Jericho glanced up from his rifle scope long enough to shake his head. “My brother, the religious philosopher…”
Bo ignored him. “So,” he said, grinning at Megan with a face that looked eerily like a more lighthearted version of his brother. Judging from the other members of the Denizens motorcycle club, he had to be leading a hard life, but he appeared to be absent the worry and stress Jericho carried around on his shoulders like a backpack full of moral responsibility. “You dating anyone?”
Mahoney shook her head, blushing in spite of herself. She wondered what she’d say if the other Quinn asked the same question. “No. My job
… my life doesn’t lend itself to dating…” Mahoney wondered why that was true. Other doctors in her office dated all the time. Some of them partied like little rabbits. Maybe she’d never extended herself. It was depressing to think she was now in her thirties and had never really had a serious relationship. She would never admit it to this man, but though she was no virgin, she was far from experienced.
“Outstanding.” Bo put his hands on his knees.
“What?” Megan winced, suddenly afraid Bo Quinn could read her mind.
“I mean the part about you not dating anybody. After we’re done here, and we whack your little terrorist friend, how about you and me get some breakfast? What do you say?”
“Knock it off, Bo,” Jericho said. “She’s not your type. And by that, I mean she’s got a brain between her ears.”
“Ha, ha, ha.” Bo wagged his head back and forth. He winked at Mahoney as he got to his feet with the slow groan of someone who’d been in a recent fight. She caught the glimpse of a white scar, almost an inch wide, running above his right hip at the waist of his jeans and disappearing over his kidney. Hand on the butt of his pistol, he readjusted the tail of his T-shirt and leaned a shoulder against the wall to peer out a gap in the living-room curtains. He took care not to touch them and cause any movement that could be seen from the outside. “I always wanted to be like him, you know-when we were growing up… Except when it came to girls. He moved way too slow for my taste in that regard.”
“At least I had taste.” Jericho chuckled. “That was the difference.”
Mahoney closed her eyes. She enjoyed listening to the two men banter. Though they were fiercely competitive, there wasn’t an ounce of animosity passing between them.
“I guess it would be difficult”-Mahoney smiled, unable to resist the urge to pick on Jericho-“having a brother who goes around bent on saving the world all the time.”
Bo gave a little shrug. “Like I said, he’s been like that my whole life. It’s all I’ve ever known. Always watching out for the one weaker than he is.” A mischievous sparkle gleamed in Bo’s eyes. “He doesn’t like to talk about it, but there was this Eskimo girl back when we were younger-”
“I’m not kidding,” Jericho said, still glued to his rifle scope. “Knock it off.”
“Hey, Jericho.” Bo raised a brow. “You invited me here, remember? Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t there, too. This is my story as much as it is yours.” He turned back to Mahoney, chuckling and waving off the implied threat. “Anyhow, we were riding our bicycles along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. I think he was in the ninth grade at the time… fourteen or fifteen, and I was maybe eleven. I was lucky he would even hang with me. Well, not far from Westchester Lagoon, we rode up on a bunch of college boys harassing this homeless native gal. She’d had a little too much to drink, and the boys were probably high. It was sort of a perfect storm. They were… you know, shoving her around and calling her a muk…”
“Muk?” Mahoney asked.
“Short for mukluk,” Bo said. “It’s like the N word of the North-pretty rude thing to say, really. Anyhow, just as we peddled by, one of the guys took a swipe at the old gal’s shirt and ripped it half off. Things went from bad to worse in a hurry. They started to grope her and she cut loose with a terrible howl. I remember, it about the scared the pee outta me. Everything was way the hell out of hand-and then my brother flew in from his home planet of Krypton…”
Jericho scoffed.
“I was just a kid, you understand,” Bo went on. “Didn’t know what to do. But my big brother jumped off his bike in a heartbeat, wading into among those college boys like they were nothing more than three mosquitoes-”
“As I recall, you waded right in there with me.”
“ ’Course I did,” Bo scoffed, more serious than before. “But I had your example.”
“I just enjoyed a good fight back then.” Jericho shook his head. “That Eskimo woman provided me with an excuse.”
“You still like to fight.” Bo’s eyes gleamed at the memory. “You know what I remember most, Jer? When you’d finished with the first two and had that biggest son of a bitch on the ground, pounding his face bloody with your fist… that boy was sobbing and slingin’ snot something awful by then. I expect he was afraid you were gonna kill him. He said something like, ‘Why are you doing this? Who cares about a drunk Eskimo?’ You remember what you told him?”
“What?” Mahoney leaned forward in anticipation. “What did you say?”
Bo snorted. “ ‘Who cares about a drunk Eskimo?’ the kid says, and my big brother just keeps hittin’ him and says, ‘It’s my job!’ Can you imagine such a thing? A fourteen-year-old kid telling someone that saving a woman was his job… like he had some sort of God-given calling to look after other people…”
“That’s about enough storytelling,” Jericho said. “I was in it for the fight and you know it.”
“Whatever you say, big brother.” Bo smiled, looking at Megan with a long sigh. “I gotta tell you though; I think I started to worship him from that moment on.”
Cujo’s nasal voice squawked across Bo’s BlackBerry, rescuing Quinn from any further roasting.
“Boss”-the biker was breathing hard-“You’re not gonna believe this
… but it’s rainin’ rag heads out here.”
Mahoney sprang to her feet. Jericho sat up, away from his scope.
“Say that again, Cuj,” Bo said.
“Aye-rabs!” Cujo said. His voice was jubilant as if was shouting BINGO! “We got us two in custody.”
CHAPTER 45
Bo offered up the phone. “I think we’re into your bailiwick, Jer.”
“Hey, Cujo, this is Jericho,” he said. “What do you mean ‘in custody’?”
It was clear from the muffled grunts in the biker’s voice that he was on the move as he spoke.
“Moon spotted two guys sneakin’ up the back alley a couple houses down from you. We was able to work our way up a deep creek bed to get in behind ’em. Then we waited under a magnolia tree and conked ’em on the head as they tried to sneak by. Jacques checked ’em out. He says it’s not the guy you’re after, but they’re definitely the bad guys.”
Thibodaux’s drawl broke squelch on Jericho’s radio. “Neither one is Zafir, beb,” he said. “Both got all their fingers and toes… so far at least.”
“And you’re sure they’re Arabs and not from Mexico or Central America?”
“Chair Force,” Thibodaux grumbled into his radio. “You’re killin’ me, pal. I have spent a day or two in the Sandbox my own self. Neither one of ’em has an ID, but they were ‘Allah Akbar-in’ me to death ’til I gagged their sorry faces… And, lest you get too worried we smacked some poor member of the local mosque, one of ’em has a copy of Zafir’s martyr photo folded up in his back pocket. They’re either the SOB’s backup or they belong to his fan club. Either way…”
Jericho peered through the rifle scope across the street at Navarro’s front door while he thought. “Get them out of sight as fast as you can. Zafir’s out there somewhere and I don’t want to tip him off.”
“Where’s Moon?” Bo said two minutes later as Thibodaux and Cujo huffed in from the backyard, each carrying a bound and gagged Arab over his shoulder. A wave of heat and humidity rolled in with them when they opened the door.
