A gun? A freaking gun? He’d hit on a woman who carried a gun? Yeah, that stuck with Kieran a little harder than wondering how sheknew his brothers. Or why anybody needed a gun in the middle of the afternoon. Which, as a soon-to-be lawyer, was probablya dumb thought. Criminals didn’t punch a time clock. Was she a criminal?
“Who are you—really?” he demanded.
“Delaney Evans. U.S. Marshal.”
No shit? Marshals were way hotter than he’d ever imagined. Kieran was also pretty fucking off balance to have that be hisfirst response to whatever the hell was going on right now.
“I’m sorry, Kieran.” Ryan shook his head and let his hands hang off of his knees. His oldest brother hadn’t looked that sadand serious since . . . hell, probably since their dad died. “It’s a shitty way to do this, but I can’t think of a good way.”
“To do what?” Because Kieran was fucking worried at this point.
“To tell you that we’re in the Chicago mob. Both of us.” Frank pointed back and forth at his older brother. “Or we were, untilthis morning.
No. No fucking way. Kieran shook his head, trying to shake Frank’s words back out of his ears. “That’s one hell of a sickjoke.”
“Notice how we’re not laughing.”
Yeah. He’d noticed alright. The pair of them matched head to toe. Kieran catalogued the oddness of all of it. Their musseddark hair—and they both liked to hog the mirror a lot to be ready for any hot women that might cross their paths on a given day. Black jeans and tees, on a week day when theyshould at least be sporting ties. Most of all, the hangdog downward tilt to their whole faces. This . . . whatever this was, it was deadly serious.
He tried to lunge sideways to get to Delaney, but the damned seat belt snapped him back in place. Kieran white-knuckled thearm rest as he torqued his body around. “Holy shit, did you arrest my brothers?”
“No.”
“Then why—oh.” His brain finally revved past the shock. If what Ryan and Frank alleged was true, there was only one reasonthere’d be a U.S. Marshal in the car with them. “You fuckers are going into Witness Protection, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m so, so sorry, K.”
“Cut the apology crap.” He didn’t have time for it. Because Kieran had the feeling he was already on borrowed time. That anysecond Marshal Evans would kick him out of the car and he’d never seen his brothers again. “You’re leaving me? This is you two saying goodbye?Forever?”
Damned if there wasn’t a lump in his throat. This couldn’t be happening. The Mullaney brothers were tight. Tight in a waythat only happened when you lost both your parents before you could shave. He’d never even thought about what life would belike without his brothers.
“No.” Ryan fought briefly with his seatbelt before just reaching over and gripping Kieran’s upper arm. Squeezing it like apython. “We stay together. Always. Keeping the three of us together is the only thing that matters. It’s the reason we’rejoining WITSEC.”
“I don’t understand. You’re ratting on the mob . . . for us?”
“The head of the mob, Danny McGinty—”
Delaney cut him off with a buzzer-like noise. “Hey. Remember the ground rules. Kieran doesn’t need details. The less he knows,the better.”
Ryan’s eyes burned with blue fire he aimed back at the marshal. “He needs to know the name of the man who fucked us over.The man who was behind the death of our parents.”
Kieran’s suddenly upside-down world did another one-eighty. Nobody had ever said their parents were murdered. What else about the life he thought he knew was a total lie?
The woman he still—unfuckingbelievable—wanted to kiss gave a sharp nod. “Fair enough. But watch yourself.”
“McGinty had some deals fall apart. He needed someone to take the rap, do time in prison. He picked Frank to be the fall guy.When he oh-so-generously gave me the heads-up, I decided to take action. No brother of mine would rot behind bars for somethinghe didn’t do.”
The repeated honk of the taxi in the lane next to them bought Kieran time to figure out how to ask the obvious question. “You’rea mobster—but you didn’t commit a crime?”
“Pretty much no. I really do—” Frank grimaced, “did run the construction company you know about. Kept my nose clean. It was the front for the mob, but legit. I sure as helldidn’t do what McGinty wants me to cop to.”
Ryan held up two fingers. “No prison. And we stay together. Those were my terms when I went to the Feds and asked for protection.They gave their word. It’s all going down today. The raid on McGinty’s crew. And the three of us disappearing forever.”
Forever? Talk about dramatic overkill. Ryan always did like to tell stories. He looked out at the enormous, overwhelming blueof Lake Michigan. The lake that had anchored his whole life. They weren’t leaving Chicago. No way.
He pushed off Ryan’s hand. “Wait a minute. You mean we’ll be holed up in some boring safehouse in the suburbs for a few weekswhile you get questioned.”
“No.” And Delaney actually looked at him with pity—fucking pity!—as she continued. “That’s only step one. The Irish Mob is bigger than McGinty, bigger than Chicago.”
Frank glanced out the window, then deliberately turned his back on the view. “It won’t ever be safe for us to come back here.Or ever be Mullaneys again. But that’s just a fucking name, right? We’ll be together, wherever we end up. Whoever we end up.”
He was right. Nothing else mattered but sticking with his brothers. The rest was just details. Really fucking weird and impossibledetails, but still. Practically immaterial compared to the Mullaneys being side by side.
Kieran hadn’t, couldn’t process any of this. How big of criminals were his brothers? What did they do? What would they donow? Even with traffic at
