Scarlet
When we get into the street, I go into FBI mode. Years spent at this job have made it so that I don’t even need to think about it. I check that the men who were going to attack us have fled, and then I yank my hand away from Cormac and go for my cellphone. I need to call this in; pretty soon this place will be well-guarded by agents, swept for clues, and with the CCTV being pored over for any hint of who those men were. Threatening a federal agent is no small offence. We’re standing near the alleyway where The Leprechaun dumps all their trash. The walls are covered in crude graffiti. Somebody has written ‘Fuck the Irish’ in big green letters, and further down, some talented artist has attempted to draw a man sucking another man’s cock. Trash spills out onto the sidewalk. I no sooner have my cell in my hand than Cormac is standing over me, shaking his head. I’m tall, but he’s a couple of inches taller, blocking the sunlight.
“What’re you doing?” he says, voice sharp.
He backs me into the alleyway so subtly I don’t even know he’s doing it until I’m standing beside a rotted banana peel.
“Calling this in.” I make as though to bring the phone to my ear.
He grits his teeth, shaking his head. “You can’t do that, Scar. That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not? Don’t you think the FBI ought to know about this? Last time I checked, murder and assault are crimes, and it seems a lot of murder and assault have been—”
“Just stop the agent shit for one goddamn second!” he snaps. “Just listen, Scar. Just think.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snap back. “You’re forgetting yourself, Mr. MacKay.”
He holds his hands up in a gesture I know well from dad—an “Oh what am I going to do with her” gesture. I pace down the alleyway, away from Cormac, finding the office in my contacts list. He’s at my side in a blink, hand reaching for my phone. I yank it away, almost falling right into the crude blowjob graffiti.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Stop for a second, Scar. Think. You know about my cousin, Mickey, right? You must have a file on him, or whatever it is you folks use these days to track men like us. You must know that Mickey isn’t the smartest man who’s ever walked the earth. He’s a fucking idiot, last I checked. Now, is my father—was my father a fucking idiot?” He pauses over this, and I see the hurt in his eyes, but as soon as it appears, it ices over and then it’s gone. “The answer is no. My dad was smart. So how the fuck does Mickey—goddamn Mickey—pull off a thing like this? He had help, Scar. He had help from the FBI. First he arranges for some of my men to be sent over to California. Now he’s made it so that he can make a move on my father. He must have back up. Nobody’d support the sack of shit otherwise.”
“But we can’t know for sure,” I say. “This is your world, Cormac. This,” and I hold up my cellphone, “is my world. Procedure exists for a reason. The rules exist for a—”
My cell starts to ring. I check the display and see that it’s the office.
“Scar, please don’t answer it—”
Turning away and pacing farther down the alleyway, I answer the phone.
“Agent O’Bannon!” It’s Max Smithson, sounding like a person does when you accidently run into them at the supermarket, like he’s trying to be nice and friendly but hasn’t quite figured out how. “How is everything in the field? Well, never mind telling me over the phone. I think it’d be for the best if you returned to the office as quickly as possible. I’ve just had word that some big players are making moves on the Irish mob. Maybe Cor mentioned something?”
“Sir, I—” Cor. He called him Cor. Cor.
I cover the microphone with my hand.
“Cormac,” I whisper.
“Agent O’Bannon?” Max Smithson barks in my ear.
“Yeah,” Cormac replies.
“What does Mickey call you?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Like, what does he call you? Does he have a nickname? Does he call you Cormac, or Cor—”
“Cor, I think. A lot of the guys call me Cor.”
“Agent O’Bannon? Agent O’Bannon?”
But is that enough to go on? A simple slip of the name. I need to probe deeper.
“I think you should return to the office immediately.” Max Smithson’s voice is deeper now, the voice of a man who wants his commands carried out without delay. But beneath the power, I’m sure I hear some desperation. Why would he be so desperate for me to return? He has seconds, thirds, and fourths; I’m far down on his list. “We have things we need to discuss.”
“Sir,” I say, making sure to keep my voice professional. “The information I’m getting is that Cormac MacKay has killed his own father and has taken over the mob. Is that the information you’re getting?”
Cormac pushes away from his place on the wall, squinting at me.
If he says yes ...
“No,” he says. “I haven’t heard anything about that. No, I’ve been asked by your father to bring you in to work for my team on this. That intel will be useful, though, if it holds any water.”
I want to tell him I’ll come in, but that name has left me off-balance. It’s a small thing, but larger cases have been built on smaller clues. In the FBI, you learn to trust your gut, and when Max Smithson called Cormac ‘Cor,’ my gut twisted like a wrenching knife. It could be nothing, but it could also be the difference between life and death. And then my choice is robbed from me. Cormac lets out an exasperated sigh, closes the distance between us, and snatches my phone out of my hand. Before I can snatch it back, he’s thrown it against the wall. It shatters into tiny pieces of plastic and glass.
“You’re suspicious,” Cormac says. “I’m suspicious. Both of us have kept ourselves alive all this time by being suspicious.”
“Cormac!” I go to my phone, thinking maybe I might repair it. But Cormac is strong and the phone is completely destroyed. “Just because I’m suspicious of one man doesn’t mean I’m suspicious of the whole FBI. I can meet with other people, people I trust, and—”
“No, that’s not how this is going down. They’ll kill you, like they killed dad. You’re coming with me.”
He has his hand on my hand, his fingers closing around my bare skin. I feel the heat of him. He’s a little sweaty, but not much—not as much as he should be after what’s just happened. He pulls me to the mouth of the alleyway toward his car, a sleek jeep the same shade of blue as his eyes. When he opens the door to shove me inside, I pull my arm away and take a step back.
“You can’t just break my phone and throw me in your jeep.” My voice is shaking. I tell myself it’s anger—outrage. I’m an FBI agent, and he can’t do this to me! But deeper down, in the place I try to ignore when I’m with Cormac, I feel something else: a wild thrill at the manly way he just grabbed me, the press of his slightly sweaty palm against my skin, and the no-bullshit look in his handsome, strong face. But I can’t let him see that. I can’t let him think I’m some kind of damsel, ready to submit to him. “You don’t put your fucking hands on me!” I shout, way too loudly, with way too much forced anger. I can’t even tell if I’m angry at him, myself, or the entire situation.
Cormac folds his arms and watches me calmly. “Are you done?”
“You think you’re so cool, don’t you?” I walk up to him, staring him in the eyes and trying to get a rise out of him. Maybe that’d make me feel better; maybe bringing him up to my level of anger will justify my own. “You think you can just decide for me how I’m going to handle this situation. You think because you’re this big tough mafia man you can treat me any way you please? I’m an—”
“My father is dead.” His voice doesn’t change in tone or volume, and his face is as hard as ever. But I’m sure there’s something under there somewhere—a hint of grief. Maybe in his eyes. “I am trying to stop you from dying too. You know I’m not an idiot. You must know that by now. Maybe I’ve never taken this shit as seriously as I should. But I’m not a goddamn fool. I’ve suspected for a while that the FBI have been on us; the FBI have arrested two of my men. And now Mickey, a big dumb animal, has taken over the family. How does that make sense if there isn’t any FBI involvement? I know you, Scar. I know when you’ve got an instinct.”
He stands close to me. The heat between us is almost too much to handle. I think about just reaching out, pressing my hand against the front of his jeans, and feeling how hard he goes for me. I think about just jumping on him and wrapping my legs around him. I think about falling to my knees and taking him in my mouth or pushing him to his knees and having him suck on my clit. Slowly, he brings his thumb to my lower lip and strokes along it. Tingles, buzzing, heat which is almost unbearable, all of it combining to make this moment the most intimate we have ever shared.
“On the phone back there, you had an instinct. I’m sure of it. So why don’t you just follow it and get in the car?”
He walks around to the driver’s seat and climbs in, looking at me over the passenger’s seat, waiting for me to do the same. I could run,and he knows it. He’s not dragging me anymore. The memory of his touch on my lip is both painfully present and painfully distant. Maybe it happened just now; maybe it happened years ago. I want to feel it again. After a pause, I realize my mouth has fallen open. I close it and make a stern line of my lips.
“This doesn’t mean I’m saying you’re right,” I say, climbing into the car. “It just means I’m saying you might be right.”
Cormac starts the engine and we cruise through the city. I lay my head against the glass and try to puzzle this thing out. Maybe Max Smithson was telling the truth and my dad asked him to bring me in, but then, if dad wanted me in, he would’ve called me himself. Ever since Tess, he’s always tried to bond with me any chance he gets. Cor, Cor, Cor ... a coincidence like that once made the difference between taking a twelve-gauge to the face and raiding a meth lab. I was undercover and the man called me Bannon. He tried to play it off by saying he was talking about The Hulk, Bruce Banner, and I’d misheard. But that was it. I knew he’d made my cover.
Cormac brings us to a stop outside a fancy tower block just south of Central Park.
“Okay, this is us.”
“Who’re we meeting, the pope?”
Cormac snorts a laugh and together we leave the jeep. A valet collects it, a doorman waves us through, and a receptionist asks us to sign our names. Without having to discuss it, we both sign fake names, and then we’re riding an elevator up to the penthouse suite. A man wearing a black suit, black shades, and a gun holster under his jacket greets us when we enter, if you can call grimacing and patting us down any kind of greeting.
When I see her, with her legs tucked under her ass and a bowl of ice cream in her hand, her eyes red from crying, I almost collapse into the fancy marble pillars that are dotted all around the living room. The whole place is upscale, shiny floors, plush animal rugs, and expensive paintings on the walls. But I don’t see any of it. I just see her, Tess, my dead sister, brought back to life. She’s short and curvy, just like Tess was, even at twelve. Her face is freckled and her nose is crooked. Her lips are quick to smile, even in sadness; when Cormac approaches her, she flashes gapped, cute teeth. She looks like a person halfway between childhood and womanhood, perpetually stuck. Just like Tess, even at twelve, looked like a woman, but giggled and played like a child.
Cormac and the woman hug, the woman muttering too fast for me to hear, and then Cormac stands up and turns to me. One of my hands is gripping the pillar. The other is opening and closing, just like it opened and closed when Tess was falling, falling ... I shake my head and plaster a smile to my face.
“It’s nice to meet you, Moira,” I say, sitting on the white leather couch.
It’s Moira MacKay, I tell myself. Cormac’s younger sister. The girlfriend to a congressman. That’s all. She’s not Tess.
“Would you like some ice cream?” Moira asks, offering me the tub. Her smile is so open that I find myself wishing I could wrap a blanket around her and keep her safe. The world takes advantage of women like Moira. If the FBI has taught me anything, it’s that.
“Sure.” I take the tub from her and use the same spoon as her. Cormac looks at me in surprise. As I hand the tub back, swallowing the half-melted vanilla, I’m surprised too.
The TV is playing some reality show. I’ve never been big on the reality stuff, but during the conversation, Moira’s eyes keep flitting to the screen. I think of Tess watching The Bachelor with her knees drawn to her chin, her wide eyes staring captivated at the screen. My chest aches. For a moment or two, my stern expression falters.
“I can’t stop crying so I had a little whisky. Ralphie is away for a couple of days, but I have five guards, and all of them have guns. They’re, like, secret service or something.”
The proper thing to do would be to approach one of these guards and tell them my name, inform them who I work for, and begin establishing an investigation. But I can’t get Cor out of my head. And looking at Moira just makes me all the more uncertain about what to do. If I mess up, she could get hurt. I’ve just met her, but memories are powerful things, perhaps more powerful than reality sometimes. And my memory of Tess is sitting before me, frozen in time, as naïve, joyful, and emotional as my little sister was. I tell myself I’m being unreasonable, and it’s true. I am. But that doesn’t mean I can switch myself off.
“You’ll be safe here,” Cormac says. “Hate to say it, but right now, this’ll be the safest place for you. But not if I’m here, Moira.”
“What do you mean?” She turns to him as a child turns to a parent when told they can’t go out to play. Disbelief at first, then encroaching sadness. “You’re not—going?”
“You’re not a threat, Moira. But I am. Mickey’s going to come after me. Which means if I’m here, he’ll come after you, too.”
“Where will you go?” Moira’s voice breaks and she starts to cry, tears streaming down her pale, freckled cheeks.
One moment I’m sitting. The next I’m on my feet, then my knees, and one of my hands is on her shoulder just as it was on Cormac’s back in the bar. I squeeze her shoulder just like I squeezed Tess’ shoulder after she fell down and scuffed her knee. I squeeze her shoulder just like I tried to squeeze some life back into Tess when the sirens were far away and I could only half-remember first aid.
“Cormac’s right,” I tell her. “The best thing for us to do is to get away for a few days or maybe a week—maybe longer. That way, we can make some calls from out of town without the risk of being—of being hurt.” I can’t say killed, not to her. “Right now, there are bad people out there looking for us. If I’ve learnt one thing in the—” I swallow FBI and go on: “—in my life, it’s that letting things settle down is always a good tactic. It makes those chasing you think they’re safe. It makes them get sloppy. That’s when you can get to the truth. And do you want to know something else, Moira?” I need to get my emotions under control. I think I might cry. What is happening to me? “I promise to keep you and your brother safe. I swear it.”
Outside, sitting in Cormac’s jeep, he turns to me with a strange expression. “What was that about?” he asks. “Promising to keep us safe? Why’d you say that?”
“Just drive, Cormac,” I say. “I wasn’t bullshitting back there. The best thing we can do if we’re going to go through with this—if we’re really going to work together—is to let the mob, and the FBI if they’re involved, think we’ve gone dark. It’ll make everything easier when we come back.”
Cormac starts the car, then lets out a low chuckle. “Keeping me safe. Goddamn, Scar. You really are something else.”