Liam shrugged. “It seemed like she should know. And we needed everyone’s help.”
“I was already in the neighborhood,” Shea added. “After you split for Seattle, Daddy threw one of his tantrums, and I wasn’t interested in sticking around for that. So I headed backto California, which meant I was just a hop, skip, and an hour’s flight to Vegas after you got pinched.”
I snorted. “Did you join the cast of Goodfellas 2 in LA too?”
For that, I received an answer in the form of a raspberry. “No. But I did find help from someone who would probably fit in.”
She gestured back to the Mercedes, where Ares fucking Antoni was now standing as he adjusted a pair of aviator lenses over his crooked nose.
“Black,” he greeted me.
Fuck. “Antoni.” I glanced at Liam.
He arched one brow, as if to say, who did you expect us to call?
Double fuck.
“Well, the airport is right there,” Mac said. “You’ve done your part. Time to go back to La La Land where you belong.”
For some reason, that really seemed to piss Shea off. “I’m sorry, did you forget I already have a daddy? And in case you forgot, Brady, I don’t take orders from him either.”
“Oh, believe me, I know,” Mac snapped right back. “I’ve spent the last six years rescuing you from stupid and stupider situations, but honestly, Shea, this takes the fuckin’ cake!”
Antoni, Liam, and I traded bemused glances. We’d all had enough interaction with Mac to know that he never lost his cool. Apparently a night in jail plus Shea pushing his buttons was the secret to cracking Brady MacNamara’s cool.
“You know what, it is just like you to get angry at someone for rescuing your ungrateful ass, you big, stupid gorilla?—”
“Hey!” I stepped between them. “Can we save it for the ring? Or someplace that isn’t crawling with cops?”
“I second that.” Antoni looked warily at the building. I had a feeling he’d spent a few nights there himself. “I can give you a ride to the Minoan. I assume that’s where you’re going.”
I sighed. God, it was hot. Only eight in the morning, and this city could already bake a loaf of fucking bread.
But I also wasn’t sure getting in a car with Ares Antoni was the best idea. Especially when another part of me wanted to walk across the street to the airport and get on the next flight back to Seattle to see my wife. For one, I needed to make sure she was still alive.
“I’ve got a car,” Liam helpfully stepped out.
But Ares didn’t leave.
“I’m guessing you had something to do with this?” I asked him, gesturing to me and Mac.
Antoni shrugged. “Your sister asked, so we stepped up. We found him in Juarez, Mexico, drinking too much cheap tequila and moaning about his daughter.”
So, he’d made it out of the canyon. The memory of my last moments with Richards came back to me like blunt force trauma.
It should have been simple.A quick push. An easy trip down. He would stumble backwards into the darkness where plenty of bodies preceded him. We were in a part of the desert no one ever went—at the far end of an old prospecting road that had been left to coyotes and Gila monsters. The desert would turn his body to ashes before anyone would ever think to find him, just like it had to others who had met similar fates.
Then I made the mistake of looking into Billy Richard’s eyes, the color of an aquamarine lake, glazed with fear and sadness. And I didn’t see him anymore. I saw her.
Two eyes, sea glass green. A laugh like a giggle and a coo.
What in the actual fuck? Was I imagining things? Richards’s daughter, maybe, or else a woman I’d never met? Or maybe my last cigarette had somehow been laced with something a lot more potent than nicotine.
Either way, it felt like someone else was waiting for me on the other side of this abyss. The promise of a different life, a different way of being. And for the first time, I couldn’t force myself to ignore it.
“Goddamn it.”
“What?” Richards stumbled again as I yanked him back from the edge, then shoved him to the ground. “What are you doing?”
