Two Evils (7 page)

“You say that as if you already know what happened,” John broke in.

“—killed two people, and injured a third before he was taken down,” she went on as if he hadn’t interrupted. “When the rest of the team went into the wind in the aftermath of that goat fuck, the first thing Wainright did was try to find me, the only person on the planet even remotely qualified to track these men down. That tells me he’s afraid the same thing will happen to them—which also tells me that if there is even a remote possibility of there being a repeat of what happened with Eddie, you’re going to want me to find them and find them fast, preferably before the bodies start piling up. You have three men who are already trained to kill who
might
potentially have a psychotic break, and you don’t know where they are.

“Now you think on that, Agent Courtney, and then you tell me this can wait.”

S
ighing heavily and shaking her head, Billie stepped back toward the trunk.

“Pop it,” she said.

John frowned. “What for?”

“So I can get one of my guns out and shoot you, of course. What else?” she replied snarkily.

He scoffed. “Well, if that’s the case, the trunk is decidedly staying closed. I rather like having a heartbeat.”

Stifling a growl, Billie gestured toward the trunk. “Open
it so I can get my bag out.”

“I repeat: What for?” John pressed.

“Because quite frankly I’m tired of your attitude. I’d like to get away from it so that it doesn’t spoil my mood,” she told him.

He came to stand across from her at the back of the car. “Billie, I can take you wherever you want to go.”

She shook her head. “No thank you, Agent Courtney. Look, you did your job—you got me here, and in spite of the mediocre efforts of a certain gangster, I’m in one piece. Believe it or not, I rather like having a heartbeat too. But since my part in this twisted tale is on hold until the next chapter, I’d really like some time to myself to think. Preferably without you brooding next to me.”

“Where are you going? How do you propose to get there?” John asked.

“None of your concern, and there are these things called taxis that I can use to get from place to place. I’ll get one of those,” she replied.

As if on cue, the car coming at them from the left turned out to be a cab, and its roof light was on. Billie raised her arm and waved to flag it down. The cab slowed and pulled to a stop at the curb several feet behind John’s Charger. Looking at him, she lifted her eyebrow and nodded toward the trunk. John sighed and pressed the button on the key ring remote, popping it open. He lifted the lid and reached in for her bag himself, holding onto it when he handed it over.

“How will I find you tomorrow?” he asked.

She pulled the bag from his hand. “You’re in the CIA—you figure it out.”

With that she turned toward the cab, walking briskly to the back door on the passenger side. She opened it sharply, tossed her duffel bag across the seat, and got in. The driver, a woman, immediately switched on the fare counter and turned off the roof light, then put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. Though she didn’t look back to confirm it, she could feel John’s eyes following them as they drove away from him.

After a moment, the driver asked, “Where ya goin’, hon?”

Billie rattled off her father’s address—thankfully, he and two of her four brothers lived in Langley (her father was the city engineer), so at least she had someplace to crash for the night, given she technically had no home of her own anymore.

The cabbie nodded, and Billie settled in for the ride. She noticed that the driver kept looking at her in the rearview—probably wondering if she’d just had a fight with her boyfriend. But in an attempt to lighten her darkening mood, she looked forward and said, “You’re not recording me for
Taxicab Confessions
, are you?”

The driver laughed. “Nah, hon, nothin’ like that—though I think that show’s hilarious. Just wonderin’ if you’re all right.”

Billie offered her a tired smile. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“That was a mighty fine man you had back there. You guys have a fight or somethin’?”

She had to grin at her accurate assessment of the driver’s thoughts. “Something like that,” she replied. “But he’s not my man. Just someone I’m going to be working with—temporarily, thank goodness.”

“Ooh, can I have him then? He was pretty tasty-lookin’,” the driver said with a wide smile.

Billie laughed…and ignored the twinge of—whatever—in her chest at the thought of John with another woman.

“He’s all yours,” she said, then turned to look out the window once more.

They pulled up to Thomas Ryan’s Cape Cod-style house, the house she and her brothers had grown up in, about fifteen minutes later. Billie noticed right away that her father’s Impala was not alone in the driveway, and there was another car sitting in front of the house at the curb. Part of her was ecstatic, knowing who was inside the house, and part of her was more nervous than she’d been in years.

After all, what did you say to the family that you’d basically shut out of your life?

With a sigh, she pulled her wallet from her pocket to pay the cab fare with some of the cash she’d appropriated from John, then grabbed her bag. She stood on the curb watching the cab drive away, and didn’t move forward until it had turned the corner at the end of the block and disappeared. Drawing a breath to shore up her nerve, she expelled it slowly and started up the front walk.

She was reaching up to knock when suddenly the door flew open and she was dragged through it into a tight bear hug. Though she dropped her bag immediately and returned the embrace with just as much emotion, it took her a moment to figure out which brother she was hugging—it was Teddy, the only brother younger than she was. Of course, given that despite his youth he was just as tall and built as the other three, and the fact that he’d moved too fast for her to catch a glimpse of his face, it was no wonder she needed a moment for recognition to sink in.

It was the hair that did it. Teddy had always worn his hair a little too long at the neck, and it tickled her nose as she held him close.

“All right now, Theodore, let your sister go so she can breathe,” their father said.

Billie stepped back as Teddy slowly released her and looked into his face. His eyes were brimming with emotion, deep concern more than anything else. She smiled tentatively and nodded her head, hoping he would be reassured that she was all right. Although he had also acted the role of take-no-shit teacher in their youth, she knew he looked up to her. Because they were the youngest of the Ryan clan, theirs had been a bond unlike the one either of them shared with Tommy, Andy, or Kevin. Teddy had been her best friend, and she felt incredibly guilty that she had shut him out.

“I would say come in, sweetheart, but your brother’s already invited you,” Thomas Ryan said then, a smile on his face, but concern for her evident in his eyes as well. “Why don’t you join us for a drink?”

A smile sprang to Teddy’s face. “We’re even prepared—got you a bottle of watermelon margarita chilled and waiting,” he said.

“How could you have possibly known I would be here?” she asked as Teddy picked up her bag in one hand and grabbed her hand in the other, dragging her toward the living room behind their father.

In the living room, taking up most of the room on the couch, were her brothers Kevin and Andrew. Her brows rose questioningly at the sight of Andy, who lived seven hours away in Boston. He stood as she entered the room, taking his turn wrapping his arms around her, holding her tightly for a moment, and then standing back to gaze upon her with the same expression of concern that Teddy and their father had used. Only he studied her with more scrutiny—probably the lawyer in him, she mused.

She decided to head them off at the pass. “Before you all bombard me with questions, please be assured that I am okay. Not fine. Probably not even a hundred percent yet,” she admitted, knowing they’d accept nothing less than the truth. “But I am getting there, I promise you.”

Billie glanced at each man in turn, hoping they could see that truth in her eyes. They exchanged looks of silent communication and each nodded. “Now that’s settled, let’s get drunk together!” Kevin exclaimed cheerfully. He jumped up and headed toward the kitchen, presumably to grab the margarita Teddy had promised her they had for her. Her father returned to his armchair and picked up a half-empty bottle of Guinness while Teddy led her over to the couch and gently pushed her down on her ass.

“Thanks, Ted, but I
can sit down on my own,” she quipped lightly.

“Just making sure you don’t go rabbiting on us again,” Teddy said with a wink as he sat in Kevin’s place on one end of the couch and Andy returned to his seat on the other—she was now stuck between them.

“Little chance of that when I’m the meat in a Ryan sandwich,” she said, though she couldn’t help grinning as she did so. Billie was glad she’d chosen to come here instead of going to a hotel—being with her family again was already changing her emotional climate. Straightforward but light-hearted banter was a specialty of the normally bawdy Ryan boys when one of the family was in emotional straits; it had always served her well to seek one of them out when she needed a kick in her mental posterior, and she suddenly wondered why she had ever run away from it.

“To answer your question, Billie Jo,” Andy said after taking a swig of his Budweiser, “We suspected you might be coming home soon after one of your former spook buddies called every single one of us looking for you.”

She scoffed. “If you’re referring to Agent Courtney, he is
not
one of my former spook buddies. I never even met the man before yesterday. But speaking of, just because he called to ask if any of you had seen me doesn’t mean I’d be coming back anytime soon.”

“Let’s just say we hoped,” Thomas said. “It’s been quite a while since we heard from you, Wilhelmina.”

Billie swallowed and both Teddy and Andy fidgeted in their seats. Her dad only called her Wilhelmina—a name he knew she wasn’t overly fond of—when he was angry with her or worried about her. The expression he now faced her with said he was both. Kevin walked back into the room and paused, then grinned foolishly.

“Oh shit. Dad pulled out the big W
, didn’t he?”

“Shut up
, Kevin, and give me my drink,” Billie muttered, holding her hand out for the clear glass beer stein with the reddish-pink liquid in it. He was still smiling like an idiot as he handed it to her and then took a seat in the chair that had been brought into the room from the dining table.

“Hey, just be glad he didn’t call you by your full name,” Kevin said, tipping his own bottle of Guinness toward her. “You know he’s about to read you the riot act when he does that.”

Billie scowled at her brother, restraining the urge to stick her tongue out at him. “Thank you for that reminder of our childhood years, Kevin Alexander Ryan.”

As the middle child of five, Kevin had taken it on himself to be the family jester, and so he brushed off her use of his given name with a shrug and a shit-eating grin. “You’re welcome, Wilhelmina Josephine Ryan.”

Thomas, although he tried to maintain a stern visage, gave into the natural humor produced by the antics of his children and shook his head, smiling. Billie relented and smiled herself, then took a welcome sip of her drink.
Ah, bliss
, she thought, and took another drink before turning to Andy.

“You drove all the way from Boston on the off chance that I
might
be coming home? Can the DA’s office spare you for however long you’re going to be here?” she asked him.

Andy shrugged. “My cases are such that they can spare me a day or two. And that Courtney fellow called Dad this afternoon to tell him he was bringing you back. I thought you might appreciate having four of the five men in your family here to greet you when you arrived, so I made the drive as soon as Dad called me.”

Billie was surprised John had thought to call her father and let him know she was heading back to the States. She wasn’t sure what to think about the generosity of the gesture. Deciding not to concern herself with it now, she nodded—and then frowned. “He didn’t even know for sure I’d agree until this morning. That would mean you got here not long before me.”

Andy nodded. “Got in about an hour ago. And I’m glad I made the trip—it’s good to see you, sis.”

She offered him a smile. “It’s good to see you too, Andy. And since all of you got together hoping to see me—which I really do appreciate, by the way, it’s really very sweet of you all—why isn’t Tommy here?”

Tom
my was Thomas Ryan Jr. He was the oldest of the siblings, followed by Andy, then Kevin, herself, and Teddy. Like Billie, Tom had joined the military, though in his case he had chosen the Navy and was now the leader of an elite SEAL team. Last she knew his unit was undergoing training maneuvers in Florida.

“Tommy got deployed again,” Teddy answered her. “’Bout six months ago, back to Iraq.”

Billie’s face fell. She would have known that had she trusted her family to help her get past losing Travis. But she’d been too stubborn to accept their love and support, insisting she needed to be alone, away from their stifling concern for her well-being.

“He’s safe, though—well, as safe as a guy can be in a war zone,” Teddy added. “I got a call from him something like a week ago.”

“So tell us something, Billie Jo,” Andy began. “Where’ve you been that gave you such a lovely tan?”

She took another drink of her margarita before replying. “St. Thomas. I’ve been working with a friend at a bar he bought down there.”

“Those months on the beach have been kind to you, Billie,” her father said. “You look good. A little thinner, perhaps, but you look good.”

“Thanks, Dad. Like I said, I’m getting better.” She sighed and looked down at the drink in her hands. “And I’m sorry for making you all worry. I know I should have at least told you where I was going. Of all people, you wouldn’t think I’d be the type to break down so completely. But after Travis died, I just…”