Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(3)

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 f*ck 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 f*cking, 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.