Sinner's Gin (24 page)

“Hi!” Miki tried for a welcoming grin, but it felt more like a terrified grimace creeping his cheeks up into his earlobes. “Um, I set the… table. Sorta.”

He’d never planned for guests. Hell, he’d never imagined anyone but Dude ever crossing the threshold. Now Kane was practically living in his armpit, and a scarlet-haired dervish appeared on his doorstep. If he had a dining room table, it was packed up tight under cellophane wrap and plastic ties along with the rest of the furniture the interior designer had picked out for him. He had no idea where to go looking for the table, even if he knew for sure he had something to eat off of at all.

From the looks of her, she’d also want the matching chairs. The best Miki could offer her were that his plates were all the same size. Mostly.

“It looks lovely, Mick love.” The smile she gave him was worthy of a Pulitzer instead of just for folding a few paper napkins and arranging the utensils together. Touching his arm, Brigid moved around Miki and sat down on the couch, then patted the seat next to her. “Come. Sit down. It’s a bit of time before dinner. The cabbage rolls got too cold on the way over here. Spend some time with me. Yer liking cabbage, aren’t ye?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure,” he mumbled. After staring at the cushion for a moment, he shuffled over and sat down at the end of the couch, sucking at his teeth. Searching for something to say, he nodded. “Cabbage is great.”

Brigid shifted closer, and Miki eyed her suspiciously. On the surface, she looked like the type of woman they’d cast as the warm-voiced mother on some drama where one of her kids caught a tragic disease. Then she spent the next couple of hours tracking through the jungles, looking for the one plant in the world that could cure him.

While wearing those heels. And flipping blueberry pancakes. And slinging an Uzi across her shoulder to fight off a horde of pirates.

And smiling in that crazy, happy way she was smiling at Miki because he put a couple of napkins and forks down on the table.

“Get off the fucking phone, Kane,” he muttered under his breath, hoping Brigid couldn’t hear him. Briefly wondering if he could fall off the couch and knock himself unconscious, Miki returned Brigid’s smile, then shifted his gaze back to Kane’s broad shoulders. That’s when he noticed the crazy left Brigid’s smile only to be replaced with something softer he didn’t recognize.

“Yer nervous,” she said, nodding. “I didn’t think you’d be nervous. Connor said yer a music star. My littlest’s got ye on her wall. I guess I got too used to seeing ye and yer boys screaming at me when I went in to put away laundry. It’s like I almost know ye.”

“Oh God, fucking hell,” Miki exclaimed, burying his face in his hands. He tried to stand, wobbling when his right knee refused to do more than throb while his left knee worked fine. Miki made a grab at the table to steady himself. “Jesus, I have no fucking clue here. Sorry, I kept telling Kane… I’m no good with the whole… family thing. I mean, thanks for coming over but….”

“Yer younger than I thought ye’d be,” Brigid replied softly. Her hands lifted up and eased Miki back down onto the couch. “Not much more than a boy, aren’t ye? It’s okay to be nervous. From what Kane’s said, it doesn’t seem like ye’ve had much of a good run with family.”

Sitting next to him, she seemed smaller, more like a hummingbird, with her generous cleavage and delicate features. He could see a hint of Kane in her face. It was there in her mouth and the slant of her eyes. He laughed like she smiled, throwing his full heart into it, and Miki wondered how the hell the world was big enough to hold an entire clan of Morgans’ passion and mirth.

She studied him with those large, too-green eyes, and Miki felt peeled open for her to pick through his bones and thoughts. He wanted to call out to Kane, but the man’s damned phone rang again, a brisk, sex-inspired tune Miki half remembered. Sighing, Miki consigned himself to Brigid’s interrogation

“How old are ye, Miki?” she asked softly. “Ye don’t look much older than my Riley, but ye’ve got a sweet face so it is hard to tell.”

“Um, maybe twenty-five? Twenty-six? Don’t really know.” Struggling to find his footing, he studied his nails for a moment. “Which one’s Riley? Shit… you’ve got a lot of kids. How the hell do you keep them straight?”

“Well, there’s enough so I’d be fine killing off a few of them when they make me mad,” she teased.

“So it’s not just me.” Miki breathed a sigh of relief. “’Cause I want to kill Kane all the fucking time.”

He was right about Kane having his mother’s laugh. She threw herself into it, an audible confetti of glee. Wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, Brigid leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Miki’s shoulders, pulling him, stiff and reluctant, into a tight embrace. His breath shortened, and then he finally simply held it, waiting for the woman to let him go.

A second passed, then three, but Kane’s mother showed no sign of giving him his freedom. Her fingers stroked the back of his head, tangling through the soft strands of hair at his nape. As he blinked furiously, the world swam behind his wet lashes, and he shifted in her arms.

Brigid’s hair tickled his nose, and he turned his face, catching a whiff of tangerine and lemon on her soft curls. Like her son’s, the pale skin at her collar was dappled with a dusting of golden freckles, and a faceted purple stone twinkled in the ear she’d been pressing into Miki’s cheek. Short of clawing free, he was trapped, cocooned in a baby powder, citrus motherly prison as Kane’s Irish-born mother slowly wrapped strand upon strand of affection around him.

“Someone should have loved ye, sweet boy,” Brigid crooned, a husky murmur laden with honey and cracked sorrow. “But ye’ve got the Morgans now. Kane’ll take care of you. All of us will.”

“Oh, God fucking help me,” Miki swore and tore himself free before he drowned in Brigid’s concern. He couldn’t meet her eyes. She saw through him, through everything. From every steak he’d shoved down the back of his pants while shoplifting for food when he ran out of money to the times he helped Damien siphon off gas from cars in a club’s parking lot so they had enough to get their equipment home… she saw it and knew he’d done wrong.

He slid as far away from the woman as he could without falling off of the couch. Brigid looked startled and reached for him. Miki recoiled, and he scrambled back, losing his tenuous balance on the soft cushions. Landing hard on the floor rattled Miki’s teeth in his head, and his leg went sideways, banging the edge of his kneecap against the couch’s hard frame.

“Mom, feed him. Don’t smother him.” Kane strode into the room. He reached down between the couch and the table to pull Miki up off the floor. His thick eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose, and he ran his hand over Miki’s injured knee, scrutinizing the man’s expression. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. Leaning forward, Miki whispered into his ear. “She’s fucking killing me, dude. I don’t know what to do with her.”

“Just eat the food and smile. Nod if you have to,” Kane advised, kissing the tip of Miki’s nose. “And don’t agree to have dinner with the family. Mom, don’t touch him until I come back. Or better yet, head home. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Yer leaving?” Brigid stood up, her heels clicking when they struck the floor. “Do ye want me to make up something to take with ye?”

“No, I’ll grab something when I come back.” He was talking to the air. Brigid was halfway to the kitchen before he could protest. Easing Miki back onto the couch cushions, he slanted his mouth over the other man’s lips, savoring a kiss before resting his forehead on Miki’s temple. “Mind if I come back?”

“No, so long as you’re taking her with you.” Miki eyed him. “She’s… fucking scary, man. No wonder all of you are cops. Nothing can scare the shit out of you. Look at what raised you.”

“No, babe,” he whispered, stroking the hair from Miki’s face. “She’s just a mom. I’ll talk to her. Tell her to take baby steps.”

“Dude, I know she’s your mom but…,” he whispered hotly. “Man, she’s always touching, and she hugs a lot. And she doesn’t let go. It’s weird.”

“Baby steps,” Kane promised. “Now, I’m going to grab her and see if I can’t shove her into her car when I head out. Sanchez just called. We pulled a body that might be Carl. There’s a patrol car heading over here to keep watch while I’m on the scene. I’ve got to go check it out, but I’ll be back in a couple of hours. If you want me back.”

“Yeah,” Miki growled. Hooking his fingers into Kane’s shirt, he shook the man lightly. “Just don’t leave me here alone with her. She’ll be having me make gingerbread houses or something before you come back. I just fucking know it.”

Chapter 15

They say I’m nobody to fear

And no one to love,

Soul blacker than ink.

Sin fits like a glove.

And the soft damning whispers,

Follow me where ever I go.

They can’t hear me crying.

Even as they kill me real slow.

—Forgotten Son

D
ISPATCH
gave Kane an address that led to a worn-out strip mall straddling the line between decrepit and seedy. Several police cars blocked off the two driveways leading into the cracked asphalt parking lot. A small group of Hispanic women clustered at the doorway of a small Laundromat at one end of the strip mall’s L, watching the steady stream of people going in and out of a boarded-up Mexican taco shop thinly disguised as an Italian ristorante. From the plywood sheets and cut chains dangling from the steel mesh doors, the neighborhood didn’t care much for spaghetti and antipasto.

From the looks of the people gathering near the sidewalk, the area needed more in the line of entertainment. A Mexican fruit salad vendor dealt a swift business on the corner, loading up plastic cups of tropical fruit before sprinkling the mixture with lime juice, salt, and chili peppers. Kane’s mouth watered at the sight, and his stomach grumbled, reminding him it was empty.

“Trust me, belly, you don’t want anything in you when we walk into this shit.” Kane flashed his badge to get past the uniforms and parked his SUV next to Sanchez’s Porsche. Climbing out of his car, he nodded to the pair of older women gossiping at the front of the check-cashing place kitty-corner of the restaurant.

Passing them, he gave them a winning smile and a nod. “Ladies.”

He jostled the chains as he edged past the steel door, and the foul smell of rotten meat hit him hard. Enormous spotlight tripods were set up to illuminate the scene, chasing away any shadow that might hide a sliver of evidence. Standing in the middle of the room, Sanchez looked like death warmed over, lack of sleep hanging creases beneath his dark eyes. Still, he was a damned sight prettier than the man strewn all over the cement floor of the abandoned restaurant. Handing his partner one of the coffees he’d grabbed from a drive-thru, Kane stepped around the circle of carnage in the middle of what was once a dining room.

“This guy is a butcher,” Kel muttered. Sipping the hot coffee, he sighed in gratitude. “Thanks for the hit. This case is killing me.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” He looked around the place. “Who called this in?”

“Lady across the street. Her cat brought home a nose. She figured she should tell someone about it.” Sanchez handed Kane a pair of plastic booties and gloves. “Suit up and I’ll show you what’s left of our pedophile.”

The restaurant wore its history on its walls. Dust and cobwebs covered nearly every flat surface, and the industrial gray rug was mostly ripped up off the floor. Only wide swaths of the gummy patterned carpet remained near a broken podium that had probably served as a hostess station. Plastic grapes and fabric ivy vines looped over nails to frame the Spanish-style arches at the entrance. More baskets of grapes and straw were fastened to the walls, a few sagging from the molly bolts giving way under their weight.

A faded mural of a salsa dancer took up most of a long wall, its background altered by a less-skilled artist to depict what Kane guessed was supposed to be an Italian vineyard. Even in the gloom, the splotches of bright purple and yellow squiggles looked more like disease cells than something he’d want a wine squeezed out of.

In the middle of the grime and filth lay a man Kane would say was the dirtiest thing in the room.

Lack of circulation hung the stink of Carl Vega’s body in the air, covering everything in a greasy feel from the gaseous expulsions of his intestines giving way. It was hard to tell what was left of Carl. Too much of him was scattered about the area, and Kane thought he spotted an ear beneath one of the banquette tables sitting askew against the wall. A circle of black dried blood pooled around the remains, its edges marred by a series of boot prints leading in and out of the mess.

One of the technicians stood near the blood mass, snapping pictures of the clearest prints. He lifted up his foot to reposition himself into a different angle and to avoid the flap of scalp and hair that had been tossed away from the body. From what Kane could see, most of the skeleton was present, although broken apart as if a wild animal had ravaged the corpse. Long shreds of skin were spread out from Carl’s kinked spine, giving the remains curling, dried fragments of wings.