Unmanned (21 page)

27

You can’t choose your family. Can’t shoot ’em, either.

—Glen McMullen, Chrissy’s dad, on child-rearing

I
T WAS A WARM
Friday afternoon in June when Lieutenant Jack Rivera accompanied me on a flight to Chicago. Maybe he went because he thought it would be pathetic if I attended my brother’s wedding sans date again, or maybe he went because he thought someone in Chi-town might want me dead. But I prefer to believe it was because he found me irresistible.

I was beginning to put the past behind me, trying to get back to normal, or what passes as such in my world. In the past week, I had seen my usual clients, including Micky Goldenstone. As it turned out, he had never met David Hawkins, but I still couldn’t help but wonder if somehow David knew I had a client who had been called Pit. Knew and was using the fact to make me paranoid, to ruin my business, my sanity.

As for Micky, he was struggling, battling with guilt, skirmishing with the idea of contacting Keneasha, of spilling his guts and opening his soul. I worried about him. Ached for him.

On the other hand, Julio Manderos seemed to worry about me. He had dropped by unexpectedly after work and gifted me with an iTwin foot massager. It hadn’t felt as heavenly as his hands, but his gesture had made me laugh, and the iTwin didn’t seem to infuriate Rivera. I hadn’t quite figured out if that was a plus or a minus.

Sitting there beside him, flying coach, with our arms almost touching, felt oddly personal. I tried to fill my head with thoughts of the impending nuptials, to forgo the blushing discomfort of skin against skin. I felt as if I were ten years old again, dreaming about my first kiss. Which, by the by, had been long on saliva and short on charm.

“You’re nervous,” Rivera said. He was watching me. I felt the heat of his dark appeal even before I turned toward him.

We’d just lifted off a few minutes before, and my inner ear was still unhappy about the idea of leaving terra firma.

“It’s been a rather trying month,” I said.

He nodded, eyes intense. “Daryl and the Heads will be in jail for a while.”

“Even though they were firing blanks?” As it turned out, Pete’s “friends” hadn’t actually wanted him dead. Just to scare the wits out of him. Mission accomplished.

“For being stupid if nothing else. And possession,” Rivera said.

“Of…”

“Marijuana. They must have been higher than Cheech when they grabbed him. So you’re safe,” he added. “You can relax. Unless something else is making you nervous.”

“A chauvinistic madman was trying to kill me,” I said. “Forgive me if I’m still a bit overwrought.”

The scar at the corner of Rivera’s mouth twitched a little. He was wearing a sky blue button-down shirt and black dress pants. He looked sharp enough to cut your lips on. If your lips happened to be somewhere on his anatomy. Mine weren’t. “Madmen are trying to kill you all the time, McMullen. I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Shows what you know,” I said, and eased up on the armrests.

He leaned a little closer. He smelled good. Like some-place sexy where they don’t wear a lot of clothes. “So I figure it’s either me or the wedding that’s got you all keyed up.”

I drew a deep breath and scowled at the head of the blond guy in front of me. His hair had been gelled into peaks resembling meringue. The sight made my stomach rumble.

“Peter John thinks there’s nothing in the world more amusing than bodily functions gone awry,” I said.

Rivera narrowed his eyes and squinted a little, pondering. “I thought I was beginning to follow the twisted meanderings of your thought processes, but…” He shook his head.

I tapped the armrest, imagining the ugly future. “There’s nothing funnier to him than flatulence, unless it’s seeing me in some god-awful bridesmaid’s dress with layers of—”

“I thought you already took care of the dress.”

It was then that I remembered my previous lies about my earlier flight to Chicago. Panic hit me somewhere in the midsection. “What?” I sounded a little squeaky.

He stared at me, dead-on.

“Listen—” I began, but he held up his hand.

“I don’t want to know.”

“What?”

“Did you kill anyone?”

I thought about that for a second, then shook my head.

“Buy any illegal substances?”

“Umm, no.”

“Then I don’t want to hear about it. Not till I’m done with the wooing.”

Wooing. “Okay.”

“So you were saying…”

“Oh.” It took me a moment to reboot my thoughts. “Nothing makes Pete happier than making me look like a pink tank.”

Rivera watched me for a long instant, then dropped his head against the cushion behind him and laughed.

I watched him. I don’t like to be laughed at, and he laughed for a long time. So I gritted a careful smile. He was, after all, accompanying me to a frightfully familial occasion that many a brave man wouldn’t dare attend. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You,” he said, and grinned as he turned toward me. “Think about it, McMullen. In the past couple weeks you’ve survived death threats, car chases, and your dumb-ass brother.” He chuckled again, low and smoky. “And you’re worried about the color of your dress?”

“Not the color,” I corrected. Men! “The style. The last wedding I was in I wore a bow the size of Texas stretched across my…” I glanced to the right. A silver-haired gentleman was watching me from D14. “…derriere,” I finished.

“Derriere,” Rivera repeated, and took my hand in his. His skin felt warm and rough. His smile looked the same. “That another word for ass?”

I cleared my throat, remembered our vow to take things slow, and gave him a prim glance. “I’m a licensed psychologist.”

“Oh, that’s right.” He nodded. “That’s why you could psychoanalyze the crap out of Adams the way you did.”

I felt a little pasty at the memory. “My diagnosis was correct,” I said. “He was an obsessive-compulsive neurotic with pathological anger issues. Had I been given an opportunity, I could have convinced him to relinquish his—”

“You shot him,” Rivera said. “Point-blank in the shoulder. Hell, I could have done that.”

I opened my mouth to object, but the truth was, I would have stabbed him, too, given half a chance. That realization did unsteady things to my equilibrium. Made me think maybe I didn’t know myself quite as well as I thought I did. Like maybe I wasn’t quite as sophisticated as I liked to believe. “I don’t know what came over me,” I said. “I was thinking of Pete and his practical jokes and—” I shrugged. “Suddenly I was sure it was all some kind of sick game.”

“Christ, I’m glad there was no hearing. I’m not sure a judge would have been real sympathetic when you told him you thought Adams was your brother, so you shot him.”

“I didn’t say that…exactly.”

He was grinning a little and scraped his thumb softly across my knuckles, making my innards quiver. “If he shows up unannounced again, I’ll shoot him myself.”

I cleared my throat and shifted my gaze from his thumb. Thumbs are not sexy. No matter what innards say. “What’s that?”

He stared at me, eyes dark as turtle mocha latte. “You’re his baby sister. He’s supposed to protect you.”

I thought it might be my duty as a bright, articulate woman to tug my hand from his and declare the obvious; I was nobody’s baby sister. But I was busy trying to calm my innards…and my salivary glands. “Isn’t that a rather antiquated idea, Rivera?”

“Call me a sentimental moron. But it just doesn’t seem right for a grown man to hide behind a woman,” he said, and raised my hand to his lips.

The caress was warm and titillating, sparking improper suggestions off in every possible direction.

In actuality, I think I might have been hiding behind
him,
but I said, “I’ll, ummm…I’ll tell him.”

He stared into my eyes for several seconds, then, “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“What—” I cleared the squeak from my throat again and tried, rather unsuccessfully, not to squirm. I’ve never felt any particular need to be a member of the mile-high club, but I have to admit, at that precise moment I was considering filling out an application. “What doesn’t matter?”

“What you wear.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you saw the size of the bow on—”

“I’d still imagine you naked.”

My mouth fell open. I made a few false verbal starts, then found my way. “I thought we were going to take this dating thing slow for a while.”

“This is slow, sweet cheeks,” he said, and skimmed his fingers down my thigh to my knee. My left leg was glad I had worn a dress. My right leg was kind of pissed it had been placed on the wrong side of my body.

“Jesus,” my lips said.

“Pray now while you have the chance.”

“Jesus,” I repeated.

The rest of the flight was a blur. Suffice it to say that I felt a little
tense
by the time we touched down, but I did not drag him into the rest room and join the mile-highers.

That would have been tacky. Exciting as hell. And practical. I mean, there’s not much else to do on flights these days now that they don’t even serve a decent meal. Still, it would have been tacky.

We fought our way through O’Hare with our carry-on luggage in tow, then rented a nondescript, midsize vehicle and proceeded to Holy Name Catholic Church. Rivera watched me as I drove. I could smell the scent of his thoughts. They were raunchy.

“So I get to meet the infamous McMullen clan,” he mused.

I refrained from cursing, since I couldn’t trust my salivary glands to allow me to do it properly.

We arrived at church seven minutes after the rehearsal was scheduled to begin. The vestibule smelled of smoke and candle wax and echoed with a thousand errant memories. They all assailed me at once. Mean little shits. I fought them off like hungry piranhas. This was a new Christina. A classy version of the old—

“Chrissy!” My mother came storming out of the sanctuary like a wombat on a sugar high. “Where have you been? You’re late.”

“Hello, Mother,” I said, heart racing. “We had a nice—”

“Gerald.” She turned toward Rivera. They’d met before. Blessedly, I had been heavily medicated at the time. I should have had such foresight again, but I’d finally fought off my head cold. “You’ve got to meet Glen.” She turned, hair lacquered to her head with enough spray to keep a ship at port. “Michael. Michael,” she called.

“Where’s Chrissy’s dress? I’m afraid it’s going to be too small. I think she should try it on right away so we can take it out if we need to.”

Michael Brian McMullen stepped into view. The darkest of the three Neanderthals, he grinned his slow grin and sauntered over.

“Michael,” I began, I’d like to introduce you to—”

“Crazy Chrissy,” he said, and wrapping his arms around me, lifted me from the floor and squeezed me like a tube of Crest. “Shit, you don’t weigh hardly nothing,” he said, and set me back down.

I disengaged, tugged my sleek but classy little black dress back into place, and cleared my throat. “This is—”

“You must be her cop,” Michael said, and turned his gaze toward Rivera. They shook like two bears faced off across the tundra. “Been hearing stories.”

Rivera’s eyes were narrowed. “I’ve heard a few myself.”

They stared at each other. Michael grinned. “She ever tell you ’bout the time she set her pants on fire?”

“I think I missed that one.”

“She had a crush on this kid,” Michael said. “We called him Scags. I don’t know what his real name—”

“That must be the dress!” I shouted, seeing a passing garment bag. I never thought I’d be relieved, but apparently there are worse things than assbows the size of pachyderms: there are stories that begin with “She had a crush on this kid.”

Spying the dress, Mom rushed over, snatched it from some hapless woman’s hands, and shoved it into mine. I pulled the opaque plastic back with slow deliberation.

The gown looked surprisingly normal. It was mint green. The overskirt was made of a delicate organza and there wasn’t a bow in sight.

But I was out of ogling time. Because that’s when James burst out of the sanctuary.

“Hey, anyone know when Chrissy’s—” He stopped, stared at me, and grinned. “’Bout damned time you showed up. Pete looks like he’s gonna piss himself. Come on, they’re waiting for you.”

The dress was snatched from my hands and I was rushed toward the altar, where Holly turned toward me. Her belly was big enough to gestate a brachiosaur, but she still looked pretty, big-eyed, and delicate. Maybe there was a toughness to her that I’d failed to see before, though. A toughness that had helped her survive an abusive marriage and find a guy who…well…Okay, Pete may be hell and gone from sainthood, but when I saw him standing near the vigil candles, I thought I recognized something in his eyes that had never been there before. Devotion. Admiration. Maybe even maturity.

“Christina…” Holly’s little-girl voice drew my attention. Her eyes were round and worried as she took my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry?” I was trying to keep up. But with Rivera’s blinding sexuality and the normal-looking dress and Michael sort of complimenting me, I was feeling kind of discombobulated.

Then I saw Father Pat. As far as I know he may have been one of the original authors of the Old Testament. Still tall and stringy, he glared at me from beneath brows so low you’d think they obscured his vision. But he saw.

Oh, he saw. I stared at him, heart beating slowly, wishing like hell I had not, at one juncture, wrapped cellophane around the toilet seat in the rectory.

“I didn’t think he’d ever find me,” Holly was saying.

I dragged my gaze from the priest’s, trying to focus.

“It had been so long,” she said. “Seven years since I saw him last.”

I squeezed her hand. “He was…” A first-rate nutcase. “…a troubled man,” I said. I could still feel Father’s eyes on me.

“Can you forgive me?”

“Forgiveness is…” I skittered my gaze to Father Pat. “…divine.”

I think I heard him snort. I turned back to Holly. Priests are not supposed to snort. Even if someone may have, once upon a time, bought him a personal ad, indicating any species would be acceptable.