Slow Heat (40 page)

Which meant it was one thirty in the afternoon and she didn’t have anything to do. She would not drive by Micah’s house again. Correction, old house. She had stopped by there yesterday only to find he didn’t live there anymore. Less than twenty-four hours after she’d walked out on him, he had disappeared. That knowledge had brought on a fresh round of tears. He told her he loved her but wouldn’t even fight to have her.

“The hell with you, Micah
Mulligan,
” she grumbled and scowled at the cars in front of her.

Maggie didn’t want to think about going home. No one had the nerve to say I told you so to her face, but their looks when they saw her tearstains and puffy eyes were enough. Not even Deidre, who’d been there the night before eating brownies in the kitchen, said a word when Maggie had traipsed in, pulled a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, and shuffled back to the stairs and up to her room.

It didn’t make her feel any better when she arrived home and no one was there. Maggie headed inside and dropped her purse on the kitchen counter.

“Mom, I haven’t seen you cooking in quite a while.” Maggie approached her mother, who was humming over a pot on the stove.

Lucy O’Malley was wearing her rosebud apron, a Christmas present from all of them when Maggie had been a child. Her mother had lived in it for years but hadn’t put it on in ages. Nor had she hummed over a steaming pot of something that smelled delicious. Maggie inched closer trying to see what her mother was cooking.

“Your father was in the mood for his Irish stew. You know how I hate making those Irish dishes,” she said, wrinkling her nose but then smiling at Maggie. “How did your job hunting go? Your father told me you had quite a few prospects lined up.”

Maggie would have thought her mom would have made some comment about her youngest brother being wrongfully incarcerated, which had caused Maggie to lose her job in the first place. Instead her mom smiled at her before returning to her cooking.

“I went to a few places. Nothing yet.” She’d left her attaché case in her car. Not that it mattered tonight. She wouldn’t line up more places to apply until tomorrow, if she managed to get out of bed. Somehow she had to get her mind off Micah.

“I know you’ll find the perfect job,” her mother promised, then held up a wooden spoon that dripped with thick sauce and had chunks of potatoes and meat on it. “Now come here and tell me what you think.”

Maggie wasn’t sure her stomach could handle food. Still, seeing her mom in the kitchen, and cooking, was the best sight she’d seen since last seeing Micah. She stepped forward obediently and blew on the stew before taking a bite.

She barely tasted it when she chewed and swallowed. “Mom, it’s delicious. Is there some kind of occasion?”

“I need an occasion to make my husband his favorite dish?” she asked, accusingly.

Her dad entered the kitchen from the hallway, wearing his forest-green vest and suspenders. He was dressed the way he always had when he went to work every day. These days he was usually in an undershirt and gray slacks, unless it was a day he claimed to go to the office and spent the day at the bar.

“Two of my favorite women,” he announced, coming forward as he sniffed the air. “And what is this delectable dish I smell?”

John O’Malley grabbed his wife’s rear end and she giggled, sounding worse than a flirting schoolgirl. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his head on her shoulder.

“Is it ready yet?”

“You’re impossible,” Maggie’s mom declared, although she was still giggling.

Maggie didn’t need this after the day she’d had. Her parents were in the Twilight Zone. They’d barely touched each other in the past ten years. She tried not to gawk, but her confused expression must have been apparent. The two of them looked at her and both started laughing.

“What are you two up to?” Maggie yelled, unable to keep her own miserable life in check and let her parents enjoy flirting with each other. “Cut it out, right now. You don’t hug, or touch, or cook for him,” she wailed.

“My poor girl,” her mother said, resting the cooking spoon on the counter and coming up to Maggie.

Her mother was wearing perfume. Maggie was too confused to think. She couldn’t remember when her mother hadn’t last smelled like Bengay, or body sweat from sleeping for several days without bathing. That’s when it dawned on her that her mother had bathed, and done her hair, and put on makeup.

“I’m going upstairs,” she told both of them, too baffled to think. But if her parents were enjoying a romantic night together, the last thing they needed was their moping daughter bringing them down.

“Hold on a minute. Sit down here.” Her father took her arm and led her to the table. “Your mother and I need to talk to you.”

“Talk to me?”

“Listen to your father, sweetheart. This is important.”

Maggie slid into one of the kitchen chairs, watching her parents warily. None of her brothers or sisters would believe her if she described John and Lucy O’Malley’s behavior right now. Maybe they were doing drugs.

“Your mother and I have been talking,” her father began, then reached out and took Maggie’s hands. “It’s not fair for you to have to live here instead of having a life of your own. Children take care of their parents when they are old and decrepit, but that is after they have a family of their own, not before. We both want you to be able to move out like your brothers and sisters and find that special man, get married, have a family.”

“Wait!” Maggie leaped out of her chair. “Is that what this is about? No! I was drunk,” she insisted, shaking her head and pointing at both of them. “And an idiot. And wrong,” she insisted. “I’m not here under protest. I promise. I mean,” she stumbled, looking at her mom. “Seeing you cooking and wearing your favorite apron is such a wonderful thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Her father looked at her mother with unadulterated love in his eyes.

Maggie was instantly jealous, and then she felt guilty. She wanted to be looked at the way her father looked at her mother, but only by one man. She couldn’t handle his past life. In fact it still terrified her. But what if Micah really had changed? She was sick and terrified just imagining what it might have been like to be an assassin. Those demons in his eyes had started to go away. Was it because of her? Without her, had he run back to his old life? That thought turned her stomach even more.

“Tell her the good news,” her mother prompted and picked up her wooden spoon.

“Yes. Right,” her father said and cleared his throat. “Sit back down, Maggie. We’ve made a decision.”

“I hope not based on what I said,” she mumbled, and slumped in the chair.

She hadn’t noticed the stack of brochures on the table until her father slid them in front of her.

“We’re moving.”

“You’re what?” she cried out.

“Your mother and I are moving into these condominiums. They have a special hospice center that will help your mother. There are all kinds of activities.”

Maggie flipped through the brochures. “Mom, Dad, how are you going to afford this?” she whispered, her heart sinking. Why did she always have to be the one to explain to them what they could and couldn’t afford? She just didn’t have the strength to do it right now. “They seem very nice,” she added flatly, but didn’t have a clue how to take the sting out of the reality she would have to break to them.

“Your brother Bernie is going to buy this house. He’s already started the paperwork with the banker. The check from selling this house will cover all our expenses there.” Her father beamed at her.

Maggie stared at him dumbfounded.

“It looks like you’ll have to move out,” her mother told her, grinning broadly.

*   *   *

Micah parked his motorcycle in the circular drive in front of KFA. Two of the three black trucks were gone. The truck he had driven when he still had a job was parked in the driveway. There wasn’t any reason to go inside. King wouldn’t be here. Micah didn’t know if he’d be chased off the property or not. But at least with only Patty in the office, he might be chased, but not with a shotgun aimed at his back.

Micah reached the door to the office but didn’t enter. Instead he held on to the screen door handle and listened to Patty inside. It sounded as if she were on the phone.

“Yes, they fired me. Can you believe that? After all I’ve done for them,” she wailed, sounding like the snooty pain in the ass she’d always been. “Haley tells me my services are no longer needed, then not five minutes later decides she’s going with her husband to chase down some creep by Old Shumba Creek. The bitch has the audacity to tell me she needs me to man the phones until she returns. I have half a mind to walk out of here and leave the place unlocked.”

Micah didn’t wait to hear what else Patty might complain about. She loved to pout but Micah seriously doubted she would actually leave the office unattended. She wasn’t daring enough. Instead he hurried back to his bike, started it, then pulled a quick U-turn in the driveway. Old Shumba Creek wasn’t too far from there.

It wasn’t actually a creek. From what the Kings had told Micah the last time they chased a fugitive there, Old Shumba Creek was once a stream, but today there was no water. There were high cement walls running along either side for a good portion of the old creekbed. Tunnels that had once been used to drain water were now stomping grounds for a lot of the homeless. And if someone needed a place to hide out, Old Shumba Creek was an ideal location. It had been a bitch chasing down their last guy, especially with no cell phone signal in the tunnels.

Micah found the black Avalanches easily enough. He parked not too far from them, then hoofed it over the hill and down into the creekbed. Micah stopped at the first three tunnels and listened. They were ideal hiding places if no one said anything. If someone in the tunnel talked, it was another story. The echo that carried made it easy for anyone standing outside to hear a lot of what was said inside. Deciphering it remained a problem, though, since three or four conversations could travel to the entrance of the tunnel at the same time.

At the fourth tunnel, Micah wondered what he was doing there. He’d thought catching King right after he’d made a bust and the man was high on victory would be the best time to try to get his job back. Ben was a felon, although wrongly accused, and King had given the kid a chance. Micah wasn’t anything. King had his strong assumptions, but Micah was willing to challenge those assumptions. The monster was now part of his past. If he could convince King, without admitting his guilt, to give him another chance, he would prove to him and Haley that he was a changed man. Then he would get a place over on Maggie’s side of town. It had all sounded like the perfect way to win her back. Now he wasn’t so sure.

And what if his dad’s and uncle’s fears were proven true? His uncle had pointed out that Micah hadn’t lived in this world as everyone else had. Granted, Micah had worked for KFA and they hadn’t thought him strange—just a mass murderer. But what if Micah hadn’t read King right and he would turn Micah in to the cops? Maybe he already had called and given the police the heads-up.

Micah had the money to buy a nice home. He could set up house and wine and dine Maggie until she wasn’t pissed at him any longer. Or at least it had been a thought. If Micah truly wanted Maggie’s heart, he needed to show her he wasn’t going to be the man he had been before any longer. He desperately wanted Maggie’s heart. He was doing all of this just for her.

Wasn’t he?

The echoes from the fourth tunnel were inaudible. Anyone in that tunnel was far enough back that their voices weren’t carrying well to the entrance. Micah looked over his shoulder. He’d hiked a fair distance. He looked ahead of him. If he remembered right, there were three more tunnels to go.

When Micah reached the last tunnel he stood in front of it quite a while before giving up and hiking up and out of the man-made creekbed. He must have missed them. Micah wasn’t worried about Patty having seen him at the office. The girl was dense. But if King saw Micah’s bike, he would know something was up. It would be easier to talk to the man if he didn’t know Micah was coming. He didn’t want King having time to prepare all the arguments he would spit out.

Or time to call the police. Why hadn’t that ever bothered him before?

Micah stared across the street and began walking. Part of him wanted to run back to his bike. The other part of him wanted to take his time. For all he knew King might have returned to his truck, spotted Micah’s bike, and called the police—and now all of them were waiting for Micah to return. He really didn’t want to go to jail.

It almost seemed a crime for him to be arrested now. No pun intended, he thought morbidly. Maybe he would have laughed but the thought soured his stomach instead. He had finally reached a point when he’d seen how the first twenty years or so of his life—as far back as when he first held a gun in his hand—had been wrong and misguided.

Micah could have blamed his father, and his uncle. They taught him to shoot. They fine-tuned him until no creature was safe from his bullet. Then, as a teenager, he’d perfected his aim, found pride in where he shot, and not just that he killed. But it was in his late teens that he’d first announced it was no longer enough.

Micah had no one to blame but himself. He stared down at his feet as he walked slowly along the paved road. His dad and uncle did everything but beat him to a bloody pulp the night he insisted he could kill a man. Micah wasn’t going to hear anyone’s argument. His mind had been set.

Staring ahead, there was still a distance before he reached his bike. Large trees cast their shadows from across the road. He walked in and out of the shadows, barely feeling the sun when it glared down at him. The next tree would send down its shade.

A chill rushed over him. Micah didn’t remember the exact day, or moment, when he and his dad and uncle became the tight unit they were for the next ten years. His father made connections. Anyone interested in Micah’s services contacted Mulligan’s Stew. His uncle worked the computer side of it. He researched, validated sources, and did background checks on all requests. Uncle Joe and his dad often showed Micah new models of guns, accessories to fine-tune his craft. Micah left the hotel room of whatever city they were in and found the ideal spot. He never used equipment for that; he used his own intuition and how it all felt to him once he was where he needed to be. Then the moment would arrive when he would raise his rifle to his shoulder, stare through the viewfinder, line up mil dots on his target. Or other times Micah would use a handgun, taking pride in his aim and his ability to disappear in a crowd or deserted field the moment that trigger was pulled.