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I strode over to the window and yanked it open, looking around. The roof was empty but there was a screen in the gutter ofall places and several faint footprints. My eyes returned to the sweatshirt and I stomped over, scooping it up.
“This isn’t yours?”
Weiss snorted. “You think I could fit into that?”
“Fuck,” I roared and leveled my gun at Weiss’s head. “There’s no way you didn’t have backups. Get them.”
“I don’t have shit, Tyler,” Weiss replied, and rage surged through me, making my teeth ache. How dare this pig use my first name? “It’s all gone. I thought about making backups but I never got around to figuring out how.” He swallowed hard. “Too afraid someone might see or hack into it. I don’t know. I’m only semi-decent at computer shit.”
As much as I wanted my goddamn record wiped from the face of the earth, I’d wanted the shit Weiss had on Hendrix more.
“Give me the dirt on Hendrix, then. Paper files, whatever.”
“There’s nothing,” Weiss said and closed his eyes, only to jolt back when I put my gun to his head. A tired sigh drew out of him. “Should’ve known it would end this way.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t pull the trigger yourself,” I snarled. “Do you know how easy it will be to make this look like a suicide?”
“Learn that from Hendrix?” Weiss asked, and I saw the tremor go through him.
Damn. Again, I felt that begrudging respect, now edging into admiration. I’d seen many guys piss themselves and beg for their mothers with a gun pointed at them. But this guy was making casual conversation.
“Maybe,” I said. “Tell me what you have on that fucker. Now, Weiss!”
“No,” he said, and I reared back, then hit him across the face with the gun.
“Get Carrone on the line,” I said to Artie. “He’s finding Weiss’s old man tonight—”
“No,” Weiss roared and tried to go for me, only to get knocked back into the chair. It fell on top of him as he crashed to the ground. I picked it up and threw it at the wall with one hand, my blood pulsing with absolute satisfaction as Weiss cowered.
“Now, Artie. Heavy. Pas,” I said. “Whatever it takes to get this fucker talking—”
Several things happened at once. There was a noise from the closet that distracted me for a split second, and I looked over my shoulder to see it opening. But before I could make sense of things, Weiss surged up, making a grab for the gun and trying to headbutt me at the same time. I managed to dodge him buthe got my chin. The fucking cop had the hardest head in Boston, judging from the stars that exploded in my vision.
Fucker still held on, twisting my arm with that expert disarmament that all cops profess. He almost got my gun but he forgot I was a Michaelson. I’d learned how to fight from the biggest bruiser in Boston after Sal “The Reaper” Michaelson: Tommasino “The Rhino” Michaelson, my father.
The familiar pain of my arm getting twisted brought me back to long days of relentless training in a cold basement. I could almost hear my father screaming orders in English and Italian, then laughing as I tried to fight and hold off him or his men.
But that was years ago and now, with the precision of habits beaten into me over years and years, I got free of my father and pulled the trigger.
Fire exploded in my vision, and it wasn’t my father. It was a cop.
I blinked several times, watching Mickey Weiss. He seemed to take an eternity to sag to the floor, wheezing and holding his side, blood squeezing between his fingers.
Only, Weiss had a look of absolute shock on his face, and I raised an eyebrow, wondering how he could’ve been that surprised at how that had shaken out.
That’s when I realized he wasn’t looking atme.
Awareness prickled over me, and I whipped around.
An electric shock jolted through me. My own father’s ghost would have surprised me less. Suddenly, I was back in my body, with all my senses tuned to eleven. It jarred me — the smell of blood, the gun smoke and the cold room. I could feel the heat of the gun chamber and its cool metal through my gloves, feel the intake and outtake of breath through my nose and all the aches and pains of fighting off Weiss.
But more than that, I could feel the pounding of my heart and the tingle of nerves spreading through my chest.
The golden blonde from the bar had tumbled out of the cop’s closet, her hair catching all the stray light from outside, and her eyes fixed on me ? eyes filled with a clash of horror and recognition and something else – something that made me almost smile in the face of this shitshow.
And before I knew what I was doing, I heard myself say, “You.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
