Deceptions (Cainsville 3)

Call him and tell him if he wants to talk, he can meet at your place. Now. I mean it. You don't want to run back to him, but you need to talk about this. You need to fix this.

I know.

She'd hug him and he'd feel her heart pounding, worried for him, and that would calm his own racing heart, reassure him that this could be fixed, that she'd make sure he fixed it.

He knew exactly what she'd say and what she'd do. All the right things.

His father wanted him to give that up? Because he had a bad feeling?

Goddamn it! Ricky knocked the kickstand out hard and swung from his bike. He looked up at the apartment. Then he yanked off his helmet and started for the door. Knowing what Liv would say was one thing, but right now he really needed to hear it.

He strode into the silent lobby. Apartment 5512. He checked his watch. It wasn't ridiculously late yet, but admittedly, if he pushed that button at this hour, he might piss off Gabriel, which he really didn't need. He should text Liv first and make sure she was still up.

He pulled out his phone. He had five voice-mail messages. Four were from Don, but the last was from Liv herself. He hit Play.

"Hey, it's me. Really hoped to catch you before I went to bed." She paused. "Which sounds whiny, doesn't it? Sorry. Long night. I know you're busy. I'll see you in the morning."

He checked the time stamp. It'd come right after he'd stomped out of the clubhouse, ignoring all calls, thinking they were his father.

Liv had had a hellish evening, and she'd gone to bed to get some rest. How could he wake her up and dump his own problems on her? How the fuck had he even considered that? Hey, I know you were reunited with your father in a prison visiting room tonight, but I've got some dad issues, too, so let's talk about mine.

Ricky ran his hand through his hair and exhaled, shaking his head. What the hell was I thinking?

I wasn't thinking. I was reacting. It's all shot to hell and the only good thing left is fifty-five stories up, out of reach. But I'm going to do the right thing and let her sleep.

He pushed open the lobby doors and walked out. As he did, he caught sight of a Volvo parked across the road. The car was running, a man in the driver's seat, the window down as he watched the building. Seeing Ricky, the driver quickly put the window up, but not before Ricky got a look at a familiar face.

Morgan? Are you fucking kidding me?

The car pulled into the street. Ricky strode to his bike and hopped on.

You picked the worst possible night to pull this shit, Morgan. And you're about to find out why.

A REASONABLE MAN

Gabriel paced the living room, checking the locks and the security system, looking out the window, then sitting on the edge of the couch, hoping to settle in for the night, only to be compelled to get up again.

He'd given Olivia the bedroom. He felt better being between her and the front door. The chances of Morgan breaking in were as infinitesimal as the chances that Gabriel had somehow failed to engage the locks or arm the security system, but taking the couch helped dull the edges of his gnawing anxiety.

He should feel better about the situation. He and Ricky had come up with a rational plan for dealing with James Morgan. The problem was that Gabriel was becoming increasingly convinced they were not dealing with a rational man.

He'd had two e-mails from Morgan toda

y. The first had come late morning. A photograph with the subject line "Thought you might want to see this." Which had told Gabriel he almost certainly did not. He'd cautiously opened it on his phone, getting the smallest possible preview before realizing what it was, deleting it, and going into his trash and removing it from there, too, on the off chance he might somehow stumble over it later.

It'd been a picture of Ricky and Olivia. Ricky had told him Morgan had interrupted him and Olivia kissing behind the diner. While Gabriel hadn't seen much before he deleted the picture, he was quite certain "kissing" didn't quite cover the situation. That was not an image he wanted anywhere in his brain.

But it raised the question: What kind of man purposely walks in on his ex-fiancee with another man and takes a photo of them? And sends the picture to someone else? The levels of incomprehensible behavior were too much for Gabriel to even process.

He was looking out the window when he caught a noise from the bedroom. He walked to the closed door and listened, and then reached for the knob. He stopped himself. Yes, there was a bedroom window--fifty-five stories up without even a balcony to climb on. Most likely, Olivia was using the bathroom. His brain whirred through everything she could find in there. The most damning items--the weapons and the money--were gone, though. He'd removed them earlier that day. With Chandler's death, the defense attorney in Gabriel had finally overruled the little boy who needed his security blankets, and he'd stashed them in an untraceable storage locker he kept.

Still, he shouldn't have insisted Olivia take the bedroom. It wasn't about putting her in a safer spot, he realized. It was about giving her a better place to sleep as a way of saying, "I'm sorry for how monumentally I fucked up tonight."

When she'd insisted he stay out of the prison visiting room, he'd racked his brain for what he'd done to deserve the rejection. Whatever the cause, he hadn't taken the snub well. Not until he'd stood at that visiting room door, seen the tears streaming down her face, and all he could think was, Thank God I'm not in there.

It wasn't that he didn't want to deal with her emotional breakdown. He wanted to fix it. To make her feel better. And he didn't know how.

Olivia knew whom to turn to for comfort. She'd wanted Ricky. And he'd talked her out of it. He'd been hurt and, yes, jealous, unwilling to acknowledge that someone else could help her when he could not. So how had he handled the situation? By making it worse.