Suddenly, Frank didn’t want to hear any more Chicago history. No matter how interesting. It just reminded him of the tickingclock hanging over his head. The one where he, Ryan, and Kieran were all leaving Chicago for good. As hard as he tried toignore it? That fact only seemed to clear out of his head for about two minutes, before the weight of it crashed back downagain.
Shit.
Ryan was jumping through all these hoops for him. To save him. No way could he let his brother see how freaked out he was. It wouldn’t be fair to lay that on him. Frank caught upin a couple of long steps. “How did I never hear this story?”
“Because you kept your nose clean running the legit biz. You didn’t spend every day hanging out, shooting the breeze withlowlifes like me.”
“Look what good that did me,” Frank mumbled. Great. His clear head had only lasted twenty seconds this time around.
Laying a hand on his arm to stop him, his brother asked, “What are you talking about?”
“Ryan, you’re the fixer for the head of the Chicago mob. You’ve done more than your fair share of bad things.”
The fingers on his arm tightened. “I take care of bad people. There’s a difference. Whatever I do, I guarantee they’ve gotit coming to them. It’s justice, Frankie. No different than handing out parking tickets. Our way’s just faster. More successful,too.”
Frank gave a quick thought to the parking tickets filling his glove compartment. Well, at least he was off the hook for acouple hundred bucks there. Silver lining. Get out of jail and get out of his tickets. Clearly, he owed Ryan a thank-you present.Something between a bottle of blue label Johnnie Walker and a boot to the balls.
He shook off Ryan’s grip. Turned to face him. To bleed off some of the bitterness suddenly spurting up from his gut. “I toedthe line. Ran the front. Paid taxes. Made sure all of you lowlifes had taxes and Medicare taken out of their paychecks. Healthinsurance. Made a construction company run even though half the people on the payroll never showed up to work. And yet I’m the one Danny McGinty wants to send to jail?”
“You’re not going to jail,” Ryan said fiercely. “That’s the whole point of this. You will not see the inside of a cell, Frank. I’ve got that in writing from the U.S. Marshals. We turn evidence, we cooperate, we’re freeto go.”
It was almost too good to be true. Nobody stood up to the mob and just walked away. “What if something goes wrong?”
Ryan put his head down, scanning the ground. Five graves down from the Schoenhofen pyramid the earth rose into a low bunker.Tombs with pointed roofs that came up maybe to his waist were built into it. At the first one, Ryan dropped to his knees.He pushed at the cornice of each of the eighth-sized columns. Then he put his fingers around the starburst carved in the middleand twisted. The entire front swung inward.
“That’s why we stole all this money, isn’t it? Best backup plan in the world. Plus, it gives you your one shot at finallybeing a bad guy to the core. I call that a win-win.” Shoving his sack in front of him, Ryan hit the deck and shimmied inside.
Frank looked around at the shadows from the pine trees, the full moon overhead, and the stark lines of the tombs. This wasa pretty epic way to end things here in Chicago. Belly-crawling into a century-old crypt on Halloween? Come on. Classic Ryan,thinking to hide the mob’s stolen money in their own hiding spot.
So he’d have fun with this. No more sulking. No more freaking out. Maybe this new life was the best thing for all of them.They’d never intended to grow up to be criminals, after all.
Starting over would be good. Not just because it kept him out of jail.
And as long as he was with Ryan and Kieran, how bad could it really be?
Chapter One
Present Day . . .
The Gorse Bar
Bandon, Oregon
Flynn Maguire hated a lot of things. As he slowly, carefully drew a pint of Guinness, he counted them. Starting with his brother,Rafe, who had the dumber than dirt idea to throw them all into Witness Protection.
He also hated his new life.
They were on version five of it now, having been planted and then yanked from four other towns and jobs. Their personal marshal,Delaney Evans, had issued the warning—aka threat—that if this one didn’t take, they were out of the program. He’d hate her a little, too, if he didn’t respect thatshe was just doing her job. Of all people, Flynn sure as hell knew what that felt like. Seeing as how he’d spent five yearsrunning a construction company he didn’t give two shits about. But he’d run it, and run it well.
For all the good it did.
He hated this quaint fucking seaside village of a town. On principle, anyway. Because it wasn’t Chicago. None of the townsthey’d moved to were anything like the Windy City. The food, the people, the action—none of it compared. Flynn hadn’t realizedhow much he’d miss his hometown. Mostly because he hadn’t had any time to think about it between being told they were leaving,and disappearing.
Top of the list? That had to be how much Flynn hated himself. Or at least the sad-sack version of himself he’d turned intosince entering WITSEC.
“These should quiet down those thirsty backpackers. Thank you, Flynn,” said a soft voice to his left. He whipped his headaround to stare at the waitress as she picked up a tray of longnecks.
The pretty waitress.
The
