Double The Risk

by Samantha Cayto

  Frankie blinked rapidly a few times. “Um, thanks, but I think you know what I’d prefer instead.”

  “Any ticket to any fucking thing in the world is yours.”

  Frankie beamed up at him. “You know what I want.”

  Yeah, Ronan did know. “Lady Gaga it is.”

  With a slap on Frankie’s back that nearly sent the man sprawling, Ronan turned once more to Diego. His partner was smiling, too, relieved as Ronan was that the data hadn’t been lost and hopeful once more that there was something worth seeing on the computer after all. If someone dared to tamper with evidence, they were running scared. Now was not the time to ask for a partner reassignment.

  “Let’s leave Frankie to it,” he suggested.

  “Right.” The one word confirmed Diego was on the same page about putting aside their personal problems for a while.

  “Smart of them to just screw with it instead of taking it outright,” Diego said as they left Frankie.

  “Yeah, there is no way to prove the frying took place here or was part of a virus that was already in the computer when we found it. And, with all the people coming and going here and in the evidence locker, there’s no end of suspects.”

  “I hate the idea of a dirty cop.”

  “Me and you both,” Ronan replied and, of course, it reminded him of his parents. He stopped suddenly and grabbed Diego’s arm. “If Mahurin is behind this cover-up for O’Malley’s murder, it may mean he had something to do with my parents’ murders as well.”

  Diego glanced down at where Ronan held him, and for a second, they were both thinking of the last time Ronan put his hands him. Ronan released him in an instant.

  Diego took a half-step away. “You think dear Uncle Connor was involved in that? Weren’t they friends?”

  Ronan shrugged. “I thought they were. Dad thought they were.” He flashed on his father’s heartsick statements to his mother about rotten cops. Could it have been more personal than blue pride?

  “Let’s hope Frankie finds something,” Diego said in a soft voice that conveyed his sympathy, which made Ronan cringe even as he appreciated it. Diego didn’t dwell on it, however, and Ronan appreciated that even more. “Lady Gaga?”

  With a wry smile, Ronan shrugged again. Shit, if not for the feud over Cassidy, he and Diego would make great partners. He wanted to put the personal stuff aside. He couldn’t. If Cassidy had been what Diego said—a notch on his belt—then okay, he could’ve put it behind them. She wasn’t that, however, and there was no changing the truth.

  They were quiet on the way back to their desks, and Ronan tried to keep himself busy by catching up on loathsome paperwork. He was mindful of Diego’s presence, yet not as resentful as he had been. The job came first, at least for now it did. He felt more than saw or heard his partner rolling his chair closer to Ronan’s. He glanced up. “What’s up?”

  Diego wore an earnest and uncomfortable expression, as if he had a difficult task ahead. Crap. If the guy started in on a conversation about Cassidy, Ronan didn’t think he could keep his shit together.

  Diego cleared his throat. Not a good sign. “I, ah, need to talk to you, but I don’t want to upset you because I could be way off base about this.”

  Christ, Jesus, not now. There was too much going on for a heart-to-heart or fist-to-fist over Cassidy.

  “It’s about your parents.”

  Ronan blinked at his partner a few times in surprise. So, not what he thought.

  “I’ve been doing some math, and it’s not adding up. Assuming that O’Malley dropped off the grid around the time of the murders because he was somehow involved. Which is a big assumption, but my gut’s telling me it’s a good one. Then he was paid off for something by Mahurin or somebody else. Maybe he set your parents up or…” He licked his lips and took his gaze off Ronan for a second. “Maybe he even pulled the trigger.”

  Ronan’s gut tightened, and the pain rolled through him as it always did when he thought of how his parents had died. Daire had been the one to identify the bodies and had kept the details from his younger brothers. Of course, Ronan had looked up the incident report the moment he had access to the file as a cop. Multiple bullet wounds, front-facing so they’d seen it coming. His mother, God, his beautiful mother, had scrapes along her face, arm, and leg where her body had landed on the pavement.

  He closed his eyes a moment to pull himself together. Diego didn’t say anything more, nor did he try to lay a hand on Ronan in comfort. Ronan appreciated the restraint. It almost made him want to forgive the man for Cassidy. Almost.

  He opened his eyes and saw Diego staring back at him, patiently waiting. “Those thoughts have crossed my mind, too. O’Malley was a small timer, though, no violent crimes in his record. As disgusting a thought as it is, Mahurin would have been better suited to murder than O’Malley.”

  Diego nodded. “Maybe he just provided information.”

  Ronan tapped his finger on the arm of his chair. “On the other hand, with the right incentive a man can do anything and using him would have been a smart move. My father would never have expected him to be a trigger man.”

  “I thought that, too. The thing is even a double murder doesn’t pay out what O’Malley has been spending for the last eight years.” Diego leaned back in his chair. “Like I said, I’ve been doing the math, and rent, food, cable, porn, and the occasional call girl adds up to a lot even when done modestly. This isn’t exactly Day of the Jackal stuff. Even a professional hit man isn’t going to score big enough on one job to retire.”

  “You think he was taking other jobs all these years and not getting caught?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of blackmail.”

  “Huh.” Ronan thought about it a minute. “How could he get away with it? I don’t think he was very bright and hanging out in Boston and blackmailing Mahurin or whoever pulled his strings to begin with? That’s crazy. They would have tracked him down.”

  “They did track him down. It just took a long time. Remember Colleen being hassled by cops over the years, looking for him, even though he’d been laying low? Hiding in plain sight is a cliché for a reason, and it might have taken a few years before he started needing more money, right about the time he sent his sister that letter, I’ll wager. He paid cash for everything as near as I can tell—no bank accounts, no credit cards. He got delivery a lot from the looks of his garbage and ordered his entertainment in, too.”

  “All right, I can see it, I suppose. But once they found him, why not make his body disappear? Why go to the trouble of making it seem like he was a vagrant?”

  Diego made a sound of frustration. “That’s the part that doesn’t make any sense. Unless.”

  “Unless?”

  “His death is a warning to others.”

  “What others?” Even as he asked the question, he answered it in his mind. “My father was looking into something, something involving police corruption. Bad cops, plural. I overheard him talking to my mother a few months before they were killed.” His voice caught on the last word, and he had to swallow a few times to continue. “Anyway, it sounded like there was a network of bad cops he knew and had respected, like Mahurin, I guess. It really bothered him because he cared so much about the integrity of the badge, you know?”

  “Yeah, I get it. It makes my blood boil, too.”

  Before either of them could say anything more, Ronan got a text. Pulling out his phone, he saw it was Frankie.

  Got something!

  Ronan jumped up. “Frankie.”

  He didn’t need to say more. Diego tore after him as Ronan raced to the lab. Frankie was sitting with a shit-eating grin on his face when they arrived.

  “I knew all that porn watching would pay off in the end.”

  He swiveled around to his desk top computer where he’d attached the external hard drive with the O’Malley files. He pressed a key and sat back to watch. Ronan and Diego crowded around him.

  At first it was a typical porno scene wi
th lots of hard, sweaty flesh and lackluster moaning. Then it switched suddenly to grainy black and white footage. Ronan and Diego both leaned in closer to make sense of the poor quality film. The scene was some alleyway between row houses that could have been Boston. It was hard to tell. A man came round the corner of one house and leaned against the outside. A few seconds ticked by before another man approached. There was a brief verbal exchange that couldn’t be heard above the ambient noise of the street. Something passed between them, although what was impossible to tell. It looked like a small package. The man receiving whatever it was turned enough as he left for his face to be visible for a few seconds.

  “Freeze it!” Ronan barked a second before Diego said the same.

  The two of them leaned over Frankie even more so that their faces were inches from the screen. Ronan’s stomach lurched at the sight, but he wasn’t really surprised. Standing back, he gave his partner a grim look. “Mahurin, the fucking asshole.”

  “Looks to me he was taking a bribe or something.”

  “Or something. That confirms our suspicions, or at least it does for me. Mahurin was one of the dirty cops my father was referring to. I can’t believe O’Malley was clever enough to get this footage and embed it into one of his downloads.”

  Frankie swung around to face them and pushed at his glasses with his finger. “He probably had some neighborhood kid do it. Any high schooler taking comp sci could manage it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s there, and whoever fried the netbook was right to worry there was something incriminating.” He glanced at Diego. “Strengthens your idea about blackmail.”

  “There may be more, too. Is that the end of the files?” Diego asked Frankie.

  “No, there’s more.”

  “Please, keep looking,” Ronan said. “There may be other footage embedded.”

  Frankie made a face. “Whatever you say, but this is kind of putting me off porn, like smoking too many cigarettes at once.”

  Ronan slapped the tech on the shoulder. “Sorry, pal. And thanks. This is huge. Keep it to yourself, though. I don’t want anyone to realize what we’ve found until we confront this guy.”

  “Sure, whatever.” Frankie turned back and hit play. Porno music started up again.

  Ronan shot Diego an evil grin. “Let’s go talk to dear Uncle Connor.”

  ****

  Diego held on for dear life, his default position when riding with his partner. He’d almost offered to drive, then thought better of it. Ronan was a good cop, and Diego didn’t want to imply otherwise. Even though this thing with O’Malley and Mahurin were pushing a lot of hot emotional buttons for Ronan, he could handle it. If Diego had really thought he couldn’t, he’d have said something back at the station. As opposed to discussing Cassidy, which was something they should do as two mature adults but probably wouldn’t.

  It sucked that she’d tossed them both, although it confirmed his view of her as being a nice person as well as a tempting woman. The idea of losing her ate at him. It shouldn’t matter as much as it did given how little time they’d spent with each other. A couple of dates, three if you counted the birthday party. That wasn’t exactly a forever scenario, and yet that was how it felt, as if he’d lost someone really important and special in his life. The damn thing of it was, he saw the same feeling in Ronan’s eyes. It had been a low blow to accuse the man of only looking for a conquest. Although he’d meant it when he said it, he realized he’d been wrong. Ronan was hurting over Cassidy, too.

  Diego had gone into work with the intent of asking the lieutenant for a new partner, even knowing it would look bad. He was already fighting the perception that he couldn’t hack it as a cop because of the effect the shooting had on him. Asking for a change after one week would make him look like a basket case. And yet, the idea of working with Ronan had curdled in his stomach. Funny how the issue with the netbook and now the chance of making real progress had shoved everything else in the background. He wanted to solve this murder and the old Callaghan ones so much he could taste it. There’d be time later to fret over the Cassidy problem.

  Ronan turned off the expressway with enough speed to make the wheels screech. Diego tightened his hold on the “oh shit” handle. They headed into a part of Boston that quickly took on more of a suburban feel. He was glad Ronan knew his way around the city. His network of contacts within the force was impressive as well.

  It hadn’t taken more than a single discreet phone call to learn Mahurin had called in sick for what was supposed to be his first day back from vacation. It was easy to look up the guy’s address, and with luck, he’d be there. Neither Diego nor Ronan believed he was really sick so much as laying low because of the computer corruption, although what he hoped to achieve by hiding out remained to be seen. A smarter move would have been to act normally, not that Diego believed at this point he was dealing with smart people. Missing the computer had been stupid, and frying it proved to be a day late and a dollar short.

  “His house is in the next block,” Ronan said, slowing down the car. He took the corner at a quieter and more sedate pace, then cursed.

  Diego followed his partner’s gaze and saw Mahurin getting into a car. “God damn it, he was tipped off!”

  “Not by Frankie, I’d swear to that. There are too many rats apparently running around to keep anything quiet.”

  Ronan sped up once more and tried to block Mahurin in. Too late. The other car pealed out from the curb and roared down the narrow street.

  “Fuck, he spotted us.” Ronan practically stood up as he jammed the gas pedal down hard. His car flew forward, closing the gap with the other car.

  Mahurin wasn’t going to go quietly and obviously knew they were after him. There was no other explanation for the high speed chase he was leading them on. The cars barreled through the neighborhood. Diego grabbed the magnetic beacon and pressed it onto the roof of the car while Ronan hit the siren, although announcing themselves made no impression on Mahurin. No surprise there, but it did hopefully warn others away. At this speed, pedestrians and vehicles were at risk.

  Ronan deftly maneuvered around all obstacles. Their quarry didn’t seem to have the same qualms about causing danger to others. Diego winced as the other car came within a hair’s breadth of a parked car. Then his heart lurched into his throat when a couple started to enter a cross walk just as Mahurin raced by. They leaped out of the way with a second to spare and a startled yell.

  “He’s heading to the expressway,” Ronan said, slapping the steering wheel. “If he gets on we’ll have a harder time catching him.”

  Diego spared Ronan a glance. “You have a plan to stop that?”

  “Yeah, catch up with him.” By some unseen magic, Ronan pulled more horse power out of his car and managed to get close enough to Mahurin’s that he tapped the bumper.

  Diego grunted at the impact but otherwise said nothing. He understood that a greater need drove Ronan to catch Mahurin than Diego’s. And he admired his partner’s superior driving skills. He knew his vehicle and was keeping it under control. The same could not be said for Mahurin. The older cop took a corner too fast and, with the same kind of slow motion horror Diego remembered from the night of the shooting, the inevitable bad thing played out.

  The car flipped and rolled, crashing into another car parked on the side of the street. The sound of screeching metal made Diego wince. There was a chain reaction of cars being shoved this way and that. Mahurin’s kept rolling in the ensuing melee until it was right side up. Its journey ended when it skidded against a street light. Ronan deftly brought his car to a stop a few feet away from the first wreck and jumped out. Diego was right behind him.

  With his gun at the ready, Ronan ran to the driver’s side of Mahurin’s car. He peered into the window, then holstering his gun again, wrenched open the dented door. Diego had his gun out as well and kept it trained on the car as he watched his partner struggle to get the door fully open. Mahurin lay against the back of his seat, blood stre
aming down his face. The damn idiot hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt from what Diego could see. As Ronan crouched down to talk to the older cop, Diego called in for an ambulance.

  There was a roar of fury, and Ronan leaned into the car, his hands fisting the other man’s shirt.

  Diego holstered his gun and quickly loomed over his partner. “Ronan, what the fuck?”

  “Don’t you dare die on me, you miserable fucker!” Ronan yelled, his face inches from Mahurin’s. Ronan shook the guy. “Do you hear me? You can’t tell me that and die.”

  Reaching down, Diego took hold of Ronan’s arms. “Jesus, Ronan, stop. If he’s not dead already, you’re going to kill him.”

  Diego yanked on Ronan to pull him back. With his grip still tight on Mahurin’s shirt, any movement of Ronan brought the dirty cop with him. Diego changed tactic and moved over to clasp one of Ronan’s hands instead. He had to pry the fingers loose using both of his hands. As soon as he did, he wedged his body between Ronan and the car to keep him from grabbing on again as Diego worked on the other hand. Sirens wailed in the distance. Thank God backup was on its way, but he couldn’t let anyone else see his struggle with Ronan. Bad enough that a crowd of gawkers had convened.

  Ronan was like a madman, thrashing against Diego, desperate to get to Mahurin again. Diego was pretty sure the older man was dead, but there was no reasoning with his partner. So he didn’t even try. He just used his superior strength to push Ronan away from the car. It was like being back in high school football practice and shoving the tackling dummy. He barely managed to get Ronan back to their car just as the first cruiser and the EMTs arrived. The uniforms did their job without being told, cordoning off the spectators and giving the EMTs a clear path. Knowing everything else was under control, Diego concentrated on his partner.

  “Ronan, stop,” he ordered as he pressed the other man against the car on the passenger’s side. It was the farthest from the scene. He didn’t want to be overheard and hoped none of the other cops would notice the weirdness playing out. Ronan’s chest rose and fell on harsh breaths, and his whole body trembled. Slowly, though, he stopped fighting Diego. And just like that, he seemed to deflate. Diego opened the door to the back seat and nudged Ronan to sit down sideways.