Choked Up (6 page)

I opened the front door. A hulking shadow just outside the door light caught my wrist and jerked me to him. My breath caught in my throat, but my lips curved in a smile as Hank's mouth came down on mine.

Behind my closed eyes, the vivid pulsing of my blood bloomed like fireworks.

It could have been hours. It could have been days.

Hank raised his head, his voice husky in my ear. “You opened the door blind.”

Yeah, that wasn't so smart.
I splayed my fingers across his chest. “I thought you were Ragnar.”

“Cute,” he said, and the smile in his voice cracked something inside of me.

“Do you want to come in for dinner?”

“What do you think?”

The tease was worse than the smile. I blinked fast. His hand went to the nape of my neck and we went inside.

Thierry had Hank seated and plated before we had the chance to opt out gracefully. I couldn't stop smiling.

Hank's black cargo shirtsleeves were rolled back on his muscled forearms. An errant comma of dark hair creased his forehead. The low light of the chandelier and close shave exacerbated the slight pallor and the lines around his mouth. He looked exhausted and dangerous and hyper-aware.

The middle of a McGrane family skirmish was the last place he ought to be.

“So, Bannon,” Da said, “how hails the conquering hero?”

“Well. Thank you.” Hank took a swallow of beer. “Although Belarus isn't the paradise it once was.”

Mom laughed and flashed a dead-eye warning at my brothers and Da, who knuckled under. A superficially pleasant conversation flowed through dinner.

Until dessert.

“Funny you should show up tonight, Bannon,” Rory said. “It's about time we had some answers.”

Hank said nothing.

“The murdered man on your car.” Rory flexed his fingers into a fist. “What do you know about it?”

“I know Maisie had the misfortune to find him,” Hank said. “And she handled it like a champ.”

“You wouldn't be knowin' the vic, now, would you?” Da asked, angling for trouble, his brogue showing.

“My car is in the police impound lot,” Hank said. “I have a meet with Detective Forman next week.” He leaned his forearms on the table and looked from Da to Rory. “If it'll make you feel better, I'll take a look at the crime scene photos.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth. A smile from me would be like handing a lit torch to a couple of gasoline-soaked baboons. I bent my head toward Hank and noticed a small dark stain on the side of his shirt, high up on his rib cage, under his arm.

“They're joking.” Mom bestowed an arctic smile on Rory and Da. “Why, it's not even their case.”

“I don't mind,” Hank said.

Something wasn't right. The purple-blue shadows beneath Hank's pale eyes were more than exhaustion, the slight hitch as he leaned forward . . .

“Gosh, it's getting late.” I tossed my napkin on my plate and stood up. “Hank hasn't been home in weeks and he's too polite to say he's wrecked.”

Mom was on her feet before Hank was. “Oh baby, do you really have to go?”

“Yeah. We do.”

 

Hank checked the rearview when we hit the freeway. Ragnar's faded blue Ford followed a couple of car lengths behind.

I sank into the black leather seat of the Mercedes. Hank was home and, depending on what was beneath his shirt, mostly all right. He turned on the radio. Chet Baker's bittersweet satin tenor enveloped the SUV, and the tension bled out of me like a slow tire leak.

The single rule of my mother's I excelled at. Because lawyers talk about nothing and cops don't talk at all.

When he finally spoke, Hank's voice was hoarse. “I'm sorry to Christ that happened, Maisie.”

“It's not on you.”

“Like hell it's not.” He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “The vic's a stringer. One of Vi's.”

“Vi” was Violetta Veteratti. They had, as Hank so eloquently put it, “a history.” Her twin, Eddie, was a made guy and a mad dog. He ran Chicago's Labor Union. Ran it exactly like Tony Lombardo did for Capone in the 1920s.

“I don't follow. How'd I rate a shadow?”

“You don't. Vi doesn't take precautions.” Hank's jaw went tight. “Especially not useless ones.”

He stared straight ahead. “What did Mant do to you?”

“Man?”

“Jeff
Mant
. Former paratrooper. Drug runner. Sociopath.”

“Seriously? My Gap tee–wearing assailant's name is
Jeff?
God, that's so . . . lame.” I really, really didn't want to talk about it.

Hank took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slowly. “Maisie.”

“He got the drop on me. Threatened me.” I rubbed my hands on my thighs. “You know.”

“No. I don't.” A tiny tic began to pulse at the base of his jaw.

“He pulled my hair, held me down.” I blinked fast and kept talking. “Felt me up over my clothes . . . That was it.”

“And he let you go?” Hank asked, eerily nonchalant.

“Pretty much,” I hedged. “It was the middle of the day in front of the mayor's office. Some guy came over for a closer look and Mant took off.”

“Who?”

“Never seen him before.”
Accurate but not honest.

“Are you sure?”

“I got lucky. Mant was going to hurt me.” My shoulders gave a spastic jerk.

“Not anymore. His number's up.” Hank cracked his neck and shot me a sideways glance, mouth quirked up at the corner. “Why'd we leave the party, Angel Face?”

“Forced interrogation is one thing. Bleeding on the dining room chair during it, is something else entirely.”

He swore and reached across to his left side. The pads of his fingers came away red. “Couple of pulled stitches. Nothing a Band-Aid won't fix.”

 

I sat on the wide white quartz counter of the master bathroom next to a first-aid spread that would put a third world hospital to shame. I peeled the sodden red-stained gauze off and felt a little woozy. “I don't think a Band-Aid's gonna cut it.”

Hank sat on a stool, left arm bent behind his head. “Don't go soft on me now, Slim.”

I fingered one of the intact stitches on the built-up ridge of tissue. “How many?”

“Not bad. A dozen or so inside,” Hank said, “a half-dozen to close the outside.”

“Actually, you have fourteen exterior stitches.”
Which means how many inside?
“Six of them are not just pulled apart, but ripped clear through.”

“Any of the interiors open?”

“No. I mean . . . I don't think so. I can't really tell.” I laid the fourth piece of stitch tape across the gaping oval slit on his left lat—latissimus dorsi—the thick muscle beneath his arm that gave him his perfect vee-shaped torso.

“A good place to take a hit, if you have to.” He craned his neck to see it in the mirror. “Full mobility, no bleed out.”

I squinched my eyes shut, trying to halt the gears of my brain from processing the injury in front of me. The oval profile of his wound told me the knife was smooth-bladed with a single cutting edge. A C-shaped black bruise had formed beneath one end of the wound.
Too late.
The bright bathroom lights flickered.

Jesus Criminey.
He'd been stabbed up to the hilt.

The room started to spin. Saliva ran down the back of my throat.

“Getting a little green, Sport Shake.” Hank laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “How 'bout you make us a drink and let me finish up.”

“You can't reach.” I swallowed fast a couple times. “Just talk,” I rasped, “okay?”

He sifted his fingers through the ends of my hair. “I was running a deep clean on a building. Below my pay grade.”

Oh God.
I adhered another piece of stitch tape across the slow-bleeding hole in his flesh. “W-why?”

“A final test before my new assignment. The crime lord has me run it with his son, Drago. A goddamned squirrel. And raw, too.” He blew out a breath. “Kid misses a hallway, and before you can blink, we're boxed in by four guys slinging blades, aiming to keep it on the QT. I take three and let Drago cut his teeth on one.”

“I hit the first one fast, he's over. I engage Number Two and Three rushes my blind side. Three's blade glances off my vest and into me. Two's done by then. I drop my arm and pivot. Three can't hang on to the knife. I end Three, and argue with Drago the goddamn squirrel for the next fifteen because he can't stand me walking around with the blade in. Kid's practically eating his own hand to get me to pull it out.”

I affixed the tenth and final strip of stitch tape, careful to keep breathing through my mouth. This was not what I had in mind when I asked him to talk. I crumpled up the stitch tape wrappers and opened a gauze pad.

“First rule when taking damage?” Hank asked.

“Keep a level head. Act quick.” I taped the gauze pad over the stitches.

“So.” Hank stared at me in the mirror. “Why did I leave the knife in?”

Trust Captain Alpha-Male to make this a teachable moment
.

“Um . . . Basic displacement theory. You'll bleed more once you remove the blade.”

He dropped his arm and grinned at me in the mirror. “Right. I apply pressure on either side
toward
the blade so it doesn't slide out, and wait another twenty while Drago reports in and lines up a decent tailor.”

“Gee,” I said, not knowing what I could possibly add to that.

He lowered his forehead to mine. “Gee, you're pretty.” His hands went to my waist, fingers spanning the small of my back.

He nuzzled my neck and gave my throat a soft bite, a move that normally made me go softer than Arizona asphalt. But I was a mannequin, plastic and hollow.

Hank leaned back. A shadow flickered across his pale eyes. “I'm gonna make you a drink.” He kissed me. Searing and primal and strangely different from any kiss he'd given me before. “Hell, I'll make you two.”

 

Hank had a road map of scars. Cruel, thin ones, raised and white with age. Others, dark and sunken. The most disconcerting weal was a perfect square, horrifying in its man-made shape.

This was just one more.

I flipped the lid of the very large, very battered red first-aid tool kit, opened the cantilever shelves inside, and started putting the supplies away. Betadine swab sticks, two unused packages of stitch tape, scissors, alcohol pads, gauze, tape. I returned an unused—
thank God
—sterile package labeled “suture 2-0 nylon armed with cutting needle” into a half-full twelve-count box.

Next to the sutures were unopened syringes and several thin cartons with rubber-stopped vials visible through cellophane windows. I tipped my head to read the labels.
Nalbuphine, promethazine, naloxone, morphine.

Nothing the average joe could acquire even
with
a prescription. I reached back for the incongruous and unnecessary box of Band-Aids and knocked it off the counter.

Adhesive strips rained onto the floor. I dropped to my knees and tried to pick the slick paper wrappers off the smooth limestone. My fingers were trembling. “Dammit.” I swept them into a pile, crumpled them into my fists, and stood up.

I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My reflection stared back at me, white-faced and shaking, mouth moving silently, swearing to God.

My eyes went soft, and so did the rest of me. For the first time, I understood exactly how Da had done what he did to me. And why.

A moment of clarity that was . . . less than pleasant.

I put the last bits of the first-aid kit away, barely noticing that one of the Israeli Battle Dressing kits had an old bloody fingerprint on the wrapper. Oblivious even, to the 60cc Demerol vial with only 15cc left. I shut the kit and smacked the metal locks home, stinging my palms.

I had a call to make.

 

Da answered his cell on the third ring. “Maisie? What's wrong?”

I choked, unable to force any sound out. I laid my head down on Hank's desk.

“Are you there, luv?”

I sat up and let out a choppy breath. “I get it,” I said, my voice squeezed and tight. “Why you did what you did to me. I wanted you to know that today, I understand.”

There was more. So much that needed to be said. But the words compounded like quick-dry cement. Each one harder to release than the one before.

And he knew it.

“I miss you.” He was silent for a moment. “More than there are stars in the sky.”

My childhood good-night. “Sands in the desert,” I filled in my line.

“Tears in the ocean.” He sighed. “I love you.”

“Me, too.” I disconnected and drifted back into the bedroom, feeling like a soap bubble in a cactus patch.

Hank was waiting with two Stolis on the rocks. He handed me one and raised his glass. “You know what's great about you?”