Edge Of Midnight

Book 4: The McClouds & Friends

by Shannon McKenna

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Suspense

Synopsis

On the very day an arsonist burns down Liv Endicott's bookstore in a small town in the Washington mountains, she finds fate has another shock in store for her. Amid the smoke, rubble, and tears, Sean McCloud appears, calling her name. He's every inch the man he always was-the man she kept on wanting. But wanting is not the same as trusting, and she doesn't dare let him get too close. Yet a ruthless killer is gunning for Liv, and she'll die unless they join forces to unearth a chilling truth-and come together in a blaze of searing passion . . .

Release date: August 9, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 480

Sample

Gordon watched his videotaped TV soap as he performed his usual calming post-job ritual of cleaning his guns, although he had not used them for today’s hit. Images of blood-soaked bodies from the multiple murder-suicide he’d staged that day appeared whenever he closed his eyes. Stupid soaps worked best for soothing his jagged nerves.

Occupational stress. It was a bitch, but he was coping.

Tonight’s evening news had buzzed with the shocking story of the famous Seattle cardiologist who had snapped under the strain of his job, murdered his beautiful wife and two young sons, and then ended his own life. Dreadful. Tragic. Almost jerked tears into Gordon’s own eyes.

Though the bank transfer of the second half of the kill fee would dry them very fast, he reflected. All in all, it had been a satisfying day.

An actress tearfully confessed her secret pregnancy, and Gordon grabbed the remote to fast-forward through the local news piece that began to play. That was how he saw her. By pure, random chance.

A hot-cold rush of shock went through him. He had seen that perfect face only once. Magnified through the scope of a sniper rifle.

He would never forget those big, dreamy eyes. His heart thudded.

The program was a tedious feel-good piece about the revitalization project in historic downtown Endicott Falls. A perky commentator was interviewing his lost girl about her new bookstore café. Gordon picked up the phone, dialed. His fingers vibrated with excitement.

The man who answered the phone did not waste words. “Yes?”

“I found the girl,” Gordon said. “From the Midnight Project fuck-up.”

There was a startled pause. “You’re sure it’s her?” his sometime employer asked. “After fifteen years? She was just a teenager.”

Gordon didn’t bother to answer the insulting question. “Want to find out what she knows before I take her out?” His eyes explored the lush curves of his lost girl’s body. “I’ll interrogate her. No extra charge.”

The other man grunted. “Forget indulging yourself. It’s been years. Just end it. Get a police file started first. Some dirty letters, a dead pet, and when you finally do kill her, nobody’ll be surprised.”

Hah. Like he needed to be told how to do his job. Gordon hung up, rewound, and studied her face. Just look at her. Fresh as a daisy—or so she seemed. He knew the truth. She was sly. Selfish. Look what she’d done to him; disappearing on him, eluding him for fifteen years, putting a massive dent in his professional reputation. Anger rose inside him like a boil, ugly and inflamed. He reveled in its hot, burning itch. Gave himself up to it. Just look at that bad, bad girl. She’d been laughing at him, all that time. Thinking she’d made a fool of him. Thinking she’d won.

Self-satisfied bitch. She was about to discover how wrong she was.

He freeze-framed, and placed his finger against her throat on the screen. Traced the laughing curve of her scornful pink mouth, imagining its hot moisture. Electricity from the TV screen buzzed against his finger.

This was going to be fun.

He had this dream so often, it gave him déjà vu. His twin, Kevin, sat on the rock behind the house, looking as he had right before he died, twenty-one, sunburned, cutoffs, flip-flops. Dirt-blond hair he’d cropped himself with kitchen shears. A dimple carved deep into his face, like there was some big secret joke that Sean eternally failed to get.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Sean snarled. “Would it be asking too much for you to just cut out this shit and leave me alone? Go into the light, or wherever the fuck it is you need to go. Move on, already!”

I just want to help, Kev said mildly. You could use some help. You’re going down the drain, buddy. Swish, glug, bye-bye.

“You can’t help me!” Sean bellowed. “You are dead! And this bullshit is torture! It does not help me! It will never help me!”

Kev was unperturbed by his rudeness. Stop being a spaz. His ghost voice took on that irritating tone he’d always used when dealing with his more volatile twin. You’ve got to do something about Liv’s car. She’s—

“Forget about Liv! Stop torturing me! Leave me alone!”

Alone…alone…alone… The echo accompanied him into waking consciousness, where there was never any way to brace himself for it.

He had to sort it all out over again. Like it had just happened.

Yeah, it was another fucking day. Yeah, Kev was still dead. And yeah, Kev was going to keep on being dead. Forever.

It would be so much easier to accept this if his twin would quit it with the spectral visits. But try explaining that to Kev. Stubborn jerk.

Light pried between his gummy eyelids. He ventured a slit-eyed peek. Unfamilar room. A clock on the bedside table read 12:47. Data crunched in his aching brain. Reality settled down, heavy and cold.

Another failure. His annual effort to erase August the eighteenth off the calendar hadn’t worked yet. Pinheaded optimist that he was, though, he just kept right on trying. The clock clicked over to 12:48. Eleven hours and twelve minutes of this goddamn day to get through.

He started to roll over, stopping as his leg encountered a silky thigh. The angle of that thigh to that ass wasn’t anatomically possible.

He struggled to focus his eyes. Oh. Yeah. There was more than one pair of female legs in the bed. The stripes of light slanting through the blinds made it tough to sort out the tangle of slender limbs.

Two girls lay crosswise to each other. A blonde and a brunette. Nice butt cheeks, all four of them. Round and smooth as duck eggs. The brunette lay with her face hidden by a heavy fall of dark hair. The blonde’s head was under the pillow, curly wisps poking out.

He stroked the butt cheeks closest to him and scanned the room for evidence that he had engaged in protected sex. One, two, three…huh, a fourth condom wrapper, on the bedside table. It would seem he had done his sacred manly duty by the sleeping cuties. That was good.

And it was starting to come back to him, in disconnected chunks. Stacey. The blonde was Stacey. The brunette was Kendra.

He extricated himself carefully from the bed. He didn’t want the babes to wake up on him, no matter how round and rosy their collective butt cheeks were. He wasn’t up to being sweet and charming today.

He stared at them, trying to reconstruct the impulse that had drawn him to them last night. Probably the brunette. With those kissable dimples in the small of her back, he could almost imagine she was Liv.

Not that he’d ever seen Liv’s naked ass. He’d just worshipped her from afar, like the lofty virgin goddess that she was. Although he’d worshipped her pretty thoroughly with his fingers once.

His dick jumped up like a puppy whenever he thought of that warm summer night when he’d cornered her in the historical collection room, and put his hand up her skirt. He remembered her pussy, tender and snug around his fingers. The way her soft thighs squeezed his hand. The choked, helpless sounds she made when she came.

The smell of old books made him hard to this day.

That sashay down memory lane had rendered him stone hard, hangover and all. He massaged his turgid cock. Eyed the brunette’s peachy ass. Half tempted to suit up with latex, close his eyes, and…

Christ, no. He shook away the bad idea, and froze, motionless, as a punishing bolt of pain reverberated through his head like one of those big Chinese gongs. Ouch. Fifteen years, and still hung up on that chick.

It would be funny, if it weren’t so fucking pathetic.

Sean massaged his throbbing forehead and let the Liv tape play through his head; he’d done her a favor, dropping her before doing anything unforgivably stupid—like marrying her, the equivalent of lying down and offering to be her personal throw rug. He would have tied himself in knots trying to be a good boy, and ultimately failed. Torture, agony, humiliation, blah blah blah. He knew the drill so well, he bored himself.

But he still saw the look in her eyes when he told her to get lost. He saw it every night, at four AM and whatever girl’s bed he woke in. Always with that same sucking hole in his gut as he pondered the most spectacular fuck-up of his life. The one that defined him as a person.

He eyed the brunette’s tantalizing ass, and sighed. He must have screwed hundreds of girls in his effort to get that chick out of his system. Hadn’t worked so far, but hey. He was nothing if not persistent.

He felt betrayed by his own body. The amount of tequila he’d drunk last night should have guaranteed a longer blackout.

Maybe he should bash himself over the head with a bigger pharmaceutical nightstick. Hard drugs weren’t his scene, though. The desperation that clung to the people who dealt and used them was a big, flesh-crawling downer. He didn’t even like alcohol that much. It made him fuck up in embarrassing ways. Not that waking up behind bars or in the emergency room really mortified him all that much, but it upset the hell out of his brothers. Upright, respectable family men that they now were. Pillars of the community. Legally wed to their fine and lovely lady wives. Soon to spawn big families too.

Connor and Erin were well on their way. Only four months to D-Day. A baby, whoa. Uncle Sean. So cheerful and normal. As if his brothers hadn’t grown up in the same gonzo parallel universe that he had. Crazy Eamon’s wild boys.

Even worse was this new family phenomenon he now faced; a pack of concerned sisters-in-law ganging up on him, trying to get him to open up and share. Suffering Christ, save him. They were great women, and it was sweet of them to care, but no fucking way, thank you.

His jeans were draped on a leather couch, beneath assorted lingerie. Another condom wrapper fluttered to the ground as he pulled on his jeans. He grunted, unimpressed, and rooted through his pockets.

Typical. He’d blown his emergency cab fare buying drinks for those girls, from the looks of them. So he was stranded, on foot, who the fuck knew where. Partying was such a freaking chore sometimes.

A trip to the john revealed two more condom wrappers. So he’d engaged in sink and/or shower sex. He stared at the scraps of foil as he pissed, trying to remember the aquatic adventures. He felt soiled.

Not that he had moral problems with an anonymous three-way. On the contrary. Girls were yummy. Bring ’em on. He was just lower than dirt depressed today. And it was just going to get worse from here.

The face that stared back from the bathroom mirror was both familiar and strange. The face of his dead identical twin, as Kev might have been. They hadn’t looked as much alike as some twins did, but his own mug was still Sean’s best point of reference. The superficial details were the same. Hard-muscled body, give or take a few scars. Wavy dirt-blond hair, which had gotten shaggy lately. A mirror image of Kev’s one-sided dimple in his own lean, stubbly cheek.

The grim face that stared back at him had no dimple today. Eye sockets smudged with purplish shadows, which made his light green irises look weirdly pale. The hollows under his cheekbones looked like they’d been chopped out with a hatchet. He looked grayish in the harsh light. Zombie pale. Something to scare the kiddies into good behavior.

Looking into a mirror on August eighteenth forced him to reflect on how much his face resembled Kev’s—and how much it no longer did.

He was harder, sharper, after fifteen years of hard living. Had a fan of squinty crinkles around his eyes. Grooves bracketing his mouth.

Years would go by, and the resemblance would continue to fade, until Sean was a gnarled, toothless, yammering old coot who’d lived many times the span of Kev’s short life. A yawning gulf of years.

He yanked open the medicine cabinet and scanned the contents.

Excedrin. He shook out four, tossed them in, crunched, gulped.

He leaned over, pressing his throbbing forehead against the cool porcelain sink, and let out a long, hissing string of vicious profanity.

This sucked ass. Utterly. Shouldn’t time have healed him? Wasn’t it a natural process, like continental drift? He tried so hard to dodge it, but this goddamn feeling circled him like a vulture, waiting for its chance to pick out his eyes and feed on his flesh. Sometimes he just wanted to lie down flat on his back and let that old vulture have its way.

And so it began. The sucking sound of Sean going down the drain.

He had to get the fuck out of here. Slinking away without coffee and pleasantries was rude, but better to leave before the charming sex machine of last night mutated before their eyes into a grunting zombie.

A cautious sniff at his pits practically knocked him out. A shower was too risky, though. So was coffee, he concluded with regret, gazing at the gleaming coffee technology on display in the kitchen. The bean grinder would wake up the cuties, and there he’d be, up shit creek. Forced to smile, chat, flirt, give them his phone number. God save him.

He stumbled out into a bland residential neighborhood. No money, no wallet. He never went out on the eve of August eighteenth with credit cards, or anything with his address printed on it. Just cash and condoms. Flashing lights, blasting music, sex, dancing, liquor, anything that blotted out higher cognitive function.

Fighting worked fine, too, if anybody was ass-for-brains stupid enough to get in his face. He loved a good fight.

He had no clue which direction to go, so he picked a vaguely downhill slope. Uphill would make his heart beat faster, and every lub-dub smacked at his brain tissues like the blow of a splitting mall.

Downhill. Down the drain, like Kev’s dream scolding. The partying, the fucking, the fighting, on days like this he saw it for what it was: a cheap trick to distract him from the sinkhole under his solar plexus.

His whole life, one big goddamn flinch.

The sinkhole was getting bigger, ground shifting, threatening to pitch him in. He might never find his way back up if he fell. Dad hadn’t. Neither had Kev. They’d fallen like rocks. All the way to the bottom.

Thunk. The muted thump of a car door had him spinning around and sinking down into guard before he knew he’d moved.

The tension sagged when he saw his brothers getting out of Seth Mackey’s Avalanche. Seth got out. Then Miles, from the passenger side.

Sean’s stomach sank. It was an ambush. He was so screwed.

The guys flicked each other glances that made him feel about six years old. Sean’s having one of his freak-outs. Quick, get the trank gun.

The one person in the world who had known him better than Con and Davy knew him had died fifteen years ago, to the day. He’d have calculated it to the second, if he could, but time of death had been impossible to determine. Kev’s body had been charred beyond recognition, after taking that swan dive into Hagen’s Canyon. He’d plowed through the guardrail, fallen for a few timeless seconds, then a rending crash, a hot whump as the pickup exploded—and that was it.

The blunt, chopped-off finality of it still baffled him.

There had been no skid marks leading up to the ragged hole in the guardrail. He’d searched and searched. Kev hadn’t tried to brake.

Sean saw Kev’s falling pickup reflected in Davy and Connor’s eyes too. He looked away fast. Couldn’t bear it, couldn’t share it. He had no comfort to offer, and he was too raw to accept any from them.

He just wanted to hide, alone. In a culvert somewhere.

It was easier to look Seth and Miles in the face than his brothers. He directed his glare there. “Who invited you guys to this freak show?”

Miles shrugged, his face worried. Seth’s mouth twisted into a humorless smile. “I had a brother once. I don’t need an invitation.”

Ouch. True enough. Seth’s younger brother had died too. Very badly, and only a couple of years ago. His loss was fresher than Sean’s.

Great. Another thing to feel like shit about. Thanks, guys.

Sean’s gaze slid away, leaving him with no place at all to rest it except for Seth’s black Chevy. “How’d you guys find me? X-Ray Specs?”

“We monitored you this time,” Con said. “From a safe distance. Bailing you out of jail for a drunk and disorderly is embarrassing.”

“So don’t bother, next time,” Sean suggested. “Leave me to rot.” He fished his cell out of his pocket. A transmitter inside sucked off the phone’s battery. Usually, it gave him the warm fuzzies that his family cared enough to plant spyware on him. Aw, how cute, and all that.

Connor, Davy, and Seth had all had freaky wild adventures that had convinced them that beacons were a great idea for the whole family.

Most of the time, he agreed. Maybe if Kev had carried one on his person, Sean might have found him in time to stop him from—

No. Don’t go there, he told himself. Just don’t.

Impotent fury welled up inside him. He hurled the thing over a chain-link fence. It exploded against asphalt with a tinkling smash.

“That was stupid and wasteful,” was Davy’s dour observation.

Sean kept on walking. His brothers, Miles, and Seth kept pace behind him. Like dogs hanging onto a bone. The only way to get rid of them would be to beat them into unconsciousness, but each of the three older men was more or less a match for him. Even Miles wasn’t half bad these days, with all the training he’d been putting in at the dojo. The four of them together…nah. Pain sucked. He’d pass.

“He was our brother too,” Davy said quietly.

Sean sucked in a sharp breath. “I had no intention of inflicting my tantrum on anyone. Still don’t. I love you guys, but kindly fuck off.”

There was a brief pause. “Nope,” Connor said simply.

“Don’t bother asking again,” Davy said.

There was a brief pause. “Uh, ditto,” Seth added belatedly.

Sean sagged down onto a low stone wall that bordered a flower bed, and rested his hot face against his hands. “Where am I?”

“Auburn,” Davy replied. “We followed you around last night.”

“I’ll get the truck,” Seth said. “You guys keep an eye on him.”

Sean grunted his disgust. Like they expected him to start twitching and frothing.

“Whose house did you just come out of?” Connor asked.

He shrugged. “Couple of girls,” he mumbled. “A blonde, a brunette. Nice bodies. Met them at the Hole, I think.”

“You filthy slut.” Davy’s voice had a superior note, which bugged the shit out of Sean.

“Don’t judge me,” he growled. “You’ve got the love of your life in your bed every night. So do Connor and Seth. So fuck you all, OK? The rest of us assholes have to get through the night somehow.”

“Poor lovelorn baby,” Davy said. Miles made a choked, snorting sound. Connor covered his mouth and looked away. The Avalanche pulled up. Davy and Connor seized his elbows.

Sean wrenched out of their grip and got to his feet unassisted. “May I ask what is the point of busting my balls today?”

“You may ask, if you like, but we don’t need a point,” Davy replied. “We bust your balls out of sheer habit. Mouthy little punk.”

Hardly little. He was as tall as either of his brothers, and bulkier than Connor, but he didn’t have the energy to argue. He heaved himself into the back of the Avalanche. Connor got in on one side, Miles on the other, squishing him into immobility. Seth put the vehicle in gear.

“You free to take on some work?” he asked. “You don’t look busy.”

Sean stifled a groan. He sometimes did freelance bodyguarding for SafeGuard, Inc., the security company that Seth and Davy had recently founded. Usually they called him when they had explosives to deal with.

Today, the idea bored him into a state approaching rigor mortis.

“What, a bodyguarding gig nobody else wants? I’m not in the mood to ego-fluff some executive asshole, or carry shopping bags for some fat cat’s trophy wife. Take me off your list. Permanently.”

“It’s not a bodyguarding gig,” Connor said. “And it’s not for SafeGuard. It’s for me. I’m working on a weird case. Real flesh-creeper. The Cave called me in to consult. Thought you might be interested.”

And Connor’s consulting gigs for various law enforcement agencies were always fascinating, in a gruesome sort of way.

He caved almost instantly. “What’s so creepy about it?”

“We’ve got a predator who likes math and science geeks.”

“Huh.” Sean blinked. “Wow. Weird.”

“Yeah. Six cases in four months. College age, males and females both. They turn up dead, ostensibly an OD outside dance clubs, but nobody remembers seeing them inside. All gifted in math, computers, engineering. All with the same unexplained cerebral damage. None of them have family. Someone’s picking them out real carefully.”

Sean considered it. “Evidence of sexual violence?”

“In the girls there’s evidence of recent sexual activity, but this prick’s careful not to leave any DNA. He doesn’t like to fuck the boys, evidently. I’ve already got Miles on it. I could use your help, too.”

Sean had his private misgivings about “the Cave,” the covert FBI task force that his brother used to belong to. Mostly because they’d practically gotten Connor slaughtered, on more than one occasion.

“What makes you think I could help?” he growled.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Con said. “You’re useful, when you’re not bouncing off the walls. And you could, ah, use a distraction.”

“Ah,” Sean said slowly. “So this is, like, a mercy fuck.”

“Shut up,” Connor snapped. “You’re bugging me.”

“It’s mutual,” Sean said. “Don’t project your own twisted coping mechanisms onto me, Con. The Superman cape drags on the ground when I wear it. I’ll find my own distractions. A hot three-way with a couple cute babes is more my speed. Shallow butterfly that I am.”

“I’ve known you since you were born,” Connor said wearily. “Don’t even try.” He passed a brutally scarred hand over his face, a souvenir of one of those near-death experiences. Sean got an unwelcome flash of just how bad his brother felt. He blocked it. Didn’t want to know.

He shook himself. “I appreciate the thought, but I’m not hurting for money. I’ve got my own projects to keep me busy. Consulting for law enforcement agencies feels too much like real work to me.”

“It is real work, you lazy slob,” Connor lectured him. “You come into focus when you’ve got real work. That’s what you should be doing, not this frivolous bullshit…what’s your latest craze again? Consulting for goddamn fight films? Give me a fucking break.”

Sean had gotten very sick of this deep-rooted disagreement long ago. “It’s lucrative frivolous bullshit,” he growled. “I’m busy, I’m off the streets, I’m not in trouble with the law, and I’m not hitting you guys up for money. What the fuck more do you want from me?”

“Not from you. For you.” Davy swiveled his head, fixed his brother with a laser beam gaze. “This isn’t about money. It’s about you concentrating on something other than your own miserable self.”

Sean flung his head back against the seat and sealed the light out with his hand. Here was the blood price he had to pay for a ride home.

Experience had taught him that to put up a fight at this point in the lecture was useless. They’d just keep at him with their meat mallets until he was quivering, bloody pulp. Not that they had far to go.

Best to keep them talking til he got a chance to cut and run.

“You’re going down the drain, and we’re sick of sitting around with our thumbs up our asses, watching it happen,” Davy went on.

Going down the drain. Goose bumps prickled up Sean’s back.

“Funny you should say that,” he said. “It gives me the shivers. Kev said the exact same words to me last night.”

Connor sucked in a sharp breath. “I hate it when you do that.”

His tone jolted Sean out of his reverie. “Huh? What have I done?”

“Talked about Kev as if he were alive,” Davy said heavily. “Please, please don’t do that. It makes us really nervous.”

There was a long, unhappy silence. Sean took a deep breath.

“Listen, guys. I know Kev is dead.” He kept his voice steely calm. “I’m not hearing little voices. I don’t think anybody’s out to get me. I have no intentions of driving off a cliff. Everybody relax. OK?”

“So you had one of those dreams last night?” Connor demanded.

Sean winced. He’d confessed the Kev dreams to Connor some years back, and he’d regretted it bitterly. Connor had gotten freaked out, had dragged Davy into it, yada yada. Very bad scene.

But the dreams had been driving him bugfuck. Always Kev, insisting he wasn’t crazy, that he hadn’t really killed himself. That Liv was still in danger. And that Sean was a no-balls, dick-brained chump if he fell for this lame ass cover-up. Study my sketchbook, he exhorted. The proof is right there. Open your eyes. Dumb ass.

But they had studied that sketchbook, goddamnit. They’d picked it apart, analyzed it from every direction. They’d come up with fuck-all.

Because there was nothing to come up with. Kev had been sick, like Dad. The bad guys, the cover-up, the danger for Liv—all paranoid delusions. That was the painful conclusion that Con and Davy had finally come to. The note in Kev’s sketchbook looked way too much like Dad’s mad ravings during his last years. Sean didn’t remember Dad’s paranoia as clearly as his older brothers did, but he did remember it.

Still, it had taken him longer to accept their verdict. Maybe he never really had accepted it. His brothers worried that he was as nutso paranoid as his twin. Maybe he was. Who knew? Didn’t matter.

He couldn’t make the dreams stop. He couldn’t make himself believe something by sheer brute force. It was impossible to swallow, that his twin had offed himself, never asking for help. At least not til he sent Liv running with the sketchbook. And by then, it had been too late.

“I have dreams about Kev, now and then,” he said quietly. “It’s no big deal anymore. I’m used to them. Don’t worry about it.”

The five of them maintained a heavy silence for the time it took to get to Sean’s condo. Images rolled around behind his closed eyes; writhing bodies, flashing lights, naked girls passed out in bed. Con’s predator, lurking like a troll under a bridge, eating geeks for breakfast.

And then the real kicker. The one he never got away from.

Liv staring at him, gray eyes huge with shock and hurt. Fifteen years ago today. The day that all the truly bad shit came down.

She’d come to the lock-up, rattled from her encounter with Kev. Tearful, because her folks were trying to bully her onto a plane for Boston. He’d been chilling in the drunk tank while Bart and Amelia Endicott tried to figure out how to keep him away from their daughter.

They needn’t have bothered. Fate had done their work for them.

The policeman hadn’t let her take Kev’s sketchbook in, but she’d torn Kev’s note out and stuck it in her bra. It was written in one of Dad’s codes. He could read those codes as easily as he read English.

Midnight Project is trying to kill me. They saw Liv. Will kill her if they find her. Make her leave town today or she’s meat. Do the hard thing. Proof on the tapes in EFPV. HC behind count birds B63.

He’d believed every goddamn word, at least the ones he’d understood. Why shouldn’t he have? Christ, he’d grown up in Eamon McCloud’s household. The man had believed enemies were stalking him every minute of his life. Up to the bitter end. Sean had never known a time that they weren’t on alert for Dad’s baddies. And besides, Kev had never led him wrong. Kev had never lied in his life. Kev was brilliant, brave, steady as a rock. Sean’s anchor.

Do the hard thing. It was a catchphrase of their father’s. A man did what had to be done, even if it hurt. Liv was in danger. She had to leave. If he told her this, she would resist, argue, and if she got killed, it would be his fault. For being soft. For not doing the hard thing.

So he’d done it. It was as simple as pulling the trigger of a gun.

He stuck the note in his pocket. Made his eyes go flat and cold.

“Baby? You know what? It’s not going to work out between us,” he said. “Just leave, OK? Go to Boston. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

She’d been bewildered. He’d repeated himself, stone cold. Yep, she heard him right. Nope, he didn’t want her anymore. Bye.

She floundered, confused. “But—I thought you wanted—”

“To nail you? Yeah. I had three hundred bucks riding on it. I like to keep things casual, though. You’re way too intense. You’ll have to get some college boy to pop your cherry, ’cause it ain’t me, babe.”

She stared at him, slack-jawed. “Three hundred…?”

“The construction crew. We had a pool going. I’ve been giving them a blow by blow. So to speak.” He laughed, a short, ugly sound. “But things are going too fucking slow. I’m bored with it.”

“B-b-bored?” she whispered.

He leaned forward, eyes boring into hers. “I. Do. Not. Love. You. Get it? I do not want a spoiled princess, cramping my style. Daddy and Mommy want to send you back East? Good. Get lost. Go.”

He waited. She was frozen solid. He took a deep breath, gathered his energy, flung the words at her like a grenade. “Fuck, Liv. Go!”

It had worked. She’d gone. She’d left for Boston, that very night.

He’d paid the price ever since. He knew just how those surgeons felt. The poor bastards you read about in magazines, the ones who fucked up and cut out the wrong eye, or lung, or kidney. Oops.

Seth pulled up at the curb outside Sean’s condo, pulled out his cell phone, and dangled it in front of Sean’s face. “Here.”

Seth waved it away. “Forget it. I don’t want—”

“Take it,” Seth snarled. “Or else I’ll hit you with it.”

Sean sighed, shoved it into his pocket.

“Short string gets to babysit this bozo til midnight.” Davy held out his huge fist. Four pieces of string dangled from it.

“Aw, shit,” Sean protested. “I don’t need—”

“Shut up,” Davy said harshly. He pulled out a string—long. Con grabbed his. Long. Seth and Miles drew.

Miles grunted in resignation. He had the short string.

“Congratulations. You got your work cut out for you,” Seth said.

“This is humiliating,” Sean complained.

“Tough. If you don’t like it, stop doing this to us every year.”

Sean shut his eyes. The weight of his eyelids made his eyeballs throb. Red bloomed like a bloodstain in his head. Black bloomed from the center and took its place. Red again. Then black. The drumbeat of his stubborn heart. And behind it, Kev’s pickup. Endlessly falling.

Miles shoved open the door and slid out. Sean followed him.

“Hey. Erin had a sonogram yesterday,” Connor said abruptly.

“Oh, yeah?” he inquired politely. “Everything’s fine, I trust?”

“Yeah, everything’s great. It’s a boy,” Con said.

“Ah. Uh…good. Congratulations.” He felt like he should say something more profound, but his mind was as blank as the white sky.

“We’re going to name him Kevin,” Con added.

Something squeezed like a vise around his larynx, horribly tight.

Con laid his hand on Sean’s shoulder. “It helps, you know?” his brother said, his voice intense. “Trying to make a difference. And if it all comes together and you get there in time to save somebody, oh, man. It’s the best damn thing in the world. It makes up for so much.”

“Yeah? And then? What happens after? When the thrill is gone?”

Connor hesitated. “You get out there and do it again.”

Sean nodded. “Right,” he muttered. “It never lasts, does it?”

“No,” Connor admitted. “But then again. What does?”

Sean contemplated that. “Sounds pointless and exhausting.”

His brother did not contradict him. He just turned away, his face stony. Sean let the door swing shut. The Chevy sped away.

Sean and Miles stared at each other. Miles’s mouth was settled into a flat, stubborn line. “Don’t even start,” he said. “It’s useless.”

Sean groaned inwardly. Not that he didn’t love the guy to pieces. Miles was a great kid. A good friend. Crazy useful when it came to the gearhead techie computer details that bored Sean out of his skull. In the last couple years since he’d taken on the role of McCloud mascot, he’d proved his worth many times over. But Sean wasn’t up to being anybody’s mentor, love counselor, cheerleader, or fashion guru today.

“Buddy? You know I love you, right? But I don’t want company,” he said wearily. “So get lost. Disappear. See ya.”

“Nope.” Miles’s face was implacable.

Sean realized that clenching his teeth so hard was making his head throb harder. He made an effort to relax his jaw. “OK. Let me phrase this differently,” he said. “Disappear, or I’ll rearrange your face.”

Miles looked unimpressed. “If I leave you alone and you get into trouble tonight, Davy, Con, and Seth will rip my head off and plant it on a stake. There’s only one of you. There’s three of them. Forget it.”

Sean started up the stairs to his condo. Each step was a hammer blow to his skull. “I won’t get in trouble. I don’t have the energy.”

“I’m not going to get in your face, either.” Miles followed him up the stairs. “Just pretend I don’t exist. I’m used to it. Look at my track record with the women. I’m, like, the Invisible Man.”

Sean shot Miles a critical glance as he unlocked his door. “Do not say stuff like that if you want to get lucky with women,” he lectured, out of habit. “Don’t even think it. It’s the kiss of death.”

“Yeah.” Miles rolled his eyes. “By the way. I need a favor.”

Sean slapped the door open. “It’s not a good day to ask favors.”

“You owe me,” Miles reminded, following him in. “Big-time.”

Sean spun around, planted his feet, and gave Miles a death look that knocked him back two paces. “What the fuck do you want, Miles?”

Miles gulped. “I want you to drive me up to Endicott Falls.”

Sean started to laugh at the irony of it. He breathed the shaking feeling down before it made him hurl all over his own kitchen. “Dream on, buddy. I hate that town, especially today, and it hates me worse.”

“I taught your Thursday kickboxing classes for the entire past month when you were in L.A.,” Miles reminded him. “I spent three days fixing your computer when that virus crashed it. Free of charge.”

“Aw, shut up. What do you want with that backward hole, anyhow?” A thought struck him. He shot Miles a darkly suspicious look. “Isn’t Cindy up there, doing band camp? Don’t tell me you’re still—”

“Absolutely not. I am totally over Cindy.” Miles’s tone was stony. “She’s up there, but I avoid her like the frigging plague.”

Sean was unconvinced. Miles had been pining for Cindy Riggs, Connor’s wife Erin’s seductive little sister, since before the McClouds had met him. He’d finally gotten a clue, after a spectacularly public episode last summer at Connor’s wedding, but it had not made him happier. On the contrary. He’d been in a funk ever since.

“I’m sound and light technician for the Howling Furballs at the Rock Bottom Roadhouse tonight,” Miles told him. “And tomorrow, I start assistant teaching karate at the Endicott Falls School of Martial Arts.”

Sean was startled. “No shit. You’ve got, what, a brown belt now?”

“Nope. Passed the test for my first dan black belt last month. Got an honorable mention for my kata, too.” The pride in Miles’s voice was palpable. “Davy gave my name to a guy who runs a dojo in Endicott Falls. They need someone to help with the class while the regular teacher recuperates from knee surgery, so…it’s no big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal,” Sean said. “It’s great. Good for you.”

“Plus, my folks just bought a car. They’re giving me their old Ford. This is the last time I’ll have to blackmail you into giving me a ride.”

“That’s reason enough in itself to drive you up,” Sean said sourly. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Early nineties sedan, right?”

Miles looked wary. “So? What of it?”

“Beige, right? I’ll bet you my left nut it’s vomit-tinted beige.”

Miles jerked his shoulders in a defensive shrug. “So what if it is?”

“Fogeymobile,” Sean said. “The Invisible Car, for the Invisible Man. You gotta drive something with testosterone, my friend.”

“It runs,” Miles grumbled. “It’s free. I know you think of motor vehicles as fashion accessories, but it’s sexier than taking the bus.”

“Barely,” Sean muttered. “I thought you were working on Con’s nerd killer project.”

“I will be. Cyber stuff. I’ll work from up there.”

Sean grunted, and yanked a couple beers out of the fridge. He handed one to Miles, chug-a-lugging half of his own. “God, I feel like shit.” The red light blinked insistently on his message machine. He stabbed the button to see what the outside world wanted from him.

The first two calls were work-related; one about an invoice he’d sent for a consulting job he’d done a few weeks before, another from an independent film director in L.A. who was shooting a movie about GIs in Iraq. Sean punched the fast forward button over both of them. He’d deal with them later, when his brain was back online.

The next message rooted him in place, bottle poised at his lips.

“Yo, Carey Stratton here. Tried your cell. Fucker was turned off. I was doing a trawl for your long lost lover-doll. Computer coughed up some new data. Olivia Endicott has had a misadventure, pal. Somebody burned down her bookstore. Oh, and she’s moved. She’s in Endicott Falls, Washington, now. That’s pretty close to you, huh? This might be your chance. Go for it, buddy. The skulking from afar shit is not good for your health, even if it does pay my rent. I sent you an e-mail with the links. No charge for this service. Take it easy, OK? Later, dude.”

Sean was rooted to the floor. Mind blank, mouth slack.

“Sean?” Miles’s voice was cautious. “You’re spilling your beer.”

Sean jerked, startled, and righted the bottle. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to swallow. His throat was choky dry, like desert sand.

Liv. Back in Endicott Falls. The last news he’d gotten from the private investigator had placed her in Cincinnati, Ohio, working as a research librarian. The latest photos Carey Stratton had sent him had been taken there last December. Black and whites, long range lens. Liv, coming out of her apartment. Liv, petting a dog, smiling. Liv getting her mail, hair swirling around her head like a halo, patterned gypsy skirt billowing in the wind. Her socia. . .