“Yeah. But we’re your brothers. We’re supposed to still be looped in to that life you’re making.”
“Hell, you weren’t this much of a nag when I was in high school.”
“The mob wasn’t hell-bent on finding and killing us back then.” Evasion duly noted. Flynn would file it under what the hell was the kid hiding and tell Rafe later. “Look, we’re following O’Connor for a day to make sure that he isn’t here on reconnaissance for a hit.Then we’ll dial in the marshal. You want her to yank us out of some knee-jerk protective reflex? Pull us out of Bandon whenall we have to do is stay off this goon’s radar for a couple of days?”
The sound of his brother’s sigh was even louder than the seagull trio fighting over a shard of waffle cone in the street.“No.”
Kellan stood. Offered a hand to help Flynn to his feet. Flynn gave in to instinct and pulled him into a bear hug. They startedwalking again.
“Then just stay cool. Don’t go near the waterfront,” Flynn cautioned. “And remember that Rafe and I would literally give ourlives to keep you safe.”
“See, that’s what I’d like to avoid.”
A deep laugh rolled out of Flynn. “Fuck, K. Me, too.”
The steel door to the service bay at Wick’s Garage was still down and locked up tight at nine in the morning, even thoughit was normally wide open to catch the breeze as well as new customers. Flynn knew it had to be Rafe taking extra securityprecautions with O’Connor in town.
“Wonder how he’s justifying the lockdown to Frieda?” he muttered to Kellan. “I swear that woman would bend over to pick upa penny if she was in a full body cast.”
His little brother shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his orange shorts. “Rafe managed to keep his involvement in theChicago mob a secret from me for more than half his life. I’m guessing that coming up with a cover story for a closed doorwon’t tax his mental faculties.”
“You don’t get paid by the word, dude.” He bumped Kellan’s shoulder. Just for fun. Just to razz him like he used to all thetime. “Would it have killed you to just say Rafe’s a good liar?”
“That’d be a waste of the one hundred and fifty thousand bucks you guys spent on my almost-law degree.” Kellan stopped walking.Jaw slack with . . . surprise? . . . confusion? . . . he asked, “Jesus Christ, was my education financed by the mob?”
A car at the end of the block honked, laying on the horn in one long, unending blast. Because Kellan had stopped dead in thecenter of the street. The garage wasn’t on the main drag, but there were enough people around to notice. Which was the verylast thing the Maguire brothers needed.
Flynn put an arm around Kellan’s shoulders and pushed him the rest of the way to the sidewalk. Then he kept his arm tightwhile he whispered in Kellan’s ear. “Remember how we can’t risk O’Connor accidentally finding us? You getting run over—howmuch attention do you think that would attract?”
“A metric shit-ton of attention. Especially if I got taken to the hospital and Mollie saw me in my briefs and decided to leaveRafe for my obviously bigger, ah, attributes.”
Classic Kellan. The kid could be serious as a heart attack—for about a minute. Then the jokes and charm rebounded, twice asstrong. He would’ve kicked butt as a trial lawyer. Kept the other side on their toes and jumping to keep up.
“Ugh.” Flynn let go and made a show of wiping his hands on his jeans. Jeans, so he’d be able to wear his steel-toed bootswithout looking like a guy who was both prepared and willing to kick someone’s teeth in. “Don’t talk about your attributeswhile I’m touching you. That’s just wrong.”
“Sorry. For stopping like that, I mean.” He scrunched up his face and ran a hand through his short, dark hair. “The thoughthit and sort of sucked the air right out of me.”
“If you wanted to know, why didn’t you ask before now?”
“You guys hate to talk about it.”
“About you going to law school? Rafe and I couldn’t be prouder that you made it into Northwestern.”
“No. You don’t talk about anything to do with Chicago in general, let alone what you did for the mob. At first, we weren’tsupposed to talk about it. Delaney’s whole you can’t focus on the future if you’re dwelling on the past rule.”
The rule made sense. Flynn just hadn’t been able to follow it for shit.
All he could think about was his old life. Every single step and decision and action that led to them abandoning everything.That always led to running through the laundry list of what each of them had given up. Big things, like Kellan’s JD, and littlethings like Rafe’s Valentine’s Day tradition. He’d put on a suit, walk to what used to be the address where the infamous St.Valentine’s Day massacre of Irish mobsters took place in 1929, and drink a shot of whiskey.
Sure, that had been a tradition Danny McGinty dragged Rafe along on initially, but it came to mean something to him. Thisyear on Valentine’s Day Rafe had quietly and methodically gotten drunk off his ass—but on tequila.
“We told you to ask whatever questions you had.”
“Yeah, but every time I do ask something, you and Rafe look at each other.” Kellan squinted. “Like you’re having a whole privateconversation, figuring out the equation of how much you want to tell me vs. how much I really need to know divided by howupset the truth might make me.”
Well, Flynn couldn’t deny a single word. Because he and Rafe had agreed, back on Halloween, that lying to Kellan was entirely different from omitting things from the truth that they shared with their little brother. They’d wanted to protect him from the ugliness of the fulltruth. Hell, it was their job in life.
And a fucking hard habit to break. Hard to remember, no, acknowledge that Kellan was now twenty-five. That if they hadn’t screwed with his life, he’d already be trying cases
