Chapter 5
Crash. Bam. Kitchen cupboard doors bounced shut, and swung open again. Sean watched in horrified fascination as his older brother stormed around the dim kitchen of their father’s old house.
“I don’t know why you’re so pissed with me,” he said plaintively. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” He paused for a moment. “Yet.”
Davy made a snarling noise. There was a squeak, and he was staring at a detached drawer, its handle torn half off. Rubber bands, nails and other detritus rattled onto the kitchen floor. He flung it away.
“Hah,” he muttered. “If I weren’t so pissed, that would be funny.”
The sun was long since hidden behind Endicott Bluff. They hadn’t bothered to light up the kerosene lamps yet. In fact, considering Davy’s current mood, perhaps the kerosene lamps were best left unlit.
Shadows were swallowing the room. The west window was a light show, ranging from fire-edged pink to mauve to deep, cobalt blue. A star hung in it. OK, a planet—Venus, if he recalled Dad’s astronomy lectures correctly.
But Davy wasn’t enjoying the sunset. He assaulted the cupboard, and another handle came loose. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Goddamn flimsy rotten piece of shit.” He hurled it against the opposite wall.
Crash, the handle hit a picture. Sean winced as glass shattered.
This was unnerving. Davy usually maintained near-pathological control over his emotions, with the notable exception of his passion for Margot, his new wife. On a normal day, it took the emotional equivalent of a catastrophic earthquake to make him lose his temper.
Davy rummaged through the cupboards. “I know there’s a bottle of Scotch around here. Unless you drank it and didn’t replace it.”
“Nope. I wouldn’t drink that stuff if you held a gun to my head. Would you calm the fuck down? You’re making me tense.”
“I’m making you tense?” Davy spun and kicked the swinging door. Smash, and one side dangled forlornly from its bent, twisted hinge. “I’m the one who bailed your ass out, and I am making you tense?”
“You did not technically bail me out,” Sean pointed out. “I was not technically under arrest! I didn’t—”
“Nah, just hanging out in the interrogation room for fun, chatting on the technical aspects of car bomb construction with local officers of the law. All of whom think you’re a delinquent. Many of whom, like Roarke, have personal reasons to hate your guts—”
“That’s not my fault!” Sean protested.
“You’ve been using that excuse ever since you learned to talk!”
“Well, sometimes it’s valid. And you did not bail me out,” Sean said obstinately. “No money changed hands. And you guys are my alibi for last night, so there’s no reason to get all—”
“Oh, yeah? How lucky is that? How does it look, that you’re so fucking unstable that your brothers have to follow you around to make sure you don’t hurt yourself when you go out drinking and whoring?”
“Whoa! Harsh words! Those girls were not whores! They just like to party! They were very sweet, cute, ah—sexually emancipated—”
“Aw, shut up,” Davy snarled. “Imagine the scene if we hadn’t followed you. Can you tell us where you were the morning of August the eighteenth, Mr. McCloud? Uh, well, Officer, I was having a drunken clusterfuck with some chicks that I met at the Hole, but I don’t remember their names. They had nice butt cheeks. Gave great head.”
“I do, too, remember their names!” Sean pondered for a moment. “Their first names, anyhow,” he amended.
Davy snorted like a maddened stallion and kicked the wall.
“It’s not like you guys have to follow me around all the time,” Sean argued. “I’m usually a good, solid citizen. It’s only on August—”
“The eighteenth, yeah. Think about it, if you remember how that’s done. Is it in your best interests for anybody to remember that today is the anniversary of your twin brother’s truck bursting into flames?”
Sean sat without breathing. “Maybe not,” he conceded.
Davy slammed both fists onto the countertop. The jars rattled nervously on the shelves. “Where the fuck is my whiskey?”
Sean got up with a frustrated sigh. He spotted the bottle, in plain sight on top of the propane refrigerator, and handed it to his brother.
Davy yanked out the stopper and sloshed a shot into the glass. He drained it, and fell into the chair. It creaked under his weight.
A heavy silence fell between them. Davy was a master at heavy silences. Sean was not, as a rule. He liked movement, dynamism, noise. But he felt tired enough to stare blankly into the dark today.
He chose his words carefully when he finally broke the silence.
“You’ve already ripped my head off about my past stupid stunts,” he said. “I don’t feel like getting lectured for them all over again.”
“Oh, no.” Davy poured another shot. “No, you did plenty of brand new stupid stuff. The last time you got within a hundred yards of Liv Endicott, you landed in jail. Did that fun fact flash through your head?”
“If I’d stayed away, Liv and Madden would be fine particles in the stratosphere, and there would be a crater where the Trinket Trove Gift Emporium used to be.” Sean pointed out. “Be glad that didn’t happen.”
“That’s not the fucking point,” Davy muttered.
“Then what is the point? For Christ’s sake, enlighten me.”
“The point is, you’re doing it again. Putting yourself in the worst possible place at the worst possible time! Throwing yourself in front of a locomotive because you’re bored, or someone dares you, or you want to impress some girl. Or you feel like shit and can’t handle your feelings. You never apply logic. And I’m getting déjà vu. I’ve said this all before.”
“Many times,” Sean confirmed, his voice heavy with resignation. “Lecture 967. Impulse Control. Part C: Actions Have Consequences.”
“And you know what burns my ass the most?”
Sean cringed. “Uh…shoot, Davy, I’m not sure if I do.”
“This is all about your dick!” Davy yelled. “You can’t keep your pants zipped to save your life, so you end up in custody, surrounded by people who would love to see you burn in hell. Every fucking time.”
“What was I supposed to do? Slink away like a whipped dog?” Sean flung his hands up, helpless. “The thing with the police, I don’t know why the fuck that keeps happening to me. I swear to God, I don’t go looking for them.”
Davy snorted. “Right. No clue. Like when you lost your scholarship and got thrown out of school. Why? For boffing the Dean’s trophy wife. No thought for consequences. No thought for your future. Your brain just kicks back and lets your glands run the show.”
Sean fidgeted on his chair. “She came on to me,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, don’t they always. I bet she had to tie you down.”
Sean tried to recollect the details. “Now that you mention it, she was pretty adventurous that way. She had a closet full of fun toys—”
“Zip it, you smart-ass punk. I’m not in the mood for your crap.”
“When are you ever? I don’t blame the woman. Hot, sexy thing, married to a physics nerd with dandruff in his eyebrows. I was just a squeeze-toy for her. And she was so good at squeezing my—”
“Shut your flapping face before I put my fist through it.”
Sean leaned his face in his hands. It was dumb, to goad Davy when he was all cranked up like this, but once he got on a roll, he couldn’t help himself. He was just wired that way. He got up and peered into the fridge, hoping he’d left a beer from a previous visit.
Oh, joy and rapture. He had. He twisted that sucker open and wandered over to the west window to drink it, leaving Davy to stew by himself at the table. Sunset had faded, mauve shading to smoky gray beneath the rectangle of cobalt. Beyond the meadow rippling in front of the house, the pine and fir forest looked dense and impenetrable.
It reminded him of when he was a kid, bedding down at night. Shivering at the dangers Dad said lurked out there. There was a real monster on the loose tonight. Thinking about Liv. His neck prickled, like a ghost had touched him.
Maybe one had.
Kev had helped him today. For some reason, that thought made him feel less alone. He knew better than to share it with Davy, though.
“I want to see the e-mails that stalker sent to Liv,” he said.
Davy laid his head on the table, and bonked his forehead heavily against the rough slabs of wood. “See? This is how it always begins.”
“He used the word ‘explosive’ in his note. That was what made me think of a bomb. I want to see the other letters. I want to feel their vibe.”
“You’re not a cop,” Davy said. “You’re not her bodyguard. Or her boyfriend. Wanting to bone her does not give you the right to stick your nose or any other protruding body part into that family’s problems.”
Sean took the final swallow, and tossed the bottle, sinking it into the trash basket. “You and Con got all over my ass this morning for being so self-serving and frivolous. I get interested in the welfare of somebody else, and you jump all over my ass again. I can’t please you guys. I might as well not try. Have you got a set of beacons on you?”
Davy’s face hardened with suspicion. “Why?”
“She needs to be tracked. She needs twenty-four hour coverage, with a four man team, until they nail this guy. Her people are idiots.”
“So knock on the door of Endicott House,” Davy said. “Lay out your proposal. See how warmly they welcome your suggestions.”
Sean paced the kitchen. “Do you have the beacons?” he repeated.
“They’d have the cops on you the instant they laid eyes on you.”
Sean shrugged. “Who says they have to lay eyes on me?”
“I’m having a stress flashback.” Davy bonked his head on the table. “My brother has decided to break into the house of the richest guy in the county and seduce his sexpot daughter, under his nose.”
“I’m not going to seduce her,” Sean said crabbily. “I’d go through the front door and talk to her right in front of her mother if I could, but those people think I’m festering sewage sludge.”
“No. They think you’re dangerous, mentally unhinged festering sewage sludge,” Davy corrected. “If they catch you, your ass is grass.”
“If you didn’t have a set of beacons, you would have said so by now. So stop yapping at me and hand them over.”
Davy got up, kicked his chair out of the way and grabbed a bag that sat next to the kitchen table. He yanked out a ziplock bag full of sheets of cardboard, each with radio transmitter beacons attached to it.
He flung them onto the table. “Here. Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks,” Sean said.
“Don’t thank me til we find out if you end up in prison.” He plucked out a strip of foil packets and tossed them on top of the beacons. “Take those.”
Sean stared down at the condoms. “Hey. You’ve got the wrong idea. I don’t plan on fucking her. I just want to—”
“Plan? Of course not. You never plan. You lack the part of the human brain that governs planning.”
“I resent that remark,” Sean said. “I just don’t want Liv to get offed by this prick just because her parents have the brains of slugs.”
“Take them.” Davy’s voice grated. “I’m not asking you to be responsible, because that would be a contradiction in terms. I’m just asking you to face reality. I know you, Sean. If you sneak into that girl’s bedroom, you’ll end up fucking her. It’s a mathematical certainty.”
Sean stared at him, dismayed. “Chill, Davy. You’re scaring me.”
Davy’s grim expression did not change. “Put them in your pocket.”
Sean folded the condoms up and tucked them into his jeans. “Anything to calm you down,” he said. “See? It’s done. Better now?”
Davy turned around, and stood in the dark, fists clenched.
Sean stared at his brother’s back, barely visible in the dimness. “This feels strange,” he said quietly. “Usually I’m the one freaking out, and you and Con are the ones talking me down. What’s up?”
Davy’s eyes glinted in the shadows of the room. “Did it ever occur to you that this day on the calendar really rots for me and Con, too?”
Sean held his breath, and willed his knotted guts to relax. “It’s crossed my mind,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m not much help with that.”
Davy’s laugh was dry. “Sure you are. It’s one mother of a distraction, chasing around after you, trying to keep you from getting killed or maimed or imprisoned, or whatever. Who has time to mope?”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Sean said dubiously. “Do you have low blood sugar, or what? You should eat. I’d cook you something, but you’ve trashed the kitchen all to shit. Grab yourself a burger on the way home. Is Margot waiting dinner for you?”
“Nah.” Davy’s voice was hollow. “I’ll just, uh, crash here tonight.”
Sean froze, playing and replaying his brother’s comment in his head. “You mean you’re voluntarily sleeping more than a millimeter away from Margot’s voluptuous body? What is up with that?”
Davy’s shoulders lifted, and dropped.
“What’s going on?” Sean demanded. “You asshole. She’s the best thing that ever happened to you. Don’t tell me you’re fucking this up. Did you fight? Did she throw you out? What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Davy said testily. “And no, she didn’t. And it’s none of your business. We both just need some, ah, breathing room.”
Now he was alarmed. Davy usually had to be pried away from his bride Margot’s side with the use of a crowbar and a pair of oversized bolt cutters. When the McClouds fell in love, they fell hard.
“Breathing room is a piss-poor idea,” Sean said. “Awful things happen when women have too much breathing room.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” Davy demanded. “You’ve never been married, you snot-nosed punk.”
Sean didn’t bother responding to that. “So is she pissed at you?”
Davy threw up his hands. “Sure, she’s pissed at me.”
“Why? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just call Margot and ask her.”
“Oh, Jesus. No. Please don’t do that,” Davy said fervently.
“So out with it. Go on. Spit it out.”
Davy struggled, helplessly. “I just…well, we’re not…she’s just angry at me because I can’t, um…” His voice trailed off, miserably.
Sean squinted at his brother, perplexed. “Can’t what?”
Davy dropped into the chair again, evidently unable to speak.
Sean gazed at him with dawning horror. “Holy shit. Are you talking about sex? You can’t have sex? With Margot the walking wet dream? What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you seriously ill?”
“No,” Davy spat out the word. “It’s just that…she’s, ah, late.”
Sean gazed at his older brother’s slumped form, unable to make out his expression in the dimness. “Late?” he echoed. “Late for what?”
“Use the tiny brain God gave you and figure it out,” Davy snarled.
Sean cogitated for a second, and sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh! Oh, shit! You mean, like, that kind of late?”
Davy’s sigh was jerky and labored. “Yeah. She can’t be sure yet. Her cycle isn’t regular. But she’s never been this late before.”
“Oh, man, that’s too much information for me. I’m not sure I can handle the intimate details of my sister-in-law’s reproductive cycle—”
“Grow up and deal with it, jerk-off,” Davy snarled. “You asked.”
“True, true,” Sean soothed. “Sorry. So can’t she just, you know, do a test, or something? Put you out of your misery?”
“Not yet.” Davy’s voice was clipped. “There’s some complicated reason why you have to wait a certain number of days before a test is valid. She explained it to me. I don’t remember the details.”
“Oh.” Sean pondered this news. “Uh, well? So? Shouldn’t I be crossing my fingers? Isn’t this a good thing? A cousin for Kevvie. Cool. They can tumble around on the rug like a couple of puppies.”
Davy shook his head. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Sure, it’s a good thing. It’s a great thing. Fantastic. Yeah. But I can’t—I can’t—”
“You can’t have sex with your wife because you think she may or may not be pregnant? That’s pretty medieval.”
“Yeah, that’s what Margot thinks.” Davy stared down at his fists, clenched before him on the table as if he were trying to hang onto something invisible.
“It’s not going to be like it was with Mom,” Sean said cautiously. “Living out here with Dad was like living in another century. Margot’ll have third millennium medical care, from a major medical center—”
“I know that.” Davy’s voice was taut. “I fucking know that.”
Davy’s eyes were shut, but Sean knew what his brother saw. Their mother, bleeding to death from an ectopic pregnancy, while the truck tires spun out in three feet of snow. His father, trying to stanch the blood. Ten-year-old Davy had been driving, or trying to.
Sean, Kev, and Connor had stayed behind in the snow shrouded house. He’d been four. Old enough to know that something terrible was happening. It was one of his earliest memories. Maybe not the earliest, because he remembered Mom, like a glow in the back of his mind. Or rather, he remembered remembering her. He shook the poignant feeling away. “Statistics are on your side. Women these days—”
“I know the statistics,” Davy said. “I’ve informed myself, Margot’s informed me. I’ve been lectured, scolded, screamed at.”
“Ah. I see,” Sean murmured.
“When she told me…Christ.” He rubbed his eyes. “She thought I’d be happy. Hell, I thought I’d be happy. But I almost lost my lunch.”
“Whoa,” Sean murmured. “Drag.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. Ever since then it’s like I can’t breathe.” He swallowed, audibly. “I close my eyes, and I see blood.”
Sean whistled. “Ouch. I can see as how that might put a crimp in a guy’s boner.”
“This is not a joke,” Davy growled.
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Sean touched his brother’s shoulder. It was rigid as steel cable, vibrating with a charge that was approaching lethal. The guy had to chill, before he hurt himself.
Or worse, wrecked something irreplaceable.
It had been such a relief, to see his tight-assed brother finally loosen up and get happy. He was so in love with Margot, he was goofy with it. He was having fun for the first time in his more or less grim life.
No way in hell was he going to let Davy fuck that up.
He folded his arms over his chest, considering his options.
“I don’t know why it threw me.” Davy sounded lost. “Considering how much we get it on, it’s amazing it hasn’t happened sooner.”
“Got it on, that is,” Sean corrected. “Past tense. That’s all over for you, buddy. Kiss your dick goodbye. You’re never having sex again.”
Davy glared at his brother, slit-eyed. “Do not fuck with me, Sean.”
“Oh, I won’t,” he assured his brother. “Neither will Margot. Nobody will, being as how Mr. Big-n-Friendly’s gone south, leaving your bride to shrivel alone, sexually unfulfilled. What a waste. Poor Margot.”
“Keep your trash mouth away from Margot, punk.”
“What an asshole, letting that sexy lady sleep alone,” Sean mused. “But she’ll land on her feet. Just looking at Margot makes a guy want to procreate. Being as how you’re giving her all this breathing room, it shouldn’t take her long to find someone capable of—nngh!”
Bam, he was clamped to the wall, Davy’s forearm pressing his trachea. Good. He struggled to breathe. It worked. He’d goaded the grizzly out of its cave. Now all he had to do was not get killed.
“You know what your problem is?” Davy spat. “You never know when to shut up. You’re going to learn. So shut…the fuck…up.”
Sean gave him a big, unrepentant grin. “Make me, meathead,” he wheezed. “Let’s take it outside. I don’t want to trash the kitchen any more than you already have.”
Davy jerked his hand away. Sean’s feet hit the floor.
He massaged his throat as he followed Davy out, and barely got into guard before Davy’s boot swooshed past his face, displacing air.
Woo-hah. Yes. Savage joy jolted through him. A no-rules fight with somebody as dangerous as he was, damn. Better than sex.
Maybe. He’d withhold judgment on that, since he’d never done the wild thing with the princess. Davy came at him like a Mack truck. His mind retreated while he ducked, punched, parried. Davy was a berserker, face contracted into a furious grimace. He didn’t seem to feel the blows Sean landed. He drove Davy backwards with a series of flying kicks, and his brother stumbled into the irrigation ditch their father had dug decades ago to feed the garden, and that split second while Davy fought for balance left him wide open for a kick to the groin.
Sean pulled it, not wanting to rupture his brother’s balls.
Davy hooked his legs and jerked him to the ground. “What the fuck was that?” Davy snarled. “You arrogant little shit! You choke on another one of your kicks, and I’ll cave in your skull.”
“And maim the golden gonads?” Sean dug an elbow into Davy’s ribs. “Castrate the great Inseminator? I couldn’t do that to Margot.”
Davy snarled like a wild animal, and they were at it again, grappling and flailing. Davy wrenched him into a hammerlock, gaining ascendancy by dint of sheer muscle mass. Sean had plenty of muscle, but Davy had him beat by twenty pounds. Goddamn buffalo.
Sean struggled for breath, face shoved into the dusty grass. “I mean, the woman was born to breed.” He gasped as Davy yanked his arms higher. “Look up the word fertile in the dictionary, and you’ll find her picture. Just look at her, for Christ’s sake. She’s a walking advertisement for the joys of procreation. Those pillowy tits, those wide hips. Yum. Make way for the next generation.”
Yank. Oh, fuck, that hurt. “I told you to shut up,” Davy said.
“Can’t,” Sean said, spitting out grass and dirt. “It’s not in my nature. Hey, what if she’s pregnant with twins? Doesn’t it run in the family?”
Yank. Agony. He tried not to shriek.
“Bite your tongue, jerkwad,” Davy growled. “Monozygotic twins are a random freak of nature. No hereditary component whatsoever.”
“Huh,” Sean grunted, coughing. “So you can have the other kind of twins. That would keep you too busy to pitch stupid-ass fits like this.”
Davy’s body started to vibrate, racked by silent, helpless shudders. Sean held his breath, and slowly relaxed. The worst was over.
Davy’s grip slackened. Sean wrenched his arms free, and with a heave and a grunt, shoved Davy’s weight off of himself.
Davy rolled over onto his back, covering his face with his hand. Sean discreetly turned his back and waited. God forbid that he inhibit his super-macho idiot brother from working out his bad ju-ju.
When Davy finally sat up, he still wouldn’t look Sean in the face. He just sat there, breathing hard, big shoulders slumped. “Gotta hand it to him,” he muttered. “Can you believe the sheer balls of the guy?”
Sean was baffled. “What guy? Who are you talking about?”
“Dad.” Davy’s voice was barely audible. “Delivering all of Mom’s babies, up here, in the middle of nowhere. All alone. Shitty roads. No phone. Twins, too.” He shuddered. “Just imagine. Sweet holy Jesus.”
Sean made a noncommittal sound as he brushed dirt and grass off his filthy shirt. “Given the choice, I’d rather not imagine it at all.”
Davy mopped sweat off his forehead and stared at the dark mass of mountains, his face stark. “I’d rather have every bone in my body broken one by one than take on that kind of responsibility.”
Sean got up, stretching and rolling his neck around, searching for the sore spots to rub. “Remember two things. One, Dad was nuts. He thought he was protecting Mom from the evil establishment. Two, he was an arrogant prick. He thought he could handle anything.”
“He was wrong,” Davy said bleakly.
“Yeah, he was. But you aren’t nuts. You aren’t an arrogant prick, either. At least, not all the time. And furthermore, Margot can look out for herself. You think the whole world is on your shoulders. It’s not. OK?”
Davy nodded, struggling up onto his feet. “Yeah,” he muttered.
Sean reached over and touched Davy’s shoulder. His brother was hot as a coal, soaked with sweat, and still shaking, but that deadly lethal, thrumming electric charge was gone. “So?” Sean demanded.
Davy shot him a wary glance. “So what?”
“So can you breathe now?”
Davy’s head jerked, in a curt nod.
“Good.” Sean gave his brother a hard shove that made him stumble. “Then go home and fuck your wife. Dickless pussy.”
Davy’s leg swept Sean’s feet out from under him, dumping him on his ass. “We’ll see how well you deal when your turn comes.”
He turned back before climbing into his truck, and gave Sean a steely, squint-eyed look. “If you get in trouble tonight, I’m going to rip off one of your arms and beat the shit out of you with it,” he warned.
Sean grinned. “I love you too, man,” he replied. “Drive carefully.”
He watched his brother’s taillights winding down the switch-backs that led up to the house. We’ll see how well you deal when your turn comes. The thought gave him a tug, around the center of his chest.
Right. Like he was ever going to found a dynasty. With who? A dance club fuckbunny? Someone like Stacey or Kendra?
Besides, Davy and Con were always on his case about his short attention span. The way they talked, he’d be liable to forget his own kid in a basket on the top of the car and drive off onto the express-way. He ought to do his hypothetical kids a favor. Give fatherhood a wide miss.
His two brothers had the preservation of the species well under control. He should probably just go to the doctor and snippity snip himself right out of the gene pool. Make it a non-issue, forever.
For some reason, the idea depressed the living shit out of him.