Page 115 of Playing By Ear

Jamie put up his hands. “Dad, no.”

“These bullets aren’t for you, ya numpty.” He shoved a clip into the pistol. “They’re for Tony and his da and anyone else who threatens my son.”

What the fuck? He’d lost the plot.

Jamie slowly rose to his feet. “Please, Dad. Put the gun down.” His voice dropped to a child’s whisper. “Please don’t hurt anyone. Not again.”

Martin threw him a quizzical glance. “I’m fed up of their disrespect.” He slid the gun into an inside pocket with the ease of old habit. “Gonnae no worry, you won’t be involved. I’ll take Gerry.”

Jamie wanted to lunge forward and stop him, but instead he backed away, his gaze fixed on the bulge in Martin’s suit jacket. For a moment, he wasn’t twenty-six, only eleven.

Martin left the room by the near door, Layla a step behind.

Jamie’s feet unfroze. He dashed to the far door and burst through in time to block his father’s path in the corridor. “If you go to the Coyles waving that thing around, they’ll kill you where you stand.”

Martin went still but looked past Jamie as he spoke. “I know,” he said quietly.

Jamie stared at him, speechless.

“I’ll leave Gerry and Layla in the car so naebody else gets hurt,” Martin said in a low voice, still avoiding Jamie’s eyes. “If the Coyles take me out, they’ll owe us a debt. You and Bel can have whatever you want from them.”

He started to move past Jamie to descend the stairs. Jamie grabbed the banister to block him. “I won’t let you do this.”

His father’s jaw tightened, and his eyes filled with rage. “You want me to go out nice and slow and painful, aye? Brought low and meek to pay for all the bad things I done?”

“No, I⁠—”

“It’s better this way, Jimmy. Think of it: You’ll never have to look after me. Nae bedpans and spoon feedings.” He patted Jamie’s shoulder. “You’re a good lad. Now step aside.”

Jamie kept his arm locked so Martin would have to push him down the stairs to get by. “I won’t let you end it like Mick. He wouldn’t want that.”

Martin bowed his head for the space of a long breath. “I will never forgive you,” he rumbled, “for using my brother’s death against me.”

“I don’t care. I don’t need your forgiveness, and I don’t need you defending my honor. I just need you alive.”

He stared into his father’s eyes, half-hoping it was the tumor making him erratic. But Martin’s gaze was lucid as ever. In fact, he looked more like his old formidable self than he had since Jamie’s return.

“Will you give that to me?” Jamie asked, steadying his voice.

Martin hesitated for what felt like a year, his jaw jutting out in defiance. Then he rolled his eyes and said, “Whatever,” like a sullen teenager. He popped out the clip, slid back the thingamie to open the action, then held out the gun, muzzle down, displaying the empty chamber.

Jamie took it with care, mentally reciting all the safety rules to keep from losing his mind over touching a gun again.

Martin stepped back and started rubbing his scalp behind his right temple, near the side part in his still-abundant mahogany and silver hair. “I can feel it, you know, more and more every day. Shooting out its wee tendrils like them bramble vines in the back garden.”

Jamie’s gut grew as cold as the gun in his hand. For ten years, he thought he’d never see his father alive again, that one day he’d simply get the call that Martin MacKray was dead.

Now, Jamie would have to watch him die.

There were no bramble vines in the back garden. Maybe they’d been there the previous year, or maybe Jamie’s father had made them up. There were, however, scattered patches of ground ivy sneaking in between the daffodils and grape hyacinths.

Not for long.

Jamie dropped to his knees and started pulling, following each stem to the soil and ripping it up, the stringy roots coming loose and making wee earthquakes in the mulch as he yanked them out. He dug knuckle-deep to dislodge every vestige, until his fingers were coated in damp soil.

Still his hands shook. They remembered the gun, hard against his palm, its contours so hand-friendly. A miracle he’d not dropped it during the endless minute before Gerry arrived to handle the situation. The bodyguard had made an unenforceable promise that Martin would never hold a weapon again.

The soil was rocky, resisting Jamie’s excavation efforts. Ivy stems liked to creep under stones and hedge roots so that when pulled, a piece of them would break off and live to fight another day.