Ronan’s eyes blazed with fury. He took a step closer to Diego. “Fuck you! You don’t get to say how I feel or what my motives are. Cassidy isn’t some notch for my bedpost, and I don’t want her just to screw with you, either, you egocentric asshole.”
“Stop! Please don’t fight. It makes everything worse.”
Diego and Ronan broke away from each to stare at Cassidy. She was on her feet as well, and oh, Holy Mother of God, there were tears in her eyes. An icy ball formed in the pit of his stomach. He’d done that to her. Ronan was guilty, too, but Diego only cared about his own role in causing her misery.
“Don’t cry,” he practically begged.
“Please, don’t,” Ronan chimed in. Diego heard the pain in the other man’s voice.
Cassidy swiped at her cheeks with impatient strokes. “I’m sorry. I cry easily, and this situation is hurting me too much. I don’t like setting you two against each other.”
“You aren’t,” Diego rushed to assure her.
“This is all on us,” Ronan added.
Cassidy shook her head almost violently. “No, it’s not. This is my fault. I guess I kind of went a little crazy after being engaged for so long. But I’m not cut out for stringing two guys along, and there is no way I can choose between you. If I had a clear preference over you, then yes, I could cut the other loose with a lot of regret for taking it so far.”
She lifted her face to them and sincerity as well as misery shone through. “I’m like the donkey standing between two stacks of hay. If I don’t do something now, it will end badly for all of us. As hard as this is, as painful as this is, I know it’s the right thing to do.”
In a fit of near panic, Diego started babbling about why she didn’t need to break up with both of them. He made incoherent promises that he knew he likely couldn’t keep. Although it was all white noise to him. Ronan was doing the same. Like supplicants, they had their hands out to her, begging her to reconsider. She kept shaking her head, the tears falling down her cheeks.
“Please, just stop!” She practically screamed her plea. It shut both men up. “I need you to go now. I’ll lock up after you’re gone,” she said in a quieter voice.
Diego hesitated as did Ronan, both staring back at her and hoping, what? That somehow she’d change her mind even knowing she wouldn’t. Finally, Diego moved to leave. He hesitated a fraction of a second to make sure Ronan was doing the same. When it was clear the other man was following him, Diego trudged out of the room and down the stairs. He was weighed down with misery, and his foolish mind still worked for a solution that didn’t involve giving up Cassidy. There was nothing, of course. She called the shots, and he felt guilty for his role in making her miserable.
When they reached the foyer, Diego stopped, wondering how he was going to get home. For sure, he had no intention of getting into a car with Ronan, even if the fucker wanted to give him a ride, which he undoubtedly didn’t. Ronan must have had a similar notion because, grabbing Diego’s arm, he whirled him against the wall. Caught by surprise, Diego couldn’t stop it.
“What the fuck!” he hissed between clenched teeth. He didn’t want Cassidy to hear this.
Ronan got into his face. “You’re going to have to find your own way home, asshole. I don’t trust myself in your company right now.”
Standing up straight, Diego clenched his fists. The urge to clean Ronan’s clock was almost overwhelming. The way Ronan flexed his neck, he obviously had the same impulses. The last thing the shitty evening needed was to bloody Cassidy’s beautiful marble floor.
“Fine by me.” He started for the front door. “I’ll put in a request to change partners as soon as I get in tomorrow.”
“Feel free, but I may beat you to it.”
And, with that final taunt, they split company. As soon as he left Cassidy’s home, Diego started to shake. Part of it was unspent adrenaline. The other part was something he thought he’d put behind him. Unbearable sadness and regret and a keening need to turn back time and make different choices. Except unlike with the shooting back in New York, he couldn’t muster regret for his actions. Pursuing Cassidy may have been a bad idea. It certainly hadn’t ended well. Being with her, though, had been special. He would carry those memories as happy ones. Knowing that difference existed helped him to calm down and ease his body into a steady state.
Besides, he needed to get his shit together if he was going to manage to get a new partner without his lieutenant marking him down as a complete loser. He would be blamed for the partnership with Ronan not working, of course, he would. He was the new guy, the outsider, while Ronan was a Callaghan.
Shit, and they hadn’t even found O’Malley’s killer. A busted partnership coupled with an unsolved case was not the way to restart a career. Just one more reason to be mad at himself.
Chapter Six
Ronan kept the smile on his aching face as he walked into the station. He’d learned to hide his feelings throughout the long years after his parents’ death. He’d hated the looks of pity thrown his way, and Daire frankly had dour down enough for all the brothers, so Ronan cultivated the carefree whenever he could. The ability served him well this morning.
He’d slept hardly at all, tossing around in his bed, seeing the heartbreaking sadness on Cassidy’s face as she’d reluctantly, yet firmly cut him and Diego off at the knees. Or the balls maybe. His cock had shriveled up at the sight of those damn tears, that’s for sure. Seeing a woman cry, knowing he’d made her cry, was worse than facing down a perp with a gun.
He took a long pull of iced coffee. This morning was going to suck way too much for even caffeine to fix. He had to face Diego and their lieutenant, because he wasn’t going to be able to continue working with the guy. God, it was like being back in high school, moving seats in class to get away from someone who’d pissed you off. He felt stupid, and in hindsight, the whole fiasco was perfectly predictable.
The problem was that the only way to have avoided it was to have given up seeing Cassidy at all after Diego, the dick, had horned in. It would have been the sensible course of action, except when he’d told Diego last night that Cassidy wasn’t merely a conquest, he’d meant it. Right from the start he felt something for her that was different, more than other women.
Now, he’d lost her and the man who was at least fifty percent responsible for it was sitting at his desk, brooding over his own cup of coffee. Ronan put a sneer on his face. Before he could think of a suitable opening line, his phone pinged. Pulling it out, he saw the text. He blinked a few times to make sure he was reading the message right. A string of swears flew out of his mouth as he sped up to Diego.
“We need to get to forensics,” he barked out.
His still-partner looked up at him in surprise. A second later, he was on his feet, following Ronan. “What’s up?”
“Frankie just texted me.” Ronan headed for the elevator without missing a step “There’s trouble with O’Malley’s laptop—netbook—whatever the fuck it is.”
He didn’t say more because he didn’t know any more. They went in silence, although Ronan had put aside any grief over Cassidy in the face of the investigation and figured Diego had done the same. They were professionals, and the job came first. They raced over to Frankie’s station the moment they arrived.
The tech guy looked up at them and blinked behind his glasses. “That was fast.”
“What’s the problem?” Ronan barked out. The computer they’d recovered from O’Malley’s apartment was open, the screen blank.
Frankie gestured toward it. “The thing’s fried.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Diego. “You’ve been digging into the files all week.”
Frankie pushed the bridge of his glasses with his forefinger. “Yeah, I was. Now, I can’t ’cause it’s fried.”
“How did that happen, exactly?” Ronan asked, his patience dwindling.
“That’s a good question. I don’t know.”
“Frankie!” Ronan put some mean in his voice. These tech guys could be maddeningly sanguine about stuff.
“I’m telling you, I don’t know. I left for the weekend, and it was fine. This morning, it’s fried.” He shrugged.
A torrent of Spanish rushed out of Diego’s mouth, no doubt the same words Ronan had said when he’d received the text. “Somebody came in over the weekend and did this deliberately, didn’t they?”
“I can’t say for certain that it was deliberate, but I can say it was thorough. I might be able to retrieve bits of data off it, but it will take a lot of time.”
Ronan turned to Diego. “Son-of-a-bitch, looks like Mahurin not only took the bait, he took it a little too well.”
“Yeah, but I don’t see him doing this. He didn’t strike me as the type to know computers well enough, and it would be strange for him to come to this station on a Sunday night, or any night really. There must be other cops involved,” Diego added quite unnecessarily.
Ronan had already done the math. “When Finn went undercover, it was because Michael said there was a leak in the department. The fucker nearly got Finn killed.”
“You think it’s the same person?” Diego seemed skeptical.
“Who the hell knows? There’s at least one dirty cop around here, that much is certain.” He turned his attention back to Frankie. “Can you get started right away on trying to recover files?”
“I don’t have to.” Before Ronan could bare his teeth, the technician pulled a black plastic box out of his desk drawer. “I backed up all the files on this hard drive.”
Ronan was speechless for a second. Then he broke out into a wide grin. “Frankie, you are the first man I’ve ever considered kissing full on the mouth.”
Frankie blinked rapidly a few times. “Um, thanks, but I think you know what I’d prefer instead.”
“Any ticket to any fucking thing in the world is yours.”
Frankie beamed up at him. “You know what I want.”
Yeah, Ronan did know. “Lady Gaga it is.”
With a slap on Frankie’s back that nearly sent the man sprawling, Ronan turned once more to Diego. His partner was smiling, too, relieved as Ronan was that the data hadn’t been lost and hopeful once more that there was something worth seeing on the computer after all. If someone dared to tamper with evidence, they were running scared. Now was not the time to ask for a partner reassignment.
“Let’s leave Frankie to it,” he suggested.
“Right.” The one word confirmed Diego was on the same page about putting aside their personal problems for a while.
“Smart of them to just screw with it instead of taking it outright,” Diego said as they left Frankie.
“Yeah, there is no way to prove the frying took place here or was part of a virus that was already in the computer when we found it. And, with all the people coming and going here and in the evidence locker, there’s no end of suspects.”
“I hate the idea of a dirty cop.”
“Me and you both,” Ronan replied and, of course, it reminded him of his parents. He stopped suddenly and grabbed Diego’s arm. “If Mahurin is behind this cover-up for O’Malley’s murder, it may mean he had something to do with my parents’ murders as well.”
Diego glanced down at where Ronan held him, and for a second, they were both thinking of the last time Ronan put his hands him. Ronan released him in an instant.
Diego took a half-step away. “You think dear Uncle Connor was involved in that? Weren’t they friends?”
Ronan shrugged. “I thought they were. Dad thought they were.” He flashed on his father’s heartsick statements to his mother about rotten cops. Could it have been more personal than blue pride?
“Let’s hope Frankie finds something,” Diego said in a soft voice that conveyed his sympathy, which made Ronan cringe even as he appreciated it. Diego didn’t dwell on it, however, and Ronan appreciated that even more. “Lady Gaga?”
With a wry smile, Ronan shrugged again. Shit, if not for the feud over Cassidy, he and Diego would make great partners. He wanted to put the personal stuff aside. He couldn’t. If Cassidy had been what Diego said—a notch on his belt—then okay, he could’ve put it behind them. She wasn’t that, however, and there was no changing the truth.
They were quiet on the way back to their desks, and Ronan tried to keep himself busy by catching up on loathsome paperwork. He was mindful of Diego’s presence, yet not as resentful as he had been. The job came first, at least for now it did. He felt more than saw or heard his partner rolling his chair closer to Ronan’s. He glanced up. “What’s up?”
Diego wore an earnest and uncomfortable expression, as if he had a difficult task ahead. Crap. If the guy started in on a conversation about Cassidy, Ronan didn’t think he could keep his shit together.
Diego cleared his throat. Not a good sign. “I, ah, need to talk to you, but I don’t want to upset you because I could be way off base about this.”
Christ, Jesus, not now.
There was too much going on for a heart-to-heart or fist-to-fist over Cassidy.
“It’s about your parents.”
Ronan blinked at his partner a few times in surprise. So, not what he thought.
“I’ve been doing some math, and it’s not adding up. Assuming that O’Malley dropped off the grid around the time of the murders because he was somehow involved. Which is a big assumption, but my gut’s telling me it’s a good one. Then he was paid off for something by Mahurin or somebody else. Maybe he set your parents up or…” He licked his lips and took his gaze off Ronan for a second. “Maybe he even pulled the trigger.”
Ronan’s gut tightened, and the pain rolled through him as it always did when he thought of how his parents had died. Daire had been the one to identify the bodies and had kept the details from his younger brothers. Of course, Ronan had looked up the incident report the moment he had access to the file as a cop. Multiple bullet wounds, front-facing so they’d seen it coming. His mother, God, his beautiful mother, had scrapes along her face, arm, and leg where her body had landed on the pavement.
He closed his eyes a moment to pull himself together. Diego didn’t say anything more, nor did he try to lay a hand on Ronan in comfort. Ronan appreciated the restraint. It almost made him want to forgive the man for Cassidy. Almost.
He opened his eyes and saw Diego staring back at him, patiently waiting. “Those thoughts have crossed my mind, too. O’Malley was a small timer, though, no violent crimes in his record. As disgusting a thought as it is, Mahurin would have been better suited to murder than O’Malley.”