I don’t miss trying to land on the fuckers, though. Hardest part of any mission was right at the end, when you were already exhausted.
In the blackest of night, when our attacks always went off, you circled back afterward, fuel down to reserve. Hunted in the blackness to see the carrier deck. When you found it, it was a tiny gray coffee table, tossed on black, biblical waves.
Aim, then drop through the gale like a stone. A million ways to miss and no second chance. Hard contact, wheels down, tires squealing, undercarriage jarred your spine as it thumped and bottomed out. Then a moment of blessed relief when you jolted to a stop.
And it taught me, no matter how tough a fight is, always keep something in reserve.
Gavin, my driver and chief bodyguard, was with me in the navy. He completes preflight checks with me.
I feel the power of the twin jet turbines rise.
I tell the controller, “Gulfstream four, seven, five, five, echo, alpha, ready to taxi.” The whine of the engines lifts as I nose the O’Malley jet out of the hangar.
There is that hint of a smile in the laid-back drawl in the headset. “Gulfstream four, seven, five, five, echo, alpha, proceed to runway twenty-six right via bravo echo. Wait clearance.”
When I slow the plane down at the ramp, I give my callsign. “Ready at twenty-six right.”
Tower comes back, “Gulfstream four, seven, five, five, echo, alpha, you are clear for departure to Boston, heading two seven seven right.”
“Two seven seven right. Thank you, tower. Roger that,” and I turn the jet to line up on the runway.
Tower signs off with, “Clear for takeoff,” and she says, “Have a good one, Mr. O’Malley.”
I wind the engines up and race along the tarmac. Wind lifts the wings. I pull the nose up. The sensation of power when the wheels leave the ground and the plane leaps still gives me a thud of excitement.
In that instant, as my stomach drops, I’m thinking of the curves under that silky dress.
It’s wrong, I know, but where’s the harm? I won’t act on it; she’s far too young for me.
At cruising altitude, I ask Gavin casually, “You know about a girl in Jack O’Leary’s house? Curvy with strawberry blonde curls? She looks about nineteen.”
Gavin eyes me suspiciously and he’s quiet for a moment. “Boss? Are you coming back from the dead?”
Chapter Three
Tegan
The hard buzz of the house intercom jolts my nerves. Jack shouts from his study.
“Tegan! Find out who that is.”
I’m all the way down in the kitchen, but I hurry up the back stairs. I run toward the hallway where the entry screen is. Running is not in my special skill set, but I’ve learned to do what Jack says.
He’s so angry, he beats me to the buzzer. His eyes flash, and he stands back in shock, glowering at the tiny screen. Somehow, he puts a smile in his voice.
“Liam. What a… what a great surprise. How great to see you!”
His scowl darkens as he pushes the buzzer to swing open the driveway gates.
Even I’ve heard of Liam. Daddy talked about him. He was a big-time gangster here in Boston, before he moved to Vegas and took his family out to their new desert kingdom. Now, he’s called the kingpin of Las Vegas.
I get an aching throb, just knowing he’s here. The boss of one of the most powerful Irish mob families in the whole country.
Jack gets angry if I say, ‘mob family.’ He says it’s disrespectful, and it’s stereotyping, but I think it’s because he isn’t in one.
Daddy told me about Jack O’Leary, too. Jack works for a syndicate. He’s always saying that the men he works for are the ‘top dogs,’ but I heard him lecturing his son, Aaron. He said, ‘The last couple of rungs up the ladder, they’re longer, steeper and harder to climb than the whole of the rest of the way up.’
And he snarled, ‘You’ve got to be ready to do anything. Anything. Whatever it takes to get a seat at the table with these bastards.’
Jack is rich and he’s powerful, but I know he feels like he’s practically a servant. The way he made my daddy feel, I guess. And the way he tries to make me feel now.
Liam O’Malley is in a whole other league.
I’m remembering when I was first driven up to this house. High black iron gates swung slowly inward and I curled up as small as I could get in the back of the big SUV. The car crunched up the long, gravel driveway till the tall black windows of the house loomed over the windshield.
I felt like I was the next victim for Dracula’s castle.
The car rocked to a stop between the circular lawn with a dried up, moss-smeared cement fountain, and the big stone steps up to the columns and the portico over the dark, paneled double doors. When the doors parted to open inward, there was Jack O’Leary.