Surviving Ice (Burying Water, #4)(6)

She shrinks back now, terror etched across her face.

It’s too bad, really. More and more, I’ve been thinking that I need a home base, after years of simply drifting. Santorini might be the place for me. I would have been a great regular for her. “Get the f*ck out of here and don’t come back.”

Her pimp spouts off a couple of words in Greek to her around his own pain. She snatches the bill from my fingertips and darts out of my apartment with him, slamming the door so hard that it rattles the wall, the dresser, and the knife lying atop it, causing it to slide off. It lands, blade-down, an inch from my left pinky toe.

I start to chuckle.





THREE


IVY


“He never changed even a bit, did he?” Ian swings his foot at the trash can. Not hard. Just enough to shift it.

I quietly watch my cousin from my perch on the front desk as he takes in his dad’s shop—the dusty collectibles, the grungy black-and-red decor, the wall-to-wall mirrors—for the first time in fourteen years. I was able to get crime scene cleaners in the same day that the police finished collecting evidence, which was a twenty-nine-hour process. It’s not like anyone’s in a rush to get the business back up and running. But the idea of Ian seeing the dark red stain where his father bled out was not something I could stomach, even if they were estranged. By the time Ian stepped off the plane from Dublin, you’d never know that a double homicide had taken place in here.

All the same, Black Rabbit feels eerily empty. Void of life. I guess that makes sense, since it lost its heart.

“He was Ned, right to the end.” Never warm and cuddly, never someone who changed himself to try to please others. He always knew who he was, and for that, he earned the respect of many people.

Including me.

But had Ned been someone else—someone who groveled, begged, who offered his attackers anything and everything he could—would they have spared his life? That question has been haunting me for six days now.

“Where did you find him?” Ian asks quietly.

I point to the leather chair that was still occupied by Dylan Royce—aka Tree Trunks—when I left for subs that night. At some point, the two men with guns must have dragged him out of the chair and forced Ned into it, using the extension cord plugged into the floor fan to secure him. The police haven’t revealed anything about the other guy, but since I never heard his nasally voice during the few minutes that I was hiding in the back, I’m guessing he was already dead when I arrived.

Then again, I also never heard the gunshot that gave Ned a quick and painless end to his ordeal.

At first I didn’t believe that the hole in his forehead was from a bullet wound. The police say they must have been using a silencer. That makes sense, when I think about the length of the handgun that I saw. But who comes with silencers, unless they’re planning to kill instead of simply scare? These guys came prepared, and they knew what they were doing, hiding their faces behind masks and their fingerprints inside gloves, and smashing the camera trained on the front. They even took the VCR to ensure there was no video evidence of their entrance.

In some ways, I’m relieved that they did that. While I want the *s who did this caught, I don’t ever want to have to sit in a courtroom and give testimony while a video of how “Mario” tested his skills with the tattoo machine against Ned’s left eyelid is played for a jury.

Ian chews the inside of his mouth. That’s one of a few signs that his father’s death has affected him emotionally. He hasn’t shed a single tear from what I’ve seen. Neither have I, though—and I’m devastated—so I guess crying is not a good indicator of pain.

But where Ned and I were close, Ian hasn’t spoken to his father in years, after he and his mom, my aunt Jun, walked in on Ned in the back room giving a female customer more than just a tattoo. When they divorced, Jun and Ian moved to San Diego, where he lived until he started college in Dublin. He’s been living in Ireland for eleven years now. So long that his voice carries a faint Irish brogue.

“I can’t believe he included me in his will,” he finally mutters, kicking the trash can again, this time denting it.

“Of course he did. You’re his son. He loved you.” It’s true, they hadn’t talked since Ian’s high school graduation day, but Ned never stopped loving Ian in his own way. I saw it, through the occasional questions that Ned would slip into a conversation, pumping me for information about Ian; and the times I’d catch Ned trolling Ian’s social media pages online after I taught him how to navigate this “goddamn computer-age world.”

Ned still kept the picture on his nightstand of seven-year-old Ian standing in front of the shop. When I was living in Dublin, I tried talking to Ian about it, hoping to convince him to pick up the phone and make amends with his father, to try and find the good in him. Unfortunately, for all that Ian inherited from his mother—which is most of his phlegmatic personality—he did get Ned’s stubbornness.

Ian’s head bows, his brow furrowed deep. He saw that picture, too, and now he needs to come to terms with the fact that he will never get the chance to know his father as an adult. “He shouldn’t have. I don’t feel like I deserve a penny of it.”

“Come on, Ian. You were everything to him.”

Black eyes settle on me, full of regret. “You’re the one who came back here. You’re the one who bothered staying in touch with him all these years.” It’s something that has caused Ian and me to have our ups and downs. He thought I was taking sides—the wrong side.