I tugged my cell out of my back pocket and pushed the speed dial feature.
“We’ve got a problem.”
The kid stared at me, clearly unsure what to do. “You can go,” I told him.
“Are you sure? You’re really hurt.”
“If you tell anyone what you saw, I’ll kill you in your sleep. I used to rent your room, so I can do it.”
He stared at me through wide eyes before he quickly turned and rushed back toward his building. I would have laughed if the pain in my shoulder hadn’t become incredibly intense.
“What do you want me to do?” Ian asked.
***
I put off calling Stacy until I knew a friend was close to her place. I didn’t want her to be alone when she found out what’d happened. I was sitting on the low table in a veterinarian’s office, trying to ignore the smell of wet dog that permeated the air. The vet, someone Pops knew from one of the deep, dark avenues of his past, was cleaning the wound in my shoulder.
“Stacy, are you there?”
“What happened?”
“I was ambushed on the street. I’m fine, but we’re going to have to move. I have a friend coming to pick you up.”
“A friend?”
“You can trust him. He’ll take you to the house in Connecticut.”
“But Killian—?”
“It’s fine, Stacy. I’m okay. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
I hung up, the pain in my shoulder was so bad that I could feel my stomach turning in on itself. The vet, a pretty woman about my age, whispered an apology as she poured more alcohol on the wound.
“Do you have to do that? Aren’t bullet wounds fairly sterile by nature?”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got pieces of fiber from your clothes imbedded in there. If we don’t get them out, you’ll have to be hospitalized to treat the infection.”
I half nodded, groaning as she picked up a long set of tweezers to pick at the fibers. It was probably the most painful thing I’d ever experienced in my life. The last time my father had the forethought to provide me with plenty of booze before he let a vet go at it.
My phone rang as she moved behind me to pick at the back of the wound.
“Ian. Did you tell Pops?”
“He thinks it might have been the Italians.”
“I don’t know who it was, but I’m not leaving Stacy here alone.”
“No, Pops wants the two of you home as quickly as possible.”
“I’ve got a place. I’m taking her there, but we’ll be in touch.”
“This has to be dealt with, Killian. Pops is going to want to talk to you.”
“I know. I’ll be in touch.”
I hung up, biting down on my finger as the vet picked deeper into the wound.
“Are you almost done?”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she dug deeper and deeper. My head was spinning and my vision darkened. It was almost a relief when she came back around and prepared the needle to suture the wound. “I don’t have any anesthetic.”
I shook my head. “Just get it over with.”
Her hand shook as she prepared the needle. Then she moved close to me, standing between my legs so that she could get a good look at the wound. It was almost intimate. I might have felt guilty if it weren’t for the fact that I was simply trying not to pass out.
It took fifteen stitches, front and back. I managed to stay upright the whole time, but I was fucking glad when it was over.
The vet handed me a bottle of pills. “Take two now, then one every twelve hours until they’re gone.”
“Thanks.” I took her hand in mine, the bottle of pills still clutched between her fingers. “Am I your first human patient?”
She nodded, tears suddenly flooding her eyes. “I owed someone a favor…”
“I know.” I kissed her cheek lightly. “Thanks.”
My car was waiting outside, brought by the same friend who should, at that moment, be loaded with Stacy into another car and hitting the highway, taking her to my house in Connecticut. I turned the car, headed back into the city. I had somewhere I needed to be before I could join her.
There was something about Davis’ murder that bothered me. I’d talked with the witnesses and spoke to the cops. They all said the same things, described everything the same way.
He was walking down an alley beside his building and a man stepped out of the shadows wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans. Davis spoke to him. One witness said he greeted him as though they knew each other. Another said he couldn’t hear what Davis said, but he didn’t seem startled. The man never touched Davis and never came more than a few feet from him. He just emptied his gun into Davis’ chest for no apparent reason. The cops said Davis still had his wallet in his pocket even though it was overflowing with credit cards and nearly a thousand dollars in cash.
It sounded a lot like what had just happened to me tonight.
I’d always suspected that Davis was killed by a hitman. It confused me that he appeared to greet his attacker. Did that mean he knew the man who killed him? And, if he did, what did that say about who Davis was? He clearly couldn’t be just a mild-mannered college professor if he knew the man who killed him, especially if that man was a professional hitman as I suspected he was.
I had to talk to my connection at the police department.
He was waiting for me, parked on a dark street in Queens. He came over to my car and slipped a file folder through my window.
“You know I can get in trouble for showing this to you. Again.”
“The case is cold. No one’s going to care.”
“That’s what you think. My sergeant is always watching me, like he expects me to fuck up or something.”
“You have to admit, you were never exactly the straightest arrow in the quiver.”
“But I’m a cop now. I have to try.”
I smiled at the thought that my buddy, Chris, had grown out of his teen rebelliousness—he was the one who introduced me to marijuana when I was fifteen and the one who managed to get us caught breaking into the school when we were seventeen—and became a cop. If our juvenile records hadn’t been expunged, neither one of us would have escaped the old neighborhood. Not that I’d gone far.
I opened the file and searched through it until I found the composite that one of the eyewitnesses had worked with an artist to produce. It was a little crude, but the face was familiar. It was the same man who’d shot me.
Fuck!
What had Davis gotten us all pulled into? And how was I supposed to explain to Stacy that all of this was connected somehow?
Chapter 15
Stacy
I paced the living room, jumping every time there was the slightest noise or a light in the front yard. It was never him. There was just this stranger sitting in a chair across the room, staring at his phone as if nothing was unusual about the things that had happened tonight.
“What did he tell you?”
The guy looked up, his eyebrows rising slightly. “He said he needed me to bring you here.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“But he was hurt?”
“I don’t know. All he said was that he needed you brought here.”
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. He’d already told me I couldn’t use the phone, but it’d been hours, and there was no sign of Killian. I needed to know what the hell was happening.
Clearly it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. He was still alive. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Killian’s henchman grabbed the phone and tugged it out of my hand.
“You can’t do that.”
“That’s my phone.”
“Killian doesn’t want you talking to anyone until he gets here.”
“Do you realize who you’re talking to?” I demanded. “I have a right to know what’s going on!”
“I can only tell you what he told me. That’s all I know.”
; I turned away, beginning to pace again. Lights flooded the front of the room, someone turning into the driveway from the street. I ran for the door, but the stranger grabbed my arm and pulled me back. But even he couldn’t hold me when I saw Killian’s face in the dim light of the car’s dome.
I don’t know what I was feeling as I ran to him. Relief? Disappointment? Fear? Pleasure? I don’t know. But I knew I wanted to touch him; I wanted to make sure he was whole. He was pale, but he smiled when I came around the car and threw my arms around him. He held me tight, his warmth and his power surrounding me.
He was okay, and I was glad.
“What happened? Why am I here? Are you okay?”
He touched a finger to my lips. “We’ll talk in a minute. But first, I need to talk to Sergio.”
“Is that his name?”
Killian moved around me and approached the stranger still standing in the doorway. They spoke for a long moment, and Killian handed him something. Then Sergio was gone, retreating through the house then leaving in the car he’d parked in the garage. Killian moved his car, too, locking it up tight in the garage before taking my hand and leading the way upstairs.
I could see the pain and the exhaustion on his face before I saw the hole torn in the shoulder of his jacket. He shrugged it off, his arm barely moving. There was blood on his shirt, some of it old, some new. I couldn’t help the little shriek that slipped from between my lips.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
I went to him and peeled the shirt away, shocked by the amount of blood oozing out from under the wet bandage covering a huge portion of his shoulder.
“Did you go to a butcher or something?”
“I’ve been moving it too much.”
I tugged at the edges of the bandage, pulling it free. There were stitches, but blood was slowly seeping from between them like liquid out of a cheap storage bag. I grabbed the first aid kit from the bathroom, searching through it for alcohol and clean bandages. Killian groaned a little, but otherwise he sat perfectly still, the color seeping from his face.
I made him take a couple of aspirin when I was done and pushed him back against the pillows, taking his shoes off so that he might be comfortable. Well, at least a little less uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he said softly, his eyes closing.
“What happened?”
“We got our wish. We’re going to have to stay here for at least a week, maybe longer. Ian wants me to heal a little before we head to Boston.”
“Who shot you, Killian?”
He peeked at me from under his eyelashes. “You were right. This life is a dangerous one.”
He was asleep almost immediately, soft snores slipping from his long, patrician nose. I lay my hand on his chest and felt his heart pounding underneath. He was still alive, still strong, still filled with vitality. He was still my Killian, still the older brother who protected me from my own fears, still the man who fell in love with me when he thought it was wrong. He was still the man who took my virginity and shared my bed every night for the last three weeks, the man who asked me to marry him not even a full twenty-four hours ago.
He was mine. I don’t know how it happened, or why, but he was mine. I wasn’t going to lose him now, not after this. I wasn’t going through this again.
I’d have to get my revenge some other way.
It wasn’t even Killian I blamed anymore. It was Brian. And I knew all of Brian’s weaknesses. I’d get my revenge. Just not like this.
***
I slipped out of the house the moment I knew Killian was sound asleep and resting comfortably. I didn’t want him to wake and find me gone, so I walked quickly, finding a quiet spot in the backyard to do what I needed to do.
The internet was a little slow, but Skype worked just fine.
“You didn’t say that he was a fighter.”
I stared at the empty chair that appeared on the other side of the line, wishing that he would show me his face. The first time I spoke to him, I was glad there was no face to put the name and the voice to. I didn’t want to know the face of the man I was hiring to kill my fiancé’s murderer. I didn’t want that memory returning to me late at night when I couldn’t ignore the guilt that would come with the idea that I was responsible for the death of another human being. I was okay going through with it; I just didn’t want that face haunting me.
But now? I wanted to know he was hearing me. I wanted to see it in his eyes.
“I’m calling it off.”
“Why? Because he walked away tonight? I assure you, he won’t walk away again.”
“He will because I’m done. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want him killed.”
“Lady, you paid me a quarter of a million dollars—”
“You can keep the money. I don’t care. Just leave him alone.”
There was a long silence. Then he cleared his throat and chuckled a little. “What is it about this guy? What makes him so special?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not the only one who has contacted me about him. Someone else paid me twice as much to kill him.”
“What?”
I didn’t understand. He must have been mistaken. Who else would want Killian dead?
“Half a million dollars. He predicted you would lose your nerve, so he paid me half a million dollars to continue on with it. He wants him dead more than you do, my dear.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“I guess our business is concluded. Don’t contact me again.”
The screen went dead. I stared at it, disbelief making the signals in my brain misfire. I pushed buttons and smacked the side of the machine, trying to bring the picture back. But it was gone. And when I tried to dial again, he refused to answer.
It had to be a joke, right? No one else could possibly want Killian dead. He was a good and decent man. He would not hurt anyone unless they were trying to hurt him. Not Killian. He wasn’t like Brian; he wasn’t in it because it was exciting. He was in it because he was loyal to the family. It wasn’t possible that someone else could want him dead.
This wasn’t happening. It simply wasn’t happening.
Chapter 16
Killian
I woke late in the morning, my face burning and my shoulder aching. The sun was shining through the windows right over my body, the bright sunlight of late winter. I started to sit up, but Stacy was there, pushing me back down against the pillows.
“Rest.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after noon.”
I sat up again, nearly knocking her to her ass as I did. “I have to call Ian and find out what’s going on.”
“You need to sit back and rest. That shoulder needs to heal, but it won’t if you keep irritating the stitches.”
I looked down at my shoulder. Most of the bleeding had stopped. The bandage was spotted, but only in a few places. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but that had to be a good sign, right?
I lay back and sighed. “Using the phone won’t stress my arm too much.”
“You should eat something and take some aspirin first.”
I looked at her and saw the dark circles under her eyes for the first time. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
She shrugged. “I’m not the one with the bullet wound in my shoulder.”
I held out my hand to her, my good hand, and pulled her close enough that she perched on the side of the bed.
“I’m okay.”
She shook her head and tears began to roll down her cheeks. “You’re not.”
“Stacy…”
I reached up and buried my fingers in her hair, pulling her down to me. “I love you,” I whispered against her lips. She made a soft, mewling sound against my lips, and we kissed, softly, her tears leaving my cheeks damp. After a minute, she pulled back, her eyes moving to my bandage.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. It went right through me.”
“
Who would do this?”
“I don’t know.” I stroked the side of her face. “But this only seems to prove that we’re better off going home.”
I felt the tension come into her body, making her tight like the string of a violin. But she didn’t argue. She took a deep breath and straightened her spine, forcing a smile as she looked down at me.
“Then we get married. Here, at the house.”
“Wouldn’t you rather wait until we can do it with our family surrounding us?”
“No. I don’t want to give Pops the chance to talk us out of it.”
“He couldn’t.” I touched her face, wiping away the tears. But I understood her thoughts. Maybe I’d put them there myself. Maybe I had the same fear.
“Okay. We’ll get married here as soon as we can.”
She kissed me almost roughly. “Thank you.”
She left a few minutes later to go get us some lunch. I got up, moved my arm around a little to see how much movement I had. Not much. My phone was still in my pocket. I called Ian and spoke to him in low tones before heading into the bathroom. I felt like I still smelled like wet dog. I knew it was probably just my imagination, but I had to get that smell off of me.
She found me standing under the hot stream of the shower, fresh blood flowing from my wound. She made a funny little sound in the back of her throat, but then she joined me, stripping out of her jeans and t-shirt, moving up against my naked body, her fingers moving over my chest like she was verifying that I was still there, that I was still who I’d been before all this.
I was. And I’d show her.
I buried my fingers in her hair and twisted her head around, shoving her back against the wall as I kissed her with more fire than ever before. She opened to me, giving back as much as she took, her beautiful little tongue doing things to my equilibrium that nothing had ever done before. I’d been afraid last night, more afraid than I would ever admit to anyone. But I was so busy fighting off death that I hadn’t realized it until I was alone, making the long drive to this house. My hands shook and my heart pounded. But now…I felt more alive than ever. She was my reason for fighting, my reason to fear death. If I ever lost this…
THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series Page 25