Keira smiled as she pressed her hand against the glass. Aiden covered it with his and ached, he wanted so badly to hold her. He had moments of anger and deep sorrow when he was at home and couldn't talk to her to make sure she was safe. And he didn't see how she could be happy, being confined to her cell for all but an hour or two a day.
Her smile was gentle and Keira's eyes glittered as they touched Aiden's. She was so present and Aiden felt truly connected to her. No one else, not even Lane, understood what Aiden felt like on the inside like Keira did. She was more than his reflection, she had been shaped by the same cold, selfish parent and had been forced to fend for herself and find her own way in the world. Her path had been twisted by pain and hate, but Keira had changed so much with just their love and support.
She had shared the most beautiful parts of her soul with Aiden, much like Lane had shared his. Each visit brought them even closer and Aiden carried Keira home with him, never able to truly leave her behind. He felt bitter when he missed her or couldn't call and share an interesting thought, but then he became grateful because he had a sister and loved her so dearly.
"I miss you too," she said. Her voice wavered and she had to stop for a breath. "But it's better than before. You leave pieces of yourself with me. Every time we talk like this, I learn so much more about you and even more about who I truly am. I have all these new pieces of myself and I feel even more complete. I'm not this big, scary emptiness anymore and I like these little things I've gathered." She tapped her temple. "It's a lot nicer in here now, thanks to you."
"Good." Aiden touched his chest. "It's nicer in here now, thanks to you."
ChapterOne
“I’ve seen corpses before they were embalmed and a mortician couldn’t have drained that body better. There’s no way that happened in a hotel room.”
Dr. Eileen Peters shook her head, exasperated as she handed Atlas her findings.
“I didn’t witness the act myself, but my agents saw Eddie Flanigan walk into the Waldorf on Saturday and all he left behind was his luggage and his brains. They were sprayed all over the headboard so we know he didn’t walk out of that room.”
There were traces of blood in the toilet and the sink, indicating that Lavender had probably flushed everything he’d drained from Flanigan and cleaned up at the sink. Aside from the spatter on the bed and the traces of blood the luminol had detected, the room was spotless. Well, as spotless as you’d expect from a hotel room in Chicago. The crime scene was drenched in DNA and dusting for fingerprints was pointless. Atlas knew Lavender wouldn’t leave his prints and that Lord Marston would have erased them if they existed in any database, but the scene was thoroughly processed.
Sometimes, a lack of evidence could be just as instructive as a room full of mistakes. Atlas opened the report and smiled as he scanned Dr. Peters’s findings.
“You found absolutely nothing on the remains.”
She frowned as she waited for the punchline. “Not a damn thing but the hotel room… You’d think we found them there, not floating in the Skokie. The remains were wrapped so tight, they were practically vacuum sealed.”
“Eddie Flanigan used to torture and dismember his victims in the kitchen of an old diner because he needed a drain. The health department shut the place down because it looked like a slaughterhouse, but they couldn’t pin anything on Flanigan until Winterstone flipped. You could toss body parts right into the wastewater back then and we didn’t have mass spectrometers or thermostatic cyclers,” he said and her brows jumped.
“So you’ve got a copycat who’s better at being Flanigan than Flanigan wasandunderstands forensics better than we do,” she said, looking mildly offended and concerned. Atlas laughed wryly as he gave her shoulder a playful swat with the file.
“We’d have an even bigger problem if you’d found something,” he said cryptically, then tapped his brow with the folder as he left her.
Finding anything would have meant they had another copycat on their hands. Or that Lavender had slipped. Both would have been worrisome, but Atlas’s gut ached because he’d seen it coming and was told to stay out of it. Not that Atlas wanted to interfere or get on Mr. Lavender’s bad side, he just hated looking the other way.
Paul Sloan had warned Atlas from the very beginning. He told Atlas he’d have to stick his conscience in his back pocket and get good at bending. Atlas understood that working with assets like Lavender and Marston would push him outside of his moral and ethical comfort zone. He just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. Or to want it.
He’d seen the intelligence from their sources within the Irish communities in New York, Boston, and Chicago. And Atlas had reports from informants in the various prison systems that there was a target on Declan Leary’s back and that Eddie Flanigan had been sent to collect on Jimmy Coonan’s behalf. Atlas went right to Lake Cliff and Mr. Lavender to make sure Declan was safe and under his protection.
The whole situation was a running protocol violation, but Atlas hadn’t cared. He had to know that Declan was safe. Atlas had felt like a child, though, arguing that the bureau should intercede and stop Lavender from assassinating Flanigan. There were snide reminders that Flanigan wasn’t the only Irish thug gunning for Declan Leary and no one was going to miss Eddie.
It didn’t sit well with his conscience and Atlas wished there was some way to protect Declan without sanctioning a hit. But at the end of the day, Atlas had to accept that Flanigan had put himself in Lavender’s path, practically offering himself as tribute.Someonewas going to try to kill Declan soon and the best way to stop them and discourage future attempts was to wipe out Eddie Flanigan.
And Lavender hadn’t just wiped him out, there were no fingers or teeth among Flanigan’s remains. Lavender had even removed Flanigan’s pacemaker and hearing aid because those had serial numbers that could be tracked. They had to wait on DNA to confirm that the remains belonged to Flanigan and they had to confirm each piece separately. It was an impressively tidy puzzle and Atlas still felt a chill when he recalled the dapper, yet faceless businessman the hotel’s cameras picked up in the hallway outside Flanigan’s room. He swept in just after midnight, then reappeared three hours later looking rested but in a hurry. Not a single person would imagine the corpse of a legendary Irish hitman was neatly packed in the Louis Vuitton Horizon 70 being casually dragged through the lobby of one of Chicago’s most prestigious hotels.
On a hunch, Atlas sent teams to the surrounding waste treatment plants. Except for the one on the Skokie River, none of the sites appeared to have been tampered with. And all the agents had found was a single cut padlock. Someone had breached the gate at the plant, but there were no tracks or footprints. Pieces began washing up downstream later that day. Luckily, Atlas had undercover agents posted along the river and all but two had been intercepted. They passed it off as a break-in at one of the local school’s labs, preventing exposure in the media and alarming the public.
The bureau was impressed and Atlas had come out looking like the ultimate boy scout, but his conscience twinged. Word had already spread through what was left of the Irish underworld that Eddie Flanigan had been snuffed out for going after Declan Leary. Eddie had ventured too close to Lake Cliff and his gory reputation and connection to Coonan did him little good.
Lavender had made an example of Flanigan and taken out the trash on Lake Cliff’s doorstep. And he practically had the FBI’s approval. Atlas had been reminded that his job was to keep an eye on Mr. Lavender and his neighbors, not to build a case. The bureau wanted to be sure that Lavender was in fact settling into semi-retirement and had control of his cohorts.
The opportunity to observe and monitor a group of sanctioned super criminals was a dream assignment for Atlas. But his impartiality and professionalism went out the window the moment Atlas laid eyes on Declan Leary.
Atlas waited until he was in his office and the door was closed to swear at himself. He dropped the file on his desk and went to glare out the window. Fall was seeping into the city and had already sapped the days of their warmth and the sky tended to be more gray than blue. The weather fit his mood as Atlas wondered if the sky could ever be as blue as Declan’s eyes.
“Fuck!” Atlas scrubbed his face with his hands, disgusted with himself.
Eddie Flanigan was in shrink-wrapped pieces and Atlas had the opportunity to study a mass murderer in his natural habitat, but what was he doing? Swooning over Declan’s eyes like a teenager.
“The rest of him is perfect too,” he noted. Atlas sighed as he fell against the window.