Sloe Ride (29 page)

There was a bit of hope in his heart that Brigid was gone, but the luck of the Portuguese apparently didn’t run the same for the Irish. Rafe recognized the wide-bodied black town car idling in the valet’s pass-through, mostly from the Finnegan’s Pub and SFPD vinyl window stickers tucked discreetly along the back glass. If there was any doubt left in Rafe’s mind, it was shooed away by Brigid’s appearance at the building’s entrance, her melodic Irish brogue thanking the doorman for letting her through.

She was a sharp explosion of red hair and personality, but Rafe’s gaze drifted to the handsome dark-haired man following her. Brigid’s hand fluttered as she talked, patting her son’s arm or side, navigating down the walk to her car with clear, sure strides. Quinn took the touching gracefully, head cocked to one side as his mother chattered away. She was carrying a weighted-down brown bag, its jute handles clutched tight in her hand, and it swayed back and forth with each step Brigid took, knocking Quinn in the shin.

It was good to see them laugh. Especially when Brigid realized she was beating her son up with whatever she was carrying. Rafe heard her hearty burst of Gaelic, something teasing and tender he couldn’t understand. Maybe never understand, really. Even at their most difficult of tense times, Brigid and Quinn loved one another—a mother and son relationship he’d never achieve with his own.

Yet when Brigid caught sight of him at the edge of the sidewalk and smiled as wide as a sunrise breaking through a San Francisco morning fog, Rafe knew he didn’t have to look any further than Quinn’s flame-haired tornado of a mother if he needed any love.

“Hey, come into my house and clean me out?” Rafe teased, crossing the few feet between them. Nudging the bag, he sniffed down at Brigid. “Thieving baggage, isn’t that what you guys say?”

“It’s cat food,” Quinn offered. “Harley’s a food snob. She won’t touch most of what Kane brought over.”

“Whereas my worthless fleabags would eat the flesh off yer bones before ye’ve drawn yer last breath.” Brigid slapped away Rafe’s hand as he reached to carry it for her. “I’ve got this—”

The bag gave way under the weight of the cans, its bottom splitting at the seams. Brigid moved forward as Rafe bent down, grabbing at the rolling tins before they could launch off of the sidewalk and down the hill. They hit hard, smacks of metal on cobblestone and cement, but Rafe heard something else, a cracking sharp slap of sound he couldn’t figure out, no matter how hard his mind turned it around. He blinked and looked, his attention snared by Brigid’s alarmed gasp, wondering what she’d seen or heard.

Then all Rafe saw was the blood.

Reaper came for all of us

Jerked us up from the brine

Slipped out from his bony fingers

Landed on our feet just fine

Took four steps to Freedom

Took four souls to the line

Spat at the Devil at the Crossroads

Drank our sins with sweet, sweet wine

—Death, Devil and Sin

Q
UINN
WAS
covered in his mother’s blood. He’d entered into the world covered in her blood, and now he feared she would leave while he stood in a cruel mockery of his own birth.

He didn’t remember the drive to the hospital. Something primal in him snapped into place, and he’d thrown both his lover and his mother into her idling black sedan, ordering Rafe to press his hands to the wound on Brigid’s chest. There probably were red lights along the way. He didn’t remember those either. Nor was he surprised when he pulled up into the hospital’s ER intake bay and found a phalanx of cop cars screaming up behind him, their lights and sirens set to full blast. Quinn hadn’t cared about the wave of dark uniforms coming toward him. He was only focused on one thing—getting Brigid inside the cold cement box of a building before she drew her last breath.

“There’s so much blood.” The sheer amount of it staining his clothes and hands staggered Quinn. “She’s so tiny. How can she have so much blood? God, suppose that’s all she had?”

A second later, panic hit, and he paced away from the wall he’d been near, almost bumping into a drawn-faced woman. His brain kicked into gear, slapping Quinn with her name—Kiki, his sister. Hell, he couldn’t even remember his own sister.

“This is your fucking fault, Quinn.” Ian rounded on him, cutting across Kiki’s path. His younger brother—youngest, really—brought himself up to his full height, towering over their sister. Ian’s expression was hard and sour, his not-quite-formed echo of Connor’s strong features startling to see in another face. Quinn took a step back, but Ian followed, nearly shoving his chest into Quinn’s. A quick finger stab into Quinn’s collarbone, and Ian was off on a tear. “You’re the reason she’s in there. Fucking dying. You’re the—”

“
Stop it
.” Donal didn’t rise from his seat in the waiting area. He didn’t have to. The shock wave of his low, cutting voice stilled his children, bringing them all to a poised apprehension. “Sit down or walk away, Ian. I’ll not be having to hear ugliness while I’m waiting for yer mother to come back to me.”

As hotheaded as Ian was, he sat, quelled by their father’s biting reproach.

It was humbling standing near his father. Donal, the strongest of them all, sat quiet and small, his body tense and firm. A soft murmur came from his lips, a Gaelic spill of prayer and promises, words Quinn heard spoken over him when he’d been waylaid by a childhood bout of pneumonia fierce enough to put him in the hospital. The others were moving, talking around one another, but every eye was on the double doors leading to a surgical ward, where their lives lay blown open and struggling to survive.

“
Breac
, come here.” There would be no arguing with Donal. Not now. Probably not ever. It was startling to see his serene, handsome face turned ashen and fraught. Dread pulled his skin down, a waxy pour of grief and worry over his strong bones.

“Da—”

“
Now
, boy.”

Quinn took one step, then another until he was at his father’s side, and Donal reached for his hand, clasping it tightly, then letting go.

“I can see what yer thinking. It’s all on yer face. This is not on ye,
breac
. Yer not the one who put her there. But mark me words, we’ll be finding the one who did, understand me then?”

“Aye.” It was lip service. He’d just paid lip service to his father, and if there was any time God would strike Quinn down, it would be then. The guilt was still there, just cowering under Donal’s cold steel gaze.

“Kane’s looking for ye. Ye’ll be wanting to change. No good to yer mum if she sees ye wearing her blood.” Donal nodded at Quinn’s shirt. “Don’t want the first thing out of her mouth to be a scold on me because yer walking around like an extra on that zombie show she watches.”

The door opened, and the Morgans strained toward it, hungry chicks anxious to be fed a scrap of news. Nothing. An orderly pushing a supply cart with creaking wheels ambled through, working to avoid the gathering crowd. Quinn turned away, unable to watch the sea of blue and stars clustered around his family.

It was too much like a funeral, creased uniforms and worried faces, all catching on his face when he passed by. Rafe’d gone to get him coffee, he remembered as he scanned the waiting area, unsure on when Rafe left. He was about to ask if someone’d seen Rafe when Kane parted the uniforms to thrust a T-shirt and a plastic bag into Quinn’s hands.

“Go change, Q.” His older brother brushed his knuckles against Quinn’s cheek. “You’ll feel better for it.”

“She might—” He wanted to object, but the smell of blood was getting to him, and his stomach roiled at the idea of wearing his mother’s life against his skin.

“I’ll come get you if there’s news. Put your shirt into the bag in case Evidence wants it. Don’t think they will, but you never know,” Kane said, pushing Quinn toward the bathroom. “Go wash up. I’ll be right here. Looking for Miki but right here. Go on. Mum’ll be okay. It’ll take more than a bullet to stop her.”

The bathroom was cold. Cold enough for Quinn to swear there were ice crystals forming on the urinals’ drains. Arctic air blasted through the vents as Quinn stripped quickly, shivering in the chilly tiled room. The water from the sink wasn’t much warmer, but he made do. Slightly damp from the lukewarm water, Quinn shoved his arms through the T-shirt’s sleeves when he heard a retching noise come from the bathroom’s single stall.

Curious, he tossed the plastic bag with his bloodied shirt onto the counter, then padded over to the stall. A push on the door swung it open, and Quinn sighed, saddened by the sight of the man he found hunkered over the toilet.

He’d found Kane’s Miki—emptying his guts out into the blue-tinged water of a hospital’s toilet bowl.

It broke his heart to find Miki—tough, growling Miki—curled up into a ball from the pain inside of him. Quinn knew that pain. It lingered in him now, biting and snapping at his sanity. He came up beside his brother’s lover, brushing his fingers through Miki’s chestnut mane.

And wasn’t surprised when Miki recoiled instantly.

Mimosa pudica
had nothing on Miki St. John.

“Get the fuck out.”

As a snarl, it was a watery attempt. Certainly not one of Miki’s best. Quinn crouched, his hand sliding down Miki’s lean back.

“Seriously, just—”

“It’ll be okay,” Quinn murmured into Miki’s hair, his lips brushing the soft, long strands. “She’ll be okay.”

Then he held his brother’s lover as Miki cried.

The cold was still there, on his ass and legs where the denim did little to protect his skin from the icy tile, but Quinn felt very little of it seeping through. His face ran hot with tears, his lashes sticky with salt as he rocked Miki back and forth, rooted together at the base of the toilet’s porcelain sides. Miki’s tears seared Quinn’s neck, burning rivers of grief pouring from his anguish-filled eyes. At one point, Quinn heard the door open, then close quietly soon after, the stilted peace of the bathroom settling down on them again.

“She can’t fucking die.” Miki’s whisper feathered over Quinn’s neck.

“She’s not going to.” It felt like a lie, one he would tell a child after seeing their dog get hit by a car, but Quinn had to believe it.
Had
to. To think otherwise would change his world too much… too soon… too hard.

“She just fucking can’t,” Miki spat out, hot and furious. Then he broke, catching a sob up in his throat. “I haven’t told her I love her.”

The walls pressed in on them, a flat pewter cage drenching them in shadows. Everything sharpened as Quinn’s mind shook off what little control he had remaining, and the world rushed in all at once. Miki’s shirt rasped over his skin, prickling the hair on Quinn’s arms, and something metal—probably the rivet from a jeans pocket—ticked on the tile floor. Quinn cringed under an assault of smells, everything from the lemon hint of soap on Miki’s skin to the astringent stink of hospital antiseptic burning his nose. He was thankful for the dullness of the stall. Color was the last thing Quinn needed. His eyes would bleed with the loud of it if there was something other than beige and muddy gray. As it was, Miki was an explosion of textures and prickles, a vivid swatch of noise violating all of Quinn’s senses.

Now was
not
the time for him to lose his shit. It took Quinn one shuddering breath and then another to shove back at the world before it cracked his skin. The two-dimensional flatness receded slowly, reluctant to snap back into reality.

Quinn shifted—or at least he thought he did—his knee made contact with the bowl, and the smack sent pain tingles up into the base of his skull. The pain shot him back, telescoping the stall back to nearly normal, but he resisted the urge to strike himself again.

It was an addicting pain. One he knew well. He still wore a few scars on his arms from a time when he needed pain to feel real… to feel alive. The pain was a siren, seductive and sweet, promising to leave him in a numb reality when he was done.

Thing was, Quinn knew he’d never be done. Not if he fell into that hole again. He’d come too far from its edge. Quinn’d be damned if he danced along its lip once more.

Miki felt small in his arms, shivering as much from shock as the cold. Quinn hiccupped, unable to swallow down the bitter guilt gurgling up from his belly. His brother Ian’d been right. If their mother died, it would be on him. Just like Simon and LeAnne. And he had no way of stopping the killing.

He must have said something under his breath, a murmuring of guilt… something to draw Miki up stiff, because damned if Miki didn’t slide back away from Quinn’s arms, then shove at Quinn’s chest in disgust.