Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(57)

It felt like forever, but finally they procured a key from somewhere and opened the door.

Rose checked the bathroom and closet while Drew helped me sit up.

She knelt by my side, eyes wide with worry. “Where is he?”

“Church,” I managed to gasp.

Confusion flickered across her pretty face. “What—”

“Rose,” her husband murmured. “She doesn’t look okay.” Then to me, “Do you need a doctor?”

She bit her lip. “Oh God. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

My muscles were still quivery, my breaths shuddering, but I would be okay. “I’m fine. Just a panic attack. I don’t do well with…locks.”

Horror filled her pretty dark eyes, so similar to Philip’s. “He’s keeping you here?”

No. Maybe. “It’s complicated. But I have to get to him. He’s making a ransom drop for my brother and I…” I trailed off, suddenly uncertain of how much to say. Did Rose know about this other Murphy sibling, one cast out of the fold before he’d ever been a part of it? “It’s someone from his past.”

Drew’s expression grew grim. “His brother?”

“Yes,” I said, relieved I wouldn’t be the one to spill family secrets.

Rose gasped. “Colin?”

Drew shook his head. “I’ll explain on the way. If this is really him, we need to hurry.”

Rose helped me stand, but I stumbled on my first step.

“I can carry you,” Drew said, solicitous but firm. I knew him to be a calming influence on Philip—and he had quit recently, I had learned from Adrian, which was part of why Philip had gone off the rails. But if Drew was acting like it was urgent, then it wasn’t just in my head.

I nodded, and Drew lifted me into his arms. I clutched his suit fabric in my hand, burying my head in his shoulder. He was almost a stranger to me, and I longed for Philip’s smell, his strength. My breathing was still coming fast, but less due to the panic attack and more due to my increasing fear over what might be happening right now in the church.

Drew settled me into the backseat. He and Rose took the front seats.

Only when they had directions to St. Mary’s and had set off down the one-lane empty road leading away from Philip’s safe house did Rose demand answers. “What were you talking about? Who has her brother?”

Drew’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “Do you remember I told you when I started working for Philip, how he told me the most important job, my only job really, was to protect his family, you and Colin?”

“Yes.”

“There were a lot of people to protect you from—other criminal types who would have liked to take his business, enemies he had made. But one of the biggest threats came from his brother. Your brother. Not Colin. He was your father’s son with another woman.”

Rose stared at him across the dark car. “But why? Why wouldn’t he tell us? Why would Philip keep him from us?”

“Shit,” Drew muttered. “He should have told you. He should be the one telling you this now. When your brother approached him, Philip had just begun making a name for himself as a problem solver. This man approached Philip and explained that he was your half brother. He wanted money.”

A dismayed sound came from Rose. “How did Philip know it was real?”

“He had a test done to confirm it. Because Philip would have given him money, if that’s all it was, either out of family loyalty or to make him go away. The problem was that this man… Marco is his name. He… Shit. He hurt people, Rose. I’m sorry. That was what he needed the money for—paying off people to stay silent.”

“I don’t understand.” She glanced back at me from the front seat. “I love my brother, but I know what kind of man he is. He hurts people too.”

“Not like this.” Drew swallowed, and I felt the car speed up. “Not for fun.”

Oh God. This man hurt people for fun, and he had my brother.





Chapter Thirty-Three

I JUMPED OUT of the car as soon as it slowed near the church. I heard Rose shout my name, but I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t wait. The doors were heavy but unlocked, and I pushed them open to reveal a dark atrium—empty.

Drew and Rose followed me in a matter of seconds, coming to a breathless stop behind the pews. More slowly, I walked up the aisle. It felt strange to be in a church at night, with no one else here. There were no lights shining, no candles, only the faint light of the moon filtering through stained-glass windows lining the walls, images of heaven and hell, of a man on a cross, of rebirth. It was an old church with traditional symbolism: suffering and sacrifice.

The only sounds were our breathing.

“They might have left already,” Rose whispered. “Where could they be?”

Drew shook his head. “I’ve never been here. This isn’t one of Philip’s regular meeting places. Or at least it wasn’t when I worked with him.”

Of course not, it was a church. Except maybe he did have churches that rotated through his roster. That would be the kind of thing he’d do, the irony of it. The memory rose unexpectedly, the little wire machines in his library: the bird in the cage, the well.

And I remembered the books behind them. One was about haunted places in Chicago, with dog-eared pages and highlights of a theater, a church. Not this church, but it could have been. I knew from middle-school history that the Underground Railroad had intersected in Chicago, that churches often had hidden passageways and compartments.