“Ghostshot, I think this just became far too expensive for you to pursue. But I do understand the irritation you must feel regarding being so far out of pocket on this job. Let me sweeten the pot, so to speak. Why don’t I pay you a breach of contract fee on the O’Conners’ behalf?”
Ghostshot sounded ruminative. “You’d do that?”
“I don’t see the harm. I fully plan to use the money acquired this evening to repair the damage done by the O’Conners. Part of it can go to you. They sent you on a suicide mission, after all.”
“They sure did.” Ghostshot made a growling noise in the back of his throat. He was clearly not happy about any of this. “Damn, it doesn’t sit well with me not finishing a job. But you know what? Fuck it. I’m not tangling with K, Eidolon, Malvagio, and Harrison. You’re right, that is suicide. And if you’re not lying about the O’Conners, there’s no one to pay me even if I complete the job. You’re too much trouble, Genovese. How does a quarter million as a breach of contract sound to you?”
Brannigan really didn’t care as it wasn’t his money he was spending. Well, technically it was now. But blood money was best gotten rid of quickly. “Acceptable.”
“K still listening?”
K leaned over to say, “I am.”
“I’ll text you my account number on this phone in a second. Transfer it there. And the next time that I take a contract on someone you’re guarding, will you just text me? I’d rather not do this whole circus again.”
K grinned from ear to ear. “I can do that. Good night, Ghostshot. You’ll have your money in less than five minutes.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Brannigan hung up the phone and set it aside. Then he offered a hand to the people on either side of him, getting high-fives in return. “You two are the absolute best. I love you.”
Remi closed in for a hug, which he readily returned. He really liked her and hoped he’d get to spend more time with her. Remi was a firecracker. Turning, he caught Kyou watching him, and he let go so that he could kiss his lover sweetly. Against his mouth, Brannigan whispered, “I think we should celebrate properly.”
“Later,” Kyou murmured back with a naughty smile. “I have to pay off an assassin first, and we should wait for the rest of the guys to get in.”
The responsible adult part of him agreed. But the rest of Brannigan hoped they had their asses in gear and got there quickly. After the insanity of the past two hours, Brannigan wanted a little one-on-one time with his lover.
15
Kyou
The next day proved Ghostshot was good as his word. He quietly left after being paid, and Kyou tracked his exit from Boston with a sigh of relief. The police were in an uproar about the explosion, of course, but most of the neighborhood celebrated, as the plague in their area had disappeared in a shower of smoke and fire. Brannigan got more than a few questions about why he’d pulled out his employees. He’d skillfully answered, with (mostly) the truth: That he’d been worried about his people. The O’Conners had sent thugs over to harass people several times in the past two weeks, and he’d gotten an anonymous tip that something bad was going down that day, so he’d sent everyone home as a precaution.
The police believed him, as there was a long paper trail of Brannigan reporting problems. The questions were more a courtesy than anything. Kyou got the distinct impression they believed whoever had bombed the O’Conners was another Mob family trying to move into the area. Or it was some territorial dispute. At any rate, not because of the upstanding and very generous real estate developer who wasn’t even in the neighborhood at the time it all happened.
He also gathered the impression the police were secretly glad the O’Conners were gone, and weren’t looking a gift horse too hard in the mouth.
They spent one more full day tying up loose ends and making sure that the contract was down, that no one else was still operating under bad intel and was after Brannigan. It didn’t look as if things were going to have a neat and tidy ending just yet. Someone was nosing about; Kyou was picking up whispers of it. He was set to pack up, go back to his own apartment, but with this going on, he didn’t dare. He set up web crawlers for overnight investigation and went to bed with the hopes he’d have a firmer answer in the morning.
The hopes were dashed the next morning. Instead of a firm identity, he instead had a dozen or so mentions of his name and Brannigan’s.
The whispers were subtle; little questions on forum boards here, a hint of a suggestion on a website there—nothing he could put a face to. Or even a single handle to. Kyou kept going back to the first hint he’d seen, the first post in the forum. It wasn’t a good forum by any means—even Kyou was careful what he posted there because the admins let basically anything go. Most of the time he didn’t even post.
Whoever had posted here first seemed to know that as they were careful in their phrasing. If not for Kyou’s very well-programmed web crawlers, he’d never have picked up on this to begin with.
This wasn’t good. They were all due to pack up today, clean up the safe house and get ready to go back to their own places. Right now, that three-hour delay of packing up, moving over, and setting up again gave Kyou hives. He didn’t want to spend that time moving about when he could be searching for a concrete answer. And was it even safe to move until he’d figured this out?
So, he sat down instead of packing up, pinging Brannigan via text to request for them to linger a bit longer so he could tie up loose ends. Brannigan responded with a simple ok. With that done, Kyou sat down and really dug in.
It should have been simple with the information he had, but it really wasn’t. Sometimes the person seemed to be looking for him, sometimes Brannigan. Kyou honestly couldn’t figure out if he was the actual target and they were using Brannigan to find him or…? Maybe they wanted to find both?
Shit, shit, shit. This was exactly what Kyou feared. As much as it had thrilled him, hearing Brannigan claim Kyou as his own, that might backfire quickly. If Ghostshot decided to sell that info, he could get a pretty penny for it. Kyou didn’t think the man was a tattle-tale and frankly, Ghostshot seemed determined not to piss him off, but things could change. Things could change for the worst in a split second, with no warning.
Kyou should know.
Kyou kept digging, but for every passing hour that he didn’t find an answer, his anxiety ratcheted up. He had three screens up, searching, his web crawlers doing the same. He kept tweaking the search parameters, kept altering them with keyword choices here and there and still, no answer. Whoever was searching was crafty, oh so crafty. Dammit. Kyou wanted to tear his hair out and scream.
Of course, it was at that moment that a little chime went off. His eyes darted down to the bottom right of the screen, where an alarm window had popped up. Stop working, time to go play with Bran! it read.
Kyou stared at it without comprehension for a full ten seconds. Then his eyes darted to the clock just underneath it. Shit. It was six o’clock, right at dinner time. He’d planned to quit well before now, in fact, but he’d set an alarm just in case. Because Kyou lived with himself and knew how well he could get sucked down the rabbit hole. With them so new to dating, he wanted to start off on the right foot. Spending time with his lover, having dinner with him, was a good first step.