Edge of Midnight (3 page)

Sean groaned inwardly. Not that he didn’t love the guy to pieces. Miles was a great kid. A good friend. Crazy useful when it came to the gearhead techie computer details that bored Sean out of his skull. In the last couple years since he’d taken on the role of McCloud mascot, he’d proved his worth many times over. But Sean wasn’t up to being anybody’s mentor, love counselor, cheerleader, or fashion guru today.

“Buddy? You know I love you, right? But I don’t want company,” he said wearily. “So get lost. Disappear. See ya.”

“Nope.” Miles’s face was implacable.

Sean realized that clenching his teeth so hard was making his head throb harder. He made an effort to relax his jaw. “OK. Let me phrase this differently,” he said. “Disappear, or I’ll rearrange your face.”

Miles looked unimpressed. “If I leave you alone and you get into trouble tonight, Davy, Con, and Seth will rip my head off and plant it on a stake. There’s only one of you. There’s three of them. Forget it.”

Sean started up the stairs to his condo. Each step was a hammer blow to his skull. “I won’t get in trouble. I don’t have the energy.”

“I’m not going to get in your face, either.” Miles followed him up the stairs. “Just pretend I don’t exist. I’m used to it. Look at my track record with the women. I’m, like, the Invisible Man.”

Sean shot Miles a critical glance as he unlocked his door. “Do not say stuff like that if you want to get lucky with women,” he lectured, out of habit. “Don’t even think it. It’s the kiss of death.”

“Yeah.” Miles rolled his eyes. “By the way. I need a favor.”

Sean slapped the door open. “It’s not a good day to ask favors.”

“You owe me,” Miles reminded, following him in. “Big-time.”

Sean spun around, planted his feet, and gave Miles a death look that knocked him back two paces. “What the fuck do you want, Miles?”

Miles gulped. “I want you to drive me up to Endicott Falls.”

Sean started to laugh at the irony of it. He breathed the shaking feeling down before it made him hurl all over his own kitchen. “Dream on, buddy. I hate that town, especially today, and it hates me worse.”

“I taught your Thursday kickboxing classes for the entire past month when you were in L.A.,” Miles reminded him. “I spent three days fixing your computer when that virus crashed it. Free of charge.”

“Aw, shut up. What do you want with that backward hole, anyhow?” A thought struck him. He shot Miles a darkly suspicious look. “Isn’t Cindy up there, doing band camp? Don’t tell me you’re still—”

“Absolutely not. I am totally over Cindy.” Miles’s tone was stony. “She’s up there, but I avoid her like the frigging plague.”

Sean was unconvinced. Miles had been pining for Cindy Riggs, Connor’s wife Erin’s seductive little sister, since before the McClouds had met him. He’d finally gotten a clue, after a spectacularly public episode last summer at Connor’s wedding, but it had not made him happier. On the contrary. He’d been in a funk ever since.

“I’m sound and light technician for the Howling Furballs at the Rock Bottom Roadhouse tonight,” Miles told him. “And tomorrow, I start assistant teaching karate at the Endicott Falls School of Martial Arts.”

Sean was startled. “No shit. You’ve got, what, a brown belt now?”

“Nope. Passed the test for my first dan black belt last month. Got an honorable mention for my kata, too.” The pride in Miles’s voice was palpable. “Davy gave my name to a guy who runs a dojo in Endicott Falls. They need someone to help with the class while the regular teacher recuperates from knee surgery, so…it’s no big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal,” Sean said. “It’s great. Good for you.”

“Plus, my folks just bought a car. They’re giving me their old Ford. This is the last time I’ll have to blackmail you into giving me a ride.”

“That’s reason enough in itself to drive you up,” Sean said sourly. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Early nineties sedan, right?”

Miles looked wary. “So? What of it?”

“Beige, right? I’ll bet you my left nut it’s vomit-tinted beige.”

Miles jerked his shoulders in a defensive shrug. “So what if it is?”

“Fogeymobile,” Sean said. “The Invisible Car, for the Invisible Man. You gotta drive something with testosterone, my friend.”

“It runs,” Miles grumbled. “It’s free. I know you think of motor vehicles as fashion accessories, but it’s sexier than taking the bus.”

“Barely,” Sean muttered. “I thought you were working on Con’s nerd killer project.”

“I will be. Cyber stuff. I’ll work from up there.”

Sean grunted, and yanked a couple beers out of the fridge. He handed one to Miles, chug-a-lugging half of his own. “God, I feel like shit.” The red light blinked insistently on his message machine. He stabbed the button to see what the outside world wanted from him.

The first two calls were work-related; one about an invoice he’d sent for a consulting job he’d done a few weeks before, another from an independent film director in L.A. who was shooting a movie about GIs in Iraq. Sean punched the fast forward button over both of them. He’d deal with them later, when his brain was back online.

The next message rooted him in place, bottle poised at his lips.

“Yo, Carey Stratton here. Tried your cell. Fucker was turned off. I was doing a trawl for your long lost lover-doll. Computer coughed up some new data. Olivia Endicott has had a misadventure, pal. Somebody burned down her bookstore. Oh, and she’s moved. She’s in Endicott Falls, Washington, now. That’s pretty close to you, huh? This might be your chance. Go for it, buddy. The skulking from afar shit is not good for your health, even if it does pay my rent. I sent you an e-mail with the links. No charge for this service. Take it easy, OK? Later, dude.”

Sean was rooted to the floor. Mind blank, mouth slack.

“Sean?” Miles’s voice was cautious. “You’re spilling your beer.”

Sean jerked, startled, and righted the bottle. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to swallow. His throat was choky dry, like desert sand.

Liv. Back in Endicott Falls. The last news he’d gotten from the private investigator had placed her in Cincinnati, Ohio, working as a research librarian. The latest photos Carey Stratton had sent him had been taken there last December. Black and whites, long range lens. Liv, coming out of her apartment. Liv, petting a dog, smiling. Liv getting her mail, hair swirling around her head like a halo, patterned gypsy skirt billowing in the wind. Her socialite bitch mother Amelia Endicott had loathed those long, swishy, hippie-mama skirts.

So Liv was still a rebel. Thank God for that.

The most recent photos, plus his all-time favorites, were kept in a folder on the shelf over his computer. Conveniently near to hand.

They were dog-eared and battered around the edges.

He slipped in the puddle of beer as he bolted for the computer room, downloaded Carey’s message, clicked the links. Read them all. Read them again. It was true. Arson, for Christ’s sake. His hands shook.

“So she’s the one, huh?”

Miles’s quiet voice from the doorway made him jump. He’d forgotten the kid was there. “What? She’s what one?”

“The one you keep that huge computer file on,” Miles said. “The reason you never stay with any one girl for more than four days.”

“What the hell do you know about my file?” he barked. “I never gave you permission to mess around in my private files!”

Miles dropped his long body into the other computer chair and gave Sean his long-suffering puppy dog look. “Remember those three days I spent trying to recuperate your data when your system crashed?”

“Oh.” Sean covered his face with his shaking hand. “Fuck me.”

Miles cleared his throat. “It’s, uh, real hard to keep secrets from your computer doctor.” His tone was apologetic. “Sorry.”

Sean stared into the screen. His face felt hot. Nobody was supposed to know about his hobby of keeping tabs on Liv Endicott. It was just a small, private insanity that did not bear close inspection. By anyone. Not his brothers, certainly. Not himself.

“You never said anything about it,” he muttered.

Miles shrugged. “Figured I had no right to point fingers. It was funny, though. Didn’t know you had it in you. To be obsessed, I mean.”

Sean winced. “I am not obsessed. And it’s no weirder than that vid clip of Cindy blowing a kiss that you used for your screen saver,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now that’s obsession for you, dude.”

“I trashed that screen saver,” Miles said, his voice lofty. “Now I have a flock of migrating birds. It’s very relaxing.”

Sean whistled. “Wow, sounds like a real dick-tingler. Relaxation, is not what you need, buddy. You need—”

“To get my bone kissed, yeah. You’ve told me that already, like, a thousand times,” Miles said impatiently. “So who is she, anyway?”

Sean buried his hot, throbbing face in his hands. “Hometown girl,” he said dully. “A direct descendant of our city’s illustrious founder, Augustus Endicott. His great-great-granddaughter, I think. You know that bronze statue of the pioneers in front of the library? The tall guy in the front who looks like he’s got a rifle shoved up his ass?”

“Oh, man,” Miles said, whistling. “Them? So she’s, like the heir to that huge construction company? Yowsa. Bart Endicott practically owns this town. And what he doesn’t own, he built.”

“Tell me about it.” Sean’s voice was bleak.

Miles studied him, slouched in the chair, his dark eyes heavy lidded and thoughtful. “Huh. So she’s the reason you do it, then?”

Sean gave him a wary look. “Do what?”

Miles’s eyebrow lifted. “Fuck everything that has a pulse.”

Sean was stung. “I do not fuck everything that has a pulse,” he said haughtily. “I have my standards. I limit myself to endoskeletal organisms. I always go for vertebrates. And I don’t do reptiles. Ever.”

“Aw, shut up,” Miles grumbled. “Man slut. It’s not fair.”

Sean gave him an appraising glance. Miles had changed since he’d started hanging with the McClouds. The results of two years of relentless martial arts training, dating from the historic battle of the Alley Cat Club, to save Cindy from her pusbag pimp of a then-boyfriend.

Miles got pulped that night, but he’d developed a burning yen to learn to fight, just like the McClouds. Which was a tall order, but they’d made big progress. He had a black belt, for God’s sake. They’d finally gotten him to stand up straight, and his lanky frame and sunken chest had filled out nicely with all the weightlifting Davy made him do. He ate real food now, not just Doritos and Coke, so he no longer looked like an undernourished vampire. Sean’s tireless lecturing about grooming was beginning to bear fruit, too. Miles wasn’t a sharp dresser yet, by any means, but his T-shirt was clean, and his black hair was pulled back into a shiny ponytail, no longer lank, greasy wings framing a pallid face. He’d ditched the weird round glasses, and his big hooked nose looked better without them. He’d taken antibiotics for his zits, praise God. The resultant scarring gave his face a tough, weathered look.

Add in the big puppy dog eyes and the bulging biceps, and voilà. Not too fucking bad. If he would just lighten up, maybe even smile occasionally, he would look like a guy who could get laid with minimal effort on his part. About time, too. The guy was a volcano about to explode.

“Are these karate classes you’re teaching mixed?” Sean asked.

Miles snorted. “I’m working with little kids. Ages four to twelve.”

Sean shrugged. “There’s always hot and hungry single moms.”

“This might come as a shock to you, but some people actually do things for reasons which are not specifically aimed at obtaining sex.”

Sean widened his eyes. “Really? It worries me to hear a healthy twenty-five-year-old male say stuff like that. Either you’re ill, you’re pathologically screwed in the head, you’re a closet gay, or you’re lying.”

“I’m not—”

“Gay, yes. I know damn well you’re not,” Sean finished. “You’ve been obsessed with Cindy since I met you. You don’t look sick, either. That leaves screwed up, or lying. Take your pick. I’d buy either one.”

Miles’s mouth hardened. “I am totally over her. And I do not want to hear her name spoken for the rest of my natural life. Get it?”

Sean winced, pained. He’d overdone it again. He was used to kicking around his rawhide brothers. Sometimes their little buddy Miles was too soft for hard-core McCloud style teasing. “Fair enough. Sorry.”

“So, what’s the deal? Are you giving me a ride?” Miles gave him a crafty look. “You do want to check out this girl’s bookstore, don’t you?”

Sean let out a grim snort. Opportunistic, guilt-tripping little bastard. He turned back to the computer and read the articles again.

He wouldn’t, of course. He wasn’t that stupid, that masochistic.

But something inside him was buzzing, wide-eyed, totally zinged from hearing Liv’s name spoken aloud. He hadn’t felt that kind of buzz since he didn’t even remember. Maybe not since…

Since he’d seen her last? Oh, please. Give him a fucking break.

He’d do a thorough and exhaustive inventory of every single high point in his life before he’d admit to that. Talk about pathetic.