Whiskey and Wry (Sinners Series) (9 page)

Except you might not be real,
his mind whispered.
What then? What happens when you find out you’re lying to yourself and Damien Mitchell really
is
dead? Who are you going to be then?

There had to be an easier way to handle the mess in his head than what he’d been doing. What he
really
should have done was stay back at the pub and ask one of the cops to run his prints for him. So fucking what if he ended up back at the Munsters’ loony bin. At least he’d have answers. Frowning, Damien strained through the memories he’d dug out of the fog in his brain, trying to remember if he’d ever been arrested. Hoping he’d at least trashed one local hotel room to have been printed, he shook his head at the young man.

“Nope.” Damien reached for his cowboy hat, but the man’s hand was quicker, and his fingers closed over Damie’s wrist. Looking down, he moved to pry off the man’s grasp, but he tightened his grip. “Dude, you’ve got about three seconds before I start breaking your hand.”

“No, I
know
you.” The young man leaned forward, close enough for Damien to smell the peppermint gum he’d been chewing. “Don’t you play in front of Finnegan’s? The pub down by one of the piers?”

“Yeah, sometimes.” Damien pulled himself free, rubbing at the red marks left by the man’s fingers.

He’d snagged his hat and almost had it on his head when the man piped up loud enough for the entire car to hear. “I
knew
I recognized you. I remember because the first time I saw you I thought, holy shit, Damien Mitchell is fucking alive.”

“F
UCKING
son of a bitch.” Sionn slammed down the shot glass he’d just drained.

His evening was ending as it started, Rafe Andrade at his side, but instead of coffee, they’d polished off a good bit of some of Finnegan’s best whiskey. The Connemara probably wasn’t something he should have yanked off the bar’s top shelf, but Sionn wanted something strong to brace himself with. Its vanilla-cream, peaty taste seemed to hit the spot. Then after a few, he no longer was sure he had any spots left.

Just a numbness growing inside of him that had nothing to do with one of Ireland’s amber imports.

“Here, pass that shit over.” Rafe snagged the bottle, taking it out of Sionn’s reach. “You’re getting drunk over some twink who ran off on you. That isn’t worth a sixty-dollar bottle of whiskey. Laura! You wanna bring your boss over some Old Crow or something?”

“He’s not my boss, Andrade. Leigh is,” a blonde woman at the bar called back to him. “He just owns the business. You all can come up and get your own shit.”

“Your employees are shitty to customers,” Rafe grumbled at his friend.

“I’m not a customer.” He puffed his cheeks out, tasting the whiskey still on his breath. “You aren’t either.”

“How about some coffee?” One of the waiters appeared at Rafe’s side, juggling a pair of bright white mugs and a steaming coffeepot. He set them down, poured out the pitch-black brew, and smiled widely at Rafe. “I can get you some… sugar and cream. If you want.”

Sionn rolled his eyes and kicked his friend under the table. Grabbing one of the cups, he muttered at the slender young man standing next to them. “Go get me something to sweeten this shit up, and quit flirting with him. He’s no good for you. Fuck, he’s no good for anyone.”

“You’re a great best friend there, Murphy.” Rafe stopped Sionn from reaching for the bottle. “None for you, man. You’re drinking your coffee American style, not Irish.”

The creamer and sugar appeared on their table, and the waiter hung there for a split second, barely long enough to drop off a pair of spoons and napkins. The clink of metal on the table fascinated Sionn, and he picked up one of the spoons and dropped it from a few inches up.

“The sound changes, you know.” He wrinkled his nose at his friend. “It kind of sounds like Dee when he’s broken a string. Those fecking things draw blood, you know? On his electric. It’s like watching a cobra strike. Scary fucking thing.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rafe held up his hand. A spray of tiny starburst scars dappled his skin, and Sionn frowned, leaning forward to take a closer look. “Try playing bass. The strings are thicker. So, Dee… your guitarist… you know where he lives? So you can check up on him?”

“Nope.” Sionn shook his head, then put his hand up to his forehead. It felt like his brain was sloshing about in his skull, and he needed to make it stop. “I just found out the git’s last name today, and Brownie was the one who told me.”

“Shit, is he still around?”

“Who? Dee?” Rafe seemed to waver in front of him, and Sionn struggled to focus. “No. I just told you he took off.”

“No, Brownie. Hell, I haven’t thought about him in years. Not since he busted us for stealing that car.”

“
You
stole the car. I just rode in it,” he pointed out. “And yeah, he’s still around.”

“He still has the mustache he stole from that walrus?”

“Yeah, all he’s missing is a blue bucket.” Sionn burped, tasting the whiskey on his breath. “He… Brownie… wants me to run Dee down for him.”

“Do
you
wanna run him down?” Rafe asked, shoving Sionn’s cup back into his hands.

“No… yes. Fecking shite damn, I don’t know.” The swirls in his coffee were making him dizzy, and he followed a bubble on a crest until it popped. “It’s stupid for me to get hammered over this. So he fucking ran? Not like we had anything. He played outside of my pub. That’s it.”

“Yep, that’s it. No reason to drain an expensive bottle of whiskey so fast you’re probably going to puke it up in a couple of hours.”

He looked up at Rafe’s placid face, unsure if the man was mocking him. Stabbing Rafe’s shoulder with his index finger, he muttered. “I’m not going to throw this up.”

“Nope, just like you’re not going to go find your boy,” Rafe drawled. “Not like he isn’t a musician and probably will be back out playing someplace with a lot of tourists to make money. Don’t know where you look for someone like that in San Fran.”

“You
are
mocking me!” Sionn accused. “Fucker.”

“Pretty much, and it’s funny. As people would say, you’ve got it bad there, Murphy.”

The teasing was irritating, more of a burr under Sionn’s skin, but Rafe had the right of it. Dee should be easy enough to find. There really
weren’t
that many places the man could go to fill his guitar case with cash. The pier was Dee’s best bet and, although long, pretty much contained to the sweep along the bay. If he tried hard enough, he’d be able to find him. It would just take time.

“He was scared, Rafe.” Sionn rubbed at his face, still hearing the tremble in Dee’s voice before he helped the man up. “And he wasn’t scared for himself… it was for me.”

Dee’s fear clung to him. More than the guilt he carried with him, Sionn found himself cradling another man’s terror, wondering what he’d done to deserve it. He didn’t need to close his eyes to feel Dee’s trembling in his arms or the metallic tang in the air from the shot metal railing. Those moments dug themselves in deep, spreading out invasive roots until Sionn could only reach for a bottle to yank the taste of fright from his tongue.

“So, Murphy, whatcha planning on doing?” Rafe rattled the half-empty bottle at him. “Finish this off or tell me how you’re going to find your boy?”

Chapter 5

K, you believe in God, right?

Most of the time. Not at four in the morning before I have to go to work and my boyfriend wakes me up to ask about him, but mostly, yeah.

Do you think Damie’s in Heaven? I mean, if there’s a Heaven, you think D’s up there with God?

Shit, Mick. I can’t imagine God not taking Damie, just so he’ll be there for when you go Home.

—
Another 4 in the Morning, Date Unknown

N
EARLY
a week after the shooting at Finnegan’s, Sionn began to suspect he’d seen the last of the musician. Leigh shook her head every time he came through the door. He’d spent a few minutes trying to repair the shot amp before giving it up as useless. It had about as much of a chance to work again as there was that Dee would walk through Finnegan’s doors.

Sionn wasn’t going to give Leigh the satisfaction of showing he missed the man, but damn him if he didn’t find himself hunting for Dee before the week was out.

Questioning other buskers did him no good. They either were woefully ignorant of other entertainers or protective of their turf. His Friday was wasted trying to get information from jugglers, clowns, and a one-man band. He didn’t have high hopes for his Saturday, but Sionn was willing to burn the hours to find the man who’d gotten under his skin.

By midafternoon, the sky was uncharacteristically clear, although winter folded a bright nip into the wind to warn off anyone who’d dare get too comfortable. He prowled the piers, pushing his legs until they ached and the scar on his right thigh buckled his gait. Needing to rest, he collapsed onto a bench to rub at his leg, working at the tight knot on his thigh.

Tired, and more than a little bit angry, Sionn closed his eyes for a moment, wishing away the too-much-coffee and not-enough-sleep headache lodged behind his temples.

There’d been nightmares when he finally was able to sleep. Blood-smeared and disjointed images where he lay helpless, unable to stop Dee from bleeding out in front of him. The musician lay sprawled on deep gray carpet in a room he knew all too well. The Viennese skyline stretched out around a wide corner, ceiling-high windows polished to a clear sheen to capture the view. If he strained his hearing, he could make out the sounds of a bazaar coming in through one of the open windows, the yodeling calls from vendors competing with birdsong to wake the morning.

Dee’s head was broken, shattered into bits by the high-powered Magnum the security issued its agents. His eyes were filming over as Sionn watched. It was too late to save him. No matter what Sionn did, he was always too late… for the family he’d been hired to protect or the crying young man in his dreams.

“Fecking git.” Opening his eyes, Sionn rubbed harder, pushing to break the hard lump of muscle knotting his leg. “Where the fuck are you?”

Then he heard music—a mournful Delya tune—and Sionn smiled up at the ice-blue heavens, sending up a quick thank-you before struggling to his feet. “Ah, I know the sound of that guitar. You, God, are never to be discounted for giving a poor man a miracle when he needs one.”

It took him a bit to find Dee. Tucked away in a warren of shops, Sionn heard the guitar before he came around a corner. The strings wept with a mellow sound, painted blue and Mississippi by skillful fingers. Dee’s rough voice carried softly over the tune, and even before Sionn had the man in sight, he could hear the shuffle of feet and people murmuring nearby.

He spotted the black leather cowboy hat he’d wanted to pull off of Dee’s head between a cluster of people gathered around a fountain. Like he had at Finnegan’s, he’d set the acoustic’s hard shell onto the sidewalk and played his heart out. A small crowd had gathered, large enough to cause foot traffic to move around the cluster of people. Some stopped to listen, and others paused in front of the case to drop money into its open flat.

There was no mistaking Dee for any other than what he was… a musician. Stripped bare of everything but a guitar, he shone brighter than Sionn thought possible.

Even from where Sionn stood, he could see Dee was lost in the music, focused on nothing anyone could see. Gone was the sarcastic twist to his mouth, and the brashness in his face had been replaced by something Sionn could only call pure. If Dee was beautiful before he picked up a guitar, he was ethereal with it in his hands.

The blues tune segued to something hot, Latin, and complicated. His fingers plucked and pushed the song out, his head bent over the guitar as if to coax out another seductive moan with a kiss. The cowboy hat Sionn hated sat forward on Dee’s inky hair, but a fleece jacket Leigh’d given him from the lost and found had been tossed aside, leaving him clad only in his T-shirt and faded jeans.

As if sensing he was being watched, Dee looked up and found Sionn standing behind the crowd. His playing continued, slowing down to a sensual crawl, as if to entice him closer. There was more than heat in the song. It sang of wet mornings spent naked and sipping wine from one another’s cupped palms. Dee swayed with the music, feeling every note on his skin and face.

It was the most erotic thing Sionn had ever seen. And it pissed him off there were others seeing it as well.

Dee ended the song with a whispering flick of his nails on the strings, then placed his palm over the guitar’s face to stop its hum. They stared at one another through the crowd, and Sionn stepped forward, shouldering past the thinning streams of people. He reached Dee’s side, unsure of what to say to the man he wasn’t sure if he wanted to bend over his legs and spank or stretch out over someplace flat and drive into.