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“Lily’s exhausted, and injured,” Bruno said. “She needs sleep—”
“Your father said that Bruno would understand.” Sean’s older brother Davy broke in, his gaze inwardly focused. “But what was he supposed to understand? What was ‘it?’ An object? A place?”
Lily laced her fingers together, examining the memory again. She hoped she hadn’t revised it herself, in having thrashed over it so many times. She addressed the oldest McCloud, a lantern-jawed guy with the same keen, bright green gaze as his brothers. “He said Magda told him that her son would understand when he saw it. But Howard never had a chance to say what ‘it’ was. That was when Miriam interrupted us.”
“Miriam, the nurse. Who then morphed into Miriam, commando warrior,” Connor McCloud said.
Bruno bristled. “What are you implying? I saw that bitch in action, and believe me, she was bad news.”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m just getting this all straight.”
“We’ve got it as straight as we can get it tonight,” Bruno said. “Sean was there. Rehash it all with him, if you’ve got doubts.”
“Hey.” Lily patted his tense, knotted forearm. “It’s OK,” she told him. “I’m not sleepy, after all that coffee. Chill.”
“I don’t want them hounding you,” he fretted.
“There’s hounding, and there’s help,” said Tam quietly.
Lily turned to the other woman, whose arms were draped over her very pregnant belly. “That’s for sure,” she said. “Hound away. Finally I have other brains to work with besides my own. It feels good.”
It was difficult to hold Tam’s gaze. A trait that many people in the room shared. These people who had been through a lot, and survived. Their eyes saw past masks, to the cringey stuff she would rather hide.
Tam Steele was so beautiful, one’s eyes got sucked to her like a magnet at first, but soon after came the strange desire to let one’s eyes skitter away from that golden laser slice of comprehension.
The paneled sliding doors opened. Another man she hadn’t met walked in. Good looking, with raven hair, chiseled features, sharp cheekbones, deepset, tilted dark eyes. He gave a nod of greeting to everyone, eyes resting on Lily and Bruno for the X-ray once-over that she was almost getting used to, and wove across the room to crouch behind Tam.
He slid his arms around her, cradled her belly, nuzzling her neck.
Lily noticed Bruno’s sidewise stare. “What?” she whispered.
“Just wondering how you’d react,” he said. “To Val, I mean. Most straight women drop their teeth when he walks into a room.”
The off-the-charts weirdness of that statement rocked her back.
“Are you kidding me?” she hissed. “You think I have enough functioning neurons left in my head to ogle strange guys?Now?”
He shrugged. “You don’t need a lot of neurons to ogle,” he said. “I’m not overloaded with extra neurons, and I ogle all the time.”
She poked him in the ribs. “Stop it! I can’t believe you even have the energy to be an pinheaded, insecure asshole at a time like this!”
“Me neither,” added Liv, the voluptuous brunette who was married to Sean. She cuddled a baby to an opening in her loose denim shirt, and peered sternly over the tops of her horn-rimmed glasses at Sean, who was slumped beside her, exhausted, his hand clamped around his son’s chubby leg. “I’ll add that to a long list of unbelievable things. Like, how you told me you were going down to the Gorge to do Kev’s other brother some innocuous favor that involved a lot of driving. And now, I find out about gun battles and dead bodies exploding.”
“Hey! Itwasan innocuous favor! I was planning to pick them up and drive them here!” Sean looked wounded. “How would I know about the gun battles and the exploding bodies? You’re wrong in blaming me!”
“Hah. So innocuous, you had Miles load his Jeep with eight different firearms, artillery rounds, blasting caps, Tovex and tear gas?”
“You can’t blame me for being prepared!” Sean protested. “I can’t help it. It’s on account of my upbringing.”
Tam flapped her hand at them. “Have this argument later, in bed. So, a recap. This started five weeks ago, when your father began to—”
“No,” Lily broke in. “It started twenty years ago, when my father went from being a successful research physician to being a drunk and a heroin addict, in a matter of days. Something bad happened to him. I never knew what. He was finally starting to tell me, and they killed him for it. All I know is that it involved Bruno’s mother, who died a violent death at about the same time. I find that a very odd coincidence.”
Tam spoke up, after a moment’s reflective pause. “And let’s not forget Aaro’s fabulous self-destructing sex toy, who also had one of these exploding phones in her purse. Another odd coincidence.”
Aaro shot her a dark glance, but was too drained to radiate true malevolence. Zia Rosa, who sat beside him, clucked her tongue and patted his thigh. “You know what your problem is, Alex, honey?”
He gave her a nervous look. “Don’t tell me. Please.”
