AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s for Leo.”
He’s protecting me—again. He’s keeping the flawlessly discreet Susan from wondering why he’s paying for my brother’s insurance. He’s avoiding any uncomfortable questions about treatment. About pre-existing conditions.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Do you really want to know?”
I pause before answering. Knowing Leo’s whereabouts is the first step toward letting him back in my life.
Second step, actually. Keeping him from dying in detox was the first.
“Yeah,” I finally say. “I want to know.”
“He’s at Dover General. In a private suite.”
“Hospitals have private suites?”
“They do if you pay enough.”
I consider asking for more information. Who’s his doctor? How are they treating him? Aside from the Crash, is he on other drugs?
But that all feels like too much. I know the whirlpool that perpetually spins around my brother. I can’t let myself get sucked in to drown.
Instead, I say, “Thank you.”
Trap just nods.
“How’s your shoulder?”
“It feels like a rabid wolf tried to chew my arm off.”
“You’re sure it’s not infected?”
“It’s fine,” he sighs. “Just hurts like a motherfucker. The doctor said it would. Shallow wounds are the worst.”
Not worse than the ones that go straight through the heart. Or the brain. But he doesn’t need me to argue.
A window flickers open on his computer screen—a text message. He palms it closed before I can see who sent it. I refuse to take the hint. “Who’s that?”
He looks at me for nearly a minute, like he’s trying to decide if I can live with the answer. Finally, he says, “Kelly.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you lying to me?”
“I’m not lying!” His voice is so sharp I cringe. He sees my flinch and he mutters something obscene. “I’m not lying,” he repeats in a quieter voice. “The Herzogs found out he was involved in the raid. One of his own men must have talked. So now he gets to figure out if he’s got a traitor on his hands or just a fucking moron. So much for laying low and visiting his Granny Muldoon in grand old County Limerick while the Herzogs cool down.”
The Herzogs aren’t going to cool down.
I reach across the desk and take Trap’s right hand, the good one, so I don’t have to worry about jostling his shoulder when I lace our fingers together. “Come back to the house,” I ask.
He juts his chin toward the computer. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You can work tomorrow. And the day after that. And so on and so on…”
He sighs from the very bottom of his lungs. I wonder if he got any sleep at all last night. I’m pretty sure not. “I have to—”
