Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(5)

“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 f*cking 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 f*ck 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 bugf*ck. 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 f*ck-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.