The phone rang against the marble counter, and Kyou glared at it for a full two seconds before shutting off the dryer and answering it.
“Yes, Carter?”
“Hey. I’m surprised you’re still awake.”
“I’m going to bed shortly.”
“Yeah? That’s good.” It was a little insulting how relieved Carter sounded. “I wanted to touch base with you a bit. So, your boy’s still home, snug and safe. Ivan said he’d crash for a few hours and then go back to shadowing him, just in case. Ari and I have a bit of a situation to take care of here.”
“Does this situation involve bodies?”
“Fortunately not. Think we have enough of those at the moment. No, we got home to discover that the upstairs tub was leaking through the kitchen ceiling. That’s kind of a priority.”
“No kidding.” It was sliding into late fall now. They were having a charitable bout of good weather, but no one in the New England area ever banked on a mild winter. Home repairs would go over better in this weather. “It’s fine, I doubt anything will happen this morning. They need time to figure out how to retaliate. Go take care of it. I’ve got Brannigan’s life so rigged with alarms, if someone even says ‘Mob’ around him, I’ll be alerted.”
“Okay. I’m honestly not sure how long this will take to sort out. Hopefully just this morning to repair the leak. That’s our main priority.”
“Sure. Go, go. I’ll let you know if something happens.” Kyou hung up and deemed his hair dry enough. With a yawn, he slipped on boxers and threw himself onto the queen-sized bed, snuggling in. “I love you, my bed. I’m sorry we don’t see enough of each other.”
The bed, being gentle and supportive, didn’t hold his long absences against him. Instead, she wrapped him up in a cocoon of softness and lulled him immediately to sleep.
Kyou slept so hard that even his REM cycle was sleeping. It took considerable concentration to figure out why he was being drawn out of the lovely darkness and to a more conscious state. Something was ringing? Or pinging? It was an annoying sound, anyway.
Rolling over, he snuggled more firmly into his cocoon of blankets and pillows and soundly tried to ignore it.
Then, of course, it became more insistent. Louder. It changed tones altogether from a blaring noise to his own voice yelling: “Get out of bed! He’s in trouble, get out of bed!”
Kyou’s eyes popped open. Shit! Rolling, he scrambled gracelessly for the phone charging on his nightstand, nearly knocking it off in the process of snatching it up. He had to pry open his left eye with thumb and finger to get it all the way up and be able to read his screen.
A red alert banner flashed over the screen: Brannigan Genovese. Hitmen.
Oh god. Kyou could just feel his brain cramping at seeing those words combined. It felt like acid reflux building up in his chest, too. Someone had said those words, his program picking it up and reporting it. Kyou double tapped the banner with his finger and an audio recording popped up. The program was set to record everything and then parse out thirty seconds before and after the keyword was said, sending the audio clip to him so he had something of context to work from.
A high-pitched voice demanded in a sharp tone, “I want to know who did this. It’s likely someone Brannigan Genovese hired, but I want names.”
“Shouldn’t we do something about Genovese? He’s becoming a problem,” a deeper, gruffer voice said.
Fucking shit, the O’Conners were definitely not taking this laying down. Kyou scrambled into clothes, yanking on jeans and a sweater, shoving his feet into the first shoes at hand.
“He’s not becoming a problem, he is a problem. I want him taken care of, too. Which one of our boys can take him?”
“Not sure if anyone can. The security around him is no joke. This might need a pro, an assassin. Man’s got someone hacking for him. It’ll take someone on the top of their game to get through his guard.”
Kyou would be proud of his work right then if it didn’t mean he’d partially be responsible for Brannigan’s death. No, that wasn’t the right way to look at this. He’d get Brannigan out of the line of fire. THEN take on the Irish Mob, because by god, they weren’t taking Brannigan from him.
“A hacker? Dammit, no wonder he’s wormed his way so skillfully into our backyard. Alright, get me a list of hitmen. Or post it on that site of yours, see if anyone’s willing to take it. I want Brannigan Genovese dead in three days. And get me the name of those thrice-cursed bastards that killed my men.”
“Yeah, boss.”
The clip ended there. Kyou frantically sprinted back to his computer and slammed commands into his system, searching for Brannigan’s location. There. He wasn’t home, he was at the park of all places. With such nice weather, of course he was outside and enjoying it, like half of the city.
But that meant he was close. Ten minutes away, in fact.
Facts careened through his head like a ping pong ball. The alarm had gone off for almost forty-five minutes before it had succeeded in waking Kyou. Forty-five minutes was a long time for people with a vendetta to work with. Kyou checked the dark web for any hints of a hit posted to take out Brannigan Genovese.
He found one in seconds.
Fucking dammit! It wasn’t taken yet, but that was only a matter of time. A short amount of time, as the hit was a cool million and of course the contract was fucking open. First come, first served. That would be snatched up fairly quickly. Kyou stood there shaking with indecision for three seconds. It felt like an eternity as his mind raced through possibilities. Ivan was still likely asleep at this point and on the other side of the city. So were Ari and Carter, and they weren’t ready to move out; they were focused on house repairs. That meant it was Kyou, and only Kyou, who was the feasible choice in snatching Brannigan up and into a safe house before a hitman could find him.
Was he overreacting? The possibility was there, but Kyou couldn’t think rationally where Brannigan was concerned. Emotions swirled through him, almost too fast to label and name—anxiety, panic, fear. This was too soon. He wasn’t ready. Not for any of this.
Determination knocked it all aside. He wasn’t ready, fine. When had Kyou ever been perfectly ready before shit hit the fan? He couldn’t let it stop him from safeguarding Brannigan now. That was the priority over everything else. Kyou swore some more, but even as the words poured out of his mouth, he was locking his computer down to prevent tampering, snatching up keys and wallet, and hurtling out of the apartment.
He kept the tracking beacon up on his phone so he could keep an eye on Brannigan’s whereabouts. His Jeep roared as he fired it up and backed it out of the space. Usually it was the guys intercepting a target and moving them quickly out of the line of fire. It felt strange to do it himself. Surely it was that role reversal making his nerves hop and tangle together like live wires.
No. No, it probably wasn’t.
Kyou shoved the thought and feelings aside as he made his way to the park. The red traffic light nearly gave him a hernia. How did the guys do this on a regular basis? Move, knowing that seconds counted? He much preferred life on the other side of the screen over doing this in real life.
He thumbed through his contacts, dialing Brannigan’s number, hands flexing nervously over the wheel as he waited for the man to pick up. He’d never called Brannigan from his actual phone before. Sign of the times, as Aiden would put it.