“Not today. I’m going to find our dear Gordo and give him to my sweet Irukandji.” I smirked in delight.
Hero frowned. “Why don’t you leave it to us?”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Men will be coming with me, but sometimes even the boss needs to get his hands bloody to teach a lesson.”
Danger laughed loudly, clapping his hands together.
Yes, today was going to befun.
2
FINN MCCORKELL
My heart hammeredas I cradled my black leather bag close to my side and closed my eyes. I leaned against the wall outside my hotel room door and ran my hand over my face. My shoulder blades hurt as I pushed against the gray stone that went three-quarters of the way up my back. A chill settled into me as I shifted. The skin across the bridge of my nose and right cheek was bumpy and the sensation of touching the healed injuries gave me goose bumps.
There were points on my face where I couldn’t feel anything anymore.
My chest had a few livid pink scars and so did my shoulders.
If I’d only put on my seat belt.
I opened my eyes and tried not to get sucked into a whirlpool of what-ifs while I studied the burgundy doorjamb across from me. I squirmed inside as terrible feelings bubbled in my mind.
Thankfully, I had no real memories of the accident. With all the pain meds and the fact that I’d had a severe concussion, the first time I’d come to in a Miami hospital after being hurt was when I was nicely drifting in a cloud of hospital blankets. Painkillers had been my best friends.
But then one of the guys in the Irish mob I worked for had come in to check on me, and I could tell by the way he was acting that something was wrong—worse than me simply being in the hospital. He’d asked me how I was feeling so he could let my family in NYC know and tell Mr. Killough—the big boss—what was going on. When he’d left, a nice nurse named Wisteria had brought me a hand mirror. I remembered her name because we’d had a long, bizarre conversation about flowers afterward. She’d smiled and held up the mirror.
I’d looked like a mummy.
Everyone had been very nice, and the surgeon had done his best, but.... I touched my face again and shuddered, tears stinging my eyes. They said I could get plastic surgery and it would help. There was no way I would be the same as before. But seeing more doctors was expensive and a stupid waste.
In my heart, I didn’t think much could be done.
Mr. Killough had paid the hospital bills, and I didn’t have it in me to ask him to shell out cash just so I could try to lookprettyagain. A guy like Mr. Killough? He probably thought the scars made me more useful because now I was scary. Okay, that was an exaggeration, because I wasn’t abigman, but at the very least, I looked more like some guy who worked for a mob. I pulled myself together when there was a burst of laughter from inside the room next to mine. I’d been given a room alone, and it was probably because I’d been in a shitty mood since I’d been stuck on a plane in coach with a small boy staring at me for the entire flight.
He hadn’t blinked once. All right, he probably did blink, but it felt like he didn’t. I’d felt terrible because his mother had tried to distract him, but he wouldn’t look away. Fortwenty-six hours. The kid hadn’t even napped. It wasn’t natural.
“I’m just going to go check where I can buy us some beer.” The voice on the other side of the door belonged to Mack Mullen and he was an asshole. I did not want to get stuck talking to him and end up explaining what I was doing tonight, so I slid along the hallway toward the stone stairs and rushed down. It sucked that the only guys I liked, Cillian Shaughnessy and one of his boyfriends, Fallon Maher, were staying at some big mob boss’s house. I hissed at the slight pain in my right hip as I skipped two steps because I really, really didn’t want to see Mack.
Somehow, when I’d gone through that windshield, I’d cracked my hip, too. It didn’t hurt often—I could even jog without it giving me trouble—but being rough and leaping down the stairs jostled it. The doctor said it was mostly the muscle giving me problems because the bone itself was healed, but whatever the issue happened to be, I was tired of dealing with it.
All this had happened to me because of the Reyes Cartel men, who’d wanted to take Miami from the Killough Company, which had control of most of the eastern US right now. I swallowed hard as I reached the bottom of the stairs, then slowed to walk out through the lobby. The stone-and-wood theme extended out here and there was a small fountain that burbled in the center. I smiled at the woman wearing a pink blazer behind the reception desk, and she gave me a grin back, but it was nothing like the happy expressions that used to get tossed my way. No, there was almost a sick sort of obligation behind her upturned lips.Look at that scarred guy. Oh, I have to be nice to him.The wince before people smiled too big was small but real.
I wasn’t making up their reactions, no matter what the therapist I’d had an appointment with tried to convince me of. He wanted me toadjust to my new life, and I wanted to punch him. All that shit was easy for a stranger to say, but they needed to spend a day walking around in my shoes—or with my face.
I had no idea why I’d even been sent along to Australia.
I’d always been a good lookout, someone who could hang around without attracting attention and watch people for the boss—or if I was noticed, people never thought too much of me, since I did things like carry around my skateboard.
Actually, I did have a guess about why I’d gotten a seat on that international flight.
I had a feeling I’d been sent to help here in Australia because Jamie Shannon—the Killough Company’s Lieutenant of Illegal Operations, a position right below the generals—felt badfor me. He seemed to understand I wasn’t feeling well and probably thought a trip to Australia would do me some good. Get me away from the neighborhood where I’d gotten hurt.
I shoved open the side door of the hotel and walked past the outdoor pool, which was lit up like a sapphire in the darkness. Palm trees surrounded the cement patio and natural rocks were placed here and there to give people places to sit. One old man had his feet in the water and a drink in his hand. On the other side of the pool area was the parking lot, and I headed that way. I had the keys to our rental van in my pocket, which I had snuck out of Mack’s possession earlier when he’d tossed them down on the table at dinner, and I had to get away before he came out here and wanted to go searching for beer.
I had somewhere to be.
I shook my head as I reached the black van. Jamie’s plan to get me in a good mood couldn’t work because it wasn’t as if I was any less ugly here, in a place with pristine, white sandy beaches, where I wouldn’t even want to strip down so everyone could see more of my scars.
