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Sean winced. He’d confessed the Kev dreams to Connor some years back, and he’d regretted it bitterly. Connor had gotten freaked out, had dragged Davy into it, yada yada. Very bad scene.
But the dreams had been driving him bugfuck. Always Kev, insisting he wasn’t crazy, that he hadn’t really killed himself. That Liv was still in danger. And that Sean was a no-balls, dick-brained chump if he fell for this lame ass cover-up.Study my sketchbook,he exhorted.The proof is right there. Open your eyes. Dumb-ass.
But they had studied that sketchbook, goddamnit. They’d picked it apart, analyzed it from every direction. They’d come up with fuck-all.
Because there was nothing to come up with. Kev had been sick, like Dad. The bad guys, the cover-up, the danger for Liv—all paranoid delusions. That was the painful conclusion that Con and Davy had finally come to. The note in Kev’s sketchbook looked way too much like Dad’s mad ravings during his last years. Sean didn’t remember Dad’s paranoia as clearly as his older brothers did, but he did remember it.
Still, it had taken him longer to accept their verdict. Maybe he never really had accepted it. His brothers worried that he was as nutso paranoid as his twin. Maybe he was. Who knew? Didn’t matter.
He couldn’t make the dreams stop. He couldn’t make himself believe something by sheer brute force. It was impossible to swallow, that his twin had offed himself, never asking for help. At least not until he sent Liv running with the sketchbook. And by then, it had been too late.
“I have dreams about Kev, now and then,” he said quietly. “It’s no big deal anymore. I’m used to them. Don’t worry about it.”
The five of them maintained a heavy silence for the time it took to get to Sean’s condo. Images rolled around behind his closed eyes; writhing bodies, flashing lights, naked girls passed out in bed. Con’s predator, lurking like a troll under a bridge, eating geeks for breakfast.
And then the real kicker. The one he never got away from.
Liv staring at him, gray eyes huge with shock and hurt. Fifteen years ago today. The day that all the truly bad shit came down.
She’d come to the lock-up, rattled from her encounter with Kev. Tearful, because her folks were trying to bully her onto a plane for Boston. He’d been chilling in the drunk tank while Bart and Amelia Endicott tried to figure out how to keep him away from their daughter.
They needn’t have bothered. Fate had done their work for them.
The policeman hadn’t let her take Kev’s sketchbook in, but she’d torn Kev’s note out and stuck it in her bra. It was written in one of Dad’s codes. He could read those codes as easily as he read English.
Midnight Project is trying to kill me. They saw Liv. Will kill her if they find her. Make her leave town today or she’s meat. Do the hard thing. Proof on the flash drive in EFPV. HC behind count birds B63.
He’d believed every goddamn word, at least the ones he’d understood. Why shouldn’t he have? Christ, he’d grown up in Eamon McCloud’s household. The man had believed enemies were stalking him every minute of his life. Up to the bitter end. Sean had never known a time that they weren’t on alert for Dad’s baddies. And besides, Kev had never led him wrong. Kev had never lied in his life. Kev was brilliant, brave, steady as a rock. Sean’s anchor.
Do the hard thing.It was a catchphrase of their father’s. A man did what had to be done, even if it hurt. Liv was in danger. She had to leave. If he told her this, she would resist, argue, and if she got killed, it would be his fault. For being soft. For not doing the hard thing.
So he’d done it. Simple as pulling the trigger of a gun.
He stuck the note in his pocket. Made his eyes go flat and cold.
“Baby? You know what? It’s not going to work out between us,” he said. “Just leave, OK? Go to Boston. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
She’d been bewildered. He’d repeated himself, stone cold. Yep, she heard him right. Nope, he didn’t want her anymore. Bye.
She floundered, confused. “But—I thought you wanted—”
“To nail you? Yeah. I had three hundred bucks riding on it. I like to keep things casual, though. You’re way too intense. You’ll have to get some college boy to pop your cherry, ’cause it ain’t me, babe.”
She stared at him, slack-jawed. “Three hundred…?”
“The construction crew. We had a pool going. I’ve been giving them a blow by blow. So to speak.” He laughed, a short, ugly sound. “But things are going too fucking slow. I’m bored with it.”
“B-b-bored?” she whispered.
He leaned forward, eyes boring into hers. “I. Do. Not. Love. You. Get it? I do not want a spoiled princess, cramping my style. Daddy and Mommy want to send you back East? Good. Get lost. Go.”
He waited. She was frozen solid. He took a deep breath, gathered his energy, flung the words at her like a grenade. “Fuck, Liv.Go!”
It had worked. She’d gone. She’d left for Boston, that very night.
He’d paid the price ever since. He knew just how those surgeons felt. The poor bastards you read about in magazines, the ones who fucked up and cut out the wrong eye, or lung, or kidney.Oops.
Seth pulled up at the curb outside Sean’s condo, pulled out his cell phone, and dangled it in front of Sean’s face. “Here.”
