Straight From the Heart

by Sam Burns

  Liam considered that carefully. He didn’t want to say anything that would make Quinn think badly of Alex, but he sure as hell didn’t want to lie to the man either. “He seems like a good kid. Apparently, he’s in a band. He plays bass.”

  Quinn gave a pleased smile, and it made him look years younger. “Now that’s unexpected. Is he any good?”

  Shrugging, Liam swallowed his bite of toast before answering. “I haven’t heard them. They were just having a party at the bar last night, and some of their conversation got loud. One of the girls said something about it.”

  Owen folded his newspaper and set it aside, giving Liam the same look as before. “You were listening?”

  “Like I said,” Liam answered. “They were loud. They drank a good bit.”

  “I doubt Donny came away with that much information,” Owen said, refusing to give an inch.

  Liam rolled his eyes at the mention of the other man. “I doubt Donny came away with much more than a drunk, blonde girl and maybe the clap.” He figured telling the Quinn family about Donny’s uselessness was the least the jackass deserved. Turnabout was fair play and all that.

  “That sounds like him,” Owen admitted, then turned to his father. “I know you trust his uncle, which I still have reservations about, but Donny is completely useless, Dad.”

  Quinn nodded, seeming to consider the words, but he didn’t say anything. Liam had the feeling that his loyalty to Donny’s uncle meant more to him than Donny’s uselessness. The well-known brotherly relationship between Quinn and Donny’s uncle Patty had been one of the reasons the department had chosen Patty as Liam’s entry point into the family.

  Owen accepted the defeat with more grace than he’d otherwise shown, and turned back to look at Liam. “My brother Keegan owns a bar with live music, you know.”

  Liam raised an eyebrow in question.

  “If your mar—friend’s band is any good, he might book them to play.” After speaking, Owen sighed and gave Liam an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. I’m not used to Dad’s ‘perfectly nice boys’ actually being nice.”

  Mickey made a sound of protest, but then stopped to think and shrugged. “Fair enough,” he whispered, mostly for Liam’s benefit.

  Liam snorted at Mickey before turning back to the younger Quinn. “I’ll tell him about it. Maybe call your brother too.”

  He got the bar’s address and phone number from Owen. It was in an upscale part of town that got a lot of tourist traffic. He wasn’t sure giving the information to Alex was a great idea, but it wasn’t a bad thing to have, just in case.

  The rest of breakfast was quiet, but less awkward. Owen actually left his newspaper aside and ate his eggs, which seemed to brighten his father’s mood. Brendan Quinn didn’t have a reputation for acting violently on whims, but Liam figured that putting the man in a good mood couldn’t hurt anything.

  Taking care of Alex full-time was an odd assignment, and he wasn’t sure if it was going to help him improve his place in the world or not, but there was only one way to find out.

  At least he wasn’t going to get shot at breakfast.

  Lunch remained to be seen.

  He was still full from breakfast with Quinn when lunchtime rolled around, but lunch itself was unavoidable.

  After a taxi, a mile walk, and another taxi, he found himself in a tiny hole-in-the-wall taqueria in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. It was too bad he was still full, since he loved the place.

  Casey was sitting in the back corner, already eating her shredded chicken tacos. She gave him a tiny nod as he walked in, then looked at the counter. Right, order.

  He filled out one of the little paper order forms, asking for a bottle of water and two tacos, and waited for his food while pretending not to watch the door. Five minutes later, no one had come in, and the girl behind the counter handed him a tray with his order. She gave him a sweet smile that he returned in kind. There was no harm in a little light flirting.

  Then he took his tray over and sat down next to his partner. He put the tray down in the middle of the table, set his elbows on the edge, and dropped his head in his hands.

  “Bad week?” she asked. “You look a little rough even without the theatrics.”

  Turning to give her a glare, he let his hands fall away and dragged the tray toward himself. Maybe he wasn’t as full as he’d thought. He planned on running his usual ten miles later that day. He could afford a meal he didn’t technically need. The tacos were really good.

  “I may have totally screwed up,” he said, using the same tone he would have used to discuss the weather.

  She just lifted an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

  “You know that job I’ve worked with Donny O’Hanrahan a couple of times? Watching some kid?” he asked. When she nodded, he continued. “There was a whole dramatic thing last night. I saved the kid from a mugging, and then took him home to sleep one off. Quinn seems to think it’s great, and assigned me to do it full-time.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Jesus, Liam, you never do anything halfway, do you? You picked the kid up?”

  “I did not! He was drunk and almost got mugged. I helped him.” Liam took a bite to stem the flow of words before he said something stupid. He wasn’t the sort of man who chattered his way into revealing secrets, but Casey was scary good at wheedling information out of people.

  She only waited for a moment before shaking her head and moving on. “Okay, we work with that, then. Any idea why Quinn wants him watched?”

  Liam shook his head. “Not a one. He’s a college dropout who plays bass in a band. Got disowned yesterday, apparently. I can’t see any reason Quinn would give a damn. He asked specifically about him, though, like he had a personal interest. Asked me to talk about him.”

  “Huh,” Casey said. She took a drink from her bottle of off-brand diet cola, mulling it over.

  He shuddered, poking the bottle before she jerked it away from him. “Don’t know how you can drink that stuff.”

  She looked down at it and shrugged. “Call me an addict. It’s a step down from the energy drinks I used to inhale when I was on vice, and it’s cheap. What can I say? I like carbonation.” After staring at the bottle for a few seconds, she looked back up at Liam. “What was his name?”

  “Alex Sage,” he answered automatically. “He was drunk, so it took some work to get any kind of name from him, but that was what I got.”

  “You can’t make things easy, can you?” She asked, sighing. “You have to impress Quinn in a way that gets you stuck doing something semi-legal.”

  He shrugged. “Sorry?”

  “Sounds like you did the right thing,” she told him, then quickly amended herself. “Assuming you were thinking with your head and not your dick.”

  Giving her a scowl, he stuffed the rest of his first taco in his mouth and didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure what the answer would be, so it was probably for the best.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m going to take that as an, ‘I was kind of thinking with both, Case, so don’t be pissed at me.’ And then you’re going to give me those adorable kitten eyes, and I’ll melt.”

  When he batted his eyes at her obligingly, she swatted his arm with the back of her hand.

  She grabbed a napkin and started systematically tearing it to strips. When she needed to think something through, she had to keep her hands busy. “Okay. So it’s kind of a promotion for you. You said Quinn seemed happy. That’s an in. You playing babysitter to some cute kid isn’t going to get us any closer to the bad guys, though, Liam.”

  He shrugged helplessly, still chewing.

  “Okay, well, gaining trust is good. If we don’t start getting answers, though, the lieutenant’s gonna pull you.” There was no reason to have a man in danger if he wasn’t in a position to get the information they needed. He’d been at it six months and hadn’t found anything substantial yet. She started lining the shreds up in a row between them. “I’m gonna look this kid up. Alex Sage. Can’t be too ma
ny of them in Chicago, can there?”

  “I can’t imagine so,” he agreed. “And I know, about the lieutenant. Just—just tell him I think this is something important. And that’s coming from my instincts, not my dick.”

  She cracked a smile. “I’m sure he’ll be reassured by that.”

  “He should be. I’m sure the guns are coming from the Quinn organization somehow,” he said. “I know it. I just don’t think the old man is involved. He’s too set in his ways to change the business at this point. I’m still leaning to Patty O’Hanrahan, but maybe one of Quinn’s sons.”

  “Our information says the older one is out of the business. There was a shooting, and a trial, and he was just too hot to be in charge of anything for a while,” she told him. “And the younger one is at school, studying—get this—criminal justice.”

  Liam considered that for a moment before nodding. “That actually fits with my impression of him. He called Mickey and me thugs today.”

  “Michael Martin is a thug. He’s a mid-level enforcer.”

  “Like me,” Liam pointed out.

  She lowered her voice. “You’re a cop, Collins, not a damned mob goon. Don’t let Brendan Quinn’s charming smile make you forget that.”

  Snatching up her strips of napkin to get her full attention, Liam gave her a hard stare. “You know I wouldn’t. I’m not one of them. I just think Mickey’s more than that. His father worked for Quinn, so he does too. It’s a family business. He didn’t have a lot of choice.”

  Her expression turned sympathetic, and she put a hand on the one he’d grabbed her paper with. Still, her words allowed for no confusion. “That doesn’t make him any less a criminal, Liam. Whatever you’re doing for the sake of your cover, you’re trying to stop guns from flowing into the city. He’s just using those damned guns to hurt people.” She opened her bottle of cola and took a violent swig, then almost coughed on it. “I don’t want you comparing yourself to him. Nothing good comes of that, and if you don’t keep your head on straight, I’m gonna ask Lieutenant Washington to pull you.”

  He nodded, feeling properly rebuked. She was right, of course. He was getting too deep into his cover. Making friends was a bad idea in jobs like the one he was working, and he needed to remember that. There was no Liam Kennedy, and Liam Collins wasn’t friends with Mickey Martin. Mickey would sell him out in a second if he knew that his partner was actually a CPD detective.

  Casey waited to make sure he wasn’t going to speak, then went on. “You just work on the kid. You say he doesn’t seem like a criminal, so there’s no harm in taking care of him. Try to get in tighter with the Quinn family. I’ll look into your boy, and see if I can come up with anything useful for you.”

  Not trusting himself to answer, he nodded again.

  “See you next week then. We doing Chinese?” she asked with a genuine grin.

  She loved the Chinese place where they met, and he kind of did too. They agreed on a restaurant for the next week at each meet so there wouldn’t be any pattern, but they seemed to do the Chinese place more often than the others. He wished he could talk her into adding an Indian place to their list. Maybe Thai. She needed to expand her horizons.

  His answering smile was weak. “Sure. Chinese.”

  “I’m sorry, Liam,” she told him, her face turning soft and sympathetic again. “I just need you to be careful. I need to not lose my partner.”

  “I know. I’ll get myself together.” His hand went instinctively to the phone in his pocket, despite the fact that he’d removed the battery before heading out for the meet. He thought of Keegan Quinn’s phone number, programmed in just a few hours earlier, and steeled his resolve. “I have an idea on how to get closer to the Quinns and do the job the old man has given me at the same time.”

  “Fantastic,” she said, standing and gathering her trash. “Be careful, partner. I’ll see you in a week.”

  “A week,” he confirmed. “Chinese.”

  3

  Alex's Morning After

  Alex wasn’t sure what to expect at the twins’ place the next morning. He’d been planning on waking up on their couch. But of course, things hadn’t exactly gone to script.

  He re-read the text message he had sent the night before, as well as the multiple responses from Jenna. Who was he leaving with? What was his name? Where were they going? Would he send a picture of the guy, just in case he turned out to be a lunatic? He’d had a lot to drink, was he sure about this?

  From Jake, there had just been one message.

  Wait. You’re gay?

  Those three words were a little frightening.

  He hadn’t given his sexuality a lot of thought before the previous night. It hadn’t seemed important, given all the things he had to do. He’d never been driven to find a girl—or boy—to explore it with. Liam had just kind of fallen into his lap, and Liam was sexuality that positively demanded to be explored.

  But he hadn’t ever discussed it with Jake. Jake, the man who had changed his whole life for the better, who had given him an entire universe that he’d never noticed before. Jake, his best friend.

  There was no way that Jake was a homophobe. It wasn’t possible. Someone so open-hearted couldn’t dislike any kind of love.

  It was possible that Jake would think Alex hadn’t been comfortable confiding in him. Possible that Alex had hurt Jake’s feelings by keeping something from him, even though Alex himself hadn’t known. Not a lot of things really bothered Alex, but the notion of his best friend hurting was one of them.

  Liam’s place was pretty far from the bar, but fortunately it was close to a green line stop. He took the train to the stop closest to Jake and Jenna’s apartment, but the half-mile walk from there took more than forty minutes. It wasn’t a busy sidewalk or anything, but Alex was dreading arrival.

  Even if Jake wasn’t hurt, there would be Jenna to contend with. She was sure to have a million and a half questions, each more awful and invasive than the last. Before they were done, she’d be asking him for sex tips, and he still hadn’t even had sex. He didn’t want to tell her that, though.

  The elevator was broken, as usual, and for once, it was a good thing instead of a mildly annoying one. Four flights of stairs were good for the soul. And the quads, or whatever.

  He almost paused at the door, but then rolled his eyes at his ridiculous hesitation. He knocked firmly.

  The door across the hall jerked open an inch, and Alex smiled and waved. “Morning, Mrs. Patterson.”

  The elderly lady nodded and then closed her door again. Jake had told him she’d been robbed some years earlier, so she didn’t leave her apartment much anymore, and didn’t like when strange people came onto their floor. He always felt a tiny bit guilty for causing her stress when he came knocking.

  A second later, the apartment door was yanked open and there was Jenna. She had the strangest look on her face, like she was his mother and he’d just arrived back from his first day of school—that was an analogy he didn’t want to follow any further.

  She grabbed him and pulled him into a hug. “Look at you! Our little baby’s all grown up!” she squealed, her voice pitched far too high for his hangover, even as minor as it was. Apparently she was okay with the analogy, so much so that she’d come to it independently.

  “Jeez Jen, leave him be.” Jake was standing in the door to his bedroom in sweats and a t-shirt, looking rumpled. “It’s too early in the morning for you to go all hypersonic, dammit.”

  She pulled back from Alex, petting his head and standing between him and Jake as though protecting him. “You’re just jealous that somebody got laid last night and it wasn’t you.”

  Jake’s lips turned down, and Alex’s stomach sank.

  There was a long moment of silence in the apartment, before Jenna threw her hands up and flounced toward the kitchen. It would have worked better on someone shorter or less graceful, but Jenna made it look like it was some kind of ballet step, and that worked for her.

  Ale
x watched her go, his head cocked to one side.

  “You okay?” Jake asked, shuffling through the room in Alex’s general direction. “You don’t look too bad. Confused, maybe?”

  Alex nodded. “Jenna’s hot, right?”

  “Ew, man, that’s my sister,” Jake said, miming a gag. “I don’t want to know if anyone finds her hot, ever.”

  Alex cringed at that. “No! I didn’t mean that I—I meant to say that from an outside standpoint, like a random straight dude on the street, he’d say that Jenna’s hot?”

  Jake considered that for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “Yeah. He’d say that, I’d threaten to hit him, Jenna would get pissy with me, Els would laugh her ass off, and you’d drag us all away so there was no fighting.”

  It was a spot-on description of how such a thing would go, and it made Alex smile. He looked to the kitchen, where Jenna was floating around making coffee and toast, then at Jake again.

  “Nothing?” Jake asked.

  Alex shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s because I don’t like girls, or if it’s just that she’s like a sister to me.”

  “Good,” Jake said, nodding. “I’d hate to have to kick your ass. As your best friend, I’d have to follow up by kicking my own ass, and that’s just a pain.”

  “In the ass?” Alex asked just as Jenna came back into the room.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t let me interrupt. Do tell us all about things in asses.” When they both turned to her with a glare, she threw her hands up. “Okay, okay, no sex jokes. I just came to ask if everyone wants toast, or if something stronger is in order. Eggs? Bacon?” Jake gave her a queasy look, so she added, “Lukewarm pork?” then darted back into the kitchen before he could find something to throw at her.

  Jake took a deep breath and leaned against the couch. “You okay?”

  “Am I okay?” Alex asked, confused. “I’ve been worried about you all morning.”

  “Obviously,” Jake agreed. “Because I’m the one who got drunk and left the bar with a stranger last night. A stranger that my friends didn’t even see, but whom the bartender described as ‘a big guy, you know, mean looking’ and then made a hand gesture to indicate that the dude was like seven feet tall.”