The Taming Of Reid Donovan

by Pappano, Marilyn

  He finished scrubbing the grease from his hands, then clocked out. He had three hours to pass before she was due home. Even with a half hour for his afternoon shower, he would still have plenty of time for a solitary lunch and a quick walk to the nearest pharmacy. Last night had exhausted his meager stash of condoms. Supplying more was the least he could do.

  He had expected her to ask why he had just happened to have condoms with him yesterday afternoon, but she hadn’t, most likely because she’d been distracted by other things. Maybe she hadn’t asked because she thought he was the sort of man who always carried a couple. At one time, that had been true. He had always been prepared. But that was a long time ago. He wouldn’t have had the two they’d used yesterday if Karen hadn’t given them to him.

  Safe sex was one of the lessons they were trying to teach at the women’s center. His stepmother hadn’t asked if he was practicing it, but had simply given him the condoms, along with one of their pamphlets. For the first time since he’d met her, she had been too uncomfortable to pry. He had been uncomfortable, too, too much to tell her that he was practicing abstinence. He had accepted the offering, and, in an odd way, he’d been touched by it, because it supported Karen’s claims that she really did care about him. He’d had a hard time believing it until then.

  Sometimes he still did.

  He walked past Serenity and into the Quarter proper, where he made his purchase at a corner drugstore before turning back toward Decatur. He hadn’t gone more than a dozen feet when a man and a woman, both wearing suits, both obviously cops, stepped onto the sidewalk ahead and stopped. He stopped, too, puzzled, uneasy. Neither of them made a move toward him.

  He wondered if they would let him walk past or if they would stop him if he tried. How serious would they be about stopping him? Would they simply block his way or take him down and handcuff him? He’d been in that position plenty of times before—spread-eagled against a rough brick wall, his arms bent up so far behind him that his shoulders threatened to dislocate, or facedown on the pavement with some two-hundred-pound cop balancing his weight in the middle of Reid’s back. It was usually uncomfortable, sometimes painful and always shameful.

  The man directed a nod somewhere behind Reid, and immediately he heard a car approaching. Keeping his hands loosely a few inches from his sides, he turned as a gray sedan pulled to the curb beside him. The two men in the front seat remained there, but the passenger in back climbed out and advanced with credentials in hand. Reid didn’t need to look at them to know the man was with the FBI. He’d met the guy twice before, over on Serenity. Both times had been purely social situations—Karen and Jamey’s wedding and the grand opening of Kathy’s House—but there was nothing social about his manner now. This was business, and the knowledge made the muscles in Reid’s stomach tighten.

  “Reid Donovan? I’m Remy Sinclair. Would you come with us?”

  Reid glanced at the other agents again. They had moved closer, cutting off any chance of escape in that direction. But he wasn’t going to run, even if that was exactly what he wanted to do. He was a grown man, for God’s sake, and he hadn’t done anything wrong—at least, not lately. He had no reason to run. “Why?”

  “We’d like to talk to you, and we would prefer not to do it here on the street. Get in the car, please.”

  He looked at the car, at Sinclair, then the other two. All the time he’d been running with the Morgans, he had expected to be arrested every damn day, every time he saw a cop, every time someone came to the door. He had been prepared for it then. Hell, he hadn’t even cared. He’d had nothing to lose then.

  But he did now. He had a job. A place of his own. A stepmother who worried about him and a father who had at least started to forgive him. He had Cassie.

  But maybe not for long.

  When he hesitated, Sinclair reached out but didn’t actually touch him. “We just want to talk, Reid. Please get in the car.”

  Uneasily aware that he had no choice, he sidestepped the agent, walked over to the car and climbed in. After Sinclair got in, the driver pulled away from the curb. The other agents got into a second car that turned in the opposite direction at the first intersection.

  “How is Karen?”

  He looked warily at Sinclair. “She’s fine.”

  “Everything okay at the women’s center?”

  “Yeah.” The pointless questions grated on Reid’s nerves. Sinclair’s wife, Susannah, was one of the nurses at Kathy’s House. No doubt, she kept him informed of everything that went on there.

  A moment or two passed in silence. Reid stared out the window, trying to figure out where they were going. Not to any police station that he knew of, not to the jail or downtown to the FBI’s or U.S. Attorney’s offices. In fact, the driver seemed to have no particular destination in mind. He was driving just to be driving. Maybe they really did only want to talk.

  “You used to run around with Ryan Morgan and his gang,” Sinclair commented at last. “Why did you stop?”

  “It’s hard to run around with a dead guy.”

  Sinclair ignored his sarcasm. “Ryan’s death hasn’t made any of the others straighten up, get a job and try to live right. Why did you?”

  “Because I didn’t want to die. Because it was a stupid way for a man to live. Because Karen seemed to think I could do better.” Reid exhaled heavily, then admitted something he’d never told anyone else. “Because of my father.” At the grown-up age of twenty-six, he’d decided that he wanted whatever relationship he could have with Jamey. It would never be a normal father-son thing, but maybe they could at least speak civilly to each other. Maybe he could quit antagonizing his old man, and just maybe Jamey could quit hating him.

  “While you were with Morgan, you did a number of jobs for Jimmy Falcone, didn’t you?”

  A chill swept over Reid. Such casual mention of such a dangerous man was guaranteed to put every self-protective instinct he had on alert. Falcone wasn’t a man to cross. People who did that died—like Ryan. Sinclair himself had been the intended victim of two murder attempts by Falcone’s people. Nobody but Jimmy knew exactly how many others had angered him and paid for it with their lives, not even his employees who shared the responsibility for the killing, because people who knew too much about Jimmy’s business became a liability. They lived looking over their shoulders and guarding their backs.

  If they lived at all.

  “A few,” he answered, his voice unnaturally flat and cold. “Nothing important.”

  “But you did work for him. He knows your name. He knows your reputation.”

  Reid nodded.

  “What I’m about to tell you is confidential,” Sinclair said. “You can’t tell anyone—not your father, not Karen, not your girlfriend.”

  Did they know about Cassie, or did they just assume that he was seeing someone? A study of Sinclair’s face persuaded Reid that it was just a guess. After all, Sinclair was best friends with Cassie’s sister and rich prosecutor brother-in-law. If he knew Reid was involved with her, he wouldn’t approve. He wouldn’t be looking so harmless.

  Sinclair traded glances with the front-seat passenger before stating, “We have a cooperating witness within Falcone’s organization.”

  Cooperating witness. Nice name for a crook willing to sell out another crook to save his own hide. “Does he know that the last cooperating witness you had with Falcone has spent the last few years in a federal prison?” Of course, Nick Carlucci hadn’t been your run-of-the-mill cooperating witness. For one thing, he hadn’t been very cooperative, and he’d had no interest in saving his own hide. What he’d had was a personal vendetta against his boss that he would have done anything to settle. When he pleaded guilty to a long list of felony charges and went off to prison, he had thought he’d settled the score, had thought that his testimony against Jimmy would send the old man away for the rest of his life. He’d been wrong.

  Ignoring his question, Sinclair went on. “As you can probably guess, since Falcone got bu
rned by Carlucci, the old man’s gotten paranoid. He keeps a tight rein on everyone around him. We have the witness in place, but now we need a reliable method of passing information back and forth, someone that Falcone wouldn’t suspect, someone who wouldn’t sell out our witness to gain Jimmy’s favor.”

  And they wanted him to be that someone. The suggestion was laughable. He’d worked too damn hard to break his ties with all those people to simply waltz back in because the FBI asked him to. Besides, who the hell did they think they were dealing with? There was nothing in his background to make them think he was reliable or trustworthy, nothing to suggest that he wouldn’t happily sell out their witness for the rat he was. Hell, he’d never been more than a small-time punk, and now he wasn’t even that. He was nobody—but he was too smart to betray Jimmy Falcone.

  “I’m not interested.”

  Again Sinclair went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “The job wouldn’t entail any illegal activity. According to our informant, you could get hired as a driver and start tomorrow. You wouldn’t be breaking any laws. You wouldn’t be taking part in any crimes. You wouldn’t have access to anything damaging to Falcone, so he wouldn’t watch you as carefully as he watches the rest of his employees. Of course, your true reason for being there would have to remain a secret from everyone. As far as they’re concerned, you have to let them believe that you couldn’t leave the life behind, that going straight was too hard, that you tried and you failed.”

  It wasn’t laughable anymore. Sinclair wasn’t kidding. They’d given some thought to this. They honest-to-God wanted him to throw away the past six and a half months—the toughest, loneliest months in his life—to do this job for them. To Sinclair it was so simple. You can’t tell anyone. It’s got to be a secret. Let them all think that you really are a loser. Betray their faith, disappoint them, disillusion them, lose them. And when it was over, what would he have for his trouble? Nothing. Worse than nothing, because for the first time in his life, he actually had something.

  “You’ve got to be crazy.”

  Sinclair didn’t speak.

  Trying to quiet the panic building inside him, Reid took an unsteady breath. “Look, it’s been hard getting away from all that. I’m not going back. I’m not getting involved again, not for any reason, not for anyone.” After all, they couldn’t make him do it. They couldn’t force him to lie to Cassie, Karen and Jamey. They couldn’t make him give up whatever little bit of progress he’d made since last fall. They couldn’t compel him to destroy his future all for the sake of their damn job. They had asked, he had refused, end of story.

  Not quite.

  The front-seat passenger handed a file back to Sinclair, who opened it, pulled out a photograph and passed it over. The subject was a woman, elegantly dressed, smiling, wearing diamond earrings and a stunner of a diamond necklace. She was pretty—auburn haired, fair skinned, blue eyed—but there was a hint of toughness that stopped her from being beautiful. She looked like a woman who had lived life hard, but had eventually prospered and done well for herself.

  Obviously she was connected to the case. The witness? Jimmy had always liked his women pretty and well dressed.

  He thought thousand-dollar dresses and precious gems could disguise a lack of refinement, just as he thought his own five-thousand-dollar suits kept people from seeing him as the low-born thug he was.

  If she was the witness, he acknowledged silently, Sinclair was taking a risk identifying her to him. How did he know Reid wouldn’t leave here and go straight to Jimmy? What made him so sure Reid could be trusted with the knowledge? Obviously something did. There was more to this request than he’d heard yet. Maybe it was part of a deal. Maybe it was leading to an ultimatum: Do this for us, or go to prison. Do this, and we’ll forget all those crimes we’ve tied you to. Do this or else.

  He tried to return the photo, but Sinclair wouldn’t take it. “I can’t do it,” he repeated, a note of desperation slipping into his voice. “Everyone on Serenity is just waiting for me to screw up. No matter what I do, they don’t trust me. They’re convinced that I’m no good, and they’re waiting for me to prove it to them. I’ve had to work damn hard to get where I am. I have too much to lose. I can’t do this. Find someone else.”

  “I’m sorry, Reid,” Sinclair said, and he truly looked regretful. “I know it’s tough. But we can’t find someone else. We need you.”

  “Why me?”

  “She asked for you.”

  “I don’t even know her. How could she ask for me?”

  “You know her. You just haven’t seen her for a while.” Reid looked at the picture again. The woman was older, probably in her forties. If the roots were any indication, the auburn hair wasn’t natural. Her own color was probably brown. The eyes were really blue, though, as blue as his own.

  As blue as his own. Reid became still, staring at the picture with rapidly growing dismay. In recent years, he had come to believe that any family resemblances were shared strictly between him and Jamey. They were both tall, with blue eyes and blond hair. But there had been other blue eyes in the family.

  It had just been so damn long since he’d seen them that he had forgotten about them.

  You know her. You just haven’t seen her for a while.

  His hand trembling, he laid the photograph on the seat but continued to study it. Was there something familiar about the smile? The set of the jaw? The way the nose was a little crooked?

  “No.” He shoved the picture away, knocking it to the floor, then turned to stare out the side window. It wasn’t true. He was just seeing things, just letting his imagination run away with him.

  Beside him, Sinclair sighed. “I’m sorry. I wish there were some other way. I wish there were someone else. But there’s not. We need your help, Reid.” He broke off, then finished in a softer voice. “Your mother needs your help.”

  After another half hour, they let Reid out where they had picked him up. He took the few necessary steps to reach the sidewalk, then simply stood there, numb and sick with frustration. It wasn’t fair. Meghan had walked away from him without a single regret when he was a kid. What right did she have to come back now, to expect him to give up everything for her, to destroy everything he’d worked so hard for? Damn her, what right did she have to take Cassie from him?

  Apparently she thought the fact that she was his mother gave her those rights. She had stressed it to Sinclair as if it meant something—and damn her selfish soul, it did. He just wasn’t sure it meant enough, that the part of him that had always loved, wanted and needed Meghan was as strong as the part that loved Cassie. He wasn’t sure he could risk his relationship with Cassie—wasn’t sure he could risk his entire damn life—to help Meghan get out of trouble.

  They would understand, Sinclair had insisted. Once the case was over, once the truth came out, everyone would understand and everything would go back to the way it was before. Reid wished he shared his optimism, but he’d never had much experience with understanding and forgiving. Karen probably would understand. She gave him credit for being a better person than he was, anyway. Jamey, though, was a different matter. He was trying now, but whatever was between them was so fragile that seeing Reid go to work for Jimmy Falcone, taking his orders and his dirty money, could do irreparable harm. One more disappointment might be more than Jamey could overcome. He very well might decide that, whatever Reid’s reasons, he just wasn’t worth the effort.

  Like Karen, Cassie thought he was better, too. She was a sweet, forgiving person, but how forgiving? When he refused to answer her questions or concede to her arguments—and she would have plenty of both—what would she do? Turn her back on him? Lose faith? Give up hope? She would undoubtedly put him out of her life. She despised Jimmy Falcone and everyone who did business with him. She would hate what she thought Reid had become. Of course, when she found out the truth, she would be apologetic, but that didn’t guarantee that they could pick up where they’d left off. She might have come to her senses by then. She
might have met someone else. She might have simply quit caring. After all, Sinclair had admitted that they might be talking about a long-term commitment.

  What Sinclair hadn’t admitted was that the truth might never fully come out. If the FBI wasn’t able to put Falcone away once and for all, there was no way Reid could admit to anyone besides Cassie and his parents what he’d done. If he did, Falcone would want to send a message—and he was damn good with deadly messages. The rest of the neighborhood would still look at Reid with distrust, convinced that he was nothing more than the loser they’d always believed. They would still be intimidated by or scornful of him. They would never accept him.

  A tourist leaving a nearby bar bumped into him, jarring him from his grim thoughts. He watched the guy stagger away, then looked back at the bar. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but today he deserved a beer—or three or five. Today he deserved to dive headfirst into the biggest, cheapest bottle of booze he could find and not come out again until his problems were solved.

  It didn’t look like that was going to happen any time in the near future.

  He walked through the double doors, grimacing at the foul smells of cheap liquor and overpowering cigarette smoke. Like O’Shea’s, this bar wasn’t much of a tourist spot, although the guy who’d bumped him obviously hadn’t cared. This place catered to hard-core drinkers, to people with plenty of sorrows to drown. He’d always felt at home in such places, but never more so than today.

  He paid for a beer at the bar, then carried it to the darkest corner booth and slid in. He didn’t have to do what Sinclair asked. He wasn’t obligated to Meghan. For the life she had given him, the way she had treated him, the day she had abandoned him, he owed her less than nothing. So what if she was in trouble over in Dallas, where she’d spent the past eight years? So what if she was facing indictment on a number of charges stemming from her involvement in Jimmy’s prostitution and drug businesses? So what if she could go to prison or worse? None of that should mean anything to him.