“I missed him so fucking much,” Damien admitted softly. He refused to cry. Refused to let his tired and his emotions get the best of him. Still, his eyes pricked and threatened to spill when he dared to let his mind drift over to his wide-shouldered Irishman. “Sionn… he’s… fuck, I don’t know what he is. Or what he thinks I am. But I need him. As much as I need Miki. Especially right now. This is such a fucking mess.”
“He’s a good guy. One of the best. Really, even if he wasn’t my cousin, I’d be happy he found you.” Kane patted Damien on the back. “It’ll be okay, D. We’ll take care of you.”
“That’s standard now for cops? Shuttling people around in Hummers? Righting their wrongs? Pulling their shit together?” He tried to sound flippant, but in his ears, it came off as pathetic.
“No, we’re doing that because you’re family.” Kane ruffled his hair, and Damien pulled away, partially disgusted at the rough affection. “You know he’s got everything you’d left behind? From the place you guys shared? It’s all packed up and in boxes in one of the rooms. Except for some beat-ass guitar. He plays on that.”
“So you’ve been living with a ghost? How’d that work out for you?”
“I was living with him missing his brother.” Kane’s reproach was soft but firm. “And now you’re back, so quit being an asshole about it and let him love you. I know it’s hard right now. Too much… has happened, but he’s there for you. We all are, Damie. Okay?”
Miki’s cop was sincere. Hell, he dripped sincerity like the bridge wept water during a heavy fog. Nodding once, Damien mumbled, “Yeah, okay.”
“Now, tell me everything you remember about the guy who shot at you.”
“Dude, I went over this like twelve times already.” Damie rolled his eyes. “Blond, huge, ugly, and creepy. I even did the thing with the sketch artist. He shot Jerome, the guy who was assigned to me at Skywood. Can’t run, but then I had someone shooting at me. It’s like the whole ‘you’ve got to run faster than the guy behind you, not the bear.’”
Kane opened the folder and pulled out a pair of photos. They were headshots, professionally done to capture the best assets of the man and woman posing for them. The woman was polished and made up, draped with a tasteful string of pearls and a blonde helmet of fine hair. Classically handsome, the middle-aged man’s bright white smile and confident set of his shoulders made him the perfect choice if someone’d wanted to cast an anchorman in a video.
Or if someone needed a couple to pretend to be an institutionalized patient’s parents.
“Fucking hell.” Damie pulled the man’s photo closer, tugging it out of Kane’s fingers. “That’s the guy who said he was my dad. Both of them were at Skywood. They were my fake parents. This is so fucking weird. She kept hugging me, but it was awkward, you know? Like she didn’t know how tall I was or something.”
“They’re dead,” Kane said softly. “Both of them are actors from Seattle. As far as we know, it looks like they were hired to do some commercial work. Or at least that’s what their families said. A bank camera across the street caught an image of a man leaving the woman’s—Stacey Winter’s—apartment. When I ran an ID search on the sketch you helped give, we got a hit on their murders.” He removed another photo and slid a paper filled with a grainy image across to Damien. “Take a good look at that guy’s face and tell me what you think.”
He studied the man in the photo, his blood chilling in his veins. The camera had captured the woman’s killer as he turned to look down the street, catching him nearly full on the face. A light gleamed from somewhere across the way, and it caught his eyes, turning them nearly feral and reflective. His short blond hair was nearly hidden beneath a beanie pulled down low on his forehead, but enough of it peeked out, the bright strands nearly a match for his pale face. With his thin mouth set hard, he was focused solely on crossing the road, his quick trot leaving a trail of smeared pixels on the camera’s data.
Damien didn’t have to look long. He’d seen that look… on that man right after he shot Jerome. It was the look of a killer whose work wasn’t quite done and his next target was close by.
“Yeah, that’s him.” Damien shoved the paper back at Kane. “That’s the guy who tried to kill me. Now when were you going to tell me that he’s probably also the guy who murdered my mom?”
EVEN though Kane warned him, nothing could prepare Damien for the sea of cameras and faces behind the Hummer’s darkened glass. The media took pictures of everything and everyone who came and went from the station, even the massive, rumbling vehicle forced to inch past them through the stream of people crossing the street to get a glimpse inside.
“They don’t know you’re in here.” Damien didn’t think he’d met Connor back at the Morgans’, but it was hard to be sure. They all seemed to be large, muscular men with cop-wary eyes. This one was huge, even deeper-voiced than Kane, and his broad hands flexed over the steering wheel, impatient with the reporters clinging to the side of his car. “Fucking leeches.”