“TALK TO me, Kane.” It wasn’t his father who barked at him from across the study. No, not the man who’d cheered him on at baseball games, hugged him tight after pinning Kane’s first badge to his tightly creased dress blues, and held him up when the hospital doctors patched Miki up. No, the steel-eyed, stone-jawed man standing by a wall covered with photos of his family was pure cop, a captain of the force, and a hardass demanding answers from a detective with little to give him. “Talk to me about how all of this is connected to Quinn, and what the fuck are you all doing about it?”
There’d be no asking for a shot of Irish whiskey, not now, but Kane poured one anyway, sighing when his father shook his head as Kane held up the bottle. Sipping at the burning amber, he leaned against his father’s desk and gathered his words carefully.
“Kappelhoff is—”
“The end of it. The recent of it. Ye start at where ye think is the beginning, and then we’ll go from there,” Donal interrupted. “We’ve got two incidents for certain—the truck ramming into the boy and then the thing at his house. You tell me how you think this and Kappelhoff’s death are connected here.”
“Sir, Kappelhoff’s murder just… it sticks something in me, and Sanchez agrees he was killed because of his connection to Quinn.” Kane shifted under his father’s glare. “And yeah, we were looking into Southern’s case without their approval. But shit, the brass down there wasn’t moving on it. They’re calling it road rage, but you and I know something’s up. I want the whole thing wrapped up into one case, and I want that case on my desk.”
“I don’t know that for sure. Ye’ve got nothing here but threads and mirrors. Maretti’s the captain down over at Southern. He’s not going to let go of something easy.” Donal chewed on his upper lip in thought, pacing a few feet of carpet. “If ye had more than a few maybes, he’d go for it, but right now, Kane, ye’ve got nothing.”
“Just a gut feeling. And a few nibbles,” Kane admitted. “Kappelhoff’s death wasn’t pretty, Da. And I’ll be the first one to tell you I stared down into what was left of him and saw my baby brother. I don’t want that to be real. I don’t ever want to find Quinn like that. I never want Quinn to become one of mine.”
His odd brother, Quinn.
Of all of Kane’s siblings, Quinn was the one he and Connor were closest to. As much as he loved to get a rise out of Kiki and Riley or put the younger ones’ backs up with a well-placed verbal jab, Quinn was the one brother he felt as if he’d had a hand in raising. Through all of the tears and stuttered thoughts, Quinn’d kept pushing through his childhood, racing toward an adulthood where his body matched the brain too tightly packed into his skull.
Despite the years, Quinn’s deep green eyes still held a wide-eyed wonder as bright and shiny as the day he’d opened them for the first time, and a two-year-old Kane declared the wrinkly pink larva his best little brother.
“Gut feelings don’t convince captains to give up cases.” Donal finally settled down at the cabinet, where he poured himself a shot of amber whiskey. “If I could, I’d be shipping him off to Ireland. That’ll take our breac out of anyone’s reach.”
“He wouldn’t go,” Kane murmured, resting his hip on his da’s desk. “For as smart as he is, he’s plenty stupid where it counts.”
“That’s the truth of it,” his father agreed. “Like yer mother in that.”
“The only thing of Mum he’s got ’sides his eyes.” He sighed, wondering if he could trust Miki to drive them home if he got sick-drunk with his father. “The problem is I don’t have anything connected, but it’s there, Da. It’s right there. I can feel it. If I felt like I had the time, I know I can connect Kappelhoff and everything else. There’s just too many small things to chase down, and Quinn’s itching to run loose in the fields.”
“Yer brother’s never run loose in any fields.” Donal chuckled. “He’d sooner sit and collect bugs. Ye need to find me something solid I can bring to the table, son. Or there’d be no arguing it. Why’d this one move up to murder? What happened?”
“Unless things have been happening, and Quinn’s not said shite about it.” Kane stiffened at a knock on the door, relaxing only when Connor slid in, then shut the door behind him.