Thirty-Two

Ben greeted them at the door. “Is it done?”

Michael nodded. “Yeah,” he said, tossing the kid the box containing the rest of the ricin capsules. For all the good it’s going to do.

Ben tossed them back. “Keep ’em.”

Michael caught the box and dropped it into his pocket. He thought about what he’d just done. About how it made him no better than Livingston Shaw.

Lark was equally yoked now, but he couldn’t serve two masters. Michael had little advantage over Shaw. Nothing really, except the fact that he and Lark had been close once. He knew Lark better than anyone. Even so, it was going to take some doing to convince his former friend to help them.

Sabrina brushed past him before shutting the door. Her face changed when she saw Ben. Went soft, giving the kid one of those smiles of hers that felt like a sucker punch. He looked away, feeling like he was intruding on something private. Like he wanted to disrupt whatever was going on between them. He had no right to be angry. He’d left her—more than once—and if he was being completely honest with himself, up until twenty-four hours ago, he’d had no intention of ever coming back.

Ben reached out, brushed her hair off the back of her neck to assess the damage done to her head. And she let him.

“You should’ve had it stitched up.” His hand stayed where it was, cupping her nape, his thumb sweeping down the column of her neck, from earlobe to collarbone. Michael had a sudden memory of touching her in that exact same spot. Having her pushed against the kitchen door no more than a few feet from where he stood now, his other hand working at the buttons of her cargos. Fingertips sliding beneath the elastic waistband of her panties. Fifteen months and he could still feel her skin felt against his. How good she’d tasted when she’d opened her mouth against his.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, he wanted a drink. Bad.

“Just a scratch. I barely know it’s there,” Sabrina said, her lips quirked in another smile.

Ben looked at her for a moment, his eyes searching her face. “Liar.” He dropped his hand and took a step back, as if suddenly aware that they had an audience.

“Well, well, well … ” Lark said beside him, cutting Michael a shitty grin.

Michael hands curled into fists inside the pockets of his slacks. All plans of sweet-talking Lark flew out the window. He returned the grin with one of his own. “I’ve got two capsules left. You still hungry?”

Lark chuckled. “You have a pretty funny way of trying to convince me to help you, O’Shea,” he said before taking a seat at the kitchen table. “Making me your bitch. Threatening to kill me every five minutes.” Lark shrugged. “You coulda just asked.”

Michael folded his arms over his chest, nailing the man across from him with a hard look. “Last time I did that, you turned around and bit me. From now on, you get the muzzle.”

“No way to treat a friend,” Lark said quietly.

“We aren’t friends.”

The corners of Lark’s mouth turned up in a semblance of a brief smile. “If that’s true, then what makes you think I’m gonna help you? I’m a dead man either way.”

He was aware that Ben and Sabrina were watching the exchange, knew he’d fucked things up with his mouth and not being able to control it. Whatever. It was never going to work anyway. Lark was never one for pretty words. “You’re gonna help because no matter what kind of heartless bastard you might be, you pay your debts.”

“Debt?” Lark laughed out loud. “Please. I don’t owe you shit.”

“No. But you owe her.” Michael tossed his head at where Sabrina still stood next to Ben. “And you know it. That’s why you didn’t kill her when you had the chance. Because what you took from her, you know you’ll never be able to give back.”

Lark’s face hardened, his eyes going flat again. “What makes you think I give a shit about some old lady?”

He was talking about Lucy—Sabrina’s grandmother. The weight of the way she’d died, knowing that his trust in Lark was what got her killed, settled in Michael’s gut like a rock. “I’m pretty sure you don’t. What you care about is keeping your ledger clear.” A smile touched his mouth, and the tingle of it almost hurt. “You never liked being in the red.”

“I help you, Shaw kills me,” Lark said, his face twisted into a look of disbelief. “What the fuck I care about some make-believe debt?”

“So? You don’t help, you’re gonna die anyway. At least this way, you’ll die with a clean slate,” Michael said. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, things like that mattered to Lark. It was his way of balancing out the shit they did, like dropping a few pennies in a charity jar helped alleviate the guilt of sin. No matter what you’ve done, you convince yourself those pennies make up for it.

The lies people told themselves.

Lark looked past Michael to where Sabrina stood. “I’m not gonna sit here and say I lose sleep over what happened. I did what I did—and I’d probably do it again. I take the shortest route from point A to point B and never think much about what gets destroyed between the two. But getting your grandmother killed was never the goal.”

Michael could practically feel Sabrina vibrating, whether it was with rage or grief, he didn’t know. Probably both. He wanted to shut Lark up. To stand and put his arms around her. Hold her. Shield her from the flood of emotion he knew was swallowing her whole.

He did neither. Had no right to.

“I don’t forgive you, but if helping us makes it easier to fool yourself into believing that you’re a decent person, then knock yourself out,” Sabrina said.

Lark began to speak, but he was cut off by Ben’s cell.

“Yeah? You got it?” Michael heard the kid say behind him. “Are you sure?” He made a few noises in the back of his throat before flipping his phone closed and moving into view.

“That was my lab rat,” Ben said, looking directly at Sabrina. “The DNA off the kid you found came in. It’s not Leo Maddox.”