by Aubrey Irons
Terror claws at me, silencing me like a hand on my throat as the two henchmen hold me firmly right in front of him.
“No, please,” he smiles wickedly, licking his thin lips. “Please scream for me, little girl.”
My heart thunders in my chest, but I squeeze my mouth shut, sucking in breaths of heavy air through my nose.
“I do so like it when they scream,” he says, his accented voice dripping with malice. I bite hard on my lips, refusing to give him what he wants. He grins wider, his hand comes up, and the cold, naked metal of his knife drags lightly over my cheek.
This time, I do scream.
Chapter Thirty
Connor
The Charger throbs around me as I take the car roaring down the back beach roads, skidding over gravel and sand. I’ve got the windows down, letting the briny sea air blast over my face. I spin the wheel, taking the car roaring around a sandy turn and gunning the engine, blasting down the access road to the old Chatham light-house point.
This has gone from a bad decision, to a worse mistake, to a goddamn disaster. I fucked up when I ignored my own rules and my own instincts that first night. There was one right move that night, and I didn’t take it. The part where I zigged when I should have zagged.
The part where I took her instead of putting a bullet in her.
The very idea of that now - after everything that’s happened, and after opening myself up in a way I literally never have - makes my skin crawl and my jaw clench tight with fury, but it doesn’t change where we are now.
Running out of road, and holding onto just enough rope to fucking hang ourselves with.
The car skids to a stop in the sandy lot next to the old lighthouse. The coast guard built a new one twenty miles east of here about thirty years ago, but I used to come to this one when the Gallagher’s brought us out here when we were kids. The parking lot’s barely a parking lot at this point - more sand than cement, and the old wood posts fence that used to line it and lead to the lighthouse are gnarled, weathered stumps - looking like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.
I kick my boots off and roll my jeans up by the car - me shedding my city-boy armor - before I trudge through the dunes towards the old rusted fence that’s supposed to keep people like me out of the general vicinity of the lighthouse.
Except people like me are pretty fucking bad at following the rules.
Clearly.
I’m desperately wishing that I’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of something with me when I stormed out of the house as I slump against the side of the building. My eyes narrow out on the dark crashing of the surf, my feet digging into the sand and my knees bent.
Hell, jeans, a t-shirt, camped out on the dunes next to this old place - this is basically the same image you’d have seen if you’d spotted me here twenty years ago. Fewer tattoos maybe - fewer scars. Less weight hanging off my shoulders.
I’ve been solving problems and fixing shit since even back then, but it’s only gotten harder and more real as I’ve gotten older.
Guess that’s how life is.
Except here I am the professional problem solver - the guy they call the fix-it man, and I can’t fix this. Because somehow, Sierra Hammond’s become an unfixable problem. She’s become a puzzle with no solution, and as I close my eyes and drop my head back against the lighthouse, I know damn well why.
…Because I don’t want to solve her. I don’t want to “fix” her, because the fucked-up truth is, deep down, she might not be a problem at all.
She might be the damn solution.
She might be the missing part of me that I cut out a long, long time ago. When I got hard, and cold, and calculating, because I had to, that part of me went away. When it was up to me to steal, borrow, and fight for food and money for my brothers and me after both our parents dipped out, something inside of me held up its fists. When I had to fight tooth and nail to keep our heads above the waters, I took the punches life had to give and spit back in its face.
When Sheila started to drift away and shut down - never telling me about the abuse and turning instead to the needle, I started to bruise and bleed.
The day when everything fell apart, I broke. The day they came to take my brother Gray to jail, and the same day Sheila died broken and alone on a flophouse mattress with a needle in her arm, a part of me scared over completely, and I’ve been a cold, calculating, machine-version of myself ever since.
Until about five days ago.
Until the too good, too innocent, too pure, too young, too nothing-I-should-have-a-single-thing-to-do with girl walked right up to me and kissed me.
Lips like whiskey and sin.
Eyes like the very ocean I’m looking at right now.
A touch that soothed the scars I’ve kept covered and hidden for fucking years.
I growl, squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head.
This has to end. Kissing her that night was foolish. Taking her was a mistake. Keeping her was a disaster.
Falling for her was fatal, or at least very well could be.
And this ends right now. No more fucking around with this - no more bullshit, no more secrets and the lies. It’s time to own up to this. Hell, it’s time to get my head out of my ass and start to figure out how I’m going to fix this. And that starts with calling my brother, because family is nothing without openness, especially this one.
I take a deep breath, still wishing for that damn drink as I pull my cell phone out of my pocket.
“How’s the house?”
“Good.”
Liam ignores my sullen tone, or maybe he’s just used to it at this point and doesn’t immediately think something’s wrong when he hears it.
“Damn I miss that place,” he whistles.
“You should take Aela here sometime. She’s been here, what, once? When you two were like eleven?”
He chuckles. “Something like that. Probably when you were going through that fucking basketball jersey craze of yours.”
I grin wryly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Liam bellows a laugh. “Bro, you fucking lived in that Larry Bird jersey.”
“It’s called hometown pride, douche. And I looked tough in that thing.”
“Dude, you were a pimple-faced fifteen-year-old pasty white Irish kid.”
“Hey, least I wasn’t walking around town wearing a fucking Superman cape.”
It’s true. My brother actually did walk around Southie for an entire summer like that when he was ten or so, with Colleen Gallagher’s full approval. It’s a miracle he didn’t get his ass beat for it.
We crack some more jokes, we reminisce on past line-ups and head coaches for the Celtics. And this is another thing that’s just not me.
Small talk.
Hiding behind banter and somehow scared to speak my mind, which is something I never have a problem with. But this is the lead-in, I guess, building up to something I know might fuck some shit up between us.
“Dude, remember when Damien painted his fucking face with-”
“Liam.”
He stops. “What’s up?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“You’ve always felt you were trapped in a man’s body, and you’re going to get some dicey surgery in Thailand in order to finally become the strong, confident woman you’ve always-”
“Shut up.”
I can almost hear him smile, but there’s a coldness in my voice that stops him.
“What’s going on, Con?”
“There’s a girl.”
“Interesting,” my brother says slowly before chuckling. “Well, that’s a good thing, man.”
“Not this one.”
“You all right? Dude, I’m hardly the guy for relationship advice, but if you need to, like, I don’t know, talk about shit or whate-”
“There’s a girl, and she saw me that night.”
There’s a pause. “What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s a
girl who saw me. That night, in the back room at the Rusty Duck, with Mikhail and the Ukrainians.”
And then I tell him everything. I tell him about Sierra barging drunk into the room, and about her watching me cap Anton’s cousin. I close my eyes and sink my head back against the lighthouse as I tell him about grabbing her, and taking her - bound and gagged - back to my place. I tell him how she was my hostage, but how she helped us both escape from the ambush back at the loft, and how we’re both on the run now from this, and about the shit with Marlow and how I’ve just walked out on her. I tell him everything, in fact, except the part where I’ve been screwing her left and right.
I tell him everything except the part where there’s a chance I’ve fallen for the very last girl in the fucking world I should have.
And then we’re quiet, the only sound the waves crashing against the rocky shore.
Finally, Liam whistles lowly.
“Fuck, man. This is a big deal.”
“I know,” I growl through clenched teeth. “Look, I made a mistake, man, and I will fix this.”
“No, Connor,” he sighs. “I mean it’s a big deal to hear you talk about a girl like this.”
“Does it sound like I’m in the mood to fuck around about this right now?”
“No, and I’m not,” Liam spits back. “I mean, shit man, you know who you sound like? You know what pussy you sound like talking about this girl like this?”
I narrow my eyes. “Enlighten me.”
“Me, talking about Aela.”
I crack a quarter smile. “Liam, there is a world of difference between this situation and what you and Aela are.”
“Is there?”
“Goddamn right there is. You and Aela are both Southie born and raised. You’ve both got the Saints in your damn blood.”
“And?”
I spit into the sand. “Could we maybe talk about the bigger issue here? She had a fucking phone from Marlow.”
“You’ve said that already.”
“And you don’t exactly seem as concerned about that as I feel like you should be.”
“Well, did she fucking call him?”
I scowl. “No, he called her.”
“And are the FBI surrounding the beach house right now and hauling you away in irons?”
“That’s not the point, Liam.”
“No, that’s exactly the point, Con,” he tosses back at me. “Marlow’s been crawling up people’s asses the last few weeks, you know that. This is exactly his style. He tried to bribe that chick Damien’s been screwing with fucking jewelry the other day to put a bug in his car. Ian Galway’s grandmother told Marlow to go fuck himself when he tried to tell her what a bad little apple Ian’s been.”
I snort at that one. Greta Galway is old-school Dark Saints, and the idea of Agent Marlow trying to somehow “enlighten” her about her grandson’s wicked ways is actually comical to imagine.
“Dude, this is just part of the game, you know that,” my brother says with a sigh. “And they’re getting bolder and antsier right now because they know that sooner than later, Aela’s going to move us to strictly legit business dealings, and the window for putting our pasty, drunk little Southie asses in jail starts to close. Look, so Marlow fucking cornered her and gave her a phone. She didn’t call him, she obviously didn’t give you up. So what’s the fucking problem?”
“Everything,” I snap. “She’s nothing like this life, and I had no business bringing her into this shit. She’s too fucking innocent, and too smart, and too young, and-”
“Young? Do I need to be worried here?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not Damien. She’s twenty-three.”
“Hardly robbing the cradle, Con.”
“Regardless, she’s got no business getting mixed up in what we do.”
“So cut her loose. If this is no big deal and just some little piece on the side for you, let her go.”
I bristled, my jaw tightening. “I never said she and I were-”
“Fucking?” Liam makes a tsking sound with his teeth. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I’m silent, scowling out at the water.
“Yeah, exactly. So, if you’re just screwing her and you’re this bent out of shape about all of the ways she’s not a Southie chick, then let it go.”
“And if she goes straight to the FBI and starts talking?”
“About what, how small your dick is or that you like to cry while making love?”
“Motherfucker.”
Liam laughs. “Con, I don’t say this often because I know that being wound so tight is kind of your thing, and it’s what makes you fucking great at what you do. But as your brother and not a fellow captain?”
“What,” I growl.
“You need to cool the fuck down. Relax, man. What does she even know? Where you live? Yeah, so does Marlow, apparently.”
“She watched me shoot a man, Liam,” I spit.
“One witness, who was drunk, and who is now completely unusable by any prosecutor in the world because she’s been fucking you, which means she’s compromised.”
We sit in silence for a second, me just staring out at the ocean.
“Been a while since I heard you talking about someone like this, man.”
“It’s nothing,” I growl.
“No, the girls you usually spend all of an hour or two banging - at their place and then never calling again are nothing.”
“She’s just-”
“Connor.”
“What.”
“You can lie to yourself all you want, but don’t lie to me.”
I sigh. “Aela around? I should fill her in on-”
“Don’t worry about Aela. I’ll catch her up.”
“I mean Aela our boss, not Aela your fiancée.”
“Blurred lines, man.”
I grin. “Fine.”
“Look, I can’t tell you what to do here, but I know that in this life of ours, you gotta hang onto the good parts. Jesus, Connor, you need to accept that sometimes, good shit will happen to you. I think you’ve probably forgotten that because you’ve spent the last twenty years fixing everything around you just like I was fighting it all until Aela.”
“It’s family or her, Liam.”
He swears. “It’s not that black and white, you fucker. Nothing is.”
We’re quiet for another minute.
“Sometimes it is,” I finally say quietly.
Liam sighs. “Same old stubborn asshole,” he mutters.
“Like you said, it’s why I’m good at what I do.”
“You deserve something good, Con,” my brother says quietly. “She’s not Sheila.”
I close my eyes, my jaw clenching painfully tight. “I know that.”
“What was going on with her was bigger than something you could just fix.”
“I know th-”
“Do you? You can’t fix the world, Connor.”
“But I can stop making mistakes that mess it up more,” I say evenly.
Mistakes like bringing someone like Sierra into a world like this. Mistakes like letting fucking emotions and my bullshit heart call the shots instead of my head. Instead of reason.
Because the truth of it is, there is no good reason for a girl like that to be anything with a guy like me. I’m too broken, too dirty.
Too dangerous.
And she’s good. She’s good manifested in beautiful, perfect, kind, loving, human form. And being this close to me will only destroy her.
I’ll only destroy her, and there’ll be no fixing things after that. But right there, sitting against the side of the lighthouse I used to explore as a kid, I know what the fix is here. As much as it fucking digs at me, and as much as it claws at something inside of me, I know what the fix is to this problem.
Letting her go.
If I want to protect her, and if I want to save her from the thunderstorm of my life that’ll only twist and drown her, I have to cut her loose.
And that fucking burns.
<
br /> I say goodbye to my brother as I head back to the car. I pull my boots on over sandy feet - the city-boy armor going back on. I drive more like a normal person back to the house - less squealing tires and wild speeds this time. The kitchen light is still on as I pull in and shut off the engine, stepping from the car and heading for the porch.
There’s a tightness in my chest, but I know what I have to do.
I kick sand from my boots as I climb the stairs to the porch and head for the kitchen door, when I suddenly stop, frowning.
The door’s ajar.
I know it’s nothing - I know it’s just that Sierra doesn’t have the same shit as me where closing and locking a door just becomes second nature, even if it is a completely safe beach house way out on the dunes like this. But it doesn’t stop that tingling sensation at the back of my neck, or the fact that I’m suddenly on edge.
I step inside, glancing around.
“Sierra?”
She might be asleep, which somehow irks me even more that she’s got the door ajar. I take a step towards the stairs when my eyes land on the kitchen floor.
And something turns cold inside of me.
There’s shattered glass on the floor, and water pooling across the linoleum.
Water tinged pink.
With blood.
There’s a blinding pain inside, like a bullet moving in slow motion through my chest, tearing its way through me and leaving a gaping wound in its wake. I glance wildly around the small living room, as if I’ve somehow missed her, sitting in a corner or something, or waiting for me on the couch. Something tugs at the corners of my vision, blinding me, and there’s a feeling of weight pushing down on me.
I can’t breathe.
“Sierra!” I roar, thundering through the rest of the downstairs, kicking open closets and almost tearing the bathroom door off it’s goddamn hinges. I storm upstairs and do the same, bellowing her name, but I already know I’m not going to find anything.
Part of me wants to hope she’s just left. Part of me wants to hope that she’s gotten tired of this shit, or that I pushed her too hard about the fucking phone. Or that she’s just decided on her own what I was going to tell her myself when I got back here: that this life is no place for her, and being near me is only going to get her hurt.