When I stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around my waist and secured with my fist, it was like stepping out the front door into the icy cold air of the winter morning.

Briar stood on the far side of the room, staring at me, her expression so remote, she could have been a statue carved from marble.

“Good morning,” I said, smiling.

She didn’t return the smile and tension settled in my gut.

It only grew and spread when she walked across the room over to the nightstand where I’d left my phone when we’d fallen asleep.

She grabbed it, and with a fierce strength that caught me off-guard, hurled it at me.

I only barely managed to catch it before it would have smashed into my face.

“You had a phone call,” she said, her voice arctic.

“Ah…”

Slowly, I lowered my gaze to look at the screen.

It was shattered, the breakpoint starting at the edge and spreading outward from there.

“Oh, yeah. I think I broke your phone. Maybe your boss can hook you up with another one—a better one. That one is a piece of shit,” she said, her voice full of false cheer.

I just stared, the dread inside me slowly turning to ice.

“Don’t you want to know who called?” She fixed wide, innocent-looking eyes on me.

I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed silent.

“Maybe you already know.” Now the ice was fading, giving way slowly to a burning, seething rage. She took a step toward me, her cheeks flushing in anger. “Did you know what was going to happen to Brooks?”

“No,” I said, squeezing the word out. My throat protested the action. There was a knot there, so big and heavy I could barely breathe, but I couldn’t let her think I’d known her brother would be attacked.

With a disdainful sneer, she demanded, “Why should I believe you? I mean, you’ve been lying to me from the start. Right?” When I didn’t answer, she shouted, “Haven’t you?”

I gave a curt nod. She knew now. What was the point in lying?

She wavered on her feet.

I started forward.

She lifted a hand, shaking her head. “You stay the fuck away from me, Cormac. Stay as far as you possibly can.” She sucked in a broken, ragged breath, then flung her arm to the door. “I want you out of here.”

“Briar…wait,” I said. I didn’t know what I could possibly say or do, but I couldn’t just leave. Not like this.

Her eyes were remote, her expression severe. “No,” she said, voice oddly gentle. “I want you out. Gone. Out of my life.”

She turned then, starting for the door. Once she reached it, she paused and looked back at me. “If you aren’t gone by the time I’m ready to leave for the hospital, I’ll call the cops. And…Cormac?”

I met her eyes over the distance that separated us. And it was a lot more than the ten or so feet of carpet.

“I’m not my brothers…or my father. I have no problem picking up that damn phone and dialing 9-1-1. I’ll do it, and I’ll have them throw your ass in jail, and I’ll press any and every charge I possibly can. I’m not a Downing who’s worried about the police taking a hard look at me. So, if I were you…I wouldn’t linger.”

It wasn’t the threat of the cops that made me leave.

If I thought I could talk her into giving me a chance to explain, I’d have spent a month…hell…a year in jail. A lifetime, even.

But nothing would convince her. It was over.

Nothing I could do would change that.

With that knowledge laying heavy inside me, I knew I had no other choice but to leave.

I was tempted to just climb into my car and drive, leave Philadelphia—drive somewhere. West, maybe. Or north. Just keep driving until my money ran out and then I’d figure out what to do.

One thing stopped me.

After leaving Briar’s house, I pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop that was open twenty-four hours a day and went inside, taking both the phone with the shattered screen and my other one—the one I hadn’t used for anything other than to text or call Briar. After ordering a coffee I didn’t particularly want, I settled in a vacant corner.

There were only three other customers, and none of them spared me a look.

I had a battery pack and set my regular phone to charging before picking up the other one.

The fractures in the screen were obvious as I ran my thumb over it to wake it up. I punched in the PIN to unlock it and went to the recent calls. Even though I already knew what I was going to find, it was still a punch in the gut to see the call from Marcos. He must have called only a couple of minutes before I came out of the shower.

The call had barely lasted a minute, but whatever they’d talked about, Briar had learned enough to piece everything together.

I thought I might be sick.

I didn’t have time for that. I took a few more minutes to brood over what I needed to do next, sipping at my coffee while my mind ran around in circles. Finally, I made a decision and gathered up the phones and charger, shoving what would fit into my pockets. With my coffee in hand, I retreated to my car.

Although he was the last person I wanted to talk to, next to Jerrel, I brought up Marcos’s contact and hit call.

The phone rang four times before rolling over to voicemail.

Frowning, I started to disconnect without leaving a message, then abruptly changed my mind. “Hey, it’s Cormac. Wanted to get an update on how we’re progressing. Give me a call.”

That done, I dropped the phone into the seat next to me and started the car. The engine gave a weak, choking sort of rattle before rolling over. Once I was certain it wasn’t going to die on me, I reversed and pulled out into the thickening flow of morning traffic.

Since I hadn’t been able to get Marcos on the phone, my next action was to hunt down Jerrel again.

“Man, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Jerrel gave me a dirty look as I strode through the door that led out into the back hall of the tattoo shop. He’d been leaving the office, but stopped now, glaring at me, arrogance written all over his face.

I kept moving.

Something flickered in Jerrel’s eyes, and I caught the subtle motion of his arm just in time to lunge forward and catch his hand. I put my entire body weight into it, taking him to the ground and smashing his wrist onto the pavement.

The suddenness of my attack caught him off guard, and I was able to pin him with relative ease. I delivered a short-armed jab to his throat, momentarily stunning him. It wouldn’t incapacitate him for long, but it gave me time to grab the weapon and check to see if it was loaded. It was. Thumbing the safety off, I pressed it to the underside of his chin.

“If I pull the trigger, you’re not going to survive,” I told him simply. “You know it, and I know it. I can also see the door, and if anybody tries to come up behind me, I’ll pull the damn trigger, and you’re dead. Understand me, Jerrel?”

His lids flickered. “Fuck you, man.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Marcos tried to call me this morning. I’m thinking he’s not done with the Downing family. Am I right?”

Jerrel sneered at me. “Why don’t you talk to him?”

“Because I’m asking you,” I said. I had one knee pressed into his shoulder as I crouched over him in a way that let me put my other foot on his wrist. I kept a fair amount of my weight balanced on his chest and torso, effectively depriving him of any leverage that might have allowed him to use his lower body. Increasing the amount of pressure I had on his wrist, I watched until fine lines started to bracket his eyes. “It won’t take much more to make one of those bones break, Jerrel. Just think, you only now got out of that cast. You want to go back into one already?”

His lip curled, and whatever word he said came out as a grunt.

I took that as a “no” and pressed on.

“What’s Marcos planning, Jerrel? You’re his man on the ground. If he’s got something planned, then he’s told you. What’s he up to?”

“Fuck you.”

I brought the weapon up. It was a Sig Sauer P226—a popular choice among cops. “You sure that’s the answer you want to go with?”

He didn’t respond. I gave him two seconds. He stayed silent.

Slamming the weapon down into his face, I didn’t flinch when blood spurted from his nose. I heard a telltale crunch, and he swore, the sound pain-filled and furious.

“You fucking bastard…man, I’m gonna kill you,” he snarled.

“Maybe. But right now, I’m the one with the weapon. What’s Marcos planning?” I demanded, shoving the muzzle of the weapon back under his chin.

Footsteps sounded out in the hall. Melia and one of the other artists appeared in the doorway.

She shrieked and started to rush forward.

“You don’t want to do that,” I warned her.

The man behind her caught her arms.

Surprisingly, Jerrel spoke up. “Get the fuck out of here, you two. I got this.” His eyes spat hate at me, but his voice was surprisingly level, although somewhat garbled by the blood filling his throat.

Melia didn’t immediately respond.

“Come on, Melia,” the guy behind her said.

Jerrel turned his head and spat blood out before focusing back on me. “You want to know what he’s up to, you big, dumb Irish bastard?” he demanded.

“No, I busted your nose because I felt like it.” I grinned at him. “Okay, maybe that was part of it. Come on, Jerrel. Talk to me.”

Vaguely, I was aware that Melia had finally retreated, although I didn’t think she’d gone far.

Jerrel sniffed. “It’s your fucking fault, you know. If you hadn’t been so busy going after pussy, Marcos wouldn’t have gotten so fed up. You fucked up and pissed him off. So you ain’t got nobody to blame but yourself.”

“For what?” I shoved the muzzle deeper into the vulnerable skin of his chin. At the same time, I ground his wrist under my heel.

He groaned, eyes wheeling around. “Fine…asshole. A couple of my guys went out to the family estate last night while everybody was wailing up at the hospital. There’s a bomb. Controlled by remote. Put a couple of cameras in too. They wanted to make sure they took out as many of them as they could.”