman.

  Even though it was cold, she separated the cape’s halves and flashed the dress that had been in the window of that shop at the strip mall. The thing was red, and it hugged her waist, and even dipped in between her breasts.

  Danny lost the ability to talk again.

  As she closed the cape back up, she started to smile. Well, looked like she was going to have to seriously thank her mother. Nancy Janice, it turned out, had skills. Mad skills.

  “Your hair,” he breathed. “Can I touch it?”

  “Sure.”

  Danny’s hand reached up and brushed the blonded streaks. “It’s amazing. Not that it wasn’t amazing before . . .”

  “Should we go inside?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry, sure, please. Thank you. What was the question?”

  Danny tripped over his feet as he opened the door, and Timeout’s raucous noise spilled out onto the street along with the warmth of its interior. As they entered, heads turned briefly—and then snapped right back.

  The conversational din in the bar lowered.

  And that was when Danny’s chest puffed out and he put his arm around her, all proud caveman. Then he escorted her through the tables like he had won the lottery, the presidential election, a Nobel Peace Prize, and the Super Bowl at the same time. Especially as they went by the 617’s booth and he nodded at Vic Rizzo.

  As they came up to the 499’s table, all the men started to stand. Duff even took off his baseball hat—and dropped it on his foot.

  “Get over y’selves, it’s just a little makeup,” Anne said with a smile.

  Danny helped her take off the cape and pulled out her chair. Then he leaned across the table and grabbed Duff’s lapels. “Your eyes stay at head level. All you guys. I see one dip below the throat, and I’m going to use you as a cue stick.”

  Then he kissed her on the mouth and sat next to her, cracking his knuckles and glowering at the crew.

  “Must you,” she drawl
ed.

  “Yup. Absolutely.”

  And then it was drinks and it was wings, it was stories and it was jokes. It was the family she had worked with and the friends she had grown to love . . . and most of all, it was the big beautiful Irish man sitting beside her, his blue eyes shining.

  Overcome with happiness, Anne stared at Danny. And when he turned to her as if he wanted to know if she needed something, she put both her hands, the one that was flesh and blood and the one that was a tool, up to his face.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what?”

  Anne tilted in and kissed him. “I haven’t been to Timeout in a very long time . . .”

  acknowledgments

  There are so many people to thank in connection with this book. Over the last year, I have had the privilege of getting to observe many firemen and police officers in the course of their work. They have been unfailingly generous with their time, patient with my questions and inexperience, and incredible models of selfless heroism. In particular, I’d like to thank Captain Brian O’Neill, of the Louisville Fire Department, all of the officers of Louisville SWAT, and Sherriff’s Deputy (ret.) Theodore Mitchell.

  I’d also like to thank Meg Ruley, Rebecca Scherer, and everyone at JRA, and Lauren McKenna, Jennifer Bergstrom, and the entire family at Gallery Books and Simon & Schuster.

  To Liz and Steve Berry, I can’t thank you all enough for what you have done for me, and thank you also to our Jillian Stein (and BStein for the car advice!), who is the FB guru of all FB gurus.

  Team Waud, I love you all. Truly.

  And as always, everything I do is with the love and support of both my family of origin and of adoption. With special thanks to my husband, Neville, my mother, and Auntie Wow, Uncle Nath, and Uncle Darrie.

  And I couldn’t have done this without Naamah, my WriterDog II, who works as hard as I do on my books!

  about the author

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY JAN COBB

  J.R. WARD is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series and more than twenty other novels and short stories. There are more than fifteen million copies of her novels in print worldwide, and they have been published in twenty-six different countries around the world. She lives in the South with her family.