Authors: Erica O'Rourke

Tangled (20 page)

BOOK: Tangled

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C
HAPTER
31

L
uc slipped my coat from my shoulders and placed it in the far corner, then waited for me to sit, sliding close to press his leg along mine. He draped an arm around my shoulders and smiled approvingly at both of us. He’d left sugar packets all over the table, and I busied myself, putting them back neatly in the black plastic box, sorting out pink and yellow and white as I went.

“Stopped by your house this mornin’, saw Jenny on the porch talking with your mom.”

I crumpled a packet of artificial sweetener. “You came by my house?” I asked her. “My uncle will freak if he finds out.”

“Why? According to you, he’s totally innocent.”

I reached for Luc’s water and drank deeply.

“Your uncle’s guys were all over the place, putting a new front door in,” Jenny added. “Your mom didn’t say what happened.”

No, she wouldn’t. If there was one skill my family had mastered, it was not answering potentially awkward questions. And Luc wasn’t too bad at it, either, because he cut in. “Figured any friend of yours was a friend of mine. Offered to buy her a cup of coffee while we waited for you.”

“Fabulous. Have we done the formal introductions yet? Jenny, this is Luc. Luc, meet Jenny.
Kowalski
.”

“The cop’s daughter?” His expression turned kind. “I’m sorry.”

Jenny nodded, blinking rapidly. One of the weekend waitresses, her blond pixie cut streaked crimson, set down two pieces of pie and a cup of coffee. She looked pointedly from me to Luc and flashed a quick smile.

After she’d left, I focused on Jenny again. “Who are you working with?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then I can’t help you. What if you’re working for someone just as corrupt as my uncle?”

She leaned across the table, knocking over the saltshaker. “I am
not.
They’re good people. They want to make this city better, and that includes putting your murderer of an uncle in jail.”

“Nothing in those files even hints Billy had something to do with your dad’s death.”

Luc frowned. “You think Mo’s uncle killed your daddy?”

“It makes sense,” she insisted. “There’s no other explanation.”

“It’s neat,” he agreed. “Wrong, but neat.”

She glanced at him. “What do you know about it?”

The last thing I needed was Jenny deciding Luc deserved his own file. “What are you after?” I asked. “I can’t help you prove something that’s not true.”

“My dad ...” She began to shred her napkin. “My dad wanted to take your uncle down. It didn’t start out personal. Billy Grady’s a cog in the Chicago Machine. Take out enough cogs and the whole machine breaks down. But he spent his entire career watching your uncle in action. He saw enough people hurt, and he made it his life’s work, putting Billy Grady behind bars.”

“And you’re going to finish it,” Luc said. It wasn’t a question, and a bit of the fight went out of her shoulders as she nodded. “To honor him. You can respect that, can’t you, Mouse?”

I knew he was talking about Verity, and I elbowed him. “This is not the same.”

“Sure it is.” He rubbed the back of my neck, working out the knots that had taken up permanent residence there. “Perhaps you’re gainin’ a bit of sympathy for my position.”

“Don’t be smug,” I said, trying to keep from sinking into his touch. I couldn’t deny the similarities. He’d known the truth of Verity’s death even as I’d raged and grieved, only telling me when there was no other choice. Now I had the answers, and Jenny was the one running into dead ends. I was just as loathe to explain as he had been.

“Same as what?” Jenny asked, eyes darting back and forth.

“Ignore him.” I wasn’t going to stonewall Jenny completely. She deserved better—Kowalski deserved better, I thought with a pang. He used to sit in this exact booth, dogged and decent, and I wondered if Jenny had chosen this spot on purpose. “My uncle didn’t have anything to do with your dad, and trying to prove it is a waste of time. But the rest of it, taking Billy down ... I’ll do what I can to help.”

Jenny dropped what remained of the napkin. “You will?” “On two conditions. One, you leave Colin Donnelly out of it. That file never goes public. No one ever hears about it.”

“He’s part of the organization. I can’t guarantee that.”

“Then we’re done.” I nudged Luc, who obligingly scooted out of the booth. “You can pay at the register.”

“Wait. Fine. We bury Colin’s file.” She glanced out the window. Colin was hunched over a cup of coffee, collar turned up against the wind. He was deliberately keeping his back to The Slice, no doubt to avoid seeing me with Luc. “Guess that clears up what the deal is with you guys.”

Standing at the edge of the table, Luc went still. I kept my eyes on Jenny.

“You have no idea what the deal is. But you leave him alone. The second condition is that if I tell you to back off something, you do. If I say something is a dead end, you leave it. It’s for your own protection.”

“This sounds like a lot of rules. What are you going to do to help?”

I took a breath, an idea forming in my head. If I was very careful, and very, very lucky, I might be able to handle Yuri Ekomov and Billy at the same time. “I’m working on it. I’ll let you know.”

She sifted the bits of torn-up napkin through her fingers, considering. “Why are you doing this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.” She stood and pulled on a polar fleece hat and jacket, frowning as she studied Luc. “I still don’t get you, though.”

“Nobody does,” he said cheerfully, waving as she left.

I elbowed Luc. “Move.”

He did—in the opposite direction, the length of his body pressing up against mine, knee to shoulder. The contact sent a pleasant tremor through me, but I still felt awkward, uncertain how to act after our kiss last night. At least Jenny had provided a buffer.

“Why did you bring her here?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t know she was the cop’s daughter. What’s in the files she’s talkin’ about?”

“Family stuff.”

“And dirt on Cujo?” When I didn’t respond, he nodded slowly. “Tell me ’bout the sudden remodel.”

“We had a break-in.” My voice sounded rusty, and I took a sip of water. “Did anyone see you at my house?”

“Give me some credit,” he said. “Wouldn’t be half-bad to introduce me to the family. Make it easier for us to spend time together.”

“My family is not going to be super enthusiastic about me bringing home new friends right now.”

He turned my hand palm up and lightly traced my scar. “You okay?”

“They didn’t hurt me.”

“Ain’t what I asked,” he said, and waited. Whatever urge I’d had to lie, to fake brave long enough to
feel
brave, vanished. I shook my head, the tiniest bit, and finally met his eyes.

“Didn’t think so.” He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, the tip of my nose, disarmingly gentle. I settled back against his chest as his fingers laced with mine. For the first time since the break-in, the ground beneath me felt solid.

“Vee told me about your family,” he said. “She knew it made things hard for you. She worried it would be a problem, after she’d gone, and you’d have to deal with them on your own.”

“Gone?”

“She wasn’t coming back, Mouse. Once she came to New Orleans, to stop the Torrent, take up her place ... that was it. No more regular life.”

I sat up again. “She came back, though. So did Evangeline.”

“Temporary. Told you before, there’s not a lot of minglin’ between the two worlds.” He waved a hand, like he was brushing away the words. “This is what got us in trouble last night. Ain’t any more fun in daylight.”

He was right about that, anyway. “Why were you looking for me this morning?”

“Wanted to see you, mostly.”

“Mmn-hmn. What else?”

Just then, the waitress came back and handed me the cordless phone. “Special order,” she said. “They asked for you.”

“Hello?”

“Mo, it’s Edie, at Shady Acres.”

My stomach dropped.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she continued. “One of our residents is concerned about an order he placed. Mr. Eckert?”

The only order Mr. Eckert—or Mr. Ekomov, or whatever he expected me to call him—had given was to send armed men to my house in the middle of the night. Cold fury seeped through my veins.

“I don’t think we can help.”

“Are you sure? He seems to think there was a misunderstanding. He’d be happy to talk to you directly.”

“No misunderstanding. We don’t have anything for him.”

Without waiting for her response, I hung up.

“Problem?” Luc asked.

“All taken care of.”

“Want me to take you home?”

“No.” I tucked my hand in my pocket and found the directions to the nursing home I’d printed out earlier. “But if you’re up for it, there’s somewhere else I need to go.”

C
HAPTER
32

S
t. Mary of the Angels nursing home smelled exactly like you’d expect—heavy-duty antiseptic and something that had moved past ripening to decay, sickly sweet. The smell of bodies failing. I rubbed at my nose, but the odor remained. In the past few months, every death I’d seen was violent, sudden, unnatural in every sense of the word. But here, it was people gradually fading away from old age and illness and neglect. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

Still, they were trying to make it as pleasant as they could. Classical music played softly in the background, and the walls were decorated with soothing impressionist paintings. Aides in cheerily printed scrubs chatted with their elderly patients as they wheeled them around. Occasionally, you’d see someone shuffle down a hallway, leaning heavily on a walker or buzzing past in a motorized wheelchair.

Luc took it all in. “Tell me again what we’re up to?”

“There’s something here. Someone. It’s important.” Important enough that I’d asked him to conceal us so we could slip out of The Slice unnoticed, then took a series of CTA buses and trains north. He’d grumbled about the hour-long trip but didn’t suggest going Between.

“Why do you need me along? Can’t you just ask them?”

“There are privacy rules. They won’t give out patient information to just anyone. I need to sneak in.”

“Oh, this should be entertainin’.”

I rammed my elbow into his gut and he wheezed. Satisfied, I pasted a smile on my face and approached the front desk. “I’m here visiting my grandma?” I said, tilting the end of every sentence up to make it sound like a question. “She has an appointment tomorrow? With a specialist at Northwestern? And they want us to bring, like, all of her records?”

The woman behind the desk barely looked up from her computer solitaire game. “That’s Jeannie’s department.”

“And her office is ...”

“Left corridor, first right, second door. Next to the director’s office,” she said, moving one stack of cards to another. “But the records department is closed on weekends. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Perfect. “Thanks,” I said, and walked back over to Luc. She nodded absently and started a new game.

“Liar,” Luc said, impressed. “I kind of like this side of you. Naughty.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just make me invisible.” The air shimmered and settled as he concealed us.

He kept his hand tight around mine as we moved down the hall. “This place is horrifyin’.”

“Arcs don’t have nursing homes?”

“We take care of our own,” he said as an aide lumbered by, pushing a tiny old woman with clouded eyes in a wheelchair. “Nothin’ homey about this place.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “I’ve seen worse ones, on field trips for school.”

Luc shuddered.

We stopped outside the records office and peered in the small window. The lock on the door was one of the fancy electronic ones; you needed a key card. “Can you do something about that?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Won’t be subtle.”

Ten feet away, the door to the director’s office was firmly shut, but a hand-painted wooden sign declared it open. “I’ll settle for quiet.”

He shrugged and covered the lock with his free hand, lips moving silently. There was a popping sound and the smell of plastic burning, and the device fell away. He handed it to me as the door swung open. “We can discuss how you want to show your gratitude later,” he said, shoving me through the doorway.

“I’ll send you a thank-you note.” After dropping his hand, I tucked the melted card reader inside my bag and headed for the lateral file cabinet.

What had Jenny—or rather, Jenny’s source—wanted me to find here? Out of all the people in Colin’s past, who could possibly be stashed in a nursing home?

“Gaskill, Raymond,” I murmured, flipping through files until I reached the Gs.

“Who’s Gaskill?” Luc asked from his post by the doorway.

“A very bad man.” I scanned the neatly labeled file folders.

“You seem to know a lot of those.”

“I don’t know him at all.” Nothing. I double-checked, but it wasn’t there. I was still missing something. “Damn.”

“This is about Cujo, right? You’re digging into all the stuff he doesn’t want you to?”

My secrets,
Colin had said.
Mine.
And Billy, so confident:
It’s not only his life he’s concerned with.

“Donnelly,” I said softly. “Not Gaskill.”

An odd, scuttling sense whispered across my neck, and it had nothing to do with magic.

Luc crossed the room, putting his hand atop mine as I reached for the cabinet labeled A–E. “You ever heard the story of Pandora’s box?”

“Of course. She couldn’t resist seeing what was inside and let out all the evil in the world. Subtle, Luc.”

“Never seen Cujo tell you no, ’less he was trying to protect you. Could be you want to take a minute before you knock the lid off this box. Man’s always looking out for you.”

“Maybe it’s time I looked out for him,” I said, yanking open the drawer.

“Dinsmore ... Donaldson ... Donnelly.” I snatched up the folder. Along the spine were stickers indicating the year—eleven of them. I looked at the name again.

“Hello, Tess.”

Luc ran a hand through his hair. “You found it?”

I opened the file. “Colin’s little sister is a patient here.” “Little sister? How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

“What’s a seventeen-year-old girl doing in an old folk’s home?” He sounded appalled.

“Hiding.” I paged through the folder, my hands shaky. Tess Donnelly, seventeen, catatonic for the last eleven years. According to the staff psychiatrist, her condition was partly physical, a result of the massive head injuries she’d sustained as a child, and partly psychological, a defense against the abuse she’d suffered and the night of Raymond Gaskill’s final attack.

I turned to her intake papers. An eleven-year-old Colin couldn’t have been the one to bring her here, no matter how desperate he was to protect her. He’d had help. And there, under “Responsible Party,” was the name I’d been expecting all along.

William Grady.

My uncle had rescued the two remaining Donnellys, and he’d been providing for Tess ever since.

It wasn’t fear keeping Colin loyal. It was love.

I didn’t know what to feel. The truth wasn’t going to set anyone free. I couldn’t help Tess, and Billy could. It wasn’t even a question of whom Colin would choose. What kind of person would ask him to?

“Time to go,” I said, struggling to keep my voice level.

“Already?” He plucked the file out of my hand and scanned it. “She’s in room 433. Don’t you want to see her?”

I’d seen enough for one day.

BOOK: Tangled

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