Bloodfever by Karen Marie Moning Page A

brother before I’d led him to his unwitting death burned like a brand from hell against my inner thigh. I ignored it. “Goodness, is your brother missing?” I blinked up at him.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow long?”
    â€œHe was last seen two weeks ago.”
    â€œHow awful!” I exclaimed. “What brings you to our bookstore?”
    He stared down at me, and I suddenly wondered how I could have missed the resemblance. The same cold eyes that had watched me two weeks ago from inside a mobster’s den wallpapered with crosses and religious iconography gazed down at me now. Some would have pegged Rocky and his brother Derek as Black Irish, but I knew from Barrons, who knows everything about everyone, that the fierce, ruthless blood of a long-ago Saudi ancestor runs in O’Bannion veins.
    â€œI’ve been stopping in at all the businesses along this street. There are three cars in the alley behind this shop. Do you know anything about them?”
    I shook my head. “No. Why?”
    â€œThey belong to … associates of my brother. I was wondering if you knew when they’d been left there and why. If you heard or saw anything. Maybe a fourth black car? A very expensive one?”
    I shook my head again. “I really don’t go out back at all, and I don’t much notice cars. My boss disposes of the trash. I just work here. I try to stay inside most of the time. Alleys scare me.” I was babbling. I bit down lightly on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from talking. “Have you spoken to the police?” I encouraged. Go there, leave here, I willed silently.
    Derek O’Bannion’s smile was sharp as knives. “O’Bannions don’t trouble the police with our problems. We take care of them ourselves.” He studied me with clinical detachment, all flirtation gone. “How long have you been working here?”
    â€œThree days,” I said truthfully.
    â€œYou’re new to town.”
    â€œMm-hmm.”
    â€œWhat’s your name?”
    â€œMac.”
    He laughed. “You don’t look like a Mac.”
    Was this safer ground presenting itself? “What do I look like?” I asked lightly, leaning a hip against the counter and subtly arching my spine. Go back to flirting with me, my body posture invited.
    He scanned me from head to toe. “Trouble,” he said after a moment, with a faint, sexually charged smile.
    I laughed. “I’m really not.”
    â€œToo bad,” he parried. But I could tell his mind wasn’t fully on flirting. It was on his brother. And something else I could completely understand; it was on a hunt for the truth, for retribution. What vagaries of fate had made kindred souls of us—me and this man? Oh, excuse me, it hadn’t been vagaries. It was
me
.
    He took a business card from his wallet, a pen from his pocket, and scribbled on the back. “If you should see or hear anything, you’ll tell me, won’t you, Mac?” He took my hand, turned it palm up, and dropped a kiss in it before the card. “Anytime. Day or night. Anything. No matter how inconsequential you think it seems.”
    I nodded.
    â€œI think he’s dead,” Derek O’Bannion told me. “And I’m going to kill the fuck that did it.”
    I nodded again.
    â€œHe was my brother.”
    I nodded a third time. “My sister was murdered,” I blurted.
    His gaze sharpened with new interest. I was suddenly more in his eyes than another flirty, pretty girl. “Then you understand vengeance,” he said softly.
    â€œI understand vengeance,” I agreed.
    â€œCall me anytime, Mac,” he said. “I think I like you.”
    I watched him leave in silence.
    When the door closed behind him, I raced to the bathroom, locked myself in, and leaned back against the door, where I stood staring at myself in the mirror trying to reconcile dual images.
    I was hunting the