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  What the hell did I get myself involved in?

  Oh, yeah, wait a minute. I too was one of those tough-as-nails assassins. I was one of the people who would be called at two a.m. and be given the ‘word.’ I was one of the underground thugs of the darkness. Scary, aren’t I?

  The walk into Nan’s with my own personal mob boss made my stomach queasy. I knew we didn’t have a whole lot of time to figure out who had set this hit and why. They knew me. Had used me--Ron Jon that no-good, dirty son of a bridge troll. It wouldn’t be long before they started checking next of kin. To my knowledge, though, Nan was off-limits. She had a pardon, so to speak, when it came to warfare. I guess that’s what happens when you’re old school and have connections to bigger bosses than even Shiretown would ever hope to know.

  The back door led to the kitchen, then the back stairs. The light at the landing burned a soft golden yellow into the darkened room beyond. “Come on,” I told Collin. “We can get cleaned up first. Put on some warm, dry clothes and then maybe by then Nan will have some information for us.”

  “What do you mean, information?”

  I stopped on the second stair to the floor above so that I was now at eye level with him. “Nan used to run rum with my Grandpa and Capone,” I told Collin. “She’s got connections you couldn’t hope to have. Whatever happened tonight, Nan will find out.”

  “You’re a very strange woman, Lucky O’Brian,” he whispered.

  He was but a heartbeat away from me. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my lips. My stomach clenched with anticipation. A rush of desire fanned my flesh, and I was instantly warm for the first time what seemed like hours. “You have no idea,” I replied softly as his hands reached for my waist. The brush of his warm lips against mine sent all sorts of electrical currents spiking through my limbs in a glorious dance. I could almost feel my feet sway.

  The feeling was so intense that as he went to deepen the kiss, his tongue just darting in to take that first taste, my footwear freaked. Footloose, they decided to dance with a maelstrom of manic moves all of their own. The move was so sudden my legs went right out from underneath me, my bottom hitting the step in a torturous thud, and I swear I wanted to die. Seriously, what is it with me and shoes lately?

  Collin stood above me, a quirk to his lips, his eyes glowing with laughter. “I haven’t taken a woman on a landing in quite some time,” he said, the mirth but a ripple away from spilling over.

  “And you’ll not being doing so anytime soon, son.” Nan’s voice came from the darkness like a splash of cold water. I’m not sure about Collin, but I felt like I was sixteen and I’d just been busted stealing my very first kiss.

  “Nan, don’t be ridiculous.” I pulled myself to my feet and looked out at her from just above Collin’s shoulder. Collin was, once again, frozen stiff as a statue. I was beginning to think that he might actually be afraid of my little old Nan.

  “There will be none of that fruity booty stuff.” She shook her finger at Collin, clearly scolding and disapproving.

  “Relax, Nan. I wouldn’t dream of--”

  I didn’t get to finish, as Collin’s statement cut me off. “I apologize, ma’am,” he started. “I have no intent of infringing on your hospitality or disrespecting your granddaughter in your home.”

  “Good thing too,” Nan told him with a nod of her head. “Now, if the two of you want to get cleaned up--separately, of course--we’ll find out who is behind your troubles.”

  “Absolutely,” I replied, taking Collin’s hand and marching him up the stairs.

  “What are doing?” Collin questioned, continually looking back down the stairs for a rampaging old Irish lady, shot gun ablazin’. “Didn’t she just warn us about being alone together?”

  “Absolutely.” I smiled, knowing mischief filled my eyes. “But she’s going to be busy for a while.”

  I had pulled him into the main bedroom where the master bath connected. Quickly rummaging through the closet I found an old pair of my grandpa’s trousers, a button-up shirt and a cardigan. Tossing them all to Collin, I grabbed the closest robe off the closet hook and pulled my wet dress over my head. “You can always shower alone,” I told him as I stood before him in nothing more than my heels, undergarments and a wicked smile.

  I was in the bathroom, pressed against its closed door with his warm, hungry lips against mine before my head stopped reeling. And from there, he just made the world spin more wildly. The rush of desire as his hands caressed my body sent shivers down my limbs. The searing heat of his lips on my neck sped my heart rate, my pulse instantly on hyper-mode.

  “We’ve got to shower,” I gasped as he nipped along my collarbone.

  “Stay right there, where you are,” he whispered. “Don’t move an inch.”

  I stood against the bathroom door and tried to relearn how to breathe. He quickly started the shower, stripping down to his gloriously tanned, muscled, naked frame. My mouth watered as my eyes scanned the sculpted muscles of his chest, the defined grooves of his abs, and the thickness of…

  Thighs. I was thinking thighs. But, if you’ve ever heard the reason God created whiskey, well, let’s just say that the Irish would probably be the master race if not for the dark liquid sin. Because standing before me was definitely a god.

  His nimble fingers removed my bra; warm, soft touches were quickly replaced by hungry lips, nibbling teeth and when he took the peak of my nipple into the wet heat of his mouth, suckling me, I thought I would die on the spot. At some point my panties were removed and when his fingers went searching between my thighs, a rush of delight and burning desire burned through my veins like a run-away locomotive.

  “The shower,” I moaned, just as an agile finger found its way inside me.

  With lips still on my breast, licking and nipping at my engorged nipple, he replied, “We are in the shower.”

  I couldn’t have been more stunned if he’d said leprechauns weren’t real, but as my body burned to a fevered pitch, I tilted my head back and felt the water sluice down the front of me.

  The groan that escaped Collin was intoxicating and heady and as he lifted me in his arms, wrapped my legs around his waist and plunged himself deep inside of me, I knew that this is what Heaven must be like.

  He took me beneath the warm water like a man possessed, driving the thickness of him inside of me as though he were branding me. His lips devoured the water from my own as if he were a drowning man and I were his last drink of water.

  “Lucky,” he moaned, pinning me to the wall, his thrusts becoming harder. Deeper. Each one seeming to touch my very soul.

  “Oh, God! Yes!” I yelled, the delight of surrender never feeling so amazing. “Yes, Collin.”

  “Yes!” We screamed together as release hit us, the sweet oblivion of our climax echoing throughout the bathroom.

  “Your Nan had best not be outside that door with her shotgun,” he chuckled, a jubilant smile warming his face as he set me on my feet. It was then that I realized I still wore my heels.

  The shoe gods had to be growing disappointed--another pair done in by water. Oh well, this time it was definitely worth the damage.

  Five

  I backed out of the bathroom, Collin’s lips still on mine and a song in my heart. The click of my Nan’s gun was the first thing that alerted me that we weren’t alone, Collin’s falter the second. “I think we’re in trouble,” he whispered with a nod over my shoulder.

  “Oh, you’ve more trouble than you know,” Nan stated, tossing me my gun. “Get dressed, child and be quick about it. We’ve company coming, and they’ve got murder on their minds.”

  “Shit!” I said as the cold rush of dread slammed through me. With a mad dash for the closet, I threw on an old pair of black capris, a silver wrap-around sweater and grabbed the spare shotgun from the closet, tossing it to Collin as I was shoving on the nearest flats. I figured these, at least, were one set of footwear that shouldn’t give me any trouble.

  “You’ve no idea,�
� Nan was saying as she handed Collin a box of shells. “When this is finished, son, you and I will be having a few words about my granddaughter,” she told him, briefly clinging to the box.

  Collin paused a moment and looked at the woman’s clear green eyes. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a nod of his head.

  “Now, the two of you had best be gettin’. Word on the street is that old Daniel McCray has it in for ya. You wouldn’t have any idea why? Would you, Lucinda Ray O’Brian?”

  Damn. The full use of my name. I was in some serious trouble, and not just from the gangsters.

  “I might know a bit,” I sheepishly replied as we headed down the stairs like three blind mice, loaded for bear. As soon as we hit the living room, shots rang out like a war zone. All three of us dove for cover.

  Personally, I had no idea my Nan could move that fast. The old woman was fast as a wit and just as quick on the barrel. She had a shell jacked and was barking out rounds like a rabid dog before I even knew what direction to fire.

  Amidst brazen bullets, I clued in my Nan and Collin into my recent nefarious and not-so deeds. As vases broke, chairs splintered and the picture screen exploded on the television set, Nan filled us in on what she had learned from her phone calls. None of it good.

  “We know you’re in there, McGregor!” A voice suddenly yelled in a brief lull of bullets. “You and the girl come out and the old lady won’t get hurt.”

  “Ain’t nobody in here but me, you no-good alley crawler!” Nan suddenly yelled, pointing towards a latch in the living room floorboard. “When Father Carmichael gets wind that you shot up my house--the home of Nan O’Brian--there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  Voices, loud and arguing, came through the shattered windows as I pulled open the trapped door. Beyond, a tunnel. “It leads to the garage where your car is,” Nan was saying. “You need to find McPhee’s Pub. There you’ll find your answers.”

  I hugged her, squeezing her as though my life depended on it. As if I’d never see her again. “Thanks, Nan,” I said, feeling the tears form in my eyes.

  “Go on now, child. And remember what I told ya. Nan’s got your back,” she said with a shooing motion.

  “Thank you, Mrs. O’Brian.”

  “Don’t forget our agreement, son,” she said. “When this is through, you and I have words to discuss.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he told her, his massive frame seeming to cower before her. “I’ll not forget.” The sight of my heap big mob boss cowering before my little old Nan would have made me laugh if not for the bullet holes in the walls with moonlight glistening through. Maybe I’d find the time to laugh about all of this later, but right now, we had some bad guys to dust and roadway to eat up.

  As this thought was running through my head, my glorious little--and what I had deemed safe--flat footwear slipped on the lower rung of the crawl space ladder. My other foot just seemed to follow. I landed in a heap on the hard, dirt floor; Collin stood above me, his eyes alight with laughter.

  “Not a word,” I ordered, pointing my finger sternly at him.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he laughingly replied. “But have you considered not wearing shoes?”

  I didn’t even bother to reply.

  The gravel flew in a million directions as I hit the gas, accelerating as fast as I could crank up the rpm’s on my little black beast. The back end swerved as we blew past the four cars in the yard and flew out of the driveway, nothing but dust in the rearview mirror--”Get them!”--and the disarray of wild bullets echoed in our wake.

  It was one in the morning, and we were heading back to the city. Nan had been true to her word; she’d gotten us the information we needed--only after I’d given her my side of the story. But by doing so, I was able to clue Collin in on my part of this whole sordid mess, even if it was between blazing bullets and shattering glass. Nan was not very happy with the hoodlums and the mess they were leaving her to clean up.

  It would seem that my involvement, however, was a little more than I had originally anticipated. Whoever had ordered the hit on Three Fingers was indeed not happy about my foul-up. To say that Three Fingers knew too much was the understatement of the century. Question was, though, what exactly did he know?

  Nan had said that Daniel McCray had been the one to put the mark on me. He had also ordered the hit on Collin. Though that didn’t come as a surprise to my lovely mob boss, Collin. One city mob boss trying to do in the other was nothing new. The why behind it? Now, that was another thing entirely.

  “So why use me?” I asked Collin as we took I-70 back into the city. I had driven twenty miles at over ninety before I felt safe and far enough away from the bad guys to slow down.

  “Why not you?” Collin asked. “Send a pretty girl to get close to me, have her be the last one to be seen in my company with a room full of people; someone known in the lower circles, despite how small, as a contract killer.” He shrugged, and the distance in his eyes as he pondered our situation didn’t make me feel any better.

  “Hey, what do you mean ‘despite how small?” I questioned, a bit offended. Despite my recent misfortunes, I was a somewhat reasonable contract killer.

  “How many hits have you actually completed, Lucky?” He turned those incredible blue eyes towards me.

  “Well, um...”

  “As I thought. You’re relatively new to all of this contract killer stuff. You haven’t actually killed anyone, have you?” he asked waiting to see if I’d respond.

  The questions were completely rhetorical, and I wasn’t about to reply. Besides, the man just met me, how the hell did he know that I hadn’t truly killed anyone? Was it that obvious? I didn’t want to know. Besides, I did manage to maim a few of my hits, which had to count for something. It’s not like it was my fault that shit just seemed to keep happening to screw things up.

  For instance, the fire escape incident wasn’t my only clothing faux pas. One time I’d had a run in with a scarf that had gotten wrapped up in a revolving door--that one had just about cost me my life. Then there was a minor situation with some mules--the kind you wear--the damn things just flew off my feet in a foot chase and sent me sprawling headlong into oncoming traffic. My hit managed to escape down a side alley while I was kissing the front end of a taxi.

  Then, there was this other time that my fingernail got jammed in my gun...don’t even bother to ask. The shell and the nail both got stuck in the barrel. Oh, the gun went off, but it melted my acrylic nail inside the barrel where the shell is normally released. And let me tell you, that was a bitch to get out. Not to mention the crap my nail tech gave me for messing up an hour’s worth of her precious time.

  The rich cadence of Collin’s voice brought me back from my recent list of screw-ups. “You’re the perfect scapegoat, Lucky,” he was saying. “So why wouldn’t McCray use you? You’re beautiful enough to distract me, and naive enough not to know any better. However, you’re known in enough circles to be considered a criminal, you own enough weapons to be thought dangerous and thanks to your Nan, you’re very well connected in the Underworld. Am I right?”

  The man did have a point. I may not have actually killed anyone, but I knew plenty of people who did. “Regardless of all of that, he shouldn’t have set me up.”

  “No. No, he shouldn’t have,” he replied, his eyes gleaming with unrestrained violence. Seeing the rage glimmer in his eyes like a contained storm and knowing it was for my benefit made me warm and fuzzy all over.

  “Now, we’re going to find out why he did it.”

  “How the hell are we going to do that?” As soon as the question left my mouth, I knew the answer.

  “Ron Jon,” we said in unison, with equal shares of glee and vengeful intent.

  Six

  A few well-placed phone calls to a trusted source of Collin’s, and we were back in business. We found Ron Jon an hour later at, of all places, McPhee’s Pub.

  McPhee’s is more like a hole in the wall you’d find a rat in than a bar dow
n off State Street. It’s been run by old Tom McCradden since the beginning of time and the bar, with its just above a dirt floor, looks it. The long, slender room consisted of a long, grizzled bar; the wood so worn you could actually see the grooves where patron’s elbows had rested for a century or better, two makeshift dartboards--and not the electrical kind, either--and one mutual public bathroom. If the place held a whole fifty people comfortably, I’d have been amazed. It was the kind of bar where the old-timers hid out from their wives and lovers. The kind of place you went if you needed solid information, or you just wanted to hide away in a draft of beer and month-old bar pretzels. Most people wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this. Hell, I’m surprised most of the patrons weren’t really dead themselves. It was that kind of low key, that quiet. Old school. Just the way the codgers liked it.

  But speaking of rats, we found ours at the end of the bar, hiding out with a shot of Jack and a beer chaser.

  “Didn’t take you long,” Ron Jon told Collin as he slugged down his shot.

  “I’m a resourceful man.”

  “So it would seem.”

  I studied Ron Jon for the first time as he and Collin exchanged what would appear to be pleasantries. He was a large man, six feet, maybe two-forty. Bulky in a brawler sort of way. His hair was chin length, slightly curly and very dark. Possibly black, but it could have just been the bad lighting and stale cigar smoke. From what I saw, he had a picture of Jesus tattooed on his right forearm and a Celtic cross on his left; the word Irish burned across his knuckles. His arms were as large as my thighs and his hands could palm my whole head. As big, mean, and intimidating as he was, it made me wonder why he was just sitting here out in the open, where anyone could find him. Especially us.