by Debbie Mason
As Michael pulled into a parking space across from the pub, James’s long-legged swagger brought him to the passenger side of the Range Rover. Six foot five and built like a linebacker, the guy could pass for the Rock and had the personality of a pit bull. They’d been working together for less than a week, and James had already tried to have Michael transferred out of organized crime and into white-collar crime three times. He had the door open before Michael had come to a complete stop.
“You got some explainin’ to do, pretty boy. You weren’t exactly forthcoming about your past with the Angels. I did a little investigating after you had me call in a favor for the old man’s niece,” James said as he filled the passenger seat with his bulk and pulled out his cell phone. Tapping the screen, he brought up an old newspaper article from the Harmony Harbor Gazette. “I’m surprised the lady still talks to you after your family had her put away. Five years for a first offense…” He shook his head, making a face like the thought of a teenage Shay Angel in prison made him sick.
Michael remembered the feeling. It had taken him years to shake the guilt. Still, he felt the need to defend the indefensible. “She stole my car. They found her with it at a chop shop. There was nothing I could do. I tried.”
He’d been hurt at first. He’d loved her and thought she’d loved him too. But as his mother had been only too happy to point out at the time, Shay had been using him. She’d played him. She was a con just like her uncle. Years later, he saw things differently, more clearly. There was no denying who Shay was back then. She had been a con, a grifter. Her uncle had trained her well. Nevertheless, that long-ago summer, she’d loved Michael too. She’d been nineteen; he’d been twenty-four.
The Christmas before last they’d had a reunion of sorts. It had been the first time they’d actually spoken since that horrific morning a decade before. Though the circumstances they found themselves in turned out to be more hair-raising than conducive to intimate conversations about their past. Shay had been working undercover for his cousin.
But talking wasn’t what Michael had come looking for that cold December afternoon. He’d been seeking absolution, and she’d readily given it. As he’d soon discovered, though, forgiven wasn’t the same as forgotten. Same time next year, she’d promised. Only she never showed at the bandstand in the village green on Christmas Day.
By then she’d stopped taking his calls for months, so he should’ve known she wouldn’t show. Still, like an idiot, he’d waited there for hours. Atticus sat in the passenger seat of the Range Rover with a big red bow around his neck, waiting for his hero. Shay had rescued his dog from his ex-fiancée, who’d held Atticus hostage after she’d jilted Michael the night before their wedding.
In his ex’s eyes, he’d done the unforgivable by deciding to give up his job as ADA to go into law enforcement. He had a feeling Shay would feel the same but for an entirely different reason than his ex. Especially once Michael told her about her uncle Charlie.
His partner eyed him and nodded. “You loved her, didn’t you?” Without waiting for Michael to respond, he continued. “Bet that went over well with the governor. Shay Angel was lucky she wasn’t put away for life.”
James wasn’t far off the mark. Only it wasn’t Michael’s father but his mother who’d been pulling the judge’s strings. Maura Gallagher had big plans for her youngest son. Michael had been chosen to follow in his father’s footsteps to become governor one day. No way was Maura about to let him squander his life and his love on a petty criminal with no social standing or family fortune.
He didn’t plan on sharing any of that with James. The man already knew more about his personal life than Michael wanted him to. “Why don’t you give Bryant a call, see if he has any news?” he suggested, keeping his growing concern for Shay from his voice. James had been the one to call in a favor with Special Agent Bryant. The two had gone through the Academy together.
“Huh, not bad, pretty boy. Some people might actually believe that you’re not crapping yourself with worry over the woman.”
“You almost make me want to transfer to white-collar crime,” Michael said, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
His partner grinned and then put him out of his misery by calling his friend. “Tom, my man, got an update for us?”
If Michael thought his wait was over, he was wrong. James did a lot of nodding, threw in a couple You don’t says and the occasional Really? before Michael bit out, “Is. Shay. All. Right?”
“Hang on a minute, Tom. Mr. Playing It Cool isn’t so cool anymore.”
“James,” Michael said through gritted teeth.
“Relax. She’s fine. By the time Tom and the cops got there, she had the Sterlings and their hired thugs taken care of.” He turned his attention back to the phone. “Yeah, sure, I’ll let him know. Thanks. You too.”
“That’s it?” he said when James disconnected. “What about the LVMPD and Detective Sims’s investigation? Did they shut her down? Have they opened an investigation into her?”
“Sounds to me like everything’s good. The ladies are out with Tom and his guys for celebratory pizza and beer. Besides, from what he told me, Shay Angel is more than capable of taking care of herself.” He chuckled. “Tom’s partner didn’t identify himself, and she had him disarmed and on the ground before he had a chance to blink.”
Michael had seen her in action a year before and knew exactly what she was capable of. It didn’t mean she was invincible, though. She’d been railroaded before, and there’d been nothing he could do to stop it. This time, there had been. Only she might not have wanted his help once she heard about her uncle.
He grimaced at the reminder, pressing the heel of his palm to his chest. “You might as well get started questioning the staff at the Salty Dog.” When they’d initially called the pub to check on Charlie’s whereabouts, no one had seen him in the past twenty-four hours. He also wasn’t answering his landline or cell. “I’ll give Shay a call. She might know where he is.”
“If I wasn’t in desperate need of a caffeine fix, I’d stick around for that conversation. Something tells me Shay Angel won’t be happy to hear you’re investigating her uncle for murder.”
The pressure of his palm did nothing to alleviate the burning ache in his chest. “He’s a person of interest, not a suspect.”
“Come on, you don’t buy that, and neither do I. Fat Tony was offed in the alley outside his apartment building twenty minutes before he was supposed to meet with Angel. Angel confirmed he’d be there, and now the guy is on the wind.”
They had ironclad evidence of the meet. Fat Tony’s murderer had conveniently left the victim’s phone behind. “Yeah, and we both know that Charlie wasn’t the only one he planned to meet. Tony was on a mission. He was warning anyone with ties to the old guard to get out of town.”
Six of the former bosses of the Costello crime family were set to be released from prison next month and things were heating up. Word on the street was that the younger generation had no interest in handing back the reins to the old guard. They’d recently moved the seat of their operations from Providence to Boston. As a former ADA, Michael was well acquainted with the Costello crime family.
“Huh, never would have thought you had it in you, but you’ve got some game, my man. Women love that white-knight crap. You tell the lady you’re doin’ everything you can to keep her uncle safe, and you’ll have her eating out of your…” He pulled a face. “Now that I think about it, I may have spoken too soon. Shay Angel doesn’t sound like any woman I’ve ever met, so this might blow up in your face, pretty boy.” He adjusted his seat into the recline position.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable. Everyone’s been telling me what a brilliant lawyer you were, so I figure it’s the perfect opportunity to see you in action. That way I can judge for myself.”
All he’d need was James heckling him from the sidelines. Michael pushed back his navy wool coat and pulled
his wallet from his back pocket. “Coffee’s on me,” he said, offering his partner a ten-dollar bill.
James cocked his head and eyebrow at the same time.
Michael pulled out another ten and handed him both. “Order me one, too, and try the rest of the numbers Fat Tony called in the twenty-four hours before he was killed.”
“You do remember I’m the senior officer in this partnership, right? And just to clarify, that means I tell you what to do and not the other way around. And even if that wasn’t the case, I couldn’t contact anyone he called if I wanted to. His phone is in evidence.”
Michael typed seven sets of digits into his phone and texted them to James. “Now you can. Those are the numbers.”
“What are you talking about?” James scanned the text, and then his bald head jerked up and around to Michael. “How and when did you get these?”
“Before the CSS guys arrived.”
“I was there, Gallagher. All you did was look through his contacts and recent calls the same as me. You didn’t take notes.” He frowned. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me you’ve got a photographic memory?”
Michael made a noncommittal sound in his throat. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about. His memories of performing on demand for his mother’s friends were almost as bad as the teasing he’d endured in grade school.
“Whoa, that is all kinds of freaky,” his partner said as he heaved his big body from the passenger seat. However, judging from his intrigued expression as he got out of the Range Rover, he could tell James was already thinking of ways to use Michael’s freaky ability to his advantage. Which made him nervous. In the short time he’d been working with his partner, he’d seen signs James wasn’t exactly a by-the-book kind of guy, and Michael was.
The freezing rain they’d dealt with earlier in the day started back up, the pebble-sized ice cubes pinging off the roof and windshield of the SUV…and off James’s bald head as he ran across the road. Michael turned the key and then adjusted the heat to high, glancing up at his partner cursing from where he half lay on the sidewalk.
Michael powered down the window. “Ouch, that looks like it hurt, partner. You need a hand?”
James gave him the finger.
Smiling, he rolled up the window. It served the guy right. He’d been a pain in Michael’s butt for the past week. Yay for karma. Michael’s smile faded at the thought of fate stepping in to even the score, of being punished for past actions. Probably not the smartest thing to be thinking about right before he called Shay.
His thumb hovered over the cell phone keys as he debated whether to press number one. He’d programmed her in at the top of his contacts the day she’d left him at the village green. He saw it so clearly then, them together again. He hadn’t liked that she’d needed a year, but he’d given in, mostly because she hadn’t given him a choice.
In the end, it hadn’t mattered. She’d stopped taking his calls three months later. She’d been right, though. He’d needed time to get his head straight after being kicked to the curb by his ex. He was more than ready for a relationship now; too bad Shay obviously wasn’t.
At least physically she’s okay, he thought, looking for something positive. But she still had a lot on her plate. The last thing she’d need to hear about was the trouble Charlie may or may not be in. Michael figured he could give her at least a day, maybe two, to deal with the situation in Vegas before he called.
Just as he returned the cell to the console, it rang. He glanced down, his heart giving an electrified thump at the name showing up on the screen. It felt like the sun had just come out. He rolled his eyes at himself, wondering when he’d lost his game. All he could think was thank God James wasn’t there.
“Hey, Shay, I’m glad you’re okay. My partner said—” Michael began before she cut him off.
“I know exactly what your partner’s saying, Michael. Agent Bryant just filled me in. But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me my uncle is a suspect in a murder investigation? The least you could’ve done is given me a heads-up.”
Karma hadn’t done near enough damage to his partner, Michael thought before saying to Shay, “And when was I supposed to do that? While the guy was shooting at you, or after, when you were bleeding out or lying in a hospital bed?” All right, so maybe he was being dramatic. She hadn’t been shot and hadn’t ended up in a hospital today. He leaned back against the seat, releasing an aggravated breath. This wasn’t only about her uncle. At least for him it wasn’t. For her, no doubt it was. “I called this morning to ask if you’d heard from Charlie or knew where he was. You didn’t pick up.”
“I listened to your message. You never said anything about Charlie.”
Okay, so that didn’t help his mood any. “I would have, if you’d returned my call like I asked. You didn’t. But I guess I should’ve known you wouldn’t. It’s not like you returned any of them over the past ten months.”
“I told you to stop calling. I wasn’t going to change my mind.” She gave a low, humorless laugh. “We would’ve ended up right where we are, Michael. You on one side of the law, me and my family on the other.”
“That’s what it all comes down to for you, doesn’t it? You can’t get past that day to remember the time before. It was good, Shay. We were good. We had something special. Something worth—”
“We were kids. We didn’t know any better.”
He heard the steely resolve in her voice. Trying to change her mind would be like trying to break down a cement wall with a toothpick. He should’ve known that his investigation into Charlie’s possible role in a murder would be the final straw for her. God only knew what would happen if he ended up being the man to arrest her uncle.
Talk about karma, he thought as the reality of the situation finally hit him. If he’d subconsciously been holding out hope that he and Shay would eventually find their way back to each other—and he knew damn well that he had—it was now completely and fully eradicated. He’d lost her for good.
And for the very first time, even after all the drama his decision to join the FBI had caused, he wondered if it had been worth it. He reached in his pocket for an antacid and popped it in his mouth. “You’re right, we were just kids,” he agreed, even though to his mind twenty-four and nineteen no longer qualified as kids. “And, Shay, I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but at this point, Charlie is merely a person of interest, not a suspect.”
“Yeah, and you probably have some land in Sweet Bay you want to sell me too,” she scoffed, referring to swamp land north of Harmony Harbor. “You forget who you’re talking to, Michael. I know the score.”
“Okay, fine, believe I’m the bad guy in this if you want to, Shay. All I need to know is if you’ve heard from Charlie in the past few days.”
“I haven’t. But, I just left a message on his landline and cell phone for him to call me. When I hear from him, I’ll let you know, or you’ll hear from him yourself.”
“Is it unusual for him to take off and not let anyone know?”
“Charlie? No. Every now and again he gets a wild hair and takes off. He was complaining about the weather when I talked to him last week. He said he might come out for a visit. He likes to gamble, you know.”
Oh yeah, Michael knew the man liked to gamble. Charlie had been the reason Shay had stolen Michael’s Corvette. Her uncle couldn’t pay off a gambling debt. Shay had intimated that the men Charlie owed money to weren’t exactly the forgiving kind. Which reminded Michael of why they were even talking. “Did Charlie ever mention a man named Tony Dulbecco? He may have referred to him as Fat Tony.”
There was a long pause; the sound of laughter in the background, along with the clink of glasses and someone playing sax. “No, doesn’t ring a bell.”
As a former prosecutor, he'd developed the ability to know when someone was lying to him. Like everything else in his life, Michael had put in extensive time and effort into learning how to pick up the slightest inflections in w
itnesses’ voices, or the minute movements that gave them away.
Which was how he knew Shay had just lied to him. “You’re sure? And before you answer, remember I’m not the enemy. Charlie could very well be in danger. There’s more going on here than you know.”
“You mean like Danny Costello going after anyone who might side with his uncles in their bid to take back the family business?”
“Okay, so maybe you’re aware of some of what’s going on.” He should’ve known that she’d start nosing around as soon as she’d been apprised of the situation with her uncle. Shay had been a PI before going into the security business. “Do you have any idea why Tony would get in touch with Charlie?”
There was a heavy silence over the line before she said, “Maybe Dulbecco liked a game of cards and heard Charlie knew where the action was.”
“I see. Charlie was running the games out of the bar, then?”
She laughed. It wasn’t a laugh shared with friends. “Come on, I’m not the one getting paid the big bucks, Special Agent Gallagher. You can’t expect me to do your job for you.”
So it was going to be like that, was it? He rubbed his fingers across his chest. “Enjoy your night out with Bryant and the boys, Shay. I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, and went to disconnect.
“Michael, wait. I’m sorry. I just…Look, thank you for getting in touch with Bryant and trying to help. I appreciate it. I really do.”
“From what I hear, you already had the situation well in hand.”
“Maybe, but having Bryant back me up when Detective Sims got to the scene made a difference.”
“So you’re in the clear with the LVMPD?”
“Yeah, it’s all good. They arrested both Sterlings and recovered half the stolen diamonds from Ray Senior’s safe. They have an APB out on the men Junior was working with, and Sims is being investigated by IA.”
“Stolen diamonds?” He winced when he realized there’d been a slight hesitation, the smallest hint of unease, in his voice.