“Like I said, you’re going to have a nasty bruise, and there’s a good chance you have a few broken or cracked ribs from the compressions.”
My gaze went to the rearview mirror. The driver’s eyes met mine. “Phillips, thank you.”
“Doing my job, Mr. Murray.”
I wasn’t certain that saving people with heart compressions was part of his job description, but if it wasn’t, we needed to update our Sparrow employee protocol. Pain shot from my chest as I exhaled. “Shit, so much for in and out of his house. My mind is still choppy. What the fuck happened?”
The SUV exited the highway and entered the city traffic.
“Maples is dead,” Mason said.
“Yeah, I remember that. Gutted like a fat fish.”
“In hindsight, we should have cut off his dick.” Mason scoffed. “...If we could have found it.”
I reached for my chest. “Don’t make me laugh.” My gaze met his. “We fucked up.”
Mason shrugged. “There will be more cleanup than we planned, but it’s getting taken care of. It will. Sparrow made some calls. The incident on South Morgan will go into the books as gang retaliation. Seems as though a shipment of over a hundred kilos of heroin was inadvertently delivered to the wrong house. Instead of being an upstanding citizen, Gordon Maples asked around, looking for the most lucrative avenue of sale. Word got around, the intended recipient wasn’t happy. Soon the police will find half the stash in the attic.”
“Attic?” I asked, recalling that was where Mason had said they’d slept.
He nodded. “Yeah. It was a lot smaller than I remembered.”
Scenes replayed in my head. There was Maples tied to the dining room chair as he watched his insides become his outsides moments before he took his last breath. And then we were leaving. The girl was across the street and there was a man. “What about the girl?”
Mason exhaled as he sent a text message. “He gave her a code. When I tried to get rid of her and the baby, Maples fucking told her to take the baby to Mrs. Stephens. I heard it, but I was too focused on him and on wanting to make him suffer. I should have known.”
“I was there. I heard that and I didn’t think anything of it.”
“It was a code. Now, I can see it. The way she responded. I fucked up.”
“How would we know that?” I asked.
“We should have been paying better attention. We didn’t. Neither one of us did for the same fucking reason. Sparrow is going to ream us out and we deserve it. We weren’t thinking like soldiers for Sparrow or for any other regime.”
“The Order would have left me.”
“Be glad we’re not in the Order,” Mason said.
“You’re right,” I said. “We made this personal.”
The SUV turned and began to descend into the tunnel that led to our parking garage.
“It’s me—my fault,” I said. “I’m the one who wanted to find him, to make him pay. Sparrow can be pissed at me. What is he going to do, fire us?”
Silence settled over us as the SUV continued underground toward the garage. It was a construction marvel that Sparrow had this tunnel created beneath some of the highest-rent towers in Chicago. It ran over three city blocks long, making it impossible to know from the entrance to which building it led.
Finally, Phillips came to a stop near the elevator and put the vehicle in park. “Sirs, do you need help?”
“No,” we both replied.
But as I reached for the door handle and pain shot up my arm and more severely constricted my chest and ribs, I sat back with a moan. Without a word, Mason came around the SUV and opened my door. When he looked down, he grinned. “Do you want me to carry you?”
“No, asshole. I can walk. I just” —I let out a breath— “need to get out of the damn back seat.” Turning slightly, I reached forward with my left arm, the one that wasn’t bandaged.
Mason grasped my hand as he partly pulled and partly supported me. Once I was out, he grinned. “Watching you hobble around like an old man will make the ass chewing we’re about to get worth it.”
Step by step, we made it to the elevator where Mason pushed 2.
“Two?” I asked. “I thought the good doctor was visiting me.”
“You’re walking and talking. We have a command performance on 2. She’ll wait at the apartments.”
Because Dr. Renita Dixon had nothing better to do or any other patients waiting.
My thoughts went to Maples and from him to Lorna. “What does Lorna know?”
“Nothing.”
“Do any of the women know what happened?”
Mason shook his head. “Cleanup is still happening in Englewood, but we do have some loose ends that need tying. Remember what you said when we first got to Englewood?”
The doors opened to the cement hallway and steel door.
I did remember. “That Maples lived in the same neighborhood as Dino’s liquor store.”
“We are about to have a second dead body on 1, and something tells me we may have a connection.”
Mason scanned his eye and the steel door opened.
All eyes turned our direction as they let out a collective breath.
Holding on to Mason’s arm, I took a staggered step into our control center. It wasn’t the massive bank of computers that I saw. It wasn’t the set of blue eyes staring my way. My focus was on the kingpin of Chicago. He was still dressed in his Michigan Avenue finest, except now his jacket was gone, his sleeves were rolled up, and his leather loafers were about to pace a hole in the concrete floor. When our gazes met, he stilled. “Don’t go rogue. It was the last fucking thing I said.”
Reid
“Technically,” Mason began as he helped me to my chair, “I believe the last thing you said was to take backup. We did.”
Sparrow glared from my brother-in-law to me.
“It wasn’t supposed to end this way,” I replied.
“With a goddamned gunfight on a residential street in my city in the middle of the day?” He ran his palm over his dark hair. “I fucking hope that wasn’t your goal. What was?”
“We didn’t plan the part of Reid getting shot either,” Mason said as he leaned against a long table, crossing his arms over his chest and casually moving one ankle in front of the other.
“How are you?” Patrick asked, stepping toward me.
“Sore as hell. I feel like I was kicked by a horse or hit in the chest with a sledgehammer.”
Patrick looked at Mason. “CPR?”
“Yeah, the good doctor wants to run some tests, EKG and shit. By the time I got to him, there wasn’t a pulse. One slug hit his arm. The second slug hit him square in the chest, threw him back about three feet or more before he fell.”
Patrick’s eyes went to the bloody sleeve on my shirt and back to my eyes. “Glad you’re all right. If we lost you, Madeline and I would feel obligated to name our son Reid, and well, Reid Kelly isn’t our first choice.”
My lips curled. “I guess I lost that bet.”
“What were you two doing six blocks from Dino’s Liquor Store?” Patrick asked. “Romero and I were leaving there when I got the text about the shoot-out.”