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“Quinn and Mercer should be cutting the cake soon,” Ava said, not that she expected it to make any difference. Once her mother had one drink, she wouldn’t stop until she passed out. It was a train wreck she and Aine had witnessed too often when they were growing up.
“Aine mentioned you were thinking of staying in California a few more days.”
“We are.”
“Oh,” her mother said, looking at her twin, “I thought it was just Ava.”
“Both of us were talking about it.” She looked at her sister with scrunched eyes.
“Aine, I had planned to invite you to join Paul and me at the shore.”
“I never said it was just Ava. I always planned to stay too.”
“Sorry. I must’ve misunderstood.”
Their mother looked miffed, but Ava didn’t care. Neither of them had ever wanted to spend much time with her, not since they were little girls. If they had ever been important to her, she would have dealt with her alcoholism.
—:—
“What’s happenin’?” asked Gunner, handing Razor a beer.
“Eighty-eight’s little brother had his hands all over Ava, so I set him straight.”
“What did Ava say when you interrupted her romantic tryst?”
“The first thing she said was no, and that wasn’t to me; it was to that little shit, Hudson. She didn’t say anything at all to me, because, evidently, we aren’t speaking.”
“I was thinking about heading home tomorrow, but maybe I’ll stick around for a few days. This will be entertaining.”
“Please go home,” Razor said, walking away.
The woman he saw Ava and her sister talking to reminded him of that character, the one that was half human, half octopus, in the mermaid cartoon movie his nieces liked so much. The only difference was, the character looked like she weighed three hundred pounds, and this woman couldn’t tip the scales at much more than one hundred, and half her weight had to come from her chest.
Her hair, which stood up on end like his did, was pure white. Her eyes were coated with bright blue and purple eye shadow; she wore flaming-red lipstick, and the dress she was wearing looked to be at least a size too small.
He might’ve laughed, until he saw the mortified look on Ava’s face when he approached. Instead, he took an entirely different tack.
“Who is this beautiful woman?” he asked, taking a seat next to Ava.
“This is my mother, Peggy,” she answered. “Mom, this is Tabon.”
“Most people call me Razor,” he said, smiling at Ava. “I like it when she calls me Tabon, though.”
The woman held her hand out to him, palm down, as though she expected him to kiss the powdery-white back of it. Instead, he shook it and put his arm across the back of Ava’s chair.
From the corner of his eye, someone else caught his attention. Razor looked over at a man and woman who had turned around and were walking the opposite way. There was something about the man that got Razor’s hackles up. He glanced over at Gunner, who appeared as affected as he was.
In their line of business, trusting your instincts was everything. When his radar reacted that strongly, it wasn’t something he could ignore.
“That was my dad,” Ava said. “And his latest wife.”
Razor’s mind raced with the intel K19 had on Ava and her twin sister. Surname: McNamara. Father’s name: Conor. Recently married for the fourth time to Kelly. Maiden name: Fitz-something. Conor was in the import-export business, worth a cool hundred-mil at least. The new wife was barely out of high school.
Ava’s mother had also remarried, to Paul Whitely. Fitting name, given the pallor of her skin.
Nothing had ever turned up on either of the parents, certainly not at the level of his reaction.
“Tabon? Is everything okay?” Ava asked.
