“Spying!” He laughs in an oddly feminine way, clutching his sides and giggling. “Is that all you think Max Smithson was up to?” He tells me about the girls and about the torture. “I can show you videos if you like.”

  My world reels, spinning too fast. Max Smithson, a murderer and torturer. That’s why he worked with Mickey. Part of me refuses to believe it, but another part of me knows it’s true. All those looks Max gave me over the years have double meanings now. I think I’ll be reliving every meeting I ever had with him for the rest of my life. I shiver. Mickey giggles again.

  “Cor is a righteous man. A real hero. He won’t let a villain like that live.”

  I remember the car, when I was in my underwear, with the coke-snorting agents. I had to swallow my feelings of revulsion then to save myself. I’ll have to do the same now. Reaching across and laying my hand on his arm makes me want to puke, but I do it. Smiling at him like he’s the funniest, most charming man I’ve ever met makes me want to scream, but I do it. I have no choice. “To be frank with you, Mickey, I’ve always thought the FBI over exaggerated how bad you are. I mean, what have you done that’s that bad? You’re just doing what you have to for your family. All you’re doing is taking what’s yours. To be honest, I think you’re the hero, not Cor.”

  I’m sorry, Cor. I don’t mean it.

  For a long time, he grins at me, that snakey, gummy grin. Then he shakes his head and starts making a tutting sound. “That must work on a lot of men, the way you look. You are a very attractive lady, Ms. O’Bannon, but please understand that I have spent my life around very attractive ladies. I even procured some for your dear, probably-dead boss. I’m afraid that won’t work on me. It might have, if I didn’t have an even more attractive lady in my care. Oh, she’s a piece, this one. The sweetest thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Like something out of a dream. Like something out of a porn movie. I played a game with her earlier, thinking of titles for the movie I’m going to put her in. Naïve Young Teen Gets Blasted With Cum is my favorite. What do you think?”

  I look into his eyes, praying he isn’t saying what I think he is. When that gummy smile gets so wide it reaches from ear to ear, a pit opens in my belly. “You’re lying,” I say, voice trembling.

  “Lying?” He shrugs, as though it’s no big deal for him. “So I didn’t go to Hell’s Kitchen to the top floor of an apartment building and pay a visit to Moira? That’s so strange. I thought I did that. Maybe I’m misremembering. And Moira isn’t under my care right now? How strange! I thought she was!” He makes that awful giggling noise. “But I suppose you hard-assed FBI types need proof, don’t you?” He reaches into his pocket and takes out his cellphone.

  He’s dressed her in a sparkling red dress and heels. She’s squinting at the camera. A deer in headlights. Tess drowned; now Moira’s drowning. “You better not hurt her,” I snarl. “I swear to God—”

  “I bet you thought you were going to try something, didn’t you?” Mickey grins. “Silly girl.”

  “What have you done with her?” My hand itches to go for my gun, but Mickey leans forward, his giant bulk ready to topple into me at any second. I have never felt smaller, more defenseless, or more aware of my own size. If he fell on me now, all the firearm training in the world wouldn’t help me. I grip the edge of the bar, digging my fingernails into the wood. “What have you done with her?” I repeat.

  He messes with his cellphone, then hands it to me. “Why don’t you hear for yourself?”

  I only realize how much I’m sweating when I put the phone to my ear. The touchscreen slides against my skin, my cheek slick. “Hello! Hello! Cor! Scarlet!”

  I’m about to respond when Mickey snatches the phone away.

  “Here is your choice,” he says, hanging up the phone, then dropping it into his pocket. “You either come with me right now—this second—or I have some special fun with little miss Moira.”

  “She’s your cousin.” I see my fist buried in his face, my hands on his throat. I see myself kicking him in the head. Violent images that my FBI training is meant to have made impossible in my well-honed mind rise up like acid. I feel ill. “You sick fuck! Is this how you show what a big man you are, by dressing your cousin up like that?”

  I hope to throw him off-balance, but he just stares at me with those mismatched eyes.

  “Part of me hopes you don’t come with me,” he says. “That way I will not be forced to withhold my urges. Urges are funny things, really hard to keep in check. So, are you coming, or am I having some fun?”

  I want to protest, to shout, or to fight, but then I think of Moira in her pretty dress and Tess sinking like a rock to the bottom of the lake. I think of the way dad looked at me when we all knew there was no life left in Tess and imagine Cor looking at me in the same way. Instead of asking me if I could get her to the shore, Cor will say, “Weren’t you meant to be protecting her?”

  “I’m coming with you,” I say, standing up, legs feeling like jelly.

  “That’s the right choice.” Mickey nods and throws a bill onto the bar. “Maybe you’re not as stupid as you look, Ms. O’Bannon. Don’t look so sad. We’re going to have a party.”

  Chapter 4

  Cormac

  Flint, Sebastian, and I drive in Flint’s rust-bucket car through New York. I’m hardly able to keep my goddamn head straight. Images keep coming into it that make me want to smash the windshield with my fist, to grab shards of the glass and squeeze them just to feel the pain. Scarlet, my Scar, the woman I love. I love you, I want to tell her. I love you and this bullshit about leaving and being apart was a mistake. I was going to find you. Please be safe.

  Flint comes to a screeching stop outside of Scar’s apartment building. I’ve only ever been here twice before, on work-related tasks back when all we had in common was a mutual desire to see other mobsters out of the game. But now I charge up the stairs, Flint and Sebastian behind me with their guns out. I’m praying that Mickey is in the apartment. I don’t even care if he has Scar by gunpoint, so long as she’s alive and Mickey is there and I can end this whole thing. I’ll give myself to him if that’s what it takes. I’ll let him bring a machete to my throat—anything. Just let Scar live. As I charge up the stairs, a ringing in my ears blocking out all other sound, I know now that I care more about Scar than I do about becoming Don. I want to become Don, but if it comes down to a choice between saving Scar and being Don, I’ll let it go. Scar can’t die. Whatever happens in this twisted life, I can’t let Scar die.

  A middle-aged hippy type with pink glasses and a multicolored scarf is carrying a bag of groceries to her apartment when we reach Scar’s floor. She pauses, frozen, and then her mouth falls open and her eyes go wide. “Ah!” she exclaims, dropping the bag. “Don’t hurt me, please!” She turns and sprints away, her colorful scarf flapping behind her. So much for being the good guys ...

  Scar’s door comes off with a swift kick, reminding me of the door in the motel room and what now seem like simpler times. The door swings open to reveal a plain-looking apartment. At first I think we’ve got the wrong place—this looks like a show apartment or something—but then I see an FBI certificate on the otherwise plain wall. This is Scar’s place all right.

  “Search the place quickly,” I say. Sebastian and Flint spread out.

  I go into her bedroom, where the bedsheets lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. She has a novel on her bedside table. No, I learn as I pick it up, not a novel. It’s one of those self-help books. Being Away from Him: Ten Steps to Dealing with Temporary Separation. So she did miss me, I reflect as I place the book down. I’ve never wanted to be with her more, never wanted to hold her more, never wanted to make love—make love, goddamn, I never thought it’d come to me like that—more. I want her. Dammit, I need her.

  “Anything?” I say, upon returning to the living room.

  “No, boss. Sorry.”

  “Fuck!” I kick the couch savagely, causing part of the foundation to collapse inward. Sorry, Scar. “Fuck!”

  When the three of us are back on the street, I massage my temples, my head pounding. I wish I could go back to that day in the apartment with Scar, Moira, and Agent O’Bannon. I wish I could make it so Scar and I were never apart in the first place. Agent O’Bannon ... “Flint, call your hacker friend. I need the address for Agent Derrick O’Bannon, Scarlet’s pa, about five goddamn minutes ago. All right?”

  We get into the car. I drive us toward The Leprechaun, swerving through traffic and causing the New Yorkers to do what they do best—roar and wave their arms at traffic. I climb from the car and bust through The Leprechaun’s doors. The whole place has been refurbished since the last time I was here. It doesn’t look like the sort of den a mobster and an FBI agent could meet in to do some secret work. A girl is working the front desk, around sixteen or seventeen, with eyes that keep straying to her cellphone, resting beside her work clipboard.

  “Top of the morning to you—”

  “Has a woman been in here, with shoulder-length red hair and green eyes? Thin, tall, and pale? She might have been wearing a suit, trousers, a jacket ... well, has she?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the teen says, in a tired, bored voice. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I’ve just got here, you see? My shift started twenty minutes ago, and the girl before me has already gone home. Maybe ask the barman?”

  Aiden! I walk past her, shoving through a group of men on a stag party, my shoulder barging the stag out of the way when he tries to dart into my path. He shouts at me—“Hey, jerk!”—but then Flint has his hand on his shoulder, shaking his head. The stag and his fawns go on their way. I walk up and down the bar, searching for Aiden O’Connell’s milky eye, but he isn’t in today. The only people behind the bar are new people, a guy and a girl, both looking as bored as the front-desk girl, and a man about my age wearing an earpiece and a new Leprechaun uniform: green shirt, leprechaun figure on the pocket, green pants, green shoes.

  When I reach across the bar and tap him on the shoulder, he takes a wary step back. “Yes, sir? Can I help you?”

  “I hope so. Where the fuck’s Aiden?”

  A few people at the bar make outraged noises because of my swearing. I ignore them. The man looks over my shoulder at Flint and Sebastian, then back at me. Swallowing nervously, he says, “I’m afraid Aiden doesn’t work with us anymore. He was let go when his—err, I guess you would say company—he was let go when his company sold their shares in the business.”

  When Mickey sold his shares for the specific purpose of getting rid of Aiden, a loyal man, you mean.

  “Fine. All right. Then you can help me. Has a woman been in here ...” I give him Scar’s description.

  “Um, let me see.” He taps his fingernails on the bar. “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “All right, then. What about a huge man? Seven feet, or maybe taller? With the ugliest goddamn face you’ve ever seen? Two mismatched eyes? A big lump of a man.”

  “He was in around three hours ago,” a barmaid says, pulling a beer. She’s the only adult apart from the earpiece man. “He was nice and polite. He left me a nice tip.”

  “And there was a girl with him?” I’m shaking now. My hands open and close, wanting to be around Mickey’s throat.

  “Yes. They left together.”

  “Did you hear them say where they were going?”

  The barmaid looks at me like I’m dumb. “I don’t eavesdrop on our customers.” She takes the beer down the bar.

  “So he has her,” I mutter, outside in the car. “That bastard has her. So much for moving in on the compound. Yeah, the three of us could roll up and more than half of the fellas in the compound’d rise up with us. But what compound is he in? He could be in any damn place. The last two months, it’s been the same thing. And now if we move on him, he’ll hurt Scarlet. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe if we were quiet, but ... fuck.” I thump the steering wheel, anger exploding out of me. “Fucking bastard! Fucking prick! Fuck!”

  “Boss,” Flint says. “I have Derrick O’Bannon’s location.”

  We drive to his apartment. Before we get out of the car, my cell buzzes. I yank it out quickly, hoping it’s Scar telling me that she’s gotten away. I have this whole fantasy in the time it takes me to take out my phone and unlock it. Scar somehow beat the shit out of Mickey, using some of her FBI ninja shit, and now she’s lying low in an alleyway somewhere waiting for me to pick her up. I’ll go and get her and that will be that. We’ll never be apart again. But it’s not Scar. It’s a number I don’t recognize, most likely a burner cellphone, and there are no words. The photograph shows Scarlet and Moira, both of them squinting in the flash, both of them squeezed into tightly-fitting party dresses.

  I have to place my phone on the dashboard to stop myself from squeezing it, shattering the glass and plastic.

  “They have Scar and they have my sister.” My voice is cold.

  “Let me see, boss,” Flint says. “Might be we’ll be able to work out where they are from the background.”

  “All right.” I hand the phone to him. “Wait here. I’m going to see Agent O’Bannon.”

  I get into the building using an age-old trick, buzzing another apartment and telling them I’m the gas engineer. They let me into the building, and then I’m standing outside Agent O’Bannon’s door. I think about what Moira told me—Scar’s sister dying in a swimming accident. This man has already lost one daughter and now he might lose another. I feel guilty as I knock on the door. If I had taken out Mickey months ago, none of this would be happening.

  He opens the door looking like a man who wishes he could live in the past. His shirt is disheveled, his eyes sleepy. “It’s you,” he says.

  When I’ve told him about Scar and Moira, he’s on his feet, pacing up and down his living room. His place is just as bare as Scar’s, except for a photograph of Scar and a girl who looks like Moira when she was younger, who I’m guessing is her sister. When Agent O’Bannon goes into the kitchen to get some water, I take a closer look at the photo and see that the girl’s name was Tess, written in the corner with pen. She really does look like Moira, the similarities stunning.

  “We need to find her,” Agent O’Bannon says, buttoning up his shirt. “I have to go to the FBI and—no, we can’t do that. He has contacts within the FBI.”

  I wonder if I should tell him about Max Smithson, but then decide against it. Maybe Agent O’Bannon is the type of man who believes even rapist-murderers deserve a fair trial. Anyway, getting the FBI involved would be a big mistake regardless of that. The FBI would roll in with their SWAT teams sounding like a herd of elephants, giving Mickey plenty of time to act out his sick perverted fantasies on Scar and Moira.

  A few minutes later, the four of us are sitting in Flint’s rust bucket. “I think I’ve figured out where they are, boss,” Flint says, reaching through from the back to show me. “See there?” He points to a mirror in the background of the photo. “Look. If you look closely, see? It’s a tower, and see that, another tower. Look at the angle, too. It’s my bet that they’re at the ballroom.”

  “The ballroom?” Agent O’Bannon tips his head. “Since when do mobsters have ballrooms?”

  “My pa liked that stuff sometimes. Mostly he just rented it out. But sometimes he used it for himself. Are you sure, Flint?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “Right.” We drive to the closest weapons cache, which is a half-mile away. After busting into the back of the ‘abandoned’ arcade, smashing open the machine, and finding the weapons hidden inside, we stand in a circle in near darkness, the only light the fading sun that shines through the busted-open door. “We need to be quiet on this job. These,” and I gesture to the guns, “are a last resort. We sneak in, find Moira and Scar, and then start firing if we need to. But we don’t start anything until we can make sure they’re safe. I don’t want a stray bullet catching either of them. I have men waiting for me in there, but—”

  My cell goes off again. When I check it, my plan seems laughable. Sneak in, easy as that, and secure Moira and Scar, easy as that, like Mickey hasn’t considered that we might try something like this. It’s another photograph, this time of Moira and Scar on their knees, looking hatefully at the camera as Mickey stands behind them, his hands on their heads. The text reads: “Girls these days ...” I laugh madly, dropping my weapon and turning toward the door.

  “Boss?” Flint calls after me. “Cor?”

  “Sneak in,” I mutter, shaking my head. “Goddamn.”

  They follow me out to the car, looking uncertain, Agent O’Bannon with the look of a man waiting to be told his daughter is dead.

  “If we try anything like this, he’ll kill them. He’ll rape them, and then he’ll kill them. It’s a damn fool move.”

  “What, then?” Agent O’Bannon asks angrily. “Are we meant to just let him have them?”

  “No.” I show them the phone. Flint and Sebastian curl their lips. Agent O’Bannon takes a step back, clenching his fists. “That’s a man who thinks he’s the big boss. Thinks he’s the biggest fucking badass the mob has ever seen. So I’m gonna roll up and tell him what he wants to hear. Remember what he said to you, Seb? You all die unless Cor accepts me as Don. That’s what I’ll do. Pretend to do, at least. You’ll be outside, waiting for me to text Flint’s phone. It’s the only way.”

  “But, boss, if the men see you kneel to this bastard—”

  I climb into the driver’s seat. “Sometimes, Flint, you’ve gotta put your woman before the men, no matter what they say.”

  Chapter 5

  Scarlet

  I want to grab his hand and snap one of his fingers as it strokes my head, but the man holding the camera has a gun on his belt and the two men standing behind him have guns on their belts. There’s nothing I can do but kneel here, feeling sick to my stomach and wishing that I was here on my own because Moira was someplace safe. We were going to use Moira as bait, but it was going to be safe, and she was going to be in on the plan. This isn’t the same. This isn’t the same at all. Moira is putting on a brave face, but as soon as Mickey takes his hand from her, she lets out a shaky breath.